Doctor Links Vitamin D Deficiency to Type 1 Diabetes?
Happy New Year everyone!
We wrote about our big expectations for the coming year, and already there is a pretty interesting news article regarding type 1 diabetes research, where Dr. Shayne Taback, a prominent pediatric endocrinologist, is saying that vitamin D is directly tied to the disease. Statistics show that the rates of diabetes increase the further you get from the equator – Finland, for example, has one of the highest diabetes rates in the world. This had led some researchers to suggest that a lack of vitamin D causes the disease.
In the article, which you can read on the CBC News website, Dr. Taback talks about how giving infants extra doses of Vitamin D can help prevent diabetes – and even says that it would be “better than a cure.”
The ironic thing, however, is that the same article features a moving story about a nine-year old diabetic girl who receives more than 1,000 injections a year and cannot remember what life without diabetes was like. The article says that prevention can help other children from ever having to go through that, but it never addresses if or how it would be able to help this girl who already has diabetes.
The main thing that we can take from this is that we need to be pushing for a cure and not give up on it no matter what other progress we make. If a prevention method is discovered, that is great– but it will not solve the problems of this nine-year-old girl or the millions of others living with type 1 diabetes. We need to be united for our common goal and continue searching for a cure, and we must make the foundations and diabetes researchers know that the money we give is for this specific mission.
- Stoyan
