Diabetes type 2 Treatments

I thought about bringing a few points to this blog that do not make sense when we treat diabetes through western medicine. This is my own personal opinion about the topic. The patient is advised to read the infformation presented here and take their own conclusions.

How does everything work?

Our ancestors had a very different life than us. They didn’t have cars or public transportation to rely on. Their hours were long and their work was more physical than ours. At that time, their meals needed to cover for the immense energy spending that they were having. Their gene pool was developed to store all the food in form of energy ( glycogen in the liver and fat everywhere in the body ) as much as possible to use it later on when there was no food available.

On our times, this is an inconvenience. With the average American eating 3900 calories a day ( when usually you need between 2000 and 2200 to live ), and hardly moving at all, the obesity epidemic were are facing is just a logical consequence that will only get worse.

Let’s talk about some hormones that participate on this obesity/diabetes problem. The first one is insulin. This is a hormone made by the pancreas as a response to protein and carbohydrate intake. It has intensive effects on both metabolism and several other body systems. Also it causes most of the body's cells to take up glucose from the blood (including liver, muscle, and fat tissue cells), storing it as glycogen in the liver and muscle, and increases the deposit of fat. It is our body’s anabolic hormone by excellence (Anabolism is the set of metabolic pathways that construct molecules from smaller units, build up of larger molecules from smaller ones ).

When we became a sedentary society ( hardy moving at all ), started eating refined carbohydrates such as white flour products and eating larger portions of food, we caused our system to fail. Whole foods are absorbed slower, giving time to the body to burn most of them ( if the body is engaged in exercise ) .

Foods made out of flour ( bread, pasta ), non-whole grains ( white rice, potatoes ), sweets ( sugar and high fructose corn syrup ) make ALL a big glucose spike in our systems. This brings as a consequence that insulin rises as a huge spike in a desperate attempt of the body to stop the glucose from elevating too much. In time, the insulin spikes generate what is called insulin resistance, meaning that the body will need each time more and more insulin to make our cells to “absorb” glucose and put it inside the cell. Increased amounts of insulin means more and more of FAT being deposited around the body ( mostly on the waist areas ). Fat tissue has been recognized not that long ago as capable of releasing hormones too. One of them is Leptin which signals to the brain that the body has had enough to eat, or satiety. Insulin and Leptin are hormones that the body can grow accustomed to having in large quantities and be resistant to. When this happens your body will not regulate itself as it was meant to. Also, high blood insulin also leads to lower HDL (the good cholesterol). It does this by increasing the removal of a part of the HDL molecule to VLDL (bad cholesterol) and the higher the triglycerides (TG) the more this happens. This happens because insulin also plays an important role in stimulating the liver to make more cholesterol. More recent research is showing that insulin in excess will increase the rate of thrombus or clot formation..encouraging the possibility of stroke. Insulin also plays a role to decrease the DHEA levels ( this is a hormone that is very important in wellness also helps protect us again arterial plaquing and sclerosis and obesity ). Finally there seems to be a relationship between increased insulin levels and salt retention ( thus hypertension ) on the kidneys.

Now on to the Treatments for diabetes

Allopathic doctors have got one goal: to keep numbers under control ( when glucose it high it does lead into many problems such as kidney failure, blindness, coronary disease etc ). So what’s wrong with this approach? Usually to do this, your glucose control system will be made worse than when you started.

Bear in mind that ANY medication that raises your insulin levels will make you fat in the long run and will make you have all the effects mentioned earlier in this note.

Lets go one by one with the treatment options:

Metformin pills: probably the best option to treat diabetes. The problem is it only tackles the hepatic ( liver ) production of more glucose ( when you don’t eat, the liver makes more glucose, due to the insulin resistance and the apparent lack of glucose sensed by your cells ). This medication does nothing to control the spikes that will happen when you eat. It is a medication that WILL NOT RAISE your insulin levels. Can cause some gas and bloating.

Acarbose ( Precose ) pills : Used to block the absorption of glucose in the bowels. NO INSULIN EFFECT either.

Sulfonylureas pills: The oldest medication for diabetes. Works by making your pancreas to squish more insulin. The result is better glucose control, for a while. Then, with more insulin, more insulin resistance will occur and you will need more and more dosing, until in the end this medication will fail. The effects of these pills lasts several hours.

Prandin and Starlix pills: The way these work is similar to the sulfonylureas, except they work for shorter timeframes. Thus, they will squish insulin from your pancreas, but for a limited time. This means that on top of worsening insulin resistance the patient will need to take them 30 minutes before they eat.

TZD’s Actos and Avandia pills: I will not get into the heart issues. Apparently these drugs “reduced insulin resistance” by facilitating the muscle intake of glucose. The “small problem” is that they will cause weight gain and fat deposit. In the long run, this will worsen your insulin resistance. On the short run they do control glucose numbers well.
Byetta shots: Although advertised as to work on the liver ( to stop it from making more glucose ), to work on some stomach hormones ( decreasing your food intake and even reducing weight ), per the BYETTA WEB PAGE “Byetta is not insulin and is not a substitute for insulin, Byetta helps your body make more of its own insulin”. Although it has lead to weight loss at first, it is not difficult to think that if more insulin is being released, then, in the long run, the weight loss will stop, you might even gain weight and probably your numbers will increase. Also Byetta is known for being very expensive.

Insulin: Was our problem a lack of insulin or a problem with excess insulin? So, how can giving insulin benefit ( in the long run ) a problem of insulin resistance? If you give insulin to a diabetes type 2 patient, you WILL CONTROL the diabetes, but in the long run you will need more and more insulin to control it ( thus increase in weight, cholesterol issues, etc ). In the hospital settings where time is of the essence, however, insulin treatment is an option for a short time control of diabetes.

Conclusion

What I am here to tell you is YOU NEED TO DIET ( reducing or eliminating the amount of processed foods and carbohydrates ) and EXERCISE ( no less than 1 hour a day or 10,000 steps ). That is the only way to help your body get rid of diabetes. It is our society way of living the one that has lead us into this problem and it is our duty to do all our efforts to improve our health.

Medications are not “wrong” if used appropriately and for a short time, the time you need to put yourself together and develop a plan of action to tackle this isssue.