Hi all

Thanks to Lucy for sending me a couple of links on this stuff. Basically the subject I wanted to discuss today was diabetes complications, and your experience with them and possibly advice you have or advice which has been given to you on how to possibly prevent them. I know that having been a T1 for 15 years (and pretty wildly uncontrolled for about 60% of that time) as well as going through a pregnancy with T1, I am starting to head into the danger zone a bit with complications. And I know friends who are of similar ages and diabetes career lengths who have started to get minor complications. So it’s something I want to get familiar with.

Lucy sent me two articles, but the one you should read if you’ve only got a window of time would be this one I think, and here’s an excerpt from it:

Benfotiamine for Diabetic Neuropathy:

Benfotiamine has undergone several studies in recent years. The main focus of the studies involve using benfotiamine as a treatment for complications of diabetes.

Most diabetes complications are caused by prolonged hyperglycemia (high blood sugar) due to poorly controlled blood glucose or to disease progression over time. The excess glucose in the blood is deposited in nerve cells and small blood vessels of the extremities, causing damage in these areas which result in signs and symptoms of complications.

Hyperglycemia

The Four Pathways to Cellular Damage:

There are four separate pathways that occur in the body that can lead to small blood vessel damage due to hyperglycemia in diabetes.

• Advanced glycation endproducts (AGE)
• Protein kinase C (PKC)
• Hexosamine pathway activation
• Polyol pathway activation

Benfotiamine appears to block three of these pathways in clinical studies. An article, which appeared in the journal Nature Medicine in February 2003, titled “Benfotiamine Blocks Three Major Pathways of Hyperglycemic Damage and Prevents Experimental Diabetic Retinopathy” showed that benfotiamine did prevent diabetic retinopathy in laboratory animals.