Living Well With Diabetes

Back on August 30, I wrote on this blog “I’m determined not to get used to [driving] my car again.”

Well, here it is nearly four months later and I’m still commuting by bicycle and using my bicycle for other errands whenever possible. I’m afraid I have to admit to driving to work a dozen or so times since August 24, the day I returned from my bicycle tour to Alaska.

Commuting by bicycle has gotten very interesting recently too. Here in Salt Lake City, this December has been a regular rotation of rain, wind, followed by snow. It only took one ride home in a heavy snow to realize I’m going to need some different tires if I expect to stay rubber side down throughout the winter.

With that in mind, I ordered some snow tires for my touring bike. But, not just any snow tires: studded snow tires. In addition to a much more aggressive tread than my current touring tires, these new tires have a hundred and twenty grippy knobs of hardened steel to help keep me upright.

I have some concerns about them though. I’m not sure what they’ll be like on dry pavement. Winters in Salt Lake City often have periods when the roads are dry. To continue commuting by bicycle, I will undoubtedly have to ride in snowy and dry conditions. I’m not going to be switching tires to suit the road conditions, so I’m hoping these studded tires will be better overall compared to my current touring tires. My new tires should arrive soon — hopefully before the next big snowfall — and I’ll post an update on how they work.

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The Hygiene Hypothesis has been around a while. Dr. David P. Strachan wrote about it first in 1989 in an article in the British Medical Journal. He proposed the hypothesis to explain the observation that allergic diseases, such as hay fever and eczema, were less common in children growing up in larger families. The explanation for this observation says that some exposure to infectious agents during childhood helps develop a robust and healthy immune system and that children in larger families are exposed to more infectious agents through their siblings.

Since that time, the Hygiene Hypothesis has been studied in great detail. It now is often mentioned to explain the general increase in allergic diseases since industrialization and the higher rate of allergic diseases in developed countries.

A recent study funded by the JDRF has found “common intestinal bacteria may somehow interact with the early (innate) immune system to modify type 1 diabetes risk, a finding that supports the hygiene hypothesis.” You can read the synopsis published by the JDRF here:

JDRF-Funded Study Links “Hygiene Hypothesis” To Diabetes Prevention

Wikipedia has a great article on the Hygiene Hypothesis, including cross-references and alternative hypotheses.

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