Diabetes: if you don’t know what’s broken, you can’t fix it

World Diabetes Day it is today – and you wonder if we shouldn’t be bowing our heads in shame as a gesture towards the spectacular failure of recent efforts to combat the disease.  It’s not for lack of drugs. There are the old ones like metformin that have been reborn as compounds with other blood sugar altering chemicals like sitagliptin in Merck’s Janumet. There’s also a bunch of newly crafted ones, like Merck’s Januvia and Novo Nordisk’s Novolog. But still the disease spirals and is expected to continue doing so, and not just in industrialised world.

The problem – as we contend in this week’s eAlert – is that we, as a society, have failed to agree over what the underlying problems or drivers of the disease might be. Just like a mechanic who fails to identify the underlying causes of an engine’s troubles, you can’t fix something that’s broken when you can’t identify the problem in the first place.

In a blog this week, I’ve offered my frank views on the UK’s latest prevention plan that I consider to be derelict. You can’t just keep telling people to eat more fruit and veg, exercise more and eat less salt and fat. Especially when there’s so little science around it. In our second piece, we look at some of the less known hormonal actors that become dysregulated when our appetites get pushed out of whack by our modern diets and lifestyles.

In other news, our HPV documentary film is out today, both in Europe and the USA, and can be viewed now, free of charge. Hearing the views of those impacted by the vaccine is heart wrenching. Like in so many areas of medicine, the science is far from black or white, especially when dealing with risks and benefits.

In health, naturally and sustainably

Rob Verkerk, PhD

Founder, executive & scientific director