Are you still looking for an endocrinologist? Here are some tips from Lyle Mitzner, M.D., at Joslin Diabetes Center to make the whole process a LOT easier:

• Check with your insurance company first to see which physicians it covers.
• Know the right places to look. Do research on these places to narrow your search down.
• Ask family and friends or check with a local hospital for recommendations.
• If you're going to an academic center, make sure the endocrinologist has a particular interest in your condition, as many doctors in academic centers are specialized to the point that they only see thyroid, diabetes or pituitary disorders, according to Mitzner.
• Don't be afraid to ask questions to make sure it's the right fit.
• Check out their credentials: where did they go to medical school, are they specialized in the right area, is he or she board certified, where did they complete their fellowship program?
• Make sure they are someone you can trust, communicate well with and establish a long-term relationship with. During the first visit, inform them of the details of your lifestyle and health history to make sure they suit your needs.

Source: Joslin Diabetes Center

In time for the holidays, TJ Dietderich has sent me a link to Jeannie Baellow's video blog. In this post, she discusses her plans for keeping on track with her new diet during the holiday season: An Easy Meal Plan For The Holidays.

Jeannie is the winner of the Diabetes Challenge, which means she's receiving training and counseling from the Lifestyle Center of America to help control her diabetes and video blogging about the experience.

Hopefully you dear readers will learn a lesson or two on holiday dieting from Jeannie.

Type 1 diabetes is the condition wherein the body doesn't produce enough insulin to convert blood sugar into energy for the cells. On the other hand, Celiac disease is a digestive disease that damages the small intestine and interferes with absorption of nutrients from food. People affected by Celiac disease cannot tolerate gluten (a protein found in wheat, rye and barley.

Both are inflammatory disoders that now has been found to be genetically linked.

"Our results spotlight that much more research needs to go into investigating the environmental factors involved," said study senior author John Todd, of the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research at the University of Cambridge in the U.K.

"Additionally, research investigating whether there are benefits for type 1 diabetics knowing they are positive for celiac is important. There needs to be clinical research to see if this information could help them."

The findings suggest that the two may orginate from the same underlying mechanism. What does this mean? it could be that research for treatments are in the same field.

Diabetics are prone to kidney damage also called diabetic nephropathy. However, albumin excretion rates determine the extent of the kidney disease.

Microalbuminuria occurs when small amounts of albumin - the most abundant protein in human serum - leaks from the kidney into the urine. It is a marker of early kidney disease development in diabetics.

Now it has been found that daily high doses of Vitamin B1 (thiamine) for three months reduced the rate of albumin excretion in type 2 diabetics by 41 per cent.

The albumin excretion rate was decreased by 41% from the value at the start of the study. The results also showed 35% of patients with microalbuminuria saw a return to normal urinary albumin excretion after being treated with thiamine.

"In this pilot study, high-dose thiamine therapy produced a regression of urinary albumin excretion (UAE) in type-2 diabetic patients with microalbuminuria," wrote the researchers in the journal Diabetologia.

"Thiamine supplements at high dose may provide improved therapy for early-stage diabetic nephropathy."

The said study was from England and Pakistan. Read more from NutraIngredients.

The popular oral diabetes drug class thiazolidinediones (TZDs), doubles the risk of fractures in women with type 2 diabetes. Such were the findings of Wake Forest University School of Medicine and the University of East Anglia, published online in the Canadian Medical Association Journal that will appear in the January 6 issue.

"We knew going into this study that there was an association between thiazolidinediones and fracture risk, however the magnitude of risk had not been evaluated," said Sonal Singh, M.D., M.P.H., an assistant professor of internal medicine and a co-researcher for the study. "This study shows that these agents double the risk of fractures in women with type 2 diabetes, who are already at higher risk before taking the therapy."

In absolute terms, Singh said, if thiazolidinediones (TZDs) are used by elderly, postmenopausal women (around 70 years) with type 2 diabetes for one year, one additional fracture would occur among every 21 women. Among younger women (around 56 years), use of the drugs for one year or longer would result in one additional fracture for every 55 women.

TZDs are oral diabetes drugs for lowering blood sugar. TZDs are available in the market as rosiglitazone (marketed as Avandia(TM) by GlaxoSmithKline) and pioglitazone (marketed as Actos(TM) by Takeda Pharmaceuticals).

Lack of sleep has a genetic link with type 2 diabetes is the new finding reported at Nature Genetics.

The said findings discovered a surprisingly clear connection between sleep and the regulation of sugar levels in the blood.

The findings fill in some of the molecular details of how sleep can change blood sugar levels. The key, it appears, is a melatonin receptor, a protein on the outside of cells that senses melatonin in the blood and triggers sleep- or wake-related changes in cells.

The three new genomic studies show that melatonin, a major regulator of the body's sleep clock, is closely linked to increased glucose levels and diabetes.

Read more from Science News.