by Paul Fassa
Health Impact News
Celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz exclaimed on national TV not long ago:
Alarm bells are ringing. The CDC estimates that one third of all Americans will develop diabetes and will live 15 years less and lose quality of life. No public health problem compares in scale.
Some considered Dr. Oz’s public statement fear mongering. One health journalist claimed mainstream medicine had diabetes all under control prescribing insulin.
It can be confusing. At first one may wonder where are all the diabetics who have to inject insulin? That’s the notion most of us have had, but the epidemic is surging among those who are not diabetic type 1. It’s happening as diabetes type 2.
The burgeoning diabetes epidemic comes mostly in the form of type 2 diabetes. Of the 29.1 million cases of diabetes estimated in 2014, only 1.25 million were type 1 diabetic, less than five percent. Type 2 diabetes is actually a life style disease, preventable with proper exercise and diet, and even reversible the same way.
Pharmaceutical medications for type 2 diabetes rarely if ever improve that condition, and their side effects are actually precursors for other diseases, even cancer. A type 2 diabetic prescribed insulin will most likely become type 1 diabetic instead of curing type 2.
Diabetes 2 is happening among a large portion of our population who are victims of SAD, the Standard American Diet of processed and fast foods as well as other poor and sedentary lifestyle choices. And injecting insulin for type 2 diabetics, though sometimes prescribed, is decried as the wrong approach by others who consider it like pouring kerosene on a fire to put it out.
The Words and Terms Differentiating Diabetes Types
You will often see the term diabetes mellitus used instead of diabetes alone. Both words describe the same type of diseases. The etymology of both words is Greek. Diabetes means passing through as a siphon. Mellitus means sweet. Ancient medical practices would observe ants being attracted to one’s more profusely produced urine because it was high in glucose that wasn’t being utilized as energy by the body.
Type 1 diabetics are usually diagnosed at younger ages. They suffer from a genetically predisposed autoimmune disease that destroys the pancreatic beta cells responsible for creating insulin. Autoimmune diseases are where the immune system mistakenly and chronically attacks one’s own organs.
Diabetes 1 victims are considered incurable and wind up artificially compensating for their pancreatic inability to produce insulin by injecting synthetic versions. Managing type 1 diabetes requires a lifetime of injections and careful meal planning. Insulin is what manages and carries glucose into cells for metabolizing energy.
Type 2 diabetes is a matter of cellular insulin resistance no matter how much insulin the pancreas may create. Now energy creating glucose from carbohydrates are denied from being utilized by cells because their insulin escort is blocked. Thus high blood sugar readings and overweight expanded waistlines are the early symptoms of diabetes type 2. Type 1 diabetics tend to be underweight.
Symptoms and Management
If not managed, diabetes can become deadly. From early stages of prediabetes, which afflicts an estimated 86 million Americans, the progression to full blown diabetes 2 looms if lifestyle and dietary changes are ignored. It’s not unusual for one who is prediabetic to not even be aware of his or her condition.
Observable symptoms for prediabetes and diabetes include expanded waistlines, excessive thirstiness, increasing fatigue or low energy, increased urination, especially nocturnal, rapidly diminishing eyesight, increased cravings for sweets and refined carbohydrates, and most importantly, fasting blood sugar levels above 100.
If you use a do it yourself blood sugar measuring kit that reads near 100 often, it may be wise to have a doctor measure your blood sugar with better equipment. A lot of those symptoms mentioned could be from other sources. So visiting a competent health practitioner with the right equipment for testing will help decide whether it’s prediabetes, diabetes 2, or other health issues.
The sedentary lifestyles within our toxic environments while consuming unhealthy food-like substances, smoking cigarettes, and using pharmaceuticals to compensate for low energy and various aches and pains are elements for brewing the perfect storm to blow in diabetes type 2. Then even more serious problems become inevitable unless lifestyle matters are addressed.
If unchecked, diabetes can result in a progression of maladies from high blood sugar (hyperglycemia) that may lead to heart disease, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, Alzheimer’s, and even cancer and premature death.
Arterial disease of the arteriosclerosis type, the thickening and hardening of arteries, is also common among advanced stage diabetics. It’s commonly held that diabetes can be a precursor for heart disease.
Some progressive health practitioners now consider Alzheimer’s as diabetes 3 and advise a ketogenic diet high in healthy whole fats including coconut oil, which has demonstrated success in improving the conditions of Alzheimer’s patients better than all pharmaceutical attempts. (Source)
Non injury lower extremity amputations are highest among diabetics, especially those who smoke, due to Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD). Blindness is also high among diabetics who don’t see the light early enough and depend on pharmaceutical drugs for their treatment instead invoking lifestyle changes.
Finnish studies determined that type 2 diabetics were more prone to Parkinson’s disease. Danish studies later confirmed what was determined in Finland earlier with additional evidence pointing to pharmaceutical diabetes medications as a significant contributing factor toward Parkinson’s.
The diabetic pharmaceutical medication factor is worthy of further discussion. MDs have the equipment for fully testing prediabetes and diabetes 2. And it’s worth visiting them for that.
But what they prescribe should be avoided. Those medications don’t work without lifestyle changes and their side effects are dangerous.
Avoiding Pharmaceuticals for Diabetes
According to Dr. Ron Rosedale, who invented the acronym DIE (Doctor Induced Exacerbation), some doctors practice DIE with type 2 diabetics because they assume the issue is simply high blood sugar instead of insulin resistance.
They ignore the fact that there is already too much insulin circulating in the blood from the pancreatic attempt at keeping up with dietary sugar intake that’s not being taken into cells to allow proper glucose metabolism. So they prescribe insulin, which in the case of a type 2 diabetic can be disastrous, eventually even turning a type 2 diabetic into a type 1 diabetic.
Getting insulin levels checked if possible is another way to diagnose diabetes and check on your progress recovering from diabetes if you’ve been diagnosed.
If insulin levels are high that’s a bad thing. If they drop after being diagnosed with diabetes 2, that’s a good thing.
There is also a test that averages out blood sugar readings over a three month period called the A1C test. The A1C test is a blood test that provides information about a person’s average levels of blood glucose, also known as the hemoglobin A1c, HbA1c, or glycohemoglobin test.
There’s a class of diabetic drugs commonly prescribed for type 2 diabetics that are linked to creating cancer. They are known as incretin mimetics. Mimetic means mimicry or imitating. Incretins are gut hormones that stimulate an insulin response while eating to handle the rising blood sugar.
Pharmaceutical imitators of incretins also inhibit the pancreas from putting out another hormone, glucagon, which causes your liver to release stored sugar into your bloodstream.
According to Dr. Rosedale this is the wrong approach of focusing on reducing blood sugar by increasing insulin when the issue is not sufficient insulin but cellular insulin resistance. It gets worse. Dr. Rosedale has uncovered several studies that link these incretin mimetic drugs to promoting cancer.
These drugs also inhibit the DPP-4 enzyme (dipeptidyl peptidase-4 enzyme), which is an enzyme that fights tumor growth and spreading or metastasis of tumors. It functions this way for 24 hours at a time. So if you take it daily as prescribed, you’re effectively continually removing a tumor suppressing action. Some of these drug labels even warn of pancreatitis as a side effect.
How much inflammation can a pancreas take before it becomes pancreatic cancer, the most lethal and difficult to cure cancer of them all? The studies Dr. Rosedale uncovered reference potential links to other cancers as well.
Here is a list of DPP-4 inhibiting drugs with their brand names in parenthesis:
• Exenatide (Byetta, Bydureon)
• Liraglutide (Victoza)
• Sitagliptin (Januvia, Janumet, Janumet XR, Juvisync)
• Saxagliptin (Onglyza, Kombiglyze XR)
• Alogliptin (Nesina, Kazano, Oseni)
• Linagliptin (Tradjenta, Jentadueto) (Source)
Ironically, a lot of the dietary issues that help create diabetes 2 are based on the wrong-headed assumption from around 1960 that a high carbohydrate low fat diet would stem the rate of heart disease. Well, that diet took hold and became dogma for most, yet heart disease rates remained the same while obesity and diabetes rapidly accelerated.
This low and no fat dogma created more and more processed oils using trans-fats and highly refined carbohydrate foods to compensate for the lack of healthy fats. Low and low fat foods themselves are also highly processed.
Sugar and high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) were not only increased in sodas and fruit juices, they have been added to non-sweet processed foods to help get consumers addicted and enhance their inherently lacking taste and quality.
This trend, along with smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol and our sedentary lifestyles have been the main source of our diabetes epidemic.
Avoiding and Reversing Diabetes 2
First, abandon all processed and fast foods. Refined carbohydrates are most common in processed white breads, pastas, and pastries. They are too easily converted to glucose because they lack the fiber that dampens those sugar spikes. Consumption over time disrupts metabolism and lead to prediabetes, just for starters. Whole grain foods without any trace of processed grains are okay in moderation.
Whole organic fruits have fructose, but not nearly as concentrated as HFCS. Fructose in fruits that are high in fiber dampens the glycemic sugar spike. And organic whole fruits are nutritious. Fruit juices lack fiber however. Processed carbohydrates and sugars are devoid of fiber and are nutrient empty.
Leaning more toward consuming organic legumes (beans), green veggies, and nuts and seeds is actually food as your first medicine. Avoiding processed oils is important, that would be anything labeled partly hydrogenated or hydrogenated, such as those cheap vegetable oils and margarine. Those are bad fats, and bad fats also create metabolic issues on a cellular level.
An excellent almost medicinal fat that is easily metabolized into energy is coconut oil. Consuming a couple of tablespoons full daily and using it or olive oil for cooking instead of those cheap trans fatty acid oils is very helpful toward preventing and reversing diabetes.
See:
Coconut Oil Effective in Treating Diabetes
Increasing omega-3 fatty acids with wild fish from relatively pristine waters and grass fed livestock that isn’t injected with hormones and antibiotics are recommended by nutritionists outside the old dogma paradigm of high carbs and low or no fat. That paradigm is still strong among our major nutritional health bureaucrats. Yet a ketogenic high fat diet has proven results. (Source)
Exercise is important, but it doesn’t have to be extreme or arduous, unless that’s preferred and well within your capacity. Walking briskly, ideally in the most natural settings possible, for a half-hour five days a week should be good enough for most. Instead of those dangerous pharmaceutical diabetes medications, there are some supplements that are helpful.
Liberal use of cinnamon has been discovered to help control blood sugar levels. Chromium is also helpful for the same reason. As a trace mineral supplement it is easy to use, while foods high in chromium include broccoli, raw cheese, green beans and grass-fed beef. Again, the medicinal qualities of virgin coconut oil are extremely beneficial. (Source)
It’s amazing how the willingness to change to a healthier lifestyle and diet alone can do more for diabetes than all the mainstream medical prescriptions that are not healing with side effects that are as bad or worse than the original malady.
Fasting is a more drastic approach that you have to be willing to take on before trying, as explained in this video, but one can see tremendous results.
There are actually other books on fasting, especially intermittent fasting, if you search for “intermittent fasting for health.”
Your diabetes strategy may have to include the cunning for using mainstream medical systems only for its diagnostic capability and a stubborn refusal to heed consensus orthodox medical dogma.
Comment on this article at HealthImpactNews.com.