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Diabetic drugs
The dangers of drugs
there are drugs that "raise insulin" [sic], make it work better or reduce
blood-sugar by other means. In later stages of adult-diabetes [very high
blood-sugar], injected insulin [at increased levels also a poison] is often
added to drugs taken by mouth. On the surface this
seems
like good strategy as blood-sugar and therefore the blood marker HbA(1c)
become more normal, for a while. This marker "A-one-C" tells how many
"frosted" (sugar-damaged) red blood cells you have, evidently an important
thing to reduce (less than 6% is normal).
The problem with drugs is that there are effectively no studies showing they
actually postpone grief and improve survival.[1] Many promising drugs and the
patients who took them are no longer with us.
With drugs you can
"normalise-the-numbers" to make the lab report look better but there is no
evidence that this delivers a long-term health benefit. And we simply don't
know whether intensive insulin treatment of diabetes decreases the risk for
cardiovascular complications by lowering glucose levels or increases the risk
by postulated direct atherogenic effects.[2]
Diabetes drugs
don't
fix underlying problems; they have side-effects and their effect decreases
with time. You might think that any drug that lowers blood-sugar [or
cholesterol or blood pressure]
should
be beneficial but this is certainly not
evident.
The big
new
class of drugs in 20 years [with names ending on -
azone
(
Avandia
,
Actos
, etc) make you fat and promote
heart failure[4],
while biguanide (metformin) and sulfonylurea (glipizide)
harden the aorta[5]
; sulfonyl-urea increases
deaths.[6]
In 2002, the
New England Journal
had a land-mark study about the superiority of
non-drug
approaches. It said:
"Since current methods of treating diabetes are inadequate... The hypothesis
that type 2 diabetes is preventable is supported by observational studies and
two clinical trials of diet, exercise, or both in persons at high risk for the
disease
but not by studies of drugs used to treat diabetes."[7]
References
1. Kilo C, Miller JP, Williamson JR. The Achilles heel of the University Group
Diabetes Program.
JAMA.
1980; 243: 450-7.
2. Genuth S. Exogenous insulin administration and cardiovascular risk in
non-insulin-dependent and insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Ann Intern Med
. 1996; 124: 104-9.
3. Ewart RM. The case against aggressive treatment of type 2 diabetes:
critique of the UK prospective diabetes study
BMJ
2001;323:854-858.
4.
http://www.fda.gov/medwatch/SAFETY/2002/safety02.htm#thiazo
Accessed 20 January 2008
5. Stakos DA, Schuster DP, Sparks EA, et al. Long term cardiovascular effects
of oral antidiabetic agents in non-diabetic patients with insulin resistance:
double blind, prospective, randomised study.
Heart
2005;91:589-94
6. Simpson SH, Majumdar SR, Tsuyuki RT, et al. Dose—response relation between
sulfonylurea drugs and mortality in type 2 diabetes mellitus: a
population-based cohort study
Can. Med. Assoc. J
. 2006; 174: 169-174.
7. Knowler WC, Barrett-Connor E, Fowler SE, et al. Reduction in the incidence
of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention or metformin.
N Engl J Med.
2002; 346: 393-403.
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