Although ancient and medieval doctors knew of the disorder called diabetes, the disease they treated was rare and largely confined to young sufferers. By the late Renaissance, however, the increasing incidence of diabetes in older adults required a re-examination of what caused the malady and how to cure it. Led by English healers, such as controversial apothecary Nicholas Culpeper and elite physician Thomas Willis, the study of diabetes produced significant debate in print over the locus of the disease and remedies for its treatment. These debates paralleled the growing schism in English medical circles over contradictory iatric theories and professional jurisdiction. On the eve of insulin's discovery, diabetologists still quarrelled over what diets might alleviate its symptoms. Including perspectives from patients and drawing on myriad sources, this book examines changing approaches to diabetes and its victims within the context of medical and scientific progress.

In 1922, an unlikely team of researchers in Toronto made one of the most important medical breakthroughs of the century: insulin. Their discovery seemed miraculous. When it was given to diabetic patients on the brink of death, their condition rapidly improved. Those present could barely believe their eyes: they had witnessed resurrection. However, this was no simple cure. Injections must be taken for life. Without them, symptoms quickly return, often with fatal results. But while a lifetime on insulin poses great challenges, it also offers opportunities. In this revelatory history, Stuart Bradwel looks back on one of medicine’s most celebrated innovations. Setting professional narrative against subjective patient experience, he tells the story of a drug that has challenged many of the basic assumptions upon which medical practice is built, both inside and outside the clinic. Nevertheless, Bradwel reminds us that the centenary of this apparent “wonder drug” should be no cause for celebration. Insulin often remains inaccessible to those who need it most: elusive prescriptions, uneven availability and sky-high prices result in rationing and desperate do-it-yourself research and development. In the face of bootstraps rhetoric and “Pharma Bro” capitalists, patients across the world are left to fend for themselves. There is a long way to go in the twenty-first century until insulin truly fulfils the extraordinary promises made by its discovery.

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Many health, environmental, and social challenges across the globe – from diabetes to climate change – are regularly discussed in terms of imbalances in biological, ecological, and social systems. Yet, as contributions to this collection demonstrate, while the pressures of modernity have long been held to be pathogenic, strategies for addressing modern excesses and deficiencies of bodies and minds have frequently focused on the agency of the individual, self-knowledge, and individual choices. This volume explores how concepts of ‘balance’ have been central to modern politics, medicine, and society, analysing the diverse ways in which balanced and unbalanced selfhoods have been subject to construction, intervention, and challenge across the long twentieth century. Through original chapters on subjects as varied as obesity control, fatigue and the regulation of work, and the physiology of exploration in extreme conditions, Balancing the self explores how the mechanisms and meanings of balance have been framed historically. Together, contributions examine the positive narratives that have been attached to the ideals and practices of ‘self-help’, the diverse agencies historically involved in cultivating new ‘balanced’ selves, and the extent to which rhetorics of empowerment and responsibility have been used for a variety of purposes, from disciplining bodies to cutting social security. With contributions from leading and emerging scholars such as Dorothy Porter, Alex Mold, Vanessa Heggie, Chris Millard, and Natasha Feiner, Balancing the self generates new insights into emerging fields of health governance, subjectivity, and balance.

FROM NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLING AUTHOR DR. JASON FUNG • “The doctor who invented intermittent fasting.” —The Daily Mail “Dr. Fung reveals how [type 2 diabetes] can be prevented and also reversed using natural dietary methods instead of medications … This is an important and timely book. Highly recommended.” —Dr. Mark Hyman, author of The Pegan Diet “Dr. Jason Fung has done it again. … Get this book!” —Dr. Steven R. Gundry, author of The Plant Paradox Everything you believe about treating type 2 diabetes is wrong. Today, most doctors, dietitians, and even diabetes specialists consider type 2 diabetes to be a chronic and progressive disease—a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But the truth, as Dr. Fung reveals in this groundbreaking book, is that type 2 diabetes is reversible. Writing with clear, persuasive language, Dr. Fung explains why conventional treatments that rely on insulin or other blood-glucose-lowering drugs can actually exacerbate the problem, leading to significant weight gain and even heart disease. The only way to treat type 2 diabetes effectively, he argues, is proper dieting and intermittent fasting—not medication. “The Diabetes Code is unabashedly provocative yet practical ... a clear blueprint for everyone to take control of their blood sugar, their health, and their lives.”—Dr. Will Cole, author of Intuitive Fasting

This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY) open access license. This book is available as an open access ebook under a CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Through its study of diabetes care in twentieth-century Britain, Managing diabetes, managing medicine offers the first historical monograph to explore how the decision-making and labour of medical professionals became subject to bureaucratic regulation and managerial oversight. Where much existing literature has cast health care management as either a political imposition or an assertion of medical control, this work positions managerial medicine as a co-constructed venture. Although driven by different motives, doctors, nurses, professional bodies, government agencies and international organisations were all integral to the creation of managerial systems, working within a context of considerable professional, political, technological, economic and cultural change.

Here is an informative overview of diabetes mellitus in conjunction with plant-based treatments. It discusses available methods for studying the antidiabetic activities of scientifically developed plant products, mechanisms of action, their therapeutic superiority, and current genome editing research perspectives and biotechnological approaches. The book begins with an introduction to diabetes, giving a brief overview of the history, diagnosis, classification, pathophysiology, and risk factors. It goes on to review traditional uses of plants for diabetes along with ethnobotanical information. The results of scientific studies on the various modes of action of antidiabetic plants are discussed, such as the molecular aspects of active plantbased antidiabetic drug molecules. A section featuring recent biotechnological advancements of antidiabetic plants and plant-based antidiabetic drugs covers advances in molecular breeding and application of molecular markers, biotechnologically engineered transgenic medicinal plants, and advances in genomic editing tools and techniques.

This book provides an overview of the most up-to-date research on diabetic nephropathy and the current understanding of its pathogenesis, clinical features and socio-economic developments. Written by leading experts in the field, it provides a comprehensive synthesis of clinical and pathophysiological aspects from a mechanism-based point of view, and reviews evidence-based treatment modalities for the prevention and management of diabetic nephropathy. In addition, closely related areas such as diabesity, diabetic eye disease and macrovascular involvement in diabetes are addressed. Diabetic Nephropathy will be of interest for nephrologists, diabetologists, internists, transplant physicians, public health professionals, basic scientists, geneticists, epidemiologists, pathologists, and molecular and cell biologists working in the field of diabetes and its complications.