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Diabetes
If any one condition, other than HIV-AIDS, could be said to dominate current international health news reporting and commentary, it would have to be Diabetes. In countries large and small, governments and health authorities increasingly warn of the seriousness and ongoing ramifications of rising incidence rates across a broad age range, even as they try to grapple with the problem through a variety of measures, programs and educational campaigns.
A recent analysis projects the global prevalence of diabetes to reach over 50 million sufferers by 2012. And, it estimates that there already some 38 million diabetic people in the U.S., Japan, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK (with almost half of that number residing in the United States). Diabetes doesn’t just take its toll in health, happiness and lives. The American Diabetes Association reported in 2002 that direct medical and indirect expenditures in the U.S. attributable to diabetes were estimated at $132 billion a year.
If you are an American diabetic, your physician will never tell you that most cases of diabetes are curable. In fact, if you even mention the “cure” word around him, he will likely become upset and irrational. His medical school training only allows him to respond to the word “treatment”. For him, the “cure” word does not exist. Diabetes, in its modern epidemic form, is a curable disease and has been for at least 40 years. In 2001, the most recent year for which U.S. figures are posted, 934,550 Americans died from out-of-control symptoms of this disease.
Your physician will also never tell you that, at one time, strokes, both ischemic and hemorrhagic, heart failure due to neuropathy as well as both ischemic and hemorrhagic coronary events, obesity, atherosclerosis, elevated blood pressure, elevated cholesterol, elevated triglycerides, impotence, retinopathy, renal failure, liver failure, polycystic ovary syndrome, elevated blood sugar, systemic Candida, impaired carbohydrate metabolism, poor wound healing, impaired fat metabolism, peripheral neuropathy as well as many more of today’s disgraceful epidemic disorders were once well understood often to be but symptoms of diabetes.
If you contract diabetes and depend upon orthodox medical treatment, sooner or later you will experience one or more of its symptoms as the disease rapidly worsens. It is now common practice to refer to these symptoms as if they were separable, independent diseases with separate, unrelated treatments provided by competing medical specialists. It is true that many of these symptoms can and sometimes do result from other causes; however, it is also true that this fact has been used to disguise the causative role of diabetes and to justify expensive, ineffective treatments for these symptoms. Epidemic Type II diabetes is curable.
Diabetes means that your blood glucose (often called blood sugar) is too high. Your blood always has some glucose in it because your body needs glucose for energy to keep you going. But too much glucose in the blood isn’t good for your health. Glucose comes from the food you eat and is also made in your liver and muscles. Your blood carries the glucose to all the cells in your body. Insulin is a chemical (a hormone) made in a part of the body called the pancreas. The pancreas releases insulin into the blood. Insulin helps the glucose from food get into your cells. If your body doesn’t make enough insulin or if the insulin doesn’t work the way it should, glucose can’t get into your cells. It stays in your blood instead. Your blood glucose level then gets too high, causing you to have diabetes.
Two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease and stroke. Diabetes can damage the kidneys and cause them to fail. Failing kidneys lose their ability to filter out waste products, resulting in kidney disease. People with diabetes do have a higher risk of blindness than people without diabetes. One of the most common complications of diabetes is diabetic neuropathy. Neuropathy means damage to the nerves that run throughout the body, connecting the spinal cord to muscles, skin, blood vessels, and other organs. People with diabetes can develop many different foot problems. Even ordinary problems can get worse and lead to serious complications. Diabetes can affect every part of the body, including the skin. As many as one third of people with diabetes will have a skin disorder caused or affected by diabetes at some time in their lives.
People can get diabetes at any age. There are three main kinds: Type-1 diabetes, Type-2 diabetes, & Gestational Diabetes. Some women develop gestational diabetes during the late stages of pregnancy. Although this form of diabetes usually goes away after the baby is born, a woman who has had it is more likely to develop type-2 diabetes later in life. Gestational diabetes is caused by the hormones of pregnancy or a shortage of insulin.
Formerly called juvenile diabetes or insulin-dependent diabetes, is usually first diagnosed in children, teenagers, or young adults. In this form of diabetes, the beta cells of the pancreas no longer make insulin because the body’s immune system has attacked and destroyed them. Insulin is necessary for the body to be able to use sugar. Sugar is the basic fuel for the cells in the body, and insulin takes the sugar from the blood into the cells. Treatment for type-1 diabetes includes taking insulin shots or using an insulin pump, making wise food choices, exercising regularly, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol.
Formerly called adult-onset diabetes or non-insulin-dependent diabetes, is the most common form of diabetes. People can develop type-2 diabetes at any age—even during childhood. In type-2 diabetes, the pancreas does not make enough insulin, and the fat, muscle, or liver cells do not use it properly, or the insulin is being produced but not being recognized by the cells. Being overweight can increase the chances of developing type-2 diabetes. Mercury toxicity can cause type-2 diabetes. Traditional medical treatment includes using diabetes medicines, making wise food choices, exercising regularly, taking aspirin daily, and controlling blood pressure and cholesterol.
When glucose builds up in the blood instead of going into cells, it can cause two problems:
Right away, your cells may be starved for energy. Then, over time, high blood glucose levels may damage your eyes, kidneys, nerves or heart.
Finding out you have diabetes is scary, but don’t panic. Type-2 diabetes is serious, but people with diabetes can live long, healthy, happy lives. While diabetes occurs in people of all ages and races, some groups have a higher risk for developing type-2 diabetes than others. Type-2 diabetes is more common in African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asian Americans/Pacific Islanders, as well as the aged population. Conditions associated with type-2 diabetes include hyperglycemia and hypoglycemia.
Hyperglycemia happens from time to time to all people who have diabetes. Hyperglycemia can be a serious problem if you don’t treat it. Hyperglycemia is a major cause of many of the complications that happen to people who have diabetes. For this reason, it’s important to know what hyperglycemia is, what its symptoms are, and how to treat it. Hyperglycemia is the technical term for high blood sugar. High blood sugar happens when the body has too little, or not enough, insulin or when the body can’t use insulin properly. A number of things can cause hyperglycemia. For example, if you have type-1 diabetes, you may not have given yourself enough insulin. If you have type-2 diabetes, your body may have enough insulin, but it is not as effective as it should be. The problem could be that you ate more than planned or exercised less than planned. The stress of an illness, such as a cold or flu, could also be the cause. Other stresses, such as family conflicts or school or dating problems, could also cause hyperglycemia.
Symptoms of Hyperglycemia
The signs and symptoms include: high blood sugar, high levels of sugar in the urine, frequent urination, and increased thirst. Part of keeping your diabetes in control is checking your blood sugar often. Ask your doctor how often you should check and what your blood sugar levels should be. Checking your blood and then treating high blood sugar early will help you avoid the other symptoms of hyperglycemia. It’s important to treat hyperglycemia as soon as you detect it. If you fail to treat hyperglycemia, a condition called ketoacidosis (diabetic coma) could occur. Ketoacidosis develops when your body doesn’t have enough insulin. Without insulin, your body can’t use glucose for fuel. So, your body breaks down fats to use for energy. When your body breaks down fats, waste products called ketones are produced. Your body cannot tolerate large amounts of ketones and will try to get rid of them through the urine. Unfortunately, the body cannot release all the ketones and they build up in your blood. This can lead to ketoacidosis.
Ketoacidosis is life-threatening and needs immediate treatment. Symptoms include:
shortness of breath
breath that smells fruity
nausea and vomiting
a very dry mouth
How do you treat hyperglycemia?
Often, you can lower your blood sugar level by exercising. However, if your blood sugar is above 240 mg/dl, check your urine for ketones. If you have ketones, do NOT exercise. Exercising when ketones are present may make your blood sugar level go even higher. Cutting down on the amount of food you eat might also help. Work with your dietitian to make changes in your meal plan. If exercise and changes in your diet don’t work, your doctor may change the amount of your medication or insulin or possibly when you take it.
Part of living with diabetes is learning to cope with some of the problems that go along with having the disease. Hypoglycemia or low blood sugar is one of those problems. Hypoglycemia happens from time to time to everyone who has diabetes. Hypoglycemia, sometimes called an insulin reaction, can happen even during those times when you’re doing all you can to control your diabetes. So, although many times you can’t prevent it from happening, hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) can be treated before it gets worse. For this reason, it’s important to know what hypoglycemia is, what symptoms of hypoglycemia are, and how to treat hypoglycemia.
Symptoms of Hypoglycemia
Shakiness.
Dizziness.
Sweating.
Hunger.
Headache.
Pale skin color.
Sudden moodiness or behavior changes, such as crying for no apparent reason.
Clumsy or jerky movements.
Seizure.
Difficulty paying attention, or confusion.
Tingling sensations around the mouth.
How do you treat hypoglycemia?
The quickest way to raise your blood sugar and treat hypoglycemia is with some form of sugar, such as 3 glucose tablets (you can buy these at the drug store), 1/2 cup of fruit juice, or 5-6 pieces of hard candy. Ask your health care professional to list foods that you can use to treat low blood sugar. And then, be sure you always have at least one type of sugar with you. Once you’ve checked your blood sugar and treated your hypoglycemia, wait 15 or 20 minutes and check your blood again. If your blood sugar is still low and your symptoms of hypoglycemia don’t go away, repeat the treatment. After you feel better, be sure to eat your regular meals and snacks as planned to keep your blood sugar level up. It’s important to treat hypoglycemia quickly because hypoglycemia can get worse and you could pass out. If you pass out, you will need IMMEDIATE treatment, such as an injection of glucagon or emergency treatment in a hospital.
Glucagon raises blood sugar. It is injected like insulin. Ask your doctor to prescribe it for you and tell you how to use it. You need to tell people around you (such as family members and co-workers) how and when to inject glucagon should you ever need it. If glucagon is not available, you should be taken to the nearest emergency room for treatment for low blood sugar. If you need immediate medical assistance or an ambulance, someone should call the emergency number in your area (such as 911) for help.
If you pass out from hypoglycemia, people should:
NOT inject insulin.
NOT give you food or fluids.
NOT put their hands in your mouth.
Inject glucagon.
Call for emergency help.
Hypoglycemia Unawareness
Some people have no symptoms of hypoglycemia. They may lose consciousness without ever knowing their blood sugar levels were dropping. This problem is called hypoglycemia unawareness. Hypoglycemia unawareness tends to happen to people who have had diabetes for many years. Hypoglycemia unawareness does not happen to everyone. It is more likely in people who have neuropathy (nerve damage), people on tight glucose control, and people who take certain heart or high blood pressure medicines. As the years go by, many people continue to have symptoms of hypoglycemia, but the symptoms change. In this case, someone may not recognize a reaction because it feels different. These changes are good reason to check your blood sugar often, and to alert your friends and family to your symptoms of hypoglycemia. Treat low or dropping sugar levels even if you feel fine.
When our bodies digest the protein we eat, the process creates waste products. In the kidneys, millions of tiny blood vessels (capillaries) with even tinier holes in them act as filters. As blood flows through the blood vessels, small molecules such as waste products squeeze through the holes. These waste products become part of the urine. Useful substances, such as protein and red blood cells, are too big to pass through the holes in the filter and stay in the blood. Diabetes can damage this system. High levels of blood sugar make the kidneys filter too much blood. All this extra work is hard on the filters. After many years, they start to leak. Useful protein is lost in the urine. Having small amounts of protein in the urine is called microalbuminuria. When kidney disease is diagnosed early, (during microalbuminuria), several treatments may keep kidney disease from getting worse.
Having larger amounts is called macroalbuminuria. When kidney disease is caught later (during macroalbuminuria), end-stage renal disease, or ESRD, usually follows. In time, the stress of overwork causes the kidneys to lose their filtering ability. Waste products then start to build up in the blood. Finally, the kidneys fail. This failure, ESRD, is very serious. A person with ESRD needs to have a kidney transplant or to have the blood filtered by machine (dialysis). Not everyone with diabetes develops kidney disease. Factors that can influence kidney disease development include genetics, blood sugar control, and blood pressure. The better a person keeps diabetes and blood pressure under control, the lower the chance of getting kidney disease.
Diabetes causes eye problems and may lead to blindness. People with diabetes do have a higher risk of blindness than people without diabetes. But most people who have diabetes have nothing more than minor eye disorders. You can keep minor problems minor. And if you do develop a major problem, there are treatments that often work well if you begin them right away.
The eye is a ball covered with a tough outer membrane. The covering in front is clear and curved. This curved area is the cornea, which focuses light while protecting the eye. After light passes through the cornea, it travels through a space called the anterior chamber (which is filled with a protective fluid called the aqueous humor), through the pupil (which is a hole in the iris, the colored part of the eye), and then through a lens that performs more focusing. Finally, light passes through another fluid-filled chamber in the center of the eye (the vitreous) and strikes the back of the eye, the retina. Like the film in a camera, the retina records the images focused on it. But unlike film, the retina also converts those images into electrical signals, which the brain receives and decodes. One part of the retina is specialized for seeing fine detail. This tiny area of extra-sharp vision is called the macula. Blood vessels in and behind the retina nourish the macula. The smallest of these blood vessels are the capillaries.
Glaucoma
People with diabetes are 40% more likely to suffer from glaucoma than people without diabetes. The longer someone has had diabetes, the more common glaucoma is. Risk also increases with age. Glaucoma occurs when pressure builds up in the eye. In most cases, the pressure causes drainage of the aqueous humor to slow down so that it builds up in the anterior chamber. The pressure pinches the blood vessels that carry blood to the retina and optic nerve. Vision is gradually lost because the retina and nerve are damaged. There are several treatments for glaucoma. Some use drugs to reduce pressure in the eye, while others involve surgery.
Cataracts
Many people without diabetes get cataracts, but people with diabetes are 60% more likely to develop this eye condition. People with diabetes also tend to get cataracts at a younger age and have them progress faster. With cataracts, the eye’s clear lens clouds, blocking light. To help deal with mild cataracts, you may need to wear sunglasses more often and use glare-control lenses in your glasses. For cataracts that interfere greatly with vision, doctors usually remove the lens of the eye. Sometimes the patient gets a new transplanted lens. In people with diabetes, retinopathy can get worse after removal of the lens, and glaucoma may start to develop.
Retinopathy
Diabetic retinopathy is a general term for all disorders of the retina caused by diabetes. There are two major types of retinopathy: nonproliferative and proliferative.
Non-proliferative retinopathy is the common, mild form. It usually has no effect on vision and needs no treatment. But after it is diagnosed, have your eyes checked at least yearly to make sure it’s not getting worse. In nonproliferative retinopathy, capillaries balloon and form pouches. Although retinopathy does not usually cause any vision loss at this stage, the capillary walls may lose their ability to control the passage of substances between the blood and the retina. As a result, the retina becomes swollen and fatty deposits form within it. If this swelling affects the center of the retina, the problem is called macular edema and vision loss can result. In some people, retinopathy progresses after several years to a more serious form called proliferative retinopathy. In this form, the blood vessels are so damaged they close off. In response, new blood vessels start growing in the retina. These new vessels are weak and can leak blood, blocking vision, which is a condition called vitreous hemorrhage. The new blood vessels can also cause scar tissue to grow. After the scar tissue shrinks, it can distort the retina or pull it out of place—this is called retinal detachment.
Your retina can be badly damaged before you notice any change in vision. Most people with nonproliferative retinopathy have no symptoms. Even with proliferative retinopathy, the more dangerous form, people sometimes have no symptoms until it is too late to treat them. For this reason, you should have your eyes examined regularly by a holistic eye care professional.
Neuropathy means damage to the nerves that run throughout the body, connecting the spinal cord to muscles, skin, blood vessels, and other organs. Diabetic neuropathy can be painful and disabling. Fortunately, severe forms of neuropathy do not occur often. And many times, symptoms of neuropathy go away after several months. Diabetic neuropathy is actually a group of nerve diseases. All these disorders affect the peripheral nerves, that is, the nerves that are outside the brain and spinal cord. There are three types of peripheral nerves: motor, sensory, and autonomic. Motor nerve fibers carry signals to muscles to allow motions like walking and fine finger movements. Sensory nerves take messages in the opposite direction. They carry information to the brain about shape, movement, texture, warmth, coolness, or pain from special sensors in the skin and from deep in the body.
Autonomic nerves are nerves that are not consciously controlled. These nerves have functions such as controlling the pace of heartbeats, maintaining blood pressure, and controlling sweating. Some symptoms of neuropathy occur when the nerve fibers are lost. If the loss of nerve fibers affects the motor fibers, it can cause muscular weakness. If loss of nerve fibers affects the sensory fibers, it can cause loss of feeling. And if the loss of nerve fibers affects autonomic fibers, it can cause loss of functions not normally under conscious control, like digestion. Neuropathy symptoms can also be caused by nerves that are damaged or are healing.
These neuropathy symptoms include prickling, tingling, burning, aching, or sharp jabs of needlelike pain. These are signs of the increased nerve activity that occurs in damaged or healing nerves. Different types of neuropathy symptoms can occur together. It is common to have pain even though many fibers have been lost.
What Causes Neuropathy?
Researchers do not yet know what causes diabetic neuropathy. Glucose control seems to play a role in neuropathy. Neuropathy is more likely to affect people who have had diabetes for a long time or whose glucose control is poor. But no one is sure how high glucose levels must be before nerve damage happens. Glucose probably does not hurt nerve cells directly. Instead, it may affect other systems of the body, which in turn affect the nerves.
Neuropathy can be prevented, at least in some cases. Avoiding alcohol and cigarettes will probably help protect your nerves from damage and prevent against neuropathy. People with diabetes should be aware that other diseases can also cause neuropathy. There are at least 50 other causes of neuropathy. These include disorders of the immune system, infectious diseases, and poor nutrition.
Types of Neuropathy
Neuropathies are classified based on the answers to a few basic questions. Neuropathy that affects both sides of the body is called symmetric. If neuropathy affects only one side, it is asymmetric.
Which class of nerves is affected?
Neuropathy can affect motor, sensory, and autonomic nerves. Neuropathy that affects only one nerve is called mononeuropathy. Polyneuropathy means several nerves are affected. The affected parts may be far from the trunk or close to it. Neuropathy in the hands and feet is distal neuropathy. In proximal neuropathy, the thigh muscles are affected, often to different degrees. When this type produces a large amount of pain, it is called femoral neuropathy. But when weakness in the thigh occurs without pain, it is called diabetic amyotrophy. Different doctors classify neuropathy differently. But there are a few well-known types of neuropathy. Distal symmetric polyneuropathy is the most common form of neuropathy. This type of neuropathy strikes both sides of the body. The legs and feet are usually affected, although the hands may be also. People with this form of neuropathy have numbness and prickling sensations or tingling. Some people feel pain in the toes or feet. The feet can sometimes be so tender that walking on a rough surface hurts. Doctors often find that people with this form of neuropathy have lost part of their ability to feel a pinprick or a vibration. For example, they are less able to feel a tuning fork vibrating against the toe. This type of neuropathy tends to develop only after many years of poor blood glucose control. Tight glucose control can prevent most cases of this type of neuropathy.
Charcot’s Joint, also called neuropathic arthropathy, occurs when a joint breaks down because of a problem with the nerves. This type of neuropathy most often occurs in the foot. In a typical case of Charcot’s Joint, the foot has lost most sensation. The person no longer can feel pain in the foot and loses the ability to sense the position of the joint. Also, the muscles lose their ability to support the joint properly. The foot then becomes unstable, and walking just makes it worse. An injury, such as a twisted ankle, may make things even worse. Joints grind on bone. The result is inflammation, which leads to further instability and then dislocation. Finally, the bone structure of the foot collapses. Eventually, the foot heals on its own, but because of the breakdown of the bone, it heals into a deformed foot. People at risk for Charcot’s Joint are those who already have neuropathy. They should be aware of symptoms such as swelling, redness, heat, strong pulse, and insensitivity of the foot. Early treatment can stop bone destruction and aid healing.
Cranial neuropathy affects the 12 pairs of nerves that are connected with the brain and control sight, eye movement, hearing, and taste. Most often, cranial neuropathy affects the nerves that control the eye muscles. The neuropathy begins with pain on one side of the face near the affected eye. Later, the eye muscle becomes paralyzed. Double vision results. Symptoms of this type of neuropathy usually get better or go away within 2 or 3 months.
Autonomic neuropathy affects the autonomic nerves, which control the bladder, intestinal tract, and genitals, among other organs. Paralysis of the bladder is a common symptom of this type of neuropathy. When this happens, the nerves of the bladder no longer respond normally to pressure as the bladder fills with urine. As a result, urine stays in the bladder, leading to urinary tract infections. Autonomic neuropathy can also cause impotence (erectile dysfunction) when it affects the nerves that control erection with sexual arousal. However, sexual desire does not usually decrease. Diarrhea can occur when the nerves that control the small intestine are damaged. The diarrhea occurs most often at night. Constipation is another common result of damage to nerves in the intestines. Sometimes, the stomach is affected. It loses the ability to move food through the digestive system, causing vomiting and bloating. This condition, called gastroparesis, can change how fast the body absorbs food. It can make it hard to match insulin doses to food portions. Scientists do not know the precise cause of autonomic neuropathy and are looking for better treatments for his type of neuropathy.
Compression mononeuropathy occurs when a single nerve is damaged. It is a fairly common type of neuropathy. There seem to be two kinds of damage. In the first, nerves are squashed at places where they must pass through a tight tunnel or over a lump of bone. Nerves of people with diabetes are more prone to compression injury. The second kind of damage arises when blood vessel disease caused by diabetes restricts blood flow to a part of the nerve. Carpal tunnel syndrome is probably the most common compression mononeuropathy. It occurs when the median nerve of the forearm is compressed at the wrist.
Symptoms of this type of neuropathy include numbness, swelling, or prickling in the fingers with or without pain when driving a car, knitting, or resting at night. Simply hanging your arm by your side usually stops the pain within a few minutes. If the symptoms are severe, an operation can give complete relief from pain.
Femoral neuropathy is also a common type of neuropathy. It occurs most often in people with type-2 diabetes. A pain may develop in the front of one thigh. Muscle weakness follows, and the affected muscles waste away. A different kind of neuropathy that also affects the legs is called diabetic amyotrophy. In this case, weakness occurs on both sides of the body, but there is no pain. Doctors do not understand why it occurs, but blood vessel disease may be the cause. Another common mononeuropathy is thoracic or lumbar radiculopathy. It is like femoral neuropathy, except that it occurs in the torso. It affects a band of the chest or abdominal wall on one or both sides. It seems to occur more often in people with type-2 diabetes. Again, people with this neuropathy get better with time. Unilateral foot drop is when the foot can’t be picked up. It occurs from damage to the peroneal nerve of the leg by compression or vessel disease. Foot drop can improve.
How Is Neuropathy Diagnosed?
Your symptoms are one way of diagnosing neuropathy. Your doctor will ask you to describe your symptoms. Also, the doctor will ask whether your muscles feel weak (not tired); how often you get muscle cramps; whether you keep having prickling, numbness, or pain; whether you have been fainting or vomiting; and whether your bladder control and sexual ability are normal. Another way to diagnose neuropathy is with a neurological evaluation. The doctor performs several simple and painless tests. These may measure muscle strength, autonomic nerve function, and sensation (such as whether you can feel a pinprick or a vibration).
A third approach is an electromyographic examination. In this test, a disk is pasted to the skin over the muscle. The doctor applies a small electric shock to nerves. A machine reads and records the voltage from the disks. In neuropathy, the speed of the impulse along the nerve gets slower, showing something is wrong. Most people do not find the shocks uncomfortable. In people with severe neuropathy, the doctor may also do a second kind of electromyographic test. In it, a needle inserted into muscles measures electrical discharges. This more in-depth test can show whether a nerve fiber is breaking down or healing. This test is uncomfortable for most people but is worthwhile because it can give a firm diagnosis. A fourth way to diagnose neuropathy is with standardized tests that measure muscle strength and loss of ability in sensory and autonomic nerves. To diagnose Charcot’s Joint, the doctor may take an x-ray of the joint and possibly do a bone scan.
As many as one third of people with diabetes will have a skin disorder caused or affected by diabetes at some time in their lives. In fact, such problems are sometimes the first sign that a person has diabetes. Luckily, most skin conditions can be prevented or easily treated if caught early. Some of these problems are skin conditions anyone can have, but people with diabetes get more easily. These include bacterial infections, fungal infections, and itching. Other skin problems happen mostly or only to people with diabetes. These include diabetic dermopathy, necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum, diabetic blisters, and eruptive xanthomatosis.
Several kinds of bacterial infections occur in people with diabetes. One common one are styes. These are infections of the glands of the eyelid. Another kind of infection are boils, or infections of the hair follicles. Carbuncles are deep infections of the skin and the tissue underneath. Infections can also occur around the nails. Inflamed tissues are usually hot, swollen, red, and painful. Several different organisms can cause infections. The most common ones are the Staphylococcus bacteria, also called staph. Once, bacterial infections were life threatening, especially for people with diabetes. Today, death is rare, thanks to antibiotics and better methods of blood sugar control. But even today, people with diabetes have more bacterial infections than other people do. Doctors believe people with diabetes can reduce their chances of these infections in several ways.
The culprit in fungal infections of people with diabetes is often Candida albicans. This yeast-like fungus can create itchy rashes of moist, red areas surrounded by tiny blisters and scales. These infections often occur in warm, moist folds of the skin. Problem areas are under the breasts, around the nails, between fingers and toes, in the corners of the mouth, under the foreskin (in uncircumcised men), and in the armpits and groin. Common fungal infections include jock itch, athlete’s foot, ringworm (a ring-shaped itchy patch), and vaginal infection that causes itching. If you think you have a yeast or fungal infection, you can use an anti-fungal substance.
Localized itching is often caused by diabetes. It can be caused by a yeast infection, dry skin, or poor circulation. When poor circulation is the cause of itching, the itchiest areas may be the lower parts of the legs. You may be able to treat itching yourself. Limit how often you bathe, particularly when the humidity is low. Use mild soap with moisturizer and apply skin cream after bathing.
Diabetes can cause changes in the small blood vessels. These changes can cause skin problems called diabetic dermopathy. Dermopathy often looks like light brown, scaly patches. These patches may be oval or circular. Some people mistake them for age spots. This disorder most often occurs on the front of both legs. But the legs may not be affected to the same degree. The patches do not hurt, open up, or itch. Dermopathy is harmless. You do not need to be treated.
Another disease that may be caused by changes in the blood vessels is necrobiosis lipoidica diabeticorum (NLD). NLD is similar to diabetic dermopathy. The difference is that the spots are fewer, but larger and deeper. NLD often starts as a dull red raised area. After a while, it looks like a shiny scar with a violet border. The blood vessels under the skin may become easier to see. Sometimes NLD is itchy and painful. Sometimes the spots crack open. NLD is a rare condition. Adult women are the most likely to get it. As long as the sores do not break open, you do not need to have it treated. But if you get open sores, see your doctor for treatment.
Thickening of the arteries—atherosclerosis - can affect the skin on the legs. People with diabetes tend to get atherosclerosis at younger ages than other people do. As atherosclerosis narrows the blood vessels, the skin changes. It becomes hairless, thin, cool, and shiny. The toes become cold. Toenails thicken and discolor. And exercise causes pain in the calf muscles because the muscles are not getting enough oxygen. Because blood carries the infection-fighting white cells, affected legs heal slowly when the skin in injured. Even minor scrapes can result in open sores that heal slowly.
People with neuropathy are more likely to suffer foot injuries. These occur because the person does not feel pain, heat, cold, or pressure as well. The person can have an injured foot and not know about it. The wound goes uncared for, and so infections develop easily. Atherosclerosis can make things worse. The reduced blood flow can cause the infection to become severe.
Allergic skin reactions can occur in response to medicines, such as insulin or diabetes pills. You should see your doctor if you think you are having a reaction to a medicine. Be on the lookout for rashes, depressions, or bumps at the sites where you inject insulin.
Rarely, people with diabetes erupt in blisters. Diabetic blisters can occur on the backs of fingers, hands, toes, feet, and sometimes, on legs or forearms. These sores look like burn blisters. They sometimes are large. But they are painless and have no redness around them. They heal by themselves, usually without scars, in about three weeks. They often occur in people who have diabetic neuropathy. The only treatment is to bring blood sugar levels under control.
Eruptive xanthomatosis is another condition caused by diabetes that’s out of control. It consists of firm, yellow, pea-like enlargements in the skin. Each bump has a red halo and may itch. This condition occurs most often on the backs of hands, feet, arms, legs, and buttocks. The disorder usually occurs in young men with type-1 diabetes. The person often has high levels of cholesterol and fat in the blood. Like diabetic blisters, these bumps disappear when diabetes control is restored.
Sometimes, people with diabetes develop tight, thick, waxy skin on the backs of their hands. Sometimes skin on the toes and forehead also becomes thick. The finger joints become stiff and can no longer move the way they should. Rarely, knees, ankles, or elbows also get stiff. This condition happens to about one third of people who have type-1 diabetes. The only treatment is to bring blood sugar levels under control.
In disseminated granuloma annulare, the person has sharply defined ring-shaped or arc-shaped raised areas on the skin. These rashes occur most often on parts of the body far from the trunk (for example, the fingers or ears). But sometimes the raised areas occur on the trunk. They can be red, red-brown, or skin-colored.
Acanthosis nigricans is a condition in which tan or brown raised areas appear on the sides of the neck, armpits, and groin. Sometimes they also occur on the hands, elbows, and knees. Acanthosis nigricans usually strikes people who are very overweight. The best treatment is to lose weight. Some creams can help the spots look better.
Diabetes is conventionally treated by the use of oral hypoglycemic agents that were first developed in the early 1950s. None of them cure the disease. All of them treat symptoms while allowing the disease to run rampant until it kills the patient. One of these agents lowers blood sugar by competitively inhibiting the action of an important enzyme that digests carbohydrates. Another suppresses the liver’s ability to supply glycogen. Another stimulates the over-production of insulin in a body that often already has far too much insulin in its bloodstream. When Rezulin was marketed, it interfered with the cellular metabolism of our peripheral cells and markedly damaged the liver. The original doctor involved in the approval process of Rezulin, Dr. John L. Gueriguian, felt it was too dangerous for people to take. Gueriguian, however, was removed from the advisory panel and the drug was eventually approved by his replacement. Rezulin was so poorly conceived that it killed over 100 trusting people before it was removed from the market amid major lawsuits. Synthetic drugs are seldom if ever needed with diabetes. This disease, like many other modern degenerative diseases, quickly responds to a well-designed program of nutritional and life-style changes. By some estimates, diabetes, together with the collateral damage it causes, provides almost a third of the income of the medical and drug industry.
Today’s diabetes industry is a massive community that has grown step by step from its dubious origins in the early 20th century. In the last 80 years it has become enormously successful at shutting out competitive voices that attempt to point out the fraud involved in modern diabetes treatment. It has matured into a religion. And, like all religions, it depends heavily upon the faith of the believer. So successful has it become that it verges on blasphemy to suggest that, in most cases, the kindly high priest with the stethoscope draped prominently around his neck is a charlatan and a fraud. In the large majority of cases, he has never cured a single case of diabetes in his entire medical career.
The financial and political influence of this medical community has almost totally subverted the original intent of our regulatory agencies. They routinely approve death-dealing, ineffective drugs with insufficient testing. Former commissioner of the FDA, Dr Herbert Ley, in testimony before a US Senate hearing, commented: “People think the FDA is protecting them. It isn’t. What the FDA is doing and what the public thinks it’s doing are as different as night and day.” The financial and political influence of this medical community dominates our entire medical insurance industry. Although this is beginning to change, in America it is still difficult to find employer group medical insurance to cover effective alternative medical treatments. Orthodox coverage is standard in all states. Alternative medicine is not. For example, there are only 1,400 licensed naturopaths in 11 states compared to over 3.4 million orthodox licensees in 50 states. Generally, only approved treatments from licensed, credentialed practitioners are insurable. This, in effect, neatly creates a special kind of money that can only be spent within the orthodox medical and drug industry. No other industry in the world has been able to manage the politics of convincing people to accept so large a part of their pay in a form that often does not allow them to spend it as they see fit.
The financial and political influence of this medical community completely controls virtually every diabetes publication in the country. Many diabetes publications are subsidized by ads for diabetes supplies. No diabetes editor is going to allow the truth to be printed in his magazine. This is why the diabetic only pays about one-quarter to one-third of the cost of printing the magazine he depends upon for accurate information. The rest is subsidized by diabetes manufacturers with a vested commercial interest in preventing diabetics from curing their diabetes. When looking for a magazine that tells the truth about diabetes, look first to see if it is full of ads for diabetes supplies. And then there are the various associations that solicit annual donations to find a cure for their proprietary disease. Every year they promise that a cure is just around the corner—just send more money! Some of these very same associations have been clearly implicated in providing advice that promotes the progress of diabetes in their trusting supporters. For example, for years they heavily promoted exchange diets, which are in fact scientifically worthless—as anyone who has ever tried to use them quickly finds out. They ridiculed the use of glycemic tables, which are actually very helpful to the diabetic. They promoted the use of margarine as heart healthy, long after it was well understood that margarine causes diabetes and promotes heart failure.
If people ever wake up to the cure for diabetes that has been suppressed for 40 years, these associations will soon be out of business. But until then, they nonetheless continue to need our support. For 40 years, medical research has consistently shown with increasing clarity that diabetes is a degenerative disease directly caused by an engineered food supply that is focused on profit instead of health. Although the diligent can readily glean this information from a wealth of medical research literature, it is generally otherwise unavailable. Certainly this information has been, and remains, largely unavailable in the medical schools that train our retail doctors.
Prominent among the causative agents in our modern diabetes epidemic are the engineered fats and oils that are sold in today’s supermarkets. The first step to curing diabetes is to stop believing the lie that the disease is incurable.
In 1922, three Canadian Nobel Prize winners, Banting, Best and Macleod, were successful in saving the life of a fourteen-year-old diabetic girl in Toronto General Hospital with injectable insulin. Eli Lilly was licensed to manufacture this new wonder drug, and the medical community basked in the glory of a job well done. It wasn’t until 1933 that rumors about a new rogue form of diabetes surfaced. This was in a paper presented by Joslyn, Dublin and Marks and printed in the American Journal of Medical Sciences.
This paper, Studies on Diabetes Mellitus, discussed the emergence of a major epidemic of a disease which looked very much like the diabetes of the early 1920s, only it did not respond to the wonder drug, insulin. Even worse, sometimes insulin treatment killed the patient. This new disease became known as insulin-resistant diabetes because it had the elevated blood sugar symptom of diabetes but responded poorly to insulin therapy. Many physicians had considerable success in treating this disease through diet. A great deal was learned about the relationship between diet and diabetes in the 1930s and 1940s. Diabetes, which had a per-capita incidence of 0.0028% at the turn of the century, had by 1933 zoomed 1,000% in the United States to become a disease seen by many doctors. This disease, under a variety of aliases, was destined to go on to wreck the health of over half the American population and incapacitate almost 20% by the 1990s. In 1950, the medical community became able to perform serum insulin assays.
These assays quickly revealed that this new disease wasn’t classic diabetes; it was characterized by sufficient, often excessive, blood insulin levels. The problem was that the insulin was ineffective; it did not reduce blood sugar. But since the disease had been known as diabetes for almost 20 years, it was renamed Type II diabetes. This was to distinguish it from the earlier Type I diabetes, caused by insufficient insulin production by the pancreas. Had the dietary insights of the previous 20 years dominated the medical scene from this point and into the late 1960s, diabetes would have become widely recognized as curable instead of merely treatable. Instead, in 1950, a search was launched for another wonder drug to deal with the Type II diabetes problem.
This new, ideal, wonder drug would be effective, like insulin, in remitting obvious adverse symptoms of the disease but not effective in curing the underlying disease. Thus it would be needed continually for the remaining life of the patient. It would have to be patentable; that is, it could not be a natural medication because these are non-patentable. Like insulin, it would have to be highly profitable to manufacture and distribute. Mandatory government approvals would be required to stimulate physicians to prescribe it as a prescription drug. Testing required for these approvals would have to be enormously expensive to prevent other, unapproved, medications from becoming competitive. This is the origin of the classic medical protocol of “treating the symptoms.” By doing this, both the drug company and the doctor could prosper in business, and the patient, while not being cured of his disease, was sometimes temporarily relieved of some of his symptoms. Additionally, natural medications that actually cured disease would have to be suppressed. The more effective they were, the more they would need to be suppressed and their proponents jailed as quacks. After all, it wouldn’t do to have some cheap, effective, natural medication cure disease in a capital-intensive monopoly market specifically designed to treat symptoms without curing disease.
Often the natural substance really did cure disease. This is why the force of law has been and is being used to drive the natural, often superior, medicines from the marketplace, to remove the “cure” word from the medical vocabulary and to undermine totally the very concept of a free marketplace in the medical business. Now it is clear why the “cure” word is so vigorously suppressed by law. The FDA has extensive Orwellian regulations that prohibit the use of the “cure” word to describe any competing medicine or natural substance. It is precisely because many natural substances do actually both cure and prevent disease that this word has become so frightening to the drug and orthodox medical community.
After the drug development policy was redesigned to focus on treating symptoms rather than curing disease, it became necessary to reinvent the way drugs were marketed. This was done in 1949 in the midst of a major epidemic of insulin-resistant diabetes. So, in 1949, the U.S. medical community reclassified the symptoms of diabetes along with many other disease symptoms into diseases in their own right. With this reclassification as the new basis for diagnosis, competing medical specialty groups quickly seized upon related groups of symptoms as their own proprietary symptoms set. Thus the heart specialist, endocrinologist, allergist, kidney specialist and many others started to treat the symptoms for which they felt responsible. As the underlying cause of the disease was widely ignored, all focus on actually curing anything was completely lost. Heart failure, for example, which had previously been understood often to be but a symptom of diabetes, now became a disease not directly connected to diabetes. It became fashionable to think that diabetes “increased cardiovascular risk.” The causal role of a failed blood-sugar control system in heart failure became obscured.
Consistent with the new medical paradigm, none of the treatments offered by the heart specialist actually cures, or is even intended to cure, their proprietary disease. For example, the three-year survival rate for bypass surgery is almost exactly the same as if no surgery was undertaken. Today, over half of the people in America suffer from one or more symptoms of this disease. In its beginnings, it became well known to physicians as Type II diabetes, insulin-resistant diabetes, insulin resistance, adult-onset diabetes or, more rarely, hyperinsulinemia. According to the American Heart Association, almost 50% of Americans suffer from one or more symptoms of this disease. One third of the U.S. population is morbidly obese; half of the population is overweight. Type II diabetes, also called adult-onset diabetes, now appears routinely in six-year-old children. Many degenerative diseases can be traced to a massive failure of the endocrine system. This was well known to the physicians of the 1930s as insulin-resistant diabetes. This basic underlying disorder is known to be a derangement of the blood-sugar control system by badly engineered fats and oils. It is exacerbated and complicated by the widespread lack of other essential nutrition that the body needs to cope with the metabolic consequences of these poisons.
All fats and oils are not equal. Some are healthy and beneficial; many, commonly available in the supermarket, are poisonous. The health distinction is not between saturated and unsaturated, as the fats and oils industry would have us believe. Many saturated oils and fats are highly beneficial; many unsaturated oils are highly poisonous. The important health distinction is between natural and engineered.
There exists great dishonesty in advertising in the fats and oils industry. It is aimed at creating a market for cheap junk oils such as soy, cottonseed, and canola oils. With an informed and aware public, these oils would have no market at all, and the USA—indeed, the world—would have far fewer cases of diabetes.
As early as 1901, efforts had been made to manufacture and sell food products by the use of automated factory machinery because of the immense profits that were possible. Most of the early efforts failed because people were inherently suspicious of food that wasn’t farm fresh and because the technology was poor. As long as people were prosperous, suspicious food products made little headway. Crisco, the artificial shortening, was once given away free in 2½ lb. cans in an unsuccessful effort to influence American housewives to trust and buy the product in preference to lard.
Margarine was introduced and was bitterly opposed by the dairy states in the USA. With the advent of the Depression of the 1930s, margarine, Crisco and a host of other refined and hydrogenated products began to make significant penetration into the food markets of America. Support for dairy opposition to margarine faded during World War II because there wasn’t enough butter for the needs of both the civilian population and the military. At this point, the dairy industry, having lost much support simply accepted a diluted market share and concentrated on supplying the military. Flax oils and fish oils, which were common in the stores and considered dietary staples before the American population became diseased, have disappeared from the shelf. The last supplier of flax oil to the major distribution chains was Archer Daniels Midland, and it stopped producing and supplying the product in 1950.
More recently, one of the most important of the remaining, genuinely beneficial, fats was subjected to a massive media disinformation campaign that portrayed it as a saturated fat that causes heart failure. As a result, it has virtually disappeared from the supermarket shelves. Thus was coconut oil removed from the food chain and replaced with soy oil, cottonseed oil, and canola oil. Our parents and grandparents would never have swapped a fine, healthy oil like coconut oil for these cheap, junk oils. It was shortly after this successful media blitz that the U.S. populace lost its war on fat. For many years, coconut oil had been our most effective dietary weight-control agent. The history of the engineered adulteration of our once-clean food supply exactly parallels the rise of the epidemic of diabetes and hyperinsulinemia now sweeping the United States as well as much of the rest of the world. The second step to a cure for this is to stop believing the lie that our food supply is safe and nutritious.
Diabetes is classically diagnosed as a failure of the body to metabolize carbohydrates properly. Its defining symptom is a high blood-glucose level. Type I diabetes results from insufficient insulin production by the pancreas. Type II diabetes results from ineffective insulin. In both types, the blood-glucose level remains elevated. Neither insufficient insulin nor ineffective insulin can limit post-prandial (after-eating) blood sugar to the normal range. In established cases of Type II diabetes, these elevated blood sugar levels are often preceded and accompanied by chronically elevated insulin levels and by serious distortions of other endocrine hormonal markers. The ineffective insulin is no different from effective insulin. Its ineffectiveness lies in the failure of the cell population to respond to it. It is not the result of any biochemical defect in the insulin itself. Therefore, it is appropriate to note that this is a disease that affects almost every cell in the 70 trillion or so cells of the body. All of these cells are dependent upon the food that we eat for the raw materials they need for self repair and maintenance.
The classification of diabetes as a failure to metabolize carbohydrates is a traditional classification that originated in the early 19th century when little was known about metabolic diseases or processes. Today, with our increased knowledge of these processes, it would appear quite appropriate to define Type II diabetes more fundamentally as a failure of the body to metabolize fats and oils properly. This failure results in a loss of effectiveness of insulin and in the consequent failure to metabolize carbohydrates. Unfortunately, much medical insight into this matter, except at the research level, remains hampered by its 19th-century legacy. Thus Type II diabetes and its early hyperinsulinemic symptoms are whole-body symptoms of this basic cellular failure to metabolize glucose properly. Each cell of the body, for reasons which are becoming clearer, finds itself unable to transport glucose from the bloodstream to its interior. The glucose then remains in the bloodstream, or is stored as body fat or as glycogen, or is otherwise disposed of in urine.
It appears that when insulin binds to a cell membrane receptor, it initiates a complex cascade of biochemical reactions inside the cell. This causes a class of glucose transporters known as GLUT4 molecules to leave their parking area inside the cell and travel to the inside surface of the plasma cell membrane. When in the membrane, they migrate to special areas of the membrane called caveolae areas. There, by another series of biochemical reactions, they identify and hook up with glucose molecules and transport them into the interior of the cell by a process called endocytosis. Within the cell’s interior, this glucose is then burned as fuel by the mitochondria to produce energy to power cellular activity. Thus these GLUT4 transporters lower glucose in the bloodstream by transporting it out of the bloodstream into all the cells of the body.
Many of the molecules involved in these glucose- and insulin-mediated pathways are lipids; that is, they are fatty acids. A healthy plasma cell membrane, now known to be an active player in the glucose scenario, contains a complement of cis-type w=3 unsaturated fatty acids. This makes the membrane relatively fluid and slippery. When these cis- fatty acids are chronically unavailable because of our diet, trans- fatty acids and short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids are substituted in the cell membrane. These substitutions make the cellular membrane stiffer and stickier, and inhibit the glucose transport mechanism. Thus, in the absence of sufficient cis- omega 3 fatty acids in our diet, these fatty acid substitutions take place, the mobility of the GLUT4 transporters is diminished, the interior biochemistry of the cell is changed and glucose remains elevated in the bloodstream. Elsewhere in the body, the pancreas secretes excess insulin, the liver manufactures fat from the excess sugar, the adipose cells store excess fat, the body goes into a high urinary mode, insufficient cellular energy is available for bodily activity and the entire endocrine system becomes distorted. Eventually, pancreatic failure occurs, body weight plummets and a diabetic crisis is precipitated. Although there remains much work to be done to elucidate fully all of the steps in all of these pathways, this clearly marks the beginning of a biochemical explanation for the known epidemiological relationship between cheap, engineered dietary fats and oils and the onset of Type II diabetes.
After the diagnosis of diabetes, modern orthodox medical treatment consists of either oral hypoglycemic agents or insulin.
• Oral hypoglycemic agents
In 1955, oral hypoglycemic drugs were introduced. Currently available oral hypoglycemic agents fall into five classifications according to their biophysical mode of action. These classes are: biguanides; glucosidase inhibitors; meglitinides; sulphonylureas; and thiazolidinediones.
The biguanides lower blood sugar in three ways. They inhibit the normal release by the liver of its glucose stores, they interfere with intestinal absorption of glucose from ingested carbohydrates, and they are said to increase peripheral uptake of glucose.
The glucosidase inhibitors are designed to inhibit the amylase enzymes produced by the pancreas and which are essential to the digestion of carbohydrates. The theory is that if the digestion of carbohydrates is inhibited, the blood sugar level cannot be elevated.
The meglitinides are designed to stimulate the pancreas to produce insulin in a patient that likely already has an elevated level of insulin in their bloodstream. Only rarely does the doctor even measure the insulin level. Indeed, these drugs are frequently prescribed without any knowledge of the pre-existing insulin level. The fact that an elevated insulin level is almost as damaging as an elevated glucose level is widely ignored.
The sulphonylureas are another pancreatic stimulant class designed to stimulate the production of insulin. Serum insulin determinations are rarely made by the doctor before he prescribes these drugs. They are often prescribed for Type II diabetics, many of whom already have elevated ineffective insulin. These drugs are notorious for causing hypoglycemia as a side effect.
The thiazolidinediones are famous for causing liver cancer. One of them, Rezulin, was approved in the USA through devious political infighting, but failed to get approval in the UK because it was known to cause liver cancer. The doctor who had responsibility to approve it at the FDA refused to do so. It was only after he was replaced by a more compliant official that Rezulin gained approval by the FDA. It went on to kill well over 100 diabetes patients and cripple many others before the fight to get it off the market was finally won. Rezulin was designed to stimulate the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream by the peripheral cells and to inhibit the normal secretion of glucose by the liver. The politics of why this drug ever came onto market, and then remained in the market for such an unexplainable length of time with regulatory agency approval, is not clear. As of April 2000, lawsuits commenced to clarify this situation.
• Insulin
Today, insulin is prescribed for both the Type I and Type II diabetics. Injectable insulin substitutes for the insulin that the body no longer produces. Of course, this treatment, while necessary for preserving the life of the Type I diabetic, is highly questionable when applied to the Type II diabetic. It is important to note that neither insulin nor any of these oral hypoglycemic agents exerts any curative action whatsoever on any type of diabetes. None of these medical strategies is designed to normalize the cellular uptake of glucose by the cells that need it to power their activity. The prognosis with this orthodox treatment is increasing disability and early death from heart or kidney failure or the failure of some other vital organ.
The third step to a cure for this disease is to become informed and to apply an alternative methodology that is soundly based upon good science. Effective alternative treatment that directly leads to a cure is available today for some Type I and for many Type II diabetics. About 5% of the diabetic population suffers from Type I diabetes; about 95% has Type II diabetes. Gestational diabetes is simply ordinary diabetes contracted by a woman who is pregnant. For the Type I diabetic, an alternative methodology for the treatment of Type I diabetes is now available. It was developed in modern hospitals in Madras, India, and subjected to rigorous double-blind studies to prove its efficacy. It operates to restore normal pancreatic beta cell function so that the pancreas can again produce insulin as it should. This approach apparently was capable of curing Type I diabetes in over 60% of the patients on whom it was tested. The major complication lies in whether the antigens that originally led to the autoimmune destruction of these beta cells have disappeared from or remain in the body. If they remain, a cure is less likely; if they have disappeared, the cure is more likely. For reasons already discussed, this methodology is not likely to appear in the United States any time soon, and certainly not in the American orthodox medical community. The goal of any effective alternative program is to repair and restore the body’s own blood-sugar control mechanism. It is the malfunctioning of this mechanism that, over time, directly causes all of the many debilitating symptoms that make orthodox treatment so financially rewarding for the diabetes industry.
For Type II diabetes, the steps in the program are:
• Repair the faulty blood sugar control system. This is done simply by substituting clean, healthy, beneficial fats and oils in the diet for the pristine-looking but toxic trans-isomer mix found in attractive plastic containers on supermarket shelves. Consume only flax oil, fish oil and occasionally cod liver oil until blood sugar starts to stabilize. Then add back healthy oils such as butter, coconut oil, olive oil and clean animal fat. Read labels; refuse to consume cheap junk oils when they appear in processed food or on restaurant menus. Diabetics are chronically short of minerals; they need to add a good-quality, broad-spectrum mineral supplement to the diet.
• Control blood sugar manually during the recovery cycle. Under medical supervision, gradually discontinue all oral hypoglycemic agents along with any additional drugs given to counteract their side effects. Develop natural blood-sugar control by the use of glycemic tables, by consuming frequent small meals (including fiber-rich foods), by regular post-prandial exercise, and by the complete avoidance of all sugars along with the judicious use of only non-toxic sweeteners. Avoid alcohol until blood sugar stabilizes in the normal range. Keep score by using a pinprick-type glucose meter. Keep track of everything you do with a medical diary.
• Restore a proper balance of healthy fats and oils when the blood sugar controller again works. Permanently remove from the diet all cheap, toxic, junk fats and oils as well as the processed and restaurant foods that contain them. When the blood sugar controller again starts to work correctly, gradually introduce additional healthy foods to the diet. Test the effect of these added foods by monitoring blood sugar levels with the pinprick-type blood sugar monitor. Be sure to include the results of these tests in your diary also.
• Continue the program until normal insulin values are also restored after blood sugar levels begin to stabilize in the normal region. Once blood sugar levels fall into the normal range, the pancreas will gradually stop overproducing insulin. This process will typically take a little longer and can be tested by having your physician send a sample of your blood to a lab for a serum insulin determination. A good idea is to wait a couple of months after blood sugar control is restored and then have your physician check your insulin level. It’s nice to have blood sugar in the normal range; it’s even nicer to have this accomplished without excess insulin in the bloodstream.
• Separately repair the collateral damage done by the disease. Vascular problems caused by a chronically elevated glucose level will normally reverse themselves without conscious effort. The effects of retinopathy and of peripheral neuropathy, for example, will usually self repair. However, when the fine capillaries in the basement membranes of the kidneys begin to leak due to chronic high blood glucose, the kidneys compensate by laying down scar tissue to prevent the leakage. This scar tissue remains even after the diabetes is cured, and is the reason why the kidney damage is not believed to self repair.
A word of warning… When retinopathy develops, there may be a temptation to have the damage repaired by laser surgery. This laser technique stops the retinal bleeding by creating scar tissue where the leaks have developed. This scar tissue will prevent normal healing of the fine capillaries in the eye when the diabetes is reversed. By reversing the diabetes instead of opting for laser surgery, there is an excellent chance that the eye will heal completely. However, if laser surgery is done, this healing will always be complicated by the scar tissue left by the laser.
The arterial and vascular damage done by years of elevated sugar and insulin and by the proliferation of systemic Candida will slowly reverse due to improved diet. However, it takes many years to clean out the arteries by this form of oral chelation. Arterial damage can be reversed much more quickly by using natto kinase or intravenous chelation therapy. What would normally take many years through diet alone can often be done in six months with intravenous therapy. This is reputed to be effective over 80% of the time. For obvious reasons, don’t expect your doctor to approve of this, particularly if he’s a heart specialist.
Recovery Time
The prognosis is usually swift recovery from the disease and restoration of normal health and energy levels in a few months to a year or more. The length of time that it takes to affect a cure depends upon how long the disease was allowed to develop. For those who work quickly to reverse the disease after early discovery, the time is usually a few months or less. For those who have had the disease for many years, this recovery time may lengthen to a year or more. Thus, there is good reason to get busy reversing this disease as soon as it becomes clearly identified. By now, you should know what causes it, what orthodox medical treatment is all about, and why diabetes has become a national and international disgrace. Of even greater importance, you have become acquainted with a self-help program that has demonstrated great potential to actually cure this disease.