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Hi Gayle- I think the difference between the 2 diseases is that w/
diabetes you have a hormone problem (Insulin is a hormone).  Because
this system is misfiring- you can eat a whole meal & your body does not
use the food (turned into glucose) for energy or get the neurological
"signal" that you are full.....  it's system is still reading hungry-
need food for energy.  To further make the problem worse- the diabetic
system is poised to make whatever you do eat turn to fat- because that
is what the body does w/ excess glucose.  Thus the viscious cycle.......

Diabetes is perhaps more deadly disease ( yielding more complications
throughout the body & doubling the risk of heart attack) than Celiac
Sprue. It is certainly a more "well known" disease, because, perhaps it
is profitable to pharmaceutical companies, who make billions annually
from diabetes alone.

I'm including an eloquently written article about this viscious cycle-
the author's name included at the end.
Fran------

-----------------------------
I think the general attitude and approach to diabetes in the past has
been pretty poor and seems to be more a struggle to keep patients "under
control" than to educate.  It may have simply been the way things
developed that caused this rather than some Machiavellian plot but the
effect was the same.  Physicians were uneducated and uninterested in
diabetes because it was incurable.  Recall the magic days of the fifties
and sixties when everything could be fixed by an antibiotic or some
other new and magic potion.  People with diabetes were a lost cause.  "
Let the disease run it's course and hope the diabetic doesn't demand
much."

The research money was taken up with cancer and what money was spent was
spent on a cure for diabetes, not the control.  We seem to be
discovering things today that aren't high tech and would seem
intuitively obvious.  "Diabetes results in high BG.  Diabetics often go
blind, suffer kidney failure and lose extremities.  The two are not
related."  What sort of logic is that?  It seems to me that the medical
community, in a piece of scientific arrogance that boggles my mind,
chose to ignore the forest AND the trees.  At the same time they also
ignored the numbers (the diabetic population) and went for things that
had more heat applied to them (cancer, heart disease and, finally,
aids).  Of course all those things kill people as well and I am not
proposing any competition in diseases.  I do, however, bridle when I see
the funds that are spent on other illnesses and those spent on diabetes.

The fact that blood sugar (BG) and complications go together is (as I
said) intuitively obvious.  I read books that stated there was no
correlation between BG and complications with wonder and disbelief.

A diagnoses of adult onset diabetes does not always raise the sense of
shock and sympathy in the unaffected that, say, cancer does.  Death is
far off and problematical.  There is a sense that the disease may be the
result of some indiscretion on the part of the patient (usually an adult
who is overweight).  The patient is given a rigid protocol to follow
and, when s/he falls off the wagon, "Well then, they brought it on
themselves."  There is always a tinge of blame in the attitude.  That
attitude was just as prevalent in the medical community.  When blame
wasn't involved, hopelessness was.  "What is the use in treating this
person?  It won't make a difference."  And so it went, into the final
decade of the twentieth century.

We know better now.  The medical community and the advocates all agree
that tight control is imperative to reduced complications.  We are even
beginning to have tools to manage this task.  The development of the
tools (not surprisingly) has pretty much followed the availability of
money.  As health care money is directed at diabetic care then
developments will continue and care will improve.  Not a surprising
cause and effect.  As tools improve, and medical knowledge improves,
then the control of diabetes will get better and better.  Make no
mistake about it, there will be positive results.

There are a lot of good people out there who want to help diabetics live
longer, happier lives.  There is also a good bit of residual
hopelessness and bad information/attitudes in the diabetic community.
Some doctors and patients think the same thing "This will not respond to
my best efforts, so why bother?"  They need better information.  I hope
we can make it available.  I hope we are about to make some really
significant advances in the treatment and control of diabetes.  I hope
that the silent march into sightlessness, dismemberment and kidney
failure will slow and then stop.  If we stay silent the wait will be
longer.

Bob Blakely
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