The University of Kansas Health System is treating a total of 48 COVID patients today, 48 Friday. Other significant numbers:

• 28 with the active virus today, 26 Friday
• 5 in ICU, 4 Friday
• 3 on a ventilator, 3 Friday

Key points from today’s guests:

Morning Rounds – Summary of Recent News

Jasmine Camacho, Ph. D., postdoctoral research associate, Stowers Institute

• Specializes in studying nectar-eating bats -- bats that only eat nectar as part of their diet.
• Nectar is composed of glucose, sucrose and fructose -- three basic simple carbohydrates -- and that's all they will eat every day for their entire lives.
• Researching how bats can have a strict sugar diet – which is bad for humans – can be essential to help provide more insight into diabetes.

Focus Topic – Diet and Diabetes

Dr. Kristin Grdinovac, director, Cray Diabetes Self-Management Center

• Diabetes rates have doubled in two decades and per the CDC, it is killing an average of 280 Americans each day.
• When blood sugar goes up, your pancreas creates the hormone insulin. Insulin moves the glucose from your blood to your cells. But with diabetes, either your body doesn't have enough insulin, or your cells resist the insulin so your blood sugar stays in the blood that can lead to serious and sometimes deadly health problems.
• Dieting often comes with a negative connotation -- a quick fix that most people fail or can't sustain.
• It’s really important to know that with type two diabetes, management of that is lifelong, and it involves always being mindful about the foods we choose how much we eat, how we move our bodies, and then managing all of the other risk factors like blood pressure and high cholesterol.
• There are a variety of diets that will work for people and it's really patient centered. It's going to be based off of what works best for the individual.
• Intermittent fasting is actually a really nice tool for some people, especially those who find themselves eating throughout the day and late into the evening. It really just involves a certain time period, or window where you're eating and then another time period throughout the day where you're not eating or fasting, and this can help people limit their intake in their calories.

Felicia Steger, Ph. D., University of Kansas Diabetes Institute

• Time restricted eating is really limiting our eating period to a shorter period throughout the day and extending the overnight fasting period.
• Intermittent energy restriction is another form where you alternate between periods of eating like you normally would eat and eat a severely reduced diet, so 500-800 calories per day.
• Both of these regimens really are targeting trying to extend the amount of time that the body is in this post absorptive state or fasting states, where we switch from sort of this anabolic states of growth in storage to rest and repair and really breaking down the energy fuels that are in our body.
• By definition, diabetes remission really means you have to be off of all medications and managing diabetes with lifestyle alone. That can be attainable for some people and some people are really striving for that, but it's not attainable for everyone, particularly people who have had diabetes for a longer period of time.

Pattie Lueyot, registered dietician, Cray Diabetes Self-Management Center

• Meal planning is very important, especially for breakfast.
• Usually recommends people eat meals rich in lean protein, healthy fat and complex carbohydrates.
• For people that choose to follow the very strict diet, it is very important for them to talk to their provider or a diabetes educator because there is a risk for hypoglycemia or low blood sugar if their medications have not been adjusted.
• For those looking to change their diet, talk to a registered dietician, diabetes educator and your health care provider to set a realistic goal to promote your success and more importantly, be sustainable.

COVID Updates

Dr. Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control, The University of Kansas Health System

• A recent Wall Street Journal article posted that the Department of Energy believes with low confidence that COVID was the result of a lab leak.
• From a medical and science perspective, the scientific evidence that can be accessed supports that this was a natural origin with spillover events around the Wuhan market area.

Tuesday, Feb. 28 is the next Morning Medical Update. You’ll see the incredible story of two siblings who both needed heart transplants. We’ll look at how shared DNA can impact heart problems.

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