Oakland A’s, MUG Root Beer and Juvenile Diabetes: The Oakland A’s held their annual MUG Root Beer Float Day event on June 30, 2011, at the East Side Club at the Coliseum in Oakland, California. All proceeds from this event went to the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation to help in the search for a cure for diabetes and its complications.
Over the past eight years, the Oakland A’s MUG Root Beer Float Day event has raised over $300,000 for the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. This year, the event raised over $29,000.
From 10:30 in the morning to 12:35 p.m., the event served MUG Root Beer Floats for $2.00 each. Any tips that were given in exchange for autographs and photos with some of the celebrity baseball A’s players were treated as donations to the JDRF. A 32-ounce mug with unlimited float refills was sold for $15.00 each, and there were mugs that had been autographed by Dallas Braden that were sold for $25.00. A number of players were in attendance and participated in the event.
This annual Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation MUG Root Beer Float Day was presented by Pepsi, and the ice cream was donated by Dreyer’s.
A number of the Oakland A’s player, even former players, have had diabetes enter their lives through its effects on a number of their close family members. They have firsthand knowledge of the devastating effects of diabetes.
Type 1 diabetes, once called Juvenile Diabetes Mellitus, is when the body stops producing insulin and artificial insulin has to be introduced into the body, or the person with the chronic condition will die.
There is no cure for Type 1 diabetes, only treatment of the condition through insulin, exercise and diet control. It’s a balancing act of insulin-exercise-food. It’s a difficult balancing act, one that over 3 million Americans have to juggle every day. They have to be constantly vigilant to avoid an insulin reaction (blood sugar levels too low due to too much insulin), which can lead to a diabetic coma, or too little insulin (blood sugar levels too high), which can also lead to a coma.
As well as the balancing act of controlling their blood sugar levels, they also have to deal with the knowledge that there could be various complications down the road from the long-term effects of Type 1 diabetes – loss of vision, kidney failure, numbness in the limbs that could lead to eventual amputation, an increased risk for strokes and heart attacks, to list a few.
Insulin was discovered in the 1920s. Prior to that time, someone with a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes did not usually survive more than a few years.
The cause of Type 1 diabetes has been attributed to genetics, viruses, autoimmune diseases or environmental effects. In Type 1 diabetes, the pancreas simply stops producing insulin. This usually occurs in young children, adolescents and young adults.
In the better-known Type 2 diabetes, which at one time was mostly limited to the older population but is now being diagnosed more and more frequently in young children and teens, the cells of the body stop using insulin properly. And as the cells need more and more insulin, the pancreas slowly stops producing enough insulin for the body.
The increase in the youth of today being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes has been connected with the rise in obesity and the sedentary lifestyles of this current generation.
The Oakland A’s have been raising money that will help in the search for a cure for diabetes. Every penny raised is a step forward in the research that is needed on this critical health condition. A cure is needed.