According to the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force, an independent panel of experts, if you have hypertension, you should get tested for diabetes. This panel studies the results for prevention strategies such as taking aspirin or diabetes testing. Recommendations from the task force usually become guidelines for primary care doctors and certain specialists.

Since high blood pressure and diabetes often go together, treating them both at the same time is the best solution. People with diabetes who control their blood pressure, cut their chances of having a heart attack, stroke or dying of heart disease in half. On the flip side, people with high blood pressure who control their blood sugar, can reduce the chances of losing their sight, losing feelings in the fingers or feet, losing a limb, and suffering kidney damage.

The American Diabetes Association recommends the fasting blood sugar test for diabetes testing. For this test, a small sample of blood is drawn in the morning before the patient has had anything to eat or drink. If the blood sugar reading is 126 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL) or higher, and is confirmed by performing a second test a few days later, that person has diabetes. There are some doctors who check for diabetes by testing blood sugar two hours after a sugary beverage is provided or by checking the blood for the percentage of sugar-coated hemoglobin (known as hemoglobin A1c).

Women age 30 and older in the U.S. are increasingly developing eating disorders. According to the National Eating Disorders Association, ten million women in the U.S. suffer from an eating disorder. Ten percent of women between ages 25 and 45 admitted to having an eating disorder during a recent online survey of 4,023 women given by SELF magazine and UNC Chapel Hill.

Some women have struggled with an eating disorder for most of their lives. Other women seem to acquire an eating disorder from a trigger, such as as a divorce, a spouse’s infidelity or a parent’s death. 

Many women feel extreme pressure to look younger as they age, and pressure from society for lifelong thinness is causing many women to acquire these disorders later in life. This can have a devastating effect on their families.

Unfortunately, medical complications of eating disorders seem to worsen as women age. Heart disease, osteoporosis, dental erosion and arthritis are just a few of the problems that are likely to develop. The intense pain of these conditions tend to cause many middle-aged women, unlike teenagers and younger women, to admit that they have an eating disorder and get help. About 20 percent of adult women overcome their eating disorder, but sadly, adolescents have only an 80 percent recovery rate. On the flip side, an astonishing 79 percent of anorexia deaths occur in people who are over the age of 45.

A new study of government data is the first to link low-level level arsenic exposure to type 2 diabetes, most likely from drinking water.

The results of 788 adults’ medical tests showed a nearly fourfold increase in the threat of diabetes in people with low arsenic concentrations in their urine when compared with people showing even lower levels.

Past research outside the U.S. has shown large levels of arsenic in drinking water to increase the risk for diabetes. The link at low levels is what’s new.

The Journal of the American Medical Association has printed the findings in the August 20, 2008 issue.

Lead author Dr. Ana Navas-Acien of Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore said “The good news is, this is preventable.” “Since we already have a safety standard for arsenic levels in drinking water and we know drinking water is the main source of exposure, it’s important to reduce arsenic levels in drinking water where it exists,” said Navas-Acien.

New and safer drinking water standards  may be needed if new findings are similar in future studies. A new study of 4,000 people has begun.

It is known that arsenic can get into drinking water naturally when minerals dissolve. It is also an industrial pollutant from copper smelting and coal burning. Utilities use filtration systems to filter it out of drinking water.

Non-toxic organic arsenic is also found in seafood. Analysis was adjusted by the researchers for signs of seafood intake and it was found that people with type 2 diabetes had 26 percent higher inorganic arsenic levels than people without type 2 diabetes.

It is unkown how arsenic, once used as a powerful rat poison, could contribute to diabetes, but past studies have shown abnormal secretion in pancreas cells that were treated with an arsenic compound.

According to Molly Kile, an environmental health research scientist at the Harvard School of Public Health, arsenic in urine reveals exposures from all areas - air, food and water, so it is hard to trace the exact source of arsenic exposure and use these findings to establish drinking water standards.

She said it is unknown whether diabetes changes the way people metabolize arsenic. People with diabetes may even excrete more arsenic.

In 2001, the U.S. lowered arsenic standards for public water systems to 10 parts per billion because of known cancer risks. Compliance was required by 2006, after the results were collected in 2003 and 2004.

More research is necessary because of the study’s limitations. Public water systems are already in the process of meeting stricter U.S. arsenic standards.