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Tag : insulin
Type 2 Diabetes: Cure vs. Remission
With an aggressive cutting-edge program, over 70% of type 2 diabetics can be returned to normal blood sugars; normal insulin levels have no further need for diabetic medications. The question is, are these patients in remission or have they been cured?
In my practice, I have found that with a combination of innovative hormonal support, increased physical activity, and significant diet changes, most type 2 diabetics can effectively be returned to normal. I usually tell them that they have been cured. But some physicians prefer to say that these patients are in remission, because if they were to return to their old lifestyle, their diabetes may return.
But if all of their tests are normal, how can I claim that they are still diabetic? What you think?
The Simple Truth About Cardiac Risk
Thanks to modern medical advances, there are an almost unlimited number of tests doctors can administer to determine who is at the greatest risk of heart attacks, strokes and dementia. Take the simple cholesterol test, for example: today we doctors can subdivide your cholesterol into seven or eight or even nine smaller subtypes and analyze your risk of cardiovascular disease, even if you appear to have “low” or “normal” cholesterol. Physicians today can administer a battery of expensive tests for just about everything.
Insulin makes you fat!
Most people have heard that obesity can be one of the chief causes of diabetes. But it’s equally true that diabetes can actually make you fat. So does the weight problem cause the disease, or is it the other way around? This is not really a purely academic “chicken or egg” question. To understand what’s going on we need to take a brief look at the physiology involved in becoming diabetic. When we do we discover a metabolic conundrum: body fat can increase the amount of insulin you require, while at the same time those higher levels of insulin can make you fatter.
Can Diabetes truly be cured or is it just "remission"?
When a diabetic no longer needs medication and has normal blood sugars – do we call it remission or do we call it a cure?
Assume for a moment that you're a diabetic. Your fasting blood sugar is 214. Your hemoglobin A1c – the component of hemoglobin to which glucose is bound – is an unhealthy 7.9. You are taking nine pills per day in an effort to control your blood sugar, but it does not seem to be working. This means you are a poorly controlled type 2 diabetic, and your risk of experiencing the deadly effects of unchecked diabetes – heart attacks, strokes, dementia, blindness, kidney failure, loss of sensation in your extremities and amputations – is significantly elevated.
Now, let's consider a different scenario.
Do Our Labels Tell the Whole Story?
We human beings seem to like to label things – the simpler, the better! This urge to put everything into simple categories definitely applies to drugs and supplements – we like to think that Drug A always has one particular effect, and Supplement B has a different one. Just take this pill or use this crème and, voila, you always get one simple outcome.
That may be tidy, but it’s seldom accurate. In the real world, the drugs and supplements we take usually refuse to cooperate with this fantasy. Instead, one compound can have many effects – and many compounds can have similar effects. Often none of these interactions seem to correlate very well to the labels we put on them.