Is your dog “hypo”-sensitive?

As previously covered in these pages, dog owners have reported that their pet can detect a drop in blood sugar and warn them of the change. Now, research from Queen’s University, Belfast, provides further evidence of this phenomenon.

In a survey of 212 dog owners with diabetes, two-thirds indicated that their dog had reacted at lease once to their hypoglycaemia by nuzzling, licking, or jumping on them. Dogs warned one in three owners of a hypoglycaemic episode that the owner was unaware of, and one in five surveyed said their dog woke them during a night-time hypoglycaemic episode.

The canines were most likely responding to a change in their owner’s odour, triggered by the hypoglycaemia and resulting in an altered chemical composition of their sweat.
The Sunday Times, 10 May 2009

Severe hypoglycaemic events raise risk of dementia
New research appears to suggest that aggressive blood sugar control resulting in hypoglycaemia that requires hospitalisation increases the risk of dementia in older adults with type 2 diabetes.

Researchers at Kaiser Permanente in Oakland, California, found that people with diabetes who experienced a single episode of hypoglycaemia requiring hospitalisation had a 26% greater risk of dementia than people with diabetes who had not experienced such an event, rising to a 115% increased risk for those who had experienced two episodes.
Reuters UK, 14 April 2009

Free-radicals good? Vitamins bad?
German scientists now believe that free-radicals may actually be good for us. While many hold that the elimination of free-radicals by taking the antioxidant vitamins C and E may prevent tissue damage associated with oxidative stress, new research suggest other factors are at work. Research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that free-radicals may in fact increase the body’s sensitivity to insulin, an ability the body loses in type 2 diabetes.
BBC News, 11 May 2009