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Yahoo! Sports: Sean Busby Becomes First Person with Type 1 Diabetes To Snowboard the Back Country on All Seven Continents

While a few of his former teammates were competing for gold, silver and bronze, Sean Busby was rounding out a set hardly any Olympian can dream of.

It started 10,500 feet high at a base camp and ended hours later on his snowboard in Morocco's Toubkal National Park.

Snowboarder, Sean Busby boarding through the High Atlas Mountains
near Marrakech, Morocco. 

By riding the highest mountain range in North Africa, Busby became the first person with Type 1 diabetes to snowboard the back country on all seven continents.

''When I finally got back, I got texts about Vic getting double gold medals and that sort of stuff,'' Busby said of his friend, Vic Wild, the American-born rider who won two snowboarding golds for his adopted country of Russia. ''But while I was up there, I had no connection to the outside world.''

At one point, Busby dreamed it might be him climbing to the top of the Olympic podium as a snowboard racer.

But his out-of-control and misdiagnosed illness that hit more than 10 years ago, at age 19, held him back.

Vomiting. Dangerous weight loss - 30 pounds in the span of 12 days. Pneumonia that set in as a result of doctors' inability to control the other symptoms. Busby lived with an incorrect diagnosis for three months - doctors first told him he had Type 2 diabetes. Turned out, he had Type 1.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease and sufferers are dependent on insulin; Type 2 diabetes, which accounts for more than 90 percent of all diabetes, is often associated with older age, obesity and physical inactivity. Sufferers can often feel better by controlling their diets and don't always need insulin.

While Busby was in search for a correct diagnosis, his sponsors left him in droves.

''One of them told me they didn't want to support an athlete who was chronically sick,'' he said.

After he got the right diagnosis, and the insulin to combat it, Busby started looking for his second act.

In search of something different than racing, he took his cue from some of the great adventurers in his sport - among then, Jeremy Jones and the late Craig Kelly. To the back country he went.

''It's the reason I got involved in the sport when I was 12 in the first place,'' said Busby, who lives in Whitefish, Mont. ''It's the sense of adventure. The sense of getting away from it all. It's the true spirit of snowboarding.''

Busby founded a charitable organization, Riding on Insulin, that raises money to give kids with Type 1 diabetes the same chance at adventure Busby has enjoyed. Busby also touts the OmniPod, a tubeless insulin pump that allows him to regulate his insulin without the constant injections that many who have the disease need.

''If something went wrong while I'm in Antarctica, I might as well be on the moon if I need help,'' he said. ''I couldn't afford to have my gear fail on me. My life depends on my gear.''

Among other places, Busby has ridden the backcountry in Tasmania, Norway's Lyngen Alps, Kyrgyzstan, Patagonia and throughout the Canadian Yukon, Newfoundland and the United States.

Though the ascent in Morocco allowed him to cross the last continent off his list, he's not done with his adventure.

He plans on leading a backcountry trip through Norway for people who have Type 1 diabetes. There's a trip to Greenland in the works. He's surrounding himself with people who have the same disease he has - spreading the word that anything is possible.

''You're moving at your own pace and it's your own two feet guiding you through it,'' he said. ''I've been able to meet amazing people, see amazing cultures and learn amazing things.

Source: Yahoo! Sports

Forbes: New Sweetener From The Tequila Plant May Aid Diabetes, Weight Loss

By: Melanie Haiken

Could a new sugar substitute actually lower blood sugar and help you lose weight? That’s the tantalizing – but distant – promise of new research presented at the American Chemical Society (ACS) this week.

Agave plant. (photo: Wikimedia)

Agavins, derived from the agave plant that’s used to make tequila, were found in mouse studies to trigger insulin production and lower blood sugar, as well as help obese mice lose weight.

Unlike sucrose, glucose, and fructose, agavins aren’t absorbed by the body, so they can’t elevate blood glucose, according to research by Mercedes G. López, a researcher at the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados, Biotechnology and Biochemistry Irapuato, in Guanajuato, Mexico.

And by boosting the level of a peptide called GLP-1 (short for glucagon-like peptide-1), which triggers the body’s production of insulin, agavins aid the body’s natural blood sugar control. Also, because agavins are type of fiber, they can make people feel fuller and reduce appetite, López’s research shows.

“We believe that agavins have a great potential as light sweeteners since they are sugars, highly soluble, have a low glycemic index, and a neutral taste, but most important, they are not metabolized by humans,” read the study abstract. “This puts agavins in a tremendous position for their consumption by obese and diabetic people.”

The caveat: The research was conducted in mice, and more study is necessary before we’ll  know whether agavins are effective and safe in humans. In other words, we’re a long way from agavins appearing on grocery store shelves.

That said, with almost 26 millions of Americans living with diabetes and another  2 million diagnosed each year, a sweetener that lowered blood sugar levels rather than raised them would be quite a useful discovery. Not to mention the potential for a sugar substitute with the potential to help people lose weight.

In the study, titled “Agavins as Potential Novel Sweeteners for Obese and Diabetic People”, López added agavins to the water of mice who were fed a standard diet, weighing them and monitoring blood sugar levels every week. The majority of the mice given the agavin-supplemented water had lower blood glucose levels, ate less, and lost weight compared with other mice whose water was supplemented with glucose, sucrose, fructose, agave syrup, and aspartame.

How Are Agavins Different from Other Sugars?

Unlike other types of fructose, Agavins are fructans, which are long-chain fructoses that the body can’t use, so they are not absorbed into the bloodstream to raise blood sugar. And despite the similarity in the name, agavins are not to be confused with agave nectar or agave syrup, natural sweeteners that are increasingly popular sugar substitutes. In these products the fructans are broken down into fructose, which does raise blood sugar – and add calories.

López has been studying fructans for some time, and has published previous studies showing that they have protective prebiotic effects in the digestive tract and contribute to weight loss in obese mice.

A 2012 study by another team of researchers published in Plant Foods for Human Nutrition found that fructans boosted levels of the beneficial probiotics lactobacillus and bifidus. And like many types of fiber, agavins also lower levels of cholesterol and triglycerides in the blood.

But the news isn’t all good; a 2011 literature review of human studies of the relationship between fructans (not agavins specifically) and blood sugar found that of 13 randomized studies of fructans, only three documented positive results. It remains to be seen whether – as López argues – agavins are distinct from other fructans in their action.

The downside: Agavins are don’t taste as sweet as other forms of sugar such as sucrose, fructose and glucose. And not everyone can tolerate them; like other types of fiber they have the potential to cause digestive problems.

Original Article: Forbes

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