Why do Diabetics get heart disease?

Below are parts of other people's recent take of the diabetes/heart disease/alzheimer's link and the CRP (C-reactive Protein) test results.  As you know, I've been saying for a while now...INFLAMMATION CAUSES ALL DISEASE!!!  And CRP tells you how much inflammation is going on.  I guess scientists need work, just like everyone else, but please don't wait for their future studies about why diabetics are getting heart disease and alzheimer's.  Start now reducing your chronic inflammation.  And if you have any pain, especially chronic, that's inflammation.  Take a look at my website (http://mindingthemiddleagedmiddle.com/) for my booklet on inflammation is you want strategies for reducing your own! 

People with diabetes are at increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke at an early age. But that’s not the only worry: Diabetes appears to dramatically increase a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease or other types of dementia later in life, according to a new study conducted in Japan.

In the study, which included more than 1,000 men and women over age 60, researchers found that people with diabetes were twice as likely as the other study participants to develop Alzheimer’s disease within 15 years. They were also 1.75 times more likely to develop dementia of any kind.

“It’s really important for the public health to understand that diabetes is a significant risk factor for all of these types of dementia,” says Rachel Whitmer, PhD, an epidemiologist in the research division of Kaiser Permanente Northern California, a nonprofit health-care organization based in Oakland, Calif.

Whitmer, who studies risk factors for Alzheimer’s but wasn’t involved in the new research, stresses that many questions remain about the link between diabetes and dementia. The new study was “well done” and provides “really good evidence that people with diabetes are at greater risk,” she says, “but we really need to look at other studies to find out why

There is more to the diabetic CRP story than heart disease. CRP correlates very highly with insulin resistance and measures of blood glucose control. A study at the Medical University of South Carolina published by ADA concluded that "the likelihood of elevated CRP concentrations increased with increasing HbA_1c levels. (your long term blood sugar) These findings suggest an association between glycemic control and systemic inflammation in people with established diabetes."   (and you and me, too!)