The science of using your own stem cells to heal the body is continuing to progress, researchers are now reporting outstanding success using Adipose Stem Cell Therapy in treating-and even reversing-the course of Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes.
Following up on recent research from teams at the University of San Paulo, Brazil and Northwestern University in Chicago, and findings published in the Journal of American Medical Association, remarkable gains are being made against a disease now affecting nearly 10% of all adults and children in the US.
In fact the US is actually experiencing a growing diabetes epidemic.
According to Time Magazine some 18 million Americans now suffer from diabetes in one form or another, with an average 1.
3 million new cases diagnosed each year and climbing.
And each year 200,000 people will die from diabetes complications.
Many doctors will tell you that the reason for the explosion is obvious: people are eating too much and exercising too little, and much of the world is following our bad example.
However weight gain only explains part of the problem.
Researchers have found that diabetes has a strong genetic component and are beginning to suspect that certain evolutionary factors as well as your mother's metabolic or nutritional status during pregnancy may predispose you to diabetes.
But by the time most patients receive a clinical diagnosis 60 to 80 percent of their beta cells have been wiped out and from that point on the disease progresses very quickly, resulting in blindness, kidney failure, heart disease and stroke.
Until now diabetes patients have been locked in a continual struggle to maintain the appropriate level of insulin in their body.
Since their beta cells no longer produce insulin on their own patients require oral drugs or insulin delivered through needles or implanted insulin pumps that dispense the hormone via tubes under the skin.
As it turns out patients are not as helpless against the ravages of diabetes as once thought and a specific area of research is holding an extremely bright future for those battling daily with the disease.
One particular company, International Stem Cell Institute, seems to be blazing a trail in alternative medicine by successfully treating diabetes patients with their own adult derived stem cells from fat.
In clinical trials by University of San Paulo, patients with Type1 diabetes receiving their own stem cells no longer needed insulin to control high blood sugar levels for up to three years.
And in a follow up study researchers found not only the same level of that success, but confirm the injections actually lead to new insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas.
These patients are able to stay off of insulin for over three years.
Companies can't claim a sure-fire cure at this point but they are seeing diabetes patients making tremendous strides, and there is proof that Adipose Stem Cell Therapy is definitely changing the natural progression of the disease.
Patients are coming off insulin, without the need for oral drugs or having to suppress the immune system.
In what is being perceived as a milestone in the treatment of diabetes, the repopulation of insulin producing beta cells in the pancreas means that the procedure can actually help the pancreas rebuild itself.
The American Diabetes Association, a national organization leading the fight against the deadly consequences of diabetes, clearly supports and defends the use of stem cells to cure diabetes via statements on it's website, http://www.
diabetes.
org.
"We strongly support the protection and expansion of stem cells and research, which offers great hope for a cure and better treatments for diabetes.
" International Stem Cell Institute is scheduling Diabetes Type 1 and Type 2 patients for therapy.
Patients receive their own Regenerative Cells, thereby avoiding the risk of rejection or disease transmission that exists with donor stem cells and the controversy associated with those from embryos.