Congratulations to Halle Berry on the birth of her healthy baby girl on Sunday! The height and weight were not divulged, so let's all hope the baby doesn't suffer from macrosomia, a common complication for women with diabetes. Regardless of Halle's ignorance about her diabetes, the healthy arrival of a baby is ALWAYS news to celebrate!

A conference this week in Washington is focusing on the subtypes of both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. At least 16 different genes can impact type 2 cases, and 14 genes can be involved in type 1. One of the goals of the conference is to increase awareness of the many possible forms of the disease beyond type 1 and type 2.

A new study released this weekend shows how diabetes can contribute to hardening of the arteries. I knew that diabetes is a risk factor for heart disease, but I didn't understand the mechanics until I read this. My grandfather died of a heart attack attributed to his poorly controlled type 2 diabetes. I am always reassured to read that most of the complications are due to high blood sugars, implying that if I keep my HbA1C at a decent level, I may be able to avoid many of these problems.

That last article at Science Daily has a shortcoming common to diabetes news stories. It never mentions whether the study concerned type 1 or type 2 diabetes or if it was any of the diabetes types. You can infer that it's probably any of them since the culprit seems to be high blood sugars, but it's not explicitly stated anywhere in the article.

There's also a lot of news today building the hype for next week's American Diabetes Alert Day but I think that is deserving of a post of it's own.