Diabetes Drugs

Part 3: The dangers of diabetes drugs

There are drugs that "raise insulin", 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 HbA1c 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] ; sulfonylurea 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]

We couldn't agree more. A proper diabetes diet which maintains blood sugars within the normal range is all that is required. But that isn't the so-called 'healthy' diet recommended by Diabetes UK and the American Diabetes Association. It's the one recommended here.

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.