People suffering from Diabetes go through a very tuff time in everyday life, from diet restrictions to tedious exercises the patients have to go to various extends to maintain their blood sugar. However there a new remedy that can be adopted soon, A new study published in the PLOS one journal states that Trained dogs have the potential to vastly improve the lives of people living with type 1 diabetes.
Dogs alerted their owners to 83% of hypoglycaemic episodes in over 4,000 hypo- and hyper-glycaemic episodes that were examined. A hypoglycaemic episode is where blood sugar drops dangerously low and if left untreated, can lead to unconsciousness or even death. The findings by researchers at the University of Bristol in the UK confirm that alert dogs can help Type 1 diabetes patients regulate their blood sugars in a non-invasive way and avoid the risks of hypoglycaemic episodes and hyperglycemia.
The researchers assessed the reliability of 27 trained glycemia alert dogs, whose owners provided six to 12 weeks continual worth of blood records detailing every time the dog was alerted. Medical Detection Dogs train pet dogs to respond to the odor of human disease and help owners cope with life-threatening diseases. Familiar with their owners, dogs are conditioned to respond with alerting behaviors when their owners’ blood sugar levels fall outside a target range. Encouraged by the alerting behavior of their pet dog, if such out-of-range (OOR) episodes occur, the patient can take appropriate action, usually by administering insulin or eating to retain the right glucose levels.
