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Family and friends can be true life lines for people living with diabetes — they can lend a helping hand or shoulder to lean on at just the right moment. Studies show that people are able to manage their diabetes better when they have support from loved ones. It helps them to know they’re not going through it alone.

If digestive health problems like constipation, diarrhea, gas, or heartburn, put a damper on your day-to-day, you may have thought about a colon cleanse, but you don't have to undergo the procedure to improve your health. Before you sign up, be sure to get the facts and decide whether the benefits really outweigh the risks.

It’s not always easy to know when you've got a seasonal allergy and when you're suffering from a cold.

If you’ve ever had trouble losing weight, you’ve probably placed at least some of the blame on a slow metabolism. It’s true that your basal metabolic rate — the rate at which your body uses energy — can affect your ability to shed pounds. But there are also a few external, controllable factors that can slow down that metabolic rate, says Michael West, MD, an endocrinologist with Washington Endocrine Clinic in Washington, D.C.

One of the challenges of managing diabetes is maintaining consistent blood sugar (glucose) levels. Even with diligence, some situations can cause high blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, while others can bring on low blood sugar, or hypoglycemia.

Many studies have found that coffee has numerous components — many of them antioxidants — that can be good for your health. Although too much caffeine can be dehydrating, drinking at least one cup of coffee a day, according to a recent Japanese study, can cut your risk for bleeding in the brain.

When it comes to working out, slow and steady may be the way to go.

Here’s a good deal of science behind eating a balanced breakfast — it sets you up to succeed for the entire day. “Studies support that you need to start your day off with a healthy breakfast,” says Bethany Thayer, RD, a spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association and manager of wellness programs and strategies at Henry Ford Health System in Detroit. 

More than half of all American adults take multivitamins or other dietary supplements, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Women in particular have been quick to jump on the supplement bandwagon, despite past research that challenged the effectiveness of multivitamins in the prevention of cancer and heart disease. Recent studies have found other benefits of vitamins, including a boost in brainpower as you age. Though experts say food is still your most important source of nutrients, they also say meeting daily dietary needs is vital to long-term health. Supplements can help you fill in nutritional gaps.

More than a romantic sentiment, a broken heart may be physically possible, according to the findings of a recent study. An international group of researchers interviewed nearly 2,000 people hospitalized after a heart attack. One of the questions they asked was whether a loved one had died within the past six months. Based on the participants’ responses, the researchers were able to calculate that heart attack risk rises to as much as 21 times higher than normal within the first day after the death of a loved one and six times higher during that first week. The risk, they found, remains elevated for at least a month.

Brisk walking is as good as running for reducing blood pressure, cholesterol and diabetes risk -- three key players in the development of heart disease, a new study finds.

You know you should do it. And you know why: Exercising -- simply put, moving instead of sitting -- is critical for safeguarding your health and setting a good example for your kids. So why does it seem so hard to get yourself moving?

Sleep is important for everyone, but it’s especially important when your body experiences changing blood sugar levels and other symptoms of type 2 diabetes. “Sleep deprivation causes changes in the effectiveness of the body's control of appetite, which can lead to weight gain, higher blood sugar, and increased resistance to insulin,” says Richard Castriotta, MD, director of the division of pulmonary, critical care, and sleep medicine at the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

A first-of-its-kind study by researchers at the Keck School of Medicine of the University of Southern California (USC) indicates that healthy, obese, reproductive-age women who use long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) containing the hormone progestin have a slightly increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes when compared to those who use non-hormonal contraception. 

The research concludes that progestin-releasing LARC appears to be safe for use by such women but needs further investigation.

Nicole M. Bender, assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology at the Keck School, was the principal investigator for the study "Effects of progestin-only long-acting contraception on metabolic markers in obese women," which recently appeared online in the journal Contraception. 

"Contraceptive studies often only look at normal-weight women," said Penina Segall-Gutierrez, co-investigator of the study and an assistant professor of clinical obstetrics and gynecology and family medicine at the Keck School. "Studies such as this are necessary because, today, one-third of women in the U.S. are overweight and one-third are obese. All women, including overweight and obese women, need to have access to safe and effective contraception." 

Obese women are at increased risk for pregnancy-related complications and are sometimes warned by their doctors not to use contraceptives containing estrogen, such as the pill, patch and vaginal ring. 

"[Those choices] raise the risk for blood clots," Segall-Gutierrez said. "So they need other, viable alternatives. The implanted LARC devices last three to 10 years, are easily reversible, and women don't have to remember to do anything with them, in contrast to the birth-control pill."

The six-month study observed the metabolic markers in three groups of obese women: a control group using non-hormonal birth control methods, including condoms, the copper IUD, and female or male sterilization; a second group with a progestin-releasing LARC device implanted in the uterus (IUD); and a third group with a progestin-releasing LARC device implanted under the skin.

"All three methods were found to be safe and effective, and they did not create changes in blood pressure, weight, or cholesterol," Segall-Gutierrez said. "However, there was a 10 percent increase in fasting blood-glucose levels among the skin implant users, compared to a 5 percent increase among the IUD users and a 2 percent decrease among those using non-hormonal methods. The effects on sensitivity to insulin showed a similar trend. It is unknown if these effects would continue if the devices were used and studied for a longer period of time."

Segall-Gutierrez and her Keck research partners have studied the metabolic effects of other birth-control methods as well. In 2012, they reported findings that obese women receiving a progestin birth-control shot every three months may be at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes. 

"Overall, we're finding that methods such as the progestin injection and the progestin skin implant, which both have higher circulating progestin, may have an increased risk for metabolic changes compared to methods like the IUD, which only has a local effect ─ in the uterus," she said. 

Segall-Gutierrez added that the progestin-releasing IUD has other benefits. It is approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for treatment of heavy menstrual bleeding, which often affects obese women. The IUD also protects against endometrial cancer, which disproportionately affects obese women.

"Choosing a birth-control method requires consideration of many factors, including the patient's lifestyle and willingness to use the method, desire for future fertility, and risk for a host of diseases ─ diabetes and endometrial cancer being two of them for obese women," she said. "We would like to expand our most recent study by looking at more participants over a longer period of time to see if the metabolic effects we observed in the progestin-releasing implants persist or are only temporary."

High blood pressure during pregnancy — even once or twice during routine medical care — can signal substantially higher risks of heart and kidney disease and diabetes, according to new research in the American Heart Association journal Circulation.

"All of the later life risks were similar in pregnant women who could otherwise be considered low-risk — those who were young, normal weight, non-smokers, with no diabetes during pregnancy," said Tuija Männistö, M.D., Ph.D., lead author of the study and a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institutes of Health, Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development in Rockville, Md. 

Studies have shown higher heart and kidney disease risk in women with preeclampsia, a serious pregnancy-related disease marked with high blood pressure and measurable protein in the urine.

In the new study, researchers looked at less serious forms of high blood pressure that are much more common in pregnant women. For 40 years, they followed Finnish women who had babies in 1966. They calculated the risk of heart or kidney disease or diabetes in later life among women with high blood pressure during pregnancy, comparing them to women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy.

They found: 

• One-third of the women had at least one high blood pressure measurement during pregnancy. 
• Women who had any high blood pressure during pregnancy had 14 percent to over 100 percent higher risk of cardiovascular diseases later in life, compared to women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 
• Women who had any high blood pressure during pregnancy were 2 to 5 times more likely to die from heart attacks than women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy. 
• Women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy and healthy blood pressure levels after pregnancy had a 1.6- to 2.5-fold higher risk of having high blood pressure requiring medication or hospitalization later in life. 
• Women who had high blood pressure during pregnancy had a 1.4- to 2.2-fold higher risk of having diabetes in later life. 
• Women who had transient high blood pressure with and without measurable protein in the urine had a 1.9- to 2.8-fold higher risk of kidney disease in later life, compared to women with normal blood pressure during pregnancy. Transient high blood pressure is temporary high blood pressure that later returns to normal.

"According to our findings, women who have had high blood pressure during pregnancy or who are diagnosed with high blood pressure in pregnancy for the first time might benefit from comprehensive heart disease risk factor checks by their physicians, to decrease their long-term risk of heart diseases," Männistö said. 

Future research should estimate how lifestyle changes during pregnancy, such as diet, affect the risk of developing high blood pressure during pregnancy, Männistö said. Studies also should focus on how lifestyle changes and clinical follow-up after pregnancy could change these women's long-term health. 

Because the study was limited to non-Hispanic Caucasian Finnish women, researchers said they aren't sure if results would be the same for other racial and ethnic groups.