Oprah was finally to take on America’s Silent Killer – diabetes. YES! I first heard this from a diabetes educator colleague with the inside scoop. Soon the diabetes online community was buzzing with morsels of info leaking out about how Oprah and her producers would present diabetes. It wasn’t sounding good – heavy on scare tactics about complications and bold orders for behavior changes from Oprah’s famed health gurus.

Yes, we’re once again in depths of the post holiday New Year's resolution ritural. And yes, the most common resolution is: lose those unwanted pounds – again or still. But, think - are you really ready to lose weight and do the daily work to keep off those unwanted pounds?

Check out my guest blog posted on skinnyandthecity.com on 11/18/09 Take Action to Beat Type 2. Please read the comments - already some heartwarming stories of people's efforts and challenges to Beat Diabetes.

The first report of the Diabetes Prevention Program Outcome Study (DPPOS) came out October 29th, 2009 online in The Lancet, a well known medical journal. DPPOS is part two of the ongoing Diabetes Prevention Program (DPP) conducted in the U.S. as a National Institutes of Health multi-site study. The DPP and DPPOS results are similar to findings from trials conducted internationally over the past two decades in Finland, China and elsewhere. 

Diabetes Daily, a popular and growing online information resource and blog, launched their week of content for people newly diagnosed with diabetes with an interview with Warshaw about her latest book Real Life Guide to Diabetes.

Revised numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) were just published in the National Diabetes Fact Sheet and they are, once again, disheartening and staggering but not surprising:

Plenty of research points to the health dangers of excess belly – or abdominal – fat, from preventing type 2 diabetes, to high blood pressure and more. Last week, a study published in the journal Neurology conducted by Kaiser Permanente’s research arm, linked excess belly fat to a high risk of dementia. Researchers found that the more belly fat participants were toting around, the greater their risk for dementia.

The facts and figures about the financial costs of diabetes as well as the numbers of children and adults at risk of developing type 2 diabetes due to genetics, but more so being overweight, are staggering…and “sobering” as noted by Drs Judith Fradkin and Griffin Rodgers, from the diabetes division of the National Institutes of Health, in their Diabetes Care editorial The Economic Imperative to Conquer Diabetes (extract).