Good to see you back Don, and still able to cause a stir on SGB

Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my maternal 
half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, they both have 
different fathers and I supposedly have a different father to each of them.

I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more about my 
alleged father's family's history regarding possible instances of diabetes, or 
should I just take it that I am at risk from my mother's side and leave it at 
that, do you think?


Robin

http://harritt.eu

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what you 
did and finding out about the private medical history of relatives. If 
those relatives leave records or agree to give information in person, 
then take and use that information. If for whatever reason seems good 
to them they do not wish to divulge anything, then you have to do what 
you can without information. There is no right to screw up their lives 
for your benefit by incessant demand for information which gets those 
relatives 'pissed off', to quote the poster on sgb. Hopefully, as time 
goes on and more people recognise that there are genetic diseases or 
genetic contributions to disease, they will accept that there is a 
moral obligation to pass on information which may affect the health of 
others. But it will only ever be a moral obligation and cannot be 
forced regardless of damage to the informant.

The trouble for adoptees will remain, because of unwisdom in the 
recent Act, that we may not be able to find birthrelatives who have 
medically valuable information and would see a duty to convey it. But 
for the peculiarities of my own adoption, and under the Act, I would 
have no right to know I had got an aunt, that she had died of diabetic 
complications, and that that information was relevant to my health and 
the health of my children. The few of us ho got lucky, or as in your 
case did an inordinately large mount of work, to get health related 
information should never forget the vast bulk of adoptees are neither 
lucky nor capable of doing that work.

That is one of the reasons why there is such a vast pool of 
undiagnosed diabetics in the UK. They are not alerted to the need for 
exercise and dietary changes, and so they die younger and with worse 
complications than they need have had. Don't let it happen to you.

Don

"Robin Harritt"  wrote in message 
news:46067643$0$8297$6c4959f3@news.easynews.nl...
> Something I need to discuss with you if you don't mind, two of my 
> maternal half siblings have recently been diagnosed type 2 diabetic, 
> they both have different fathers and I supposedly have a different 
> father to each of them.
>
> I wonder if there is any additional advantage in finding out more 
> about my alleged father's family's history regarding possible 
> instances of diabetes, or should I just take it that I am at risk 
> from my mother's side and leave it at that, do you think?

Normally I'd reply privately to any question involving health, but 
what you raise here is of increasing public interest and could affect 
many adoptees.

First and foremost, diabetes is not a single disease. It is many 
diseases which happen to have multiple symptom in common. So it has to 
be expected that there are many possible causes for those symptoms. 
Sorting those causes is a difficult task and I do not know of any 
researcher who would claim to know for sure all the possible causes 
and what causes which symptoms.

Some causes are undoubtedly environmental, equally undoubtedly some 
are genetic, and even more undoubtedly many forms of diabetes to not 
arise from a single cause but from two or more acting in concert. It 
really is a buggeration to sort out what might have happened in any 
one case.

As you know, where genetics are concerned there is also a lottery. You 
get half your genes from each parent but you don't know which half. 
Even if you did know what you got it does not follow that it works as 
'have gene, so have disease'. Both my male cousin and I have the gene 
for breast cancer but neither or us have breast cancer. His sister 
doesn't have breast cancer either, but that is because she inherited 
the other copy of the gene which doesn't give rise to BC. One of my 
daughters and one of my cousin's have BC even though neither their 
parents nor grandparents show it. The common factor is the 
greatgrandmother of both girls.

Diabetes skips about amongst generations in an even more complicated 
way. My birthmother did not have it but her sister did. Obviously I 
did not inherit from my aunt. I inherited via my mother.

It really is all a bugger's muddle which is still not understood in 
detail even though hundreds of millions of pound and millions of man 
hours have been spent on research. So the inclination could be just 
give up and ignore the risk. That is exactly what is NOT sensible.

When I started in research and teaching, doing a blood glucose test 
was a major lab exercise, required a lot of skill, and wasn't all that 
reliable. Doing a glucose tolerance test was even more of a 
time-consuming pain in the arse. Now doing blood glucose is a few 
seconds at home if you have the right kit - very cheap and in any case 
free on the NHS if you are or are suspected of being diabetic. If you 
have blood samples taken for any other test, ask for the glycosylated 
haemoglobin to be tested. The percentage of haemoglobin which is 
glycosylated is a fairly good three-month average indicator of your 
blood glucose level. It will pick up indication of diabetes which may 
well be missed on occasional finger-prick tests.

There are other things you can look for as 'straws in the wind' to 
indicate blood glucose levels but the best way to get clued up is to 
have a talk with the practice nurse at your GP surgery. Diabetes is 
now so common that there will almost certainly be one nurse in the 
practice who is accepted as the knowledgeable lead on all matters 
diabetic.

You've actually already done the most important part of the 
preparatory work. That was finding out that there is diabetes amongst 
your relatives. It puts you on alert. You'd be surprised, or perhaps 
you wouldn't, just how many non-alert people are found to be diabetic 
in the course of some entirely unrelated investigation or because they 
have collapsed at work or on the road.

If you are alert to the possibility you can start straight away doing 
something about it even before having any sort of test or any sort of 
discussion with a nurse.You can attend to your diet and your exercise 
regime. On exercise you don't have to go mad. Even taking the dog out 
for a brisk walk is significantly more than many people achieve, and 
it helps. Diet is a little more complicated to start with. Simply cut 
out all the obvious sugary fattening things. No more treacle tart or 
suet pud, no more meringues, cut out sugar in tea, coffee and soft 
drinks. Eat plenty of fruit and generally a high fibre diet. In basic 
terms, do what your wife has been telling you to do for years! Don't 
be afraid of the occasional treat. It also helps with dieting if you 
get a strong positive interest in food and drink! A healthy diet does 
not have to be dull and unappetising. For a simple example, I 
automatically say 'No' to all puds in restaurants. They'll always be 
loaded with sugar, for which there are sound commercial and 
biochemical reasons. I ask for cheese, and in the sort of restaurants 
I'll go to more than once that doesn't mean a slab of supermarket 
soap. So I'll get a plate of 3 - 6 very interesting cheeses, and 
almost everybody else saying they wished they had chosen cheese too. I 
recognise that it may not work for you if you don't like cheese and 
are in an area where cheese is not regarded as an art form. I do like 
cheese and there are always a couple of dozen 'boutique' Devon-made 
cheeses available hereabouts. But the principle is the same. Look into 
your local food and drink, get interested, and eat well but not 
gluttonously. If you attend in these simple ways to exercise and diet 
you will be healthier whether you have diabetes or not. If you have 
it, you'll postpone the onset of gross clinical symptoms and 
complications, possibly by many years.

It is one of the few 'benefits' of almost all forms of diabetes that 
assuming in advance you are going to get it, and taking avoiding 
action, is a good thing to do even if you don't get it. There is 
nothing to lose and a lot to be gained by responding to the alert that 
you've already found via your family researches.

However, I cannot emphasise too strongly that I am not a registered 
medical practitioner and do not give specific advice on individual 
cases. I'll make general comments as above but the over-riding 
injunction to all individuals is to take their individual problems to 
the person qualified and paid to look at individual problems: their 
GP.   I very positively refused to become a medical practitioner 
because in my view it was incompatible with what I had to do as a drug 
research director. In that role I had to play the statistical game: 
the greatest good and the least harm for the greatest number. I had to 
make decisions knowing that the consequences included some individuals 
dying who would not have otherwise died. I had to make decisions such 
as 'I will kill 10,000 people so that 10,000,000 may live. You cannot 
make decisions like that if you look into the eyes of people one at a 
time. That is the very demanding and very honourable task of being a 
GP. I knew I couldn't do it.

I'm glad to see you are still monitoring sgb. I hope you noticed that 
what I told the person looking for Scottish relatives was no more and 
no less than what should be the position for any adoptee seeking 
birthfamily. It is not inconsistent with me advocating doing what