The Risks of Treating Diabetes with Drugs Are FAR Worse than the Disease

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September 07, 2011 | 127,128 views

Story at-a-glance
  • Drugs in type 2 diabetics will nearly universally cause more damage than good
  • Drugs used to lower blood sugar may increase your risk of death from all causes by 19 percent, and your risk of cardiovascular mortality by 43 percent
  • You can prevent, treat and even reverse type 2 diabetes by making straightforward lifestyle changes

By Dr. Mercola

Nearly 26 million Americans have diabetes, and up to 95 percent of these cases are type 2 diabetes.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease that shuts down your body's insulin production, type 2 diabetes is directly caused by lifestyle. Whereas type 1 diabetics need to inject insulin several times a day to stay alive, type 2 diabetics do NOT need drugs. In fact, taking drugs for type 2 diabetes can be far worse than the disease itself!

Diabetes Drugs Increase Your Risk of Death

Drugs are widely prescribed for type 2 diabetics to help lower blood sugar levels, but a new meta-analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials involving more than 33,000 people showed that this treatment is not only ineffective, it's dangerous as well. Treatment with glucose-lowering drugs actually showed the potential to increase your risk of death from heart-related, and all other causes.

Researchers noted:


Lessons Learned from Avandia: Diabetes Drugs Can be Deadly









Lowering Blood Sugar is Not the Correct Strategy to Overcome Type 2 Diabetes

Diabetes is not a blood sugar disease. So, drugs that focus on the symptom of elevated blood sugar, rather than addressing the underlying cause, are doomed to fail in most cases. Rather, as explained in this classic article by Dr. Ron Rosedale, type 2 diabetes is a disease caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signaling (leptin is a hormone produced in your fat cells), both of which are regulated through your diet.

As Dr. Rosedale states:

"Much more appropriate names for type 1 and type 2 diabetes would be insulin-deficient or insulin-resistant diabetes respectively, stressing the importance of insulin signaling in this disease. And in this case, the progression and deterioration of so-called type 1 and type 2 diabetes into one another should more appropriately be called Doctor Induced Exacerbation or DIE, stressing the significance of current medical treatment as the cause of … double diabetes."




Dr. Rosedale adds:




When you add drugs to this harmful mix, your pancreas is actually stimulated to produce even more insulin, and this is the last thing that a type-2 diabetic, whose pancreas has been producing excess insulin for some time to try to compensate for being insulin resistant, needs. Dr. Rosedale states:


This is much like whipping a horse to run faster at the end of a race; it runs faster for a little while, but if you keep doing it, it collapses and dies. So too do the islet cells that manufacture insulin in the pancreas die when drugs, nay doctors, whip them to keep producing more insulin when they are tired and sick.


Leptin May be Even More Important Than Insulin

In terms of diabetes, leptin may even supersede insulin in importance, for new research is revealing that in the long run glucose and therefore insulin levels may be largely determined by leptin.

Dr. Rosedale explains:

"It had been previously believed that the insulin sensitivity of muscle and fat tissues were the most important factor in determining whether one would become diabetic or not. Elegant new studies are showing that the brain and liver are most important in regulating a person's blood sugar levels especially in type 2 or insulin resistant diabetes.

It should be noted again that leptin plays a vital role in regulating your brain's hypothalamic activity which in turn regulates much of a person's "autonomic" functions; those functions that you don't necessarily think about but which determines much of your life (and health) such as body temperature, heart rate, hunger, the stress response, fat burning or storage, reproductive behavior, and newly discovered roles in bone growth and blood sugar levels.



This is an important distinction but the take-home message remains the same, because both insulin resistance and leptin resistance are caused by the same thing: poor diet. Dr. Rosedale continues:





This is why many type 2 diabetics become worse by following current medical recommendations and treatment. If your physician has not talked to you about the importance of limiting sugars, fructose and grains, and only wants to give you drugs, your diabetes will get worse, not better. Dr. Rosedale adds:

"Your body's cells become desensitized to insulin (and importantly to leptin and other hormones) by being overexposed to these hormones by eating food that causes excessive secretion. This is much like being overexposed to an odor in a room; soon you can't smell it. If you eat a diet high in sugar-forming foods, the excess insulin that is being produced each time causes your cells to eventually become unable to properly "smell" the insulin."

So remember, type 2 diabetes is a perfect example of a health problem best treated without drugs; lifestyle changes are the ticket to wellness you're really looking for. This is a disease that is reversible, and in many cases curable, by paying attention to decades of metabolic science!

Beware of New Statin-Fish Oil Pill Coming to Market

Aside from drugs to lower blood sugar, many physicians will advise diabetics to take a statin cholesterol-lowering drug to lower your heart disease risk. This is wrong on many levels (not the least of which is the fact that cholesterol is NOT the cause of heart disease!), including the fact that statin drugs may actually cause diabetes. A meta-analysis, published in JAMA in June, concluded that those taking higher doses of statins were at increased risk of diabetes compared to those taking moderate doses.


Statins appear to provoke diabetes through a few different mechanisms, the most important being that they increase your insulin levels, which can be extremely harmful to your health. Statins also increase your diabetes risk by raising your blood sugar and robbing your body of certain valuable nutrients, which can also impact your blood sugar levels. Two nutrients in particular, vitamin D and CoQ10, are both needed to maintain ideal blood glucose levels.

It's important that you're aware of this connection because GlaxoSmithKline, the maker of the new prescription-strength fish oil medication, sold under the name Lovaza, has a new combination statin-fish oil drug in the works, which has reportedly already passed the required FDA tests.

While high-quality, animal-based omega-3 fats are essential for preventing type 2 diabetes, prescription-strength fish oil combined with a statin drug is not. So don't be fooled by this new "wolf in sheep's clothing" that's part of Glaxo's "all-natural" PR campaign.

You Can Reverse Type 2 Diabetes

Please don't let anyone tell you that type 2 diabetes has no cure, as this is not true. Type 2 diabetes is not terminal; you don't have to live with it forever! Nearly 100 percent of type  2 diabetics can be successfully treated -- eliminating the symptoms of diabetes, or the high risk of developing health complications -- if you are willing to implement the lifestyle changes discussed below. These same changes will also drastically reduce your risk of the disease, so you can avoid developing it in the first place.


  2. Following my nutrition plan will help you do this without much fuss. It's important to realize that nearly all type 2 diabetics need to swap out their grains for other foods, such as healthy sources of protein or vegetable-only carbohydrates.


  8. Get enough high-quality sleep every night.


[+]Sources and References [-]Sources and References