FOCUS TOPICS ORTHOPAEDICS OBESITY/DIABETES AUGUST 2015 / $5
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On Rounds Fleisig’s Biomechanics Lab Helps Athletes Stay in the Game What do Major League Baseball, youth gymnastics, and Hollywood digital effects have in common? They all intersect in a field known as biomechanics - a specialty that didn’t even exist in its current form only a generation ago. ... page 3
Verapamil May Reverse Type 1 Diabetes Adult patients needed for UAB clinical trial UAB researchers have found a way to reverse type 1 diabetes in animal models. Now they need adults aged 19 to 45 years diagnosed with type 1 diabetes to participate in the clinical trial. “They must have been diagnosed within three months of starting the trial with us,” says Anath Shalev, MD, director of the UAB Comprehensive Diabetes Center and principal investigator of the trial ... page 9 Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn
Rapamycin Could Be Anti-Aging Drug By Jane Ehrhardt
The solution to slowing aging may already be in people’s hands. “It’s been wildly successful,” says Steven Austad, PhD, chair of UAB Department of Biology and scientific director for the American Federation for Aging Research. Austad has been examining the effects of known pharmaceuticals on slowing the aging process, mostly in mice. “We found a drug where, not only do the mice live longer, but it also improved many aspects of their health,” he says. The news gets better. The drug has been in use with some of the most vulnerable sectors of the population. “Rapamycin not only exists in use in human medicine, but it’s only given to people who are really, really sick,” Austad says. Currently, rapamycin makes up part of a cocktail of medicines used to suppress the immune system after kidney transplants. In cardiac patients, it coats stents to stop cells from dividing and causing scarring and blockages. (CONTINUED ON PAGE 12)
Steven Austad, PhD
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Functional Medicine Offers Surprising Outcomes will help the body restore normal functioning without prescriptions.” “We do testing to determine what the root cause A 55-year-old man with peripheral neuropathy is,” Sultan says. When blood tests show high blood taking three diabetes medications came to Farah Sulsugar, conventional medicine would rely on medicatan, MD, a primary care physician in Birmingham, fed tion to control it. “In functional medicine, we treat up and in pain. Within six weeks, his blood sugar had the insulin resistance by altering the diet and using stabilized enough that he quit all his diabetes prescriporganic, non-GMO [genetically modified organisms] tions along with his medications for blood pressure, supplements for a certain time period to regain norpain, depression, and cholesterol. mal biological function.” The reason was functional medicine. “It’s based Farah Sulton, MD The protocol begins with a 21-day detoxification. on an old philosophy, but the field as a formal branch During that time, the patient eats no wheat gluten proteins, dairy, of medicine is fairly new,” Sultan says. The phrase was coined about sugar, sweeteners, as well as a few other foods. The patient also 15 years ago. “It’s the same principles we learned in medical school. But it uses scientific lab results to determine lifestyle changes that (CONTINUED ON PAGE 10) By Jane Ehrhardt
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