Insulin Pump Users

Hi David, IDDM is by and large a disease of young Caucasians.
Japanese have the lowest rate of any major country
(a Japanese child has about 1000-fold less chance of developing it as
compared to a Finnish child for example),
although Type II has become extremely frequent. This is mentioned in
Joslin and all the other textbooks on DM.
Genetic factors are probably the most important here, as well as some
lifestyle factors such as almost universal
breastfeeding in infancy. In Caucasians at least, DM is associated
with the two common tissue types DR-3 and
DR-4 (99% of diabetics have one or the other, although I am an
exception with neither). DR-3 and DR-4 are much
less common in non-White peoples.

I work as a medical translator in Japan and have my own business. I

also edit several Japanese medical journals.
I get my info by subscribing to Diabetes Care and other DM-related
journals and buying and reading all the
textbooks that come out. Except for my kidneys (I had developed
nephropathy already by1970 but managed to
delay renal failure by 20 years longers than my medical advisors had
predicted largely thanks to the pump), I
think I have done very well. I am, I believe, the first person in
Asia to go on pump therapy and probably one of the
first in the world. From the very first day I felt much better and
have never had a skin infection or other pump-
related problems. Since I started working in 1974 until I flew to
Canada for my TX in 1996 I had never missed a
single day of work because of illness, and since my TX as well I have
missed only one day because of a sore
throat. I think I have done so well because (not despite) I don’t
rely on medical professionals, but this is not
something I recommend to others as everyone is different. BTW, in the
terrible pre-pump days my HbA1c was
10%, which was not bad at the time but was still too high to protect
my kidneys. Best Regards, John Gelblum

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