Customer Reviews

Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Medical journalist Dan Hurley has written an engaging and important book. He divides his book into a prologue, three major sections, and a conclusion. In the prologue, he introduces us to the prosperous town of Weston MA which illustrates two things about diabetes in the United States today: it is increasingly common and we are not doing enough to track it. He then broadens the perspective so that the reader can understand that we are really dealing with a global pandemic. Then, Part One of the book gives an accounting of the history of diabetes, from ancient times when it was rare, to the current day when the rates of both Types 1 and 2 have exploded. He concludes this section with a detailed discussion of the state of Type 2 today and a visit to Logan County WV, the county with the highest incidence of diabetes in the United States, where 14.8% of everyone over the age of 20 has been diagnosed with the disease. In Part Two of the book, the author outlines the five theories as to the likely causes of diabetes that he finds most compelling. In Part Three, he examines four different approaches that may ultimately lead to significantly better management, to a cure, or to significant rates of prevention. He wraps up with a brief conclusion. Please note that while you will learn things about what might be smart to do (take 2,000 IU of Vitamin D3 each day, for instance), this is not a guide on how to manage diabetes on a daily basis. If you are looking for a book on how to calculate basal rates and boluses or cook low-carb dishes, this is not it.

Much of the information in this book will be at least somewhat familiar to those who follow the disease. Very few people, however, will be familiar with all of it. For those who don't deal with diabetes on a daily basis, this book is a great way to gain some insight. Many of the quotes and experiences bear vivid witness to what diabetics have to endure, from the description of diabetes as "the baby that never stops crying" to the hypoglycemic episode described by the author where his nine year old daughter had to spoon Marshmallow Fluff down his throat. One diabetic woman who attended and worked at the Clara Barton diabetes camp for girls states that she believes "that there is something about being a teenage girl and having diabetes that just makes life infinitely more difficult. Most of the girls I know who've had diabetes through puberty have really struggled with some form of depression, anxiety, even self-mutilation or diabulimia." (Note: diabulimia is the practice of not taking as much insulin as needed. This leads to weight loss - hence the bulimia reference - but it also leads to high levels of glucose in the blood that can cause death in the short term or significant complications in the long term.)

Mr. Hurley's discussion of the potential causes of and solutions to the diabetes epidemic in Parts Two and Three are interesting and thought-provoking. The diabetes world is one that is rife with hype, but at no time did I feel like the author was overstating the evidence or drawing conclusions too broadly. In fact, he takes pains to present the evidence on both sides of each issue. My one disappointment with the book was the conclusion. I was expecting a major call to action with detailed recommendations. Instead, his wrap up was just over two pages long. In it, he calls for mandatory reporting of new cases so that they may be better tracked and an end to the bureaucratic dithering by the FDA and medical device companies that has delayed the introduction of better technology to manage blood glucose levels (namely the "artificial pancreas" that can be built by integrating existing technology). While he doesn't come right out and say it, he clearly feels that the ADA has failed to be an effective advocate for diabetics and so calls for a new advocacy group. The author asks why none of America's 23 million people with diabetes are demanding a federal investigation into the rising number of cases and agitating for a cure. The answer is probably that not many people know where even to start. After doing all of the work of researching and writing his excellent book, Mr. Hurley probably has as good an idea as anyone about what is needed, but it would take more than two pages to describe it.

The desire for a more fully fleshed out action plan aside, this is a great book and well worth reading. The implications of the diabetes epidemic are profound. Even if you and your loved ones manage to avoid developing it, you will feel its effects indirectly. The United States and most other major countries in the world will find more and more public policy decisions driven by the need to treat millions of people suffering from this chronic disease at great expense. The cost components to the health insurance debate currently taking place in the United States are early indicators of this unavoidable fact. If you don't know much about diabetes, you don't know much about where a big chunk of the economy is heading. I haven't come across a better way to get up to speed on diabetes, let alone to get smart quickly, than by reading this book.

I am a physician with a diabetic son and I ordered this to see if it would be useful for him, especially, to read. I have enjoyed it and it has many bits of new information. The first 87 pages is a pretty good history of the disease and of attempts to treat it. I have one quibble as I had always believed that Frederick Allen got the idea for the "starvation treatment" of diabetes from evidence that diabetics did better than nondiabetics with the malnutrition in cities cut off during the First World War. His treatment program began in 1919 to 1921. His method, described by Hurley, was to eliminate carbohydrates from the diet. This worked to stop acidosis and glycosuria but the children became skeletal and were obsessed with hunger. The only way they could be treated was by residential centers where they could be kept from eating sugar. The method did keep some children alive until insulin came along in 1922. One of those children was the daughter of Charles Evans Hughes whose father was the Republican presidential nominee in 1916, losing to Woodrow Wilson. She lived to the age of 88 and few in her family even knew of her diabetes.

Hurley follows the lead of Michael Bliss in denigrating Fredrick Banting who, while not the learned professor that MacLeod was, had the vision to try a new tack in the search for a cure. There are other versions of the story that give Banting far more credit. Still, the history is all good. The most intersting part for me is where he gets into the mechanism for the disease, the "accelerator hypothesis" and the "cow's milk hypothesis" and the others. They are very interesting and may hold clues to treatment and prevention. There have been other studies, one for example, with prediabetic pregnant women in which frank diabetes may have been prevented.

The environmental pathogen theory has been so overdone in other books on other subjects that it doesn't hold much interest (Dioxin, for example, is mostly hype) but most of his theories are very interesting. The "Hygiene hypothesis" is very interesting and has been a major thread in research on asthma, another disease of cleanliness. Much of this began with the story of polio which really was a disease of cleanliness. All the way back in the 1960s, it was discovered that slum children in Mexico City all had antibodies to polio viruses but there was very little paralytic polio. Like some other viral diseases, polio was relatively harmless in early childhood but deadly in the young adult. He writes about the use of intestinal parasites, like hookworm, which have become of great interest in many autoimmune diseases the past few years. Even schizophrenia may have a worm connection.

He goes on to the various prospects for cures and explains some of the problems that beset diabetes therapy. He has several sections on the latest in potentially curative treatment, including islet cell transplant and the artificial pancreas. A short section on the use of microballoons with insulin is very interesting and I wish there was more about it. All in all, this is an excellent book for the educated layperson or the physician. Since most diabetics know more about their disease than their doctors do, every diabetic should read this book. It is highly recommended.

I was very interested in this book as my 10 year old daughter was recently diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. While I haven't
done exhaustive research regarding this disease I have read and been given a lot of information lately, some of it contradictory.
This book was very informative and easy to understand and an enjoyable read! I really appreciated the history of the disease and some of it's early treatments
and an overview of the kind of research currently being done. I felt empowered at the end with a greater understanding of the disease and hopeful for my daughter's future. Valuable read.

The alarming rate of diabetes growth over the past two decades alone has quite literally become an international health epidemic in 21st Century society. As the numbers have continued to rise and rise while blood sugar disorders have become much more common than ever before, the health experts have attempted to put on their thinking caps to come up with a solution that will help people suffering with diabetes have the ability to beat this problem once and for all. So far, there have been no cures found. What we need are people who can come up with solutions to this monstrosity of a disease and Dan Hurley has attempted to do just that with the release of his book Diabetes Rising: How a Rare Disease Became a Modern Pandemic, and What to Do About It.

Hurley himself has Type 1 diabetes and as an investigative medical journalist has a personal vested interest in this topic. After living with this disease and seeing so many people suffering from both the juvenile diabetes (Type 1) and adult onset diabetes (Type 2), you would like Hurley would examine ALL of the science and latest information on how to best control the symptoms of diabetes. But one thing glaringly missing element in the Diabetes Rising book is the lack of any mention of the low-carbohydrate nutritional connection to diabetes and how it would play some role in the solution. With all we know about carbohydrate-restriction as an essential part of an effective way to control blood glucose levels, this is quite perplexing to say the least.

But there are exactly TWO references to low-carb (one simply mentioning the Atkins diet and another talking about what the low-carb diet is). But that's it! I'm greatly concerned that this seemingly innocuous oversight will lead people to believe carbohydrate awareness and control plays virtually zero role in treating diabetes. I've had the privilege of interviewing Dan Hurley on my "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Show" podcast and he admitted to me that low-carb living is an ideal way to manage diabetes. So then it begged the question: WHY NO MENTION OF IT AS PART OF THE SOLUTION?

Even more disconcerting was the lack of any references to those medical practitioners who are doing amazing work using low-carb diets on real diabetic patients. People like Dr. Richard K. Bernstein who wrote Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution and Dr. Mary C. Vernon who co-authored Atkins Diabetes Revolution are at the forefront of effectively normalizing blood sugar levels in diabetics of all types simply by cutting their carbs and shifting them from being carbohydrate burners to fat burners. A high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb diet is the cornerstone for making this happen for diabetics and yet Dan Hurley missed this point in his book? In fact, he'd never even heard of them before I brought up their names. How can you write a book about solutions to the diabetes problem and miss the two biggest names using low-carb diets?

I credit Hurley for realizing the change in dietary recommendations in the 1970s to a high-carb, low-fat diet negatively impacted diabetes rates and that's exactly right. And while Type 2 diabetes tends to get all the press for being on the rise, he also makes the case for why even Type 1 diabetes is skyrocketing as well in Diabetes Rising. It's certainly a well-organized and sorely needed book on the subject of diabetes that lawmakers and health professionals alike should take heed and notice. And yet it's impossible for me to take a work like this seriously because of the low-carb omission. Despite heaping great praise on carbohydrate-restriction as a solution during my interview describing it as "the best diabetes diet," Hurley said he didn't include it in his book because of his belief that people won't follow a low-carb diet because we're surrounded by cheap carbs. What a crock of you know what!

I'm not a diabetic, but I've been eating a healthy low-carb nutritional plan for nearly seven years and it has helped me stave off diabetes and control my morbid obesity. Had I not begun a low-carb lifestyle change on January 1, 2004 when I went on the Atkins diet, then there's no doubt in my mind that I'd be a Type 2 diabetic today. But carbohydrate control has kept my blood sugars at normal levels and I challenge anyone to tell me I'm not a healthier man today as a result. It's disheartening to think a book about diabetes can be written in 2010 with all that we know from the science about this disease and the low-carb connection and have nary a mention of this way of eating. Completely and utterly incomprehensible!

My wife was diagnosed with type one diabetes shortly after we were married, when she was 30 years old. It's been five years now and I feel like I still don't have as good a grasp on the disease as I should if I'm going to be a big help to her. So after hearing an interview with the author on the radio, I decided to read this book in order to learn more about the disease and what the prospects are for real life changing treatments and cures for my wife. I also wanted to lean more about the origin of the disease and how best to prevent its manifestation in high risk individuals, seeing as how we have recently had a son who so far has not shown any signs of having it.

I thought the book was fantastic and I promptly made my wife read it (in order to give her some guidance and hope) as well as my parents and in-laws so that all involved in her support system would have a better idea of what we were up against. The book laid out in an easy to understand fashion, the biology and history of the disease, as well as the possible controversial causes, cutting edge treatments and outlook for future cures. All told, the book was very hopeful that a cure or "cure like treatment" could be possible within the next 20 years. That may be in time to save my wife's life and the lives of millions of others. The book also laid out a plan of action to avoid contracting the disease for those who may be genetically susceptible to it. That is extremely valuable to me as I try to protect my son who may be at risk due to my wife's genetics.

I highly recommend this book not only to those who already have diabetes or have a loved one who does, but to everyone else because this disease is spreading at an alarming and unprecedented pace and can strike the perfectly healthy at any time. People should be aware that it's out there and know what to do to avoid it because once you have it, your life will be changed for ever.

Diabetes Rising is comprehensively informative and extremely reader friendly. Debunking dozens of myths about the disease, DR elucidates the myriad of potential causes and treatment options while painting a clear picture of the human costs being paid for our lack of understanding and action to date. In extensive reading about nutrition, health diabetes and obesity I have never found any other book so complete, professional and informational. Highly recommended to all readers!

After initially learning they have diabetes, many people turn to "how-to" books recommending ways to lower blood glucose levels, eat right and lose weight. This is a great companion book, which describes the history, treatment and research involved with diabetes I and II. Much of what Dan Hurley writes about is eye-opening. I recommend everyone read Diabetes Rising, not just full-blown diabetics. It is sure to motivate and enlighten anyone interested in not becoming part of this fast-growing pandemic.

Dan Hurley is a medical journalist who has been a type 1 diabetic for more than thirty years. In his well-researched book, "Diabetes Rising," Hurley traces the history of a scourge that has plagued mankind since ancient times. For some reason, the incidence of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes has been skyrocketing across the United States and in other countries such as Mexico, India, China, and Japan. Hurley cites the theories of various experts who attempt to explain this alarming pandemic. In addition, he delves into various avenues of research that may someday lead to a cure.

Diabetes has been with us since ancient times. The first written reference to it dates back to 1536 B. C. in an Egyptian papyrus. A breakthrough in the early 1920's--the discovery of insulin--gave diabetics a chance to live a normal life for the first time. Insulin has been around for nearly ninety years, billions have been spent on diabetes research, and better treatment protocols have been devised. The question remains, why are so many new cases cropping up and why is the death rate from diabetes continuing to climb? To find the answer, Hurley interviewed physicians, researchers, and patients both in America and overseas. "Diabetes Rising" is an attempt to shine an impartial light on a disorder that has stymied many brilliant and dedicated scientists.

In clear prose that laymen will appreciate, the author discusses in detail some of the possible causes of diabetes, such as a genetic predisposition, environmental pollution, the intake of cow's milk or wheat gluten at an early age, vitamin D deficiency, and a dearth of "friendly" bacteria in our intestinal tracts. No one knows for sure if any or all of these factors are connected to the onset of this disease. The author also previews what the future may hold for sufferers. Better drugs, innovative surgery, and automated control of insulin levels are just a few approaches that are being explored. For now, diabetics must rely on self-monitoring, adherence to a healthful diet, and good medical care to avoid the horrible complications that afflict so many. Dan Hurley has written an informative work, filled with thought-provoking anecdotes, about a fearsome autoimmune disorder that, unfortunately, shows no signs of abating.

Having also been motivated to order this book by Hurley's engaging recent NPR interview, I was greatly pleased at what a readable job he does of bringing us up to date on the current state of understanding of diabetes and its treatment, and of promising future research directions. As an adult-onset Type I diabetic and a biologist, I considered myself pretty well informed on this subject, but I learned a great deal nevertheless. While I can't really say whether those with no specific prior interest in diabetes will find this book worthwhile, I certainly recommend it strongly for all diabetics. And if it motivates people to demand that the government do a responsible job of collecting statistics on the (increasing) incidence of type I and type II diabetes, Hurley will have done us all a great service. I was stunned to learn that such statistics are not routinely collected. With respect to the history of the discovery of insulin, on which Hurley touches relatively briefly, I strongly recommend that readers get a copy of "Glory Enough for All." It is a wonderful read that doesn't only give what is one of the most accurate, engaging, and thorough accounts of this lifesaving discovery, but also communicates the human side of the way great scientific discoveries are generally made as well as any book I've read -- including Jim Watson's "The double helix" (which was more than a little colored by the author having been one of the principals involved).

This is an excellent book for someone who wants to understand diabetes and to learn how to protect himself from this epidemic. The book describes diabetes in a thorough and wide-ranging manner.

The heroic discovery of Insulin in Canada by a doctor, Dr Banting, working without a huge research grant but employing his own personal resources and time is well described. Dr Banting's story shows clearly how sham organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation will never achieve worthwhile results due to the lack of concentrated, highly intelligent leadership.

Volunteering at two local hospitals has brought home to me the rapidity of the rise of this epidemic. As I visit each patient on each of three floors I notice that it is rare to enter a room without at least one of the patients having diabetes and requiring a sugar-free drink such as Diet Ginger Ale. On two occasions I have entered a room where the patient had the bed sheet pulled back from the foot of the bed. Starkly visible, I see two shins sticking out with no feet on the end of them. Amputation of the feet due to the black gangrene engulfing each foot is not uncommon.

Type 1 Diabetes is difficult to prevent but the book does describe some possible strategies to do so. Type 2 Diabetes is mostly preventable since the typical sufferer is over weight, does not exercise every day and inhabits the fast-food outlets in their area. Well worth reading!