|
||||
  
 
 |
What, chromium in milk? By
Julie Sulunga
You have to watch what you eat every day, you have to exercise at least three times a week and you can't gain too much weight because it might worsen the life-threatening disease you have. Why worry? Maybe, it is because you have a life-threatening disease called type II diabetes. A disease that affects 14.9 million Americans out of the nearly 16 million Americans. That is 95 percent of the population and about one third of the Americans who have diabetes don't even know they have it, said www.diabetes.org/ada/facts.asp. Though this disease can be controlled by proper diet and exercise. Oftentimes, people need some sort of oral medication or insulin to control their blood-glucose levels. Andrea Heninger, a student a Utah State University is creating an alternative. She is working on connecting a new theory of chromium in milk so people don't have to take the oral medication or the insulin if they have'nt started using these medications already. They can control it by the chromium intake they will have in milk. Though this research will eventually help the millions of people with diabetes, we can't help the problem until we know what type II diabetes is. Type II diabetes arises in people when they can't make enough or use insulin properly. It can be controlled with proper diet meaning eating healthy and not too much fast food or candy and exercise. Some of the warning signs to detecting type II diabetes are frequent urination, unusual thirst, extreme hunger, extreme fatique, frequent infections, cuts and bruises that don't heal, reoccurring skin, gum, and bladder infections. However, at times there are no warning signs, the disease is something that you detect after you start experiencing some of the complications. Type II diabetes is different from type I diabetes in the sense that with type I you have to take insulin five times a day. Type I diabetes is usually detected in your childhood years to teenage years which is why it is commonly referred to as juvenile diabetes. Dean Byrne, a professor at Utah State University is the exception to the norm because his type I diabetes wasn't detected until he was 30 years-old and he has had it for 30 years. He takes two types of insulin at breakfast, one type at lunch and two types at dinner. He has to test his blood sugar levels before taking his insulin shot so he regulate how much insulin he puts into his body. Some of the warning signs for how he found out he had diabetes were his unquenchable thirst and his necessity to use the bathroom more than usual. No one in his immediate family has it though, members from his extended family do, Dean Byrne said. Type II diabetes however, often occurs in minority groups like the African-Americans where it affects 2.3 million with that being a percentage of 10.8 percent of their population. It affects 1.2 million Latino-Americans making up 10.6 percent of their population. With Native-Americans type II diabetes has reached epidemic proportions with 12.2 percent of Native-Americans 19 year-olds and older having the disease. In one tribe in Arizona 50 percent of the 30-65 year-olds have the disease. It also occurs frequently in people who over 65 with 18.4 percent of that age group being affected. Some people don't even know they have the disease until they start experiencing complications as a result of it. Those complications are blindness, kidney disease, heart diseases and strokes, nerve disease sometimes leading to amputations, and impotence for men. The complications that arise as a result of type II diabetes make up the seventh leading cause of death among Americans today. Chromium is an element that we eat and though it may not appear to do anything for our bodies because it simply goes right through us, it is an element that is biologically active in our bodies. Type II Diabetes has to have insulin present to take glucose from the blood and use it in our bodies. In other words, Type II Diabetes is resistant to letting the necessary glucose into our cells which in turn would be used for energy and enable human beings to live. Traditionally, there has always been medication to control this. Andrea Heninger is creating a supplement that will do this for you without so much of a chemical work-up behind it by using chromium in place of the insulin. Some one that has type II diabetes can't absorb sugars without the glucose present and Heninger is developing an alternative that will supplement this. The chromium that will supplement this is found in milk. Chromium that is not bound to milk is called oligopeptide meaning it has three elements of chromium bound together. This can be found in cows milk, breast milk from a human mother and even possibly goat milk. A negative example of chromium bonded together is found in the film "Erin Brokavich." Brokavich found that six elements of chromium together create a form of cancer when found in water. When six elements of chromium are bound, it has a negative effect on the body. It created cancer, and often limbs to be amputated because of it. There was clear evidence of this in the movie "Erin Brokavich." "I chose to do this because of the experience you gain from doing a research project and it looks really good on your resume if your study is successful enough to get it published," Heninger said. "You learn how to do research, I had to read through a lot of medical journals, something I had never done before. You learn how to record data, how to talk to people and how to do lab work." This project is different from anything Heninger has done in the past because she is on her own. She has had to apply for grants by writing a lot of papers. She advertises for case studies to come to her by putting fliers in doctor's offices to try and find people to actually do research on. She has the chance to ask her professor, Dr. Beloy G. Hendricks whom is supervising the project about any questions or problems she may have. This is great for the sort of nutrition career she wants to go into. "She is the only one doing the research because I am going on sabbatical next year," said project adviser Dr. Beloy G. Hendricks. "She can get a start with the research she is doing now and it will be completed when I get back." Henninger is not the first to do research on what role chromium may play in milk, she will merely be the person to tie up the loose ends that nobody has done before, Hendricks said. The research that has been done previous to this is by two men by the names of Davis and Vincent (first names could not be found). These were two people that did work for the chemistry department in the University of Alabama. They did not however, do their experiments with the chromium found in milk. They found though that there is a connection to an oligopeptide of chromium being in carbohydrate and working as a supplement so they don't need to take insulin. Heninger is going to take their research they did and combine it with the information she has gained through her own research. Her research will nearly minimize the effects of diabetes by keeping the blood sugars lower. It will not act as a replacement to the insulin. If a patient is already taking insulin or some sort of medicine, this will not work for them. It will only work on people who have just been diagnosed and are still trying to keep their diabetes out of control by putting themselves through diet and exercise, Hendricks said. Though Heninger is moving along quite steadily, her progress has been slow, Hendricks said. She will finish the milk analyzing by as early as April 6. This will give her time to start finding people in which she can test their blood sugar levels to find out if the chromium in milk will in fact lower their blood sugar levels. "We hope to use milk as the character enhancing it but, don't want to make a supplement," Hendricks said. If Heninger is successful in her research which has been moving along quite successfully, she will be able to minimize the costs of diabetes in America. She will save the country billions of money like the 44 billion that was spent in 1997. She will save thousands of lives like the 187 thousand lives that were lost to it in 1995. "If people can control their blood sugar levels by drinking milk enhanced with chromium, then what better way," Heninger said.
|
Archived Months:
January
1999 January
2000 January
2001 |
||