Scanning scientific summaries is an interesting game. Recently a paper was published which suggested that the weather affects the performance of those "sticks" on which a diabetic puts a drop of blood after finger prick. It recommended that this problem be looked at more closely as results may be skewed incorrectly to the patient's detriment. After all, careful monitoring of blood sugar, often several times a day, is the cornerstone of modern diabetic treatment.

Diabetes itself is a friable disease. By that is meant that for many patients it is often unstable. Mostly it is clear what has brought about the instability... lack of exercise, emotional stress and poor food adherence are well known triggers.

Less well known is the finding that special weather patterns can contribute to detrimental changes in a diabetic's health. Weather can be a trigger too, it turns out. The good news is that long years of correlative fact finding have shown which kinds of patterns are associated with these changes.

Biometereologists (researchers who study the effects of weather on health) have come to believe that synoptic weather analysis, where several meteorological parameters are measured at once, is the best way of parsing the atmospheric environment to evaluate its effects on us.

The MediClim Index (R) is the first synoptic weather index to be offered to the general public for personal use, and at least one of its indices is a marked as a possible trigger for problems in a diabetic's condition. It is not the only trigger and it is probably not the most important one either. But is the one that can be predicted daily based on the weather forecast.

If you're a diabetic we'll send you an email alert the day before the weather is pegged as a possible trigger of instability in your condition. We will suggest that you follow your doctor's advice as closely as possible. That's what we're all about.