How Mary Tyler Moore championed diabetes research: Beloved late actress was the first - and only - high profile celeb to advocate for Type 1
- The TV actress was diagnosed with Type 1, or juvenile, diabetes in 1969
- Moore was an advocate, and among the only in Hollywood, for years for further funding and research
- She was also the chairwoman for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation
- At the end of her life, Moore was unable to stand and almost completely blind
She was loved by millions as an actress and comedienne.
But a more important role that Mary Tyler Moore held was off-screen, as the first - and only - celebrity advocate for people with Type 1 diabetes.
Moore died on January 25 at age 80 from cardiopulmonary arrest after she had contracted pneumonia. For years she had suffered from complications from the diabetes.
Soon after her diagnosis, she became a staunch champion, and one of the only faces in Hollywood, who advocated for more funding and research into the disease that afflicts 1.25 million Americans.
Actress Mary Tyler Moore was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1969 and was the first, and few in Hollywood, to advocate for research. Here, Moore testifies in 2009 at a senate hearing on the need for federal funding for Type 1 Diabetes
Towards the end of her life, Moore was suffering from several complications including a benign tumor, the inability to stand and almost total blindness. She is pictured here in 1970 - one year after her Type 1 Diabetes diagnosis
Moore was diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes in 1969 at 33 years old.
After checking out of a hospital, where she had been recovering from a miscarriage, a routine blood test revealed her blood sugar levels to be abnormally high.
Normal levels fall somewhere between 70 and 110 - Moore's was 750. She kept the results secret at first.
'Back then, nobody really knew what diabetes was. My concern about talking about it was that it would be distracting for an audience,' she said in an interview with the Archive of American Television.
She had already made a name for herself with leading roles on The Dick Van Dyke Show and The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the '60s and '70s.
But she quickly made a name in Washington where she routinely promoted the need for research for juvenile diabetes.
In Type 1 diabetes, the body does not produce insulin, which is necessary to get glucose from the bloodstream into the cells of the body. It is usually diagnosed in children and young adults and accounts for only five percent of all diabetes cases.
The most common form is Type 2, formally called adult-onset.
Moore began volunteering for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation in 1984 and soon became its international chairwoman.
She raised millions of dollars through various functions and appeared several times in front of Congress where she lobbied for further funding.
Moore appeared several times on Capitol Hill and pushed for research funding that would eventually lead to many now-common diabetes tools. Here she speaks to child delegates and parents in 2005 in Washington, D.C.
Moore discussed regularly about how she was very careful with what she ate, how she exercised and that she tested her blood sugar regularly. Here, she attends the 1994 Carousel of Hope Ball to Benefit the Barbara Davis Center for Childhood Diabetes
In 2005, she testified before a Senate hearing for a critical need to find a cure for the disease, along with 150 child delegates.
Moore appeared on Capitol Hill three times more, advocating for more visibility for Type 1 Diabetes sufferers and funding for research for many of the now-common diabetes tools available today such as blood sugar level monitors.
Dr Andrew Ahmann, director of the Harold Schnitzer Diabetes Center at Oregon Health and Science University, told WebMD: 'For at least the first 20 years that she had diabetes, she would not have been able to check her own blood sugars.
'And if you go back to the kinds of insulins available when she was diagnosed, they were less pure, less responsive, they might peak unexpectedly, compared to those we have today.'
Moore spoke about how she was first diagnosed, her body wasn't receptive to the daily regimen she suddenly had to follow.
She told the National Institutes of Health: 'I was incredulous at first. I was, after all, a very healthy and active adult, and I didn't ever expect something like that to happen to me.
'[Doctors] worked hard to make me understand that diabetes is a serious disease. When that sank in, then I became vigilant about managing my diabetes.'
Moore discussed regularly about how she was very careful with what she ate, how she exercised and that she tested her blood sugar regularly.
She told Larry King that what most scared her was: 'What next might happen to me. As I said, I've had problems with my eyes, and my legs hurt if I walk a great deal. That's due to very bad circulation.
'It's called claudication, and it's painful. So I have to stop if I'm walking, and pretending I'm looking in the window, so that I can rest them a little bit and then start off again.'
October 1991: Moore with her former cast-mates from 'The Mary Tyler Moore Show' Ed Asner (left) and Valerie Harper (right) at the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation Gala. She became the organization's chairwoman
Type 1 Diabetes complications include kidney failure, blindness, nerve damage, heart attack and stroke.
Towards the end of her life, Moore had several of these. In 2011, she underwent surgery to remove a benign brain tumor. She was often too weak to stand and, by 2014, she was almost blind.
Although, she at several times called the disease a 'tremendous burden' that 'affects you emotionally as well as physically', she said she was proud of the awareness she had brought.
The JDRF released a statement that read: 'Over the past 30 years, Moore educated about and increased awareness of T1D around the world and raised millions of dollars for research that will one day lead to a cure.
'With Moore's passing, our country has lost an advocate, a hero and a woman who 'turned the world on with her smile' both on and off screen.'
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