Glucose

Albert S. Keston, 80, inventor of a test used by diabetics to determine urine sugar levels. His simple, inexpensive glucose-sensitive tape called Tes-Tape led to the discovery of millions of cases of diabetes. He also developed several other diagnostic tools and used the money from his inventions to found the Institute for Medical Research and Studies in New York City. He taught at City College of New York, the New York University School of Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine.

Diarrhea, according to the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF), is the world's leading cause of death of children under age 5. More accurately, it is the dehydration that can be a consequence of diarrhea that accounts for 5 million of the 14 million deaths of children under 5 occurring annually worldwide.

A short while ago, Lars came in for a visit. He's a friendly, happy-go-lucky guy with a desk job in some sort of marine industry. The bulk of his visits have revolved around his passion for softball. He plays on three teams year round, and from time to time his competitive edge gets the better of him and he twists an ankle or pulls a muscle and comes in to get patched up. I remind him he's 45, not 25, that it's not Game 7 of the World Series, that he should go a little easy on himself.

Diabetes affects more than 25 million Americans. New medications and strategies to treat the disease are greatly needed. But the jury is still out on the experimental medication dapagliflozin. The medication looks to have significant benefits and risks, according to a study published Monday. Dapagliflozin is being developed by Bristol-Myers-Squibb Co. in partnership with AstraZeneca. It represents a new class of diabetes medications called selective renal sodium glucose contransporter inhibitors.

"WELL," said the doctor, "let's look at the numbers." "The numbers," an indecipherable series of test results from my recent exhaustive physical, filled half a dozen pages, each of which he scanned soberly before flipping to the next. As I waited for the verdict on that afternoon last autumn, I wondered whether all this recent concern about my health was worth the trouble. It had begun three years earlier, when I turned 50, and my wife insisted I have a colonoscopy.

Healthy middle-aged women who take hormones to ease the misery of hot flashes and night sweats have fewer depressive symptoms, less anxiety and tension, and better and more sex than those who do not, according to a new study. Though the long-term effects of hormone replacement therapy could not be measured by the new research, it did offer some reassuring findings. It suggested that some women's cholesterol profiles and metabolic function might improve on hormone replacement therapy and that blood pressure did not rise during or after a relatively brief stay on hormone replacement.

When roasted at 475 degrees, coffee beans are sometimes described as rich and full-bodied. But for the full-bodied person who is not so rich, unroasted coffee beans - green as the day they were picked - may hold the key to cheap and effective weight loss, new research suggests. In a study presented Tuesday at the American Chemical Society's spring national meeting in San Diego, 16 overweight young adults took, by turns, a low dose of green coffee bean extract, a high dose of the supplement, and a placebo.

The patient in his 50s was mildly overweight, had high cholesterol and was headed down the road to diabetes. Common problems, and his doctor made the usual recommendation: medications. But the patient, Michael Mosley - a British author, journalist, TV personality and doctor himself - decided to go a different route. He traveled around his own country and ours, interviewing leading researchers, then tested some of their latest findings. The result? "The Fast Diet," a bestselling book in Britain (it has nothing to do with fast food, how fast you eat or even how fast you lose weight)

Sweet potatoes are often regarded as a healthier alternative to the white potato, which has been recently maligned as “Public Enemy No. 1” in America’s battle of the bulge. Some would even say that sweet potatoes are to white potatoes what brown rice is to white. But in a head-to-head comparison, these two tubers are seemingly very similar. In a 100-gram portion, the white potato has 92 calories, 21 grams of carbs, 2.3 grams of dietary fiber, 2.3 g of protein and 17% of the recommended daily value of vitamin C. The same amount of sweet potato, on the other hand, has 90 calories, 21 grams of carbs, 3 grams of fiber, 2 grams of protein, 35% of the recommended daily value of vitamin C and 380% of the daily recommended value of vitamin A. Importantly, both have won Vegetable of the Month designations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Long ago, some brazen wolves started hanging around human settlements, jump-starting events that ultimately led to today's domesticated dogs. Now geneticists say they have identified one of the key changes that turned wolves into the tame, tail-wagging creatures well-suited to living by our sides - the ability to digest carbohydrates with ease. The report, published online Wednesday by the journal Nature, found signs that dogs can break down starch into sugar, and then transport those sugars from the gut into the bloodstream, more efficiently than can wolves.