Lesson 5 Proquest

1. I searched for prediabetes and then narrowed it down to magazines. I found an article that I wanted to read titled “Do You Have Prediabetes.”  It was a good article and I’m glad I read it. It was in relation to women’s health and it had an easy quiz to see if you should visit your doctor.

Because the first article got me interested I looked up another article. This one was on how treating prediabetes might prevent a full-blown disease. It talked about a study of 3,000 people who were randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group was asked to make lifestyle changes; a second group was given the drug metformin, which lowers blood sugar; and the third group was given an inactive placebo. The goal of the program was for participants to reduce their blood sugar levels to a normal range.

The new study was to look at these individuals years later. What they found was that patients who were able to return to normal blood sugar levels, even for a short period, could prevent or slow progression to full type 2 diabetes. The researchers found that people who reduced their blood sugar had a 56 percent reduction in progression to diabetes during nearly six years of follow-up. And this was regardless of how those normal blood sugar levels were achieved (exercise, diet, medication) and even when it was only for a short time.

What I found interesting is that it didn't matter how people got back to normal blood sugar, whether with diet and exercise or with metformin or placebo, but just the fact that by getting back to normal it prevented or slowed the progression of the diabetes. The next study will need to be looking at whether the regression improves other long-term health care outcomes such as heart disease, kidney disease or blindness.

I’m so glad I read these two articles. Time for me to make an appointment.

1. a. I read Mike’s blog and commented on it. I really enjoy reading what Mike writes because it is always interesting and I usually learn something. Way to go Mike.

2. My background includes many years in special education so I looked for special education. There were three publications dealing with the topic of special education in the title. When I changed it to search for special education in the subject that number went up to 28, which included scholarly journals, trade journals and magazines. This was a good reminder for me to remember to search in different ways.