HOME HEALTH GUIDE

Wairarapa Times-Age, 12 March 1943, Page 4

HOME HEALTH GUIDE

THE INSULIN NEEDLE. MODERN TREATMENT EFFECTIVE FOR DIABETES. (By the Health Department.) During the last two decades cases of diabetes have shown a remarkable increase. Ordinarily any increase in a serious disease is a cause for alarm, but in this instance the fact, rather incongruously, is comforting. It simply means that more people suffering from diabetes are alive —thanks to the discovery of the wonderful substance called insulin, which is prepared from the pancreas of calves to overcome a mysterious pancreas deficiency in humans. The discovery was made 21 years ago by two Canadian research workers, Doctors Banting and Best. Prior to the insulin era, the diabetic was a half-starved sufferer condemned to an early death, or to years of pitiful invalidism. Today the average diabetic child of 10 may expect to live to 50; before he lived little more than a year after the onset of the disease. At 30 the life expectancy is now 27 years, . as compared with 6, and at 50 it is 14 to 15 years. Two-thirds of the cases of diabetes occur after the age of 40. Diabetes is an abnormal condition of the body which does not permit of the thorough utilisation of foods taken into the body. Excessive eating and drinking with loss of weight and energy are among the characteristic symptoms of diabetes, and obesity is the chief disposing cause. With the blessing of insulin, and a not too rigid diet, the diabetic can look forward to years of normal life. In the meantime medical science is looking for the elusive cause of the disease.