Category: Medical Issues

The Well-Timed Period: Bone Density and Depo-Provera

Bone Density and Depo-Provera

The Well-Timed Period: Bone Density and Depo-Provera

Bone Density and Depo-Provera

Okay, now this is just weird.

If I get Depo-SubQ mail order, it costs $65.84 each fill, but if I get it at the local pharmacy, after the first 2, it’s $55.00. On the first two fills it is $40.00. That’s weird. Now I need to look up Depo again.

I’m glad I checked. They must have changed the prices because it’s $25 for the first two, and then $35.00 at retail and $45 by Mail.

I’m going retail.

I wish I had checked this before I ordered the last one.

The Diabetes Blog

I’ve already commented on this post, but I want to expand upon it further.

One of the huge misconceptions is that sugar leads to diabetes. It doesn’t.

Type 1 diabetes is known to be an autoimmune problem. Ingesting sugar has nothing to do with getting diabetes, or even preventing complications. What you have to control is the amount of sugar that is in the blood stream. While sugar itself metabolises to sugar in the blood stream so does any other carbohydrate, and so does protein, but at a much slower and lesser rate.

Type 2 is believed to be linked to obesity, but that again doesn’t mean that consuming sugar leads to diabetes. It doesn’t mean that all obese people are going to become diabetes, and it does not mean that non-obese people will not become diabetes.

I believe that any press in the news that ignores the cause and effect factors, or exagerates cause and effect factors is doing harm. I’ve blogged on this in the past, and so have the other diabetes bloggers.

There are many ways in which the popular press is harming diabetics. First, the more that an obese person is pushed to lose weight, the harder it can be for them to do it. It becomes even harder when that person has uncontrolled blood sugar, because uncontrolled blood sugar causes them. It’s a weird mechanism, but what is happening, when the body doesn’t get enough insulin, the body isn’t getting enough fuel, and as a result, the body is literally starving. In fact, sudden, rapid weight loss is a sympthom of diabetes.

Anything that can get in the way of good glycemic control, and that includes mental attitudes is harmful to the diabetic, no matter the cause.

APP.COM – Problems with sleep apnea resound in waking hours

Problems with sleep apnea resound in waking hours

Diabetes Health – Where Do We Stand With the Noninvasive Dream?

CNN.com – Hospital sued over wrong surgeries – Feb 10, 2005

A doctor may have performed the wrong type of gastric bypass surgery on more than 50 patients at a Wilmington hospital, officials said.

Here’s someone that gets the Catch 20/20

The Health Care Blog

There is general agreement that — at least 15 years since everyone has understood the problem — the health care system suffers from a lack of transparency, information systems, rational incentives, and care quality. Diabetes care is a microcosm of that.

Kevin, M.D. – Medical Weblog: Vytorin and the license to eat

As a patient who is on Zetia and Zocor … and who struggles with controlling blood sugar, lipid levels, etc. and who will soon be on Vytorin…

I don’t take any of the advertising too seriously, even though I seem to be on every medication with a serious ad compaign.

For me, the combo has been the end of a long time of frustration. I couldn’t, even with high doses of Zocor, control blood sugar AND lipid levels. It was the addition of Zetia that finally brought it down.

Vytorin is great, because it reduces a copay.

I come home and find a HUGE box on my door step. I open it to find a cooler with 3 gel packs inside and one dose of depo (yes, that’s right, I ordered one dose).

First thing wrong with the picture — it’s supposed to be stored at controlled room tempature.

Second thing wrong? Well the last shipment of insulin came in an insulated bag with one gel pack and it’s supposed to be stored refrigerated.

Oh well.