Type 2 Diabetes and the Benefits Gained From Repairing Blood Vessels!

There is good news on the effectiveness of treatment for Type 2 diabetes.
According to an article published in Diabetologia, August 2010, control of Type 2 diabetes with multiple drugs and lifestyle changes might help to heal blood vessels.
Workers at the Steno Diabetes Center in Denmark looked at cells that repair the insides of blood vessels in twenty eight people with Type 2 diabetes.
Type 2 diabetics are known for having a reduced number of vessel repairing cells and a high risk for heart and blood vessel disease.
How does this damage occur? When there is too much sugar circulating in the blood, it can clog up small blood vessels by several different methods.
The lining of these vessels does not have the ability to say 'no' to the sugar...
this leads to clogging of the cells' energy-management process.
This results in increased free radicals, sugar attached to proteins and other damaging compounds.
Injured blood vessels:

• in the eyes can cause blindness
• in the kidneys can cause kidney failure
• in the nerves, this can lead to neuropathy
• can affect the circulation in your extremities

But high insulin levels also tends to cause circulation problems, called large blood vessel disease.
Now this involves the coronary arteries and the heart itself...
not the eyes, or kidneys.
Results of the Research: During the research at the Steno Diabetes Center in Denmark, drug treatment and lifestyle modification were aimed at controlling:

• blood sugar levels
• blood pressure,
• cholesterol and fats in the blood and
• preventing heart and blood vessel disease

After 90 days of treatment, blood sugar and cholesterol levels were seen to improve.
Blood vessel repairing cells were higher after 90 days in the treated diabetics, than in the group of untreated diabetics in the control group.
Disease resulting from blood vessel damage include:

• diabetic retinopathy, the commonest cause of preventable blindness in the industrialized world, is caused when the small vessels in the back of the eye are severely damaged.
  As the walls weaken, outpouchings called microaneurysms form and they can burst and bleed.
  Smaller vessels can close down.
  Then the retina is unable to get the oxygen and nutrients it needs and retinopathy is the result.
  Sometimes the retina can become detached
• glaucoma, another cause of blindness can also form when damaged blood vessels increase pressure inside the eye.
  Increased pressure can cause damage to the optic nerve, the nerve that carries messages from the eye to the brain
• poor circulation in the extremities can cause diabetic ulcers and bone infections as well as gangrene.
  This is why amputation, particularly of the feet, is one risk that many people with diabetes face

But a diagnosis of Type 2 diabetes does not need to be a sentence of death and disability.
Blood sugar levels can be treated and complications prevented.