Part 1 is the blog titled "Safe & Effective Exposed."
I will be reviewing several medical silos and exposing how the standard of care is causing more harm than good.
Now let's look at diabetes trends and the treatment thereof....
The main effort of my messaging is to convey the concept that we all are somewhere on a health-disease continuum. That is, we are neither sick nor healthy. Instead, we are somewhere in between. Here is the diabetes continuum:
Most interesting is the American Diabetes Association and other organizations supposedly working to curb diabetes indicate that if you are pre-diabetic, there are lifestyle modifications you can make to reverse the trend. However, if you cross over this artificial and subjective line, then there is no turning back without drug interventions.
I state it is a subjective line because different parameters are used. Some use HbA1C while others use fasting glucose. Here is the CDC definition: A fasting blood sugar level of 99 mg/dL or lower is normal, 100 to 125 mg/dL indicates you have pre-diabetes, and 126 mg/dL or higher indicates you have diabetes.
BTW, a fasting blood sugar of 99mg/dL is normal in the United States today - but it is far from normal. Optimal blood sugar is 65 - 80 mg/dL. Because of the high levels of insulin resistance in the American population, a blood glucose level of around 65 mg/dL may be a better indicator of hypoglycemia. However, this is an outstanding number in insulin sensitive individuals.
And now for a deep dive into diabetes as will appear in my book...
Most drugs to "treat" diabetes are harmful. The term "treat" means to lower glucose levels. This would be wonderful if glucose was the primary causal factor of the disease, but it is NOT. Thus, treating a symptom, like high blood glucose levels, has the usual negative outcomes provided by our medical establishment.
Metformin is considered to be an anti-aging drug even within certain sectors of the medical establishment. However, we have heard these types of claims before about statins, stents, and blood pressure drugs. Are they true?
In the case of metformin, there appears to be an effect but there are also consequences. Metformin points to a very basic aspect of longevity, that being reduced calorie intake. It is a basic concept. Sugars are important but in excess, drive inflammation. Also, reducing calories puts less stress on digestion and elimination pathways providing more bandwidth for repair and recovery. However, the complement to calorie control is to make sure micronutrient intake is high. The mid-Victorians consumed substantially more micronutrients than we do today. You might be saying, "but the mid-Victorians consumed many more calories compared to people today!" This is true, but their level of physical activity also played an important role in glucose control. They actually needed the calories and nutrients, whereas today, consuming food is a habit or an act of pleasure rather than necessity.
If diabetes is not about controlling sugar, then what is it. The disease is that of insulin resistance so having an optimally low fasting insulin value of 1.5 - 3 is what contributes to longevity. Metformin may help people lower their fasting insulin by controlling glucose but this is an artificial approach and even "good" drugs have side effect.
Many people who are classified as type 2 diabetics are on insulin. Can you predict if this treatment will extend or reduce longevity? Glucose levels are lower but insulin levels are higher. You need to go no further than the ACCORD study for your answer. One of the publications from this study is titled, "Intensive glycemic control and the prevention of cardiovascular events: implications of the ACCORD, ADVANCE, and VA diabetes trials: a position statement of the American Diabetes Association and a scientific statement of the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association." [i] It is quite interesting that the phrase "prevention of cardiovascular events" is in the title because lower glucose does just the opposite. Here is information from the publication.
"Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD), terminated its glycemic control study early due to the finding of increased mortality in participants randomized to a strategy of very intensive glycemic control with a target A1C of <6%. The findings of these three major trials led the American Diabetes Association (ADA), with representatives of the American Heart Association (AHA) and the American College of Cardiology (ACC), to reexamine the recommendations for glycemic targets in patients with diabetes, the majority of whom have type 2 diabetes."
Translation: Lower glucose in diabetics (people with high glucose) can be deadly even though conventional medicine thought - and still thinks - just the opposite. An A1C target of <6% is not even optimal. Truly healthy people have an A1C of 4.5 - 5%. Few U.S. citizens have such a value. However, no one should dwell on the A1C value because it is a trailing indicator. Fasting insulin is the leading indicator and better represents the disease process.
The only thing I can conclude about the American Diabetes Association is they are either an incompetent or corrupt organization. In their 82nd year, it is difficult to avoid their myriad of donation buttons but impossible to find the ACCORD study results. This study should be front-and-canter on their website if they cared about people with diabetes. Why is it not? But their message is loud and clear - they care about money.
[i] Skyler, Jay S., et al. "Intensive glycemic control and the prevention of cardiovascular events: implications of the ACCORD, ADVANCE, and VA diabetes trials: a position statement of the American Diabetes Association and a scientific statement of the American College of Cardiology Foundation and the American Heart Association." Journal of the American College of Cardiology 53.3 (2009): 298-304.
Figure 1. is what you cannot avoid when you visit the ADA website. They have donation pop-ups all over the place - to the point of being annoying.
Figure 1. The ADA helping their C-suite stay rich.
This is what SHOULD be front-and-center on the ADA website, Figure 2.
Figure 2. The content the ADA should be providing on their home page. Notice that the people who do the worse only got to an A1C of 6.4% on average. A good A1C for a healthy individual is between 4.0 and 5.0%. The ACCORD Study calls this the "intensive treatment" arm - but it is not even that intensive.
Interesting that people on the intensive insulin treatment GAINED WEIGHT! Yes, the insulin is pushing the sugars fast and furiously to the liver to be converted to fat. Dr. Jason Fung and others call insulin the "fat hormone" for a reason.
Also interesting, the SAEs (serious adverse events" are reported in absolute statistics. I know most people hate statistics - but if you do not want to be fooled, you need to understand the differences between relative and absolute.
Here is a breakdown of the ACCORD statistics:
intensive treatment arm - 2500 people - 55 adverse events - ~ 2.2% on an absolute basis
regular treatment arm - 2500 people - 40 adverse events ~1.6% on an absolute basis.
But this is what the drug companies would have reported if the data was favorable.
2.2 minus 1.6 and then divide the quantity by 2.2 and then multiply by 100 to get a percent.
The relative harm from intensive treatment is: 27%
Convenient they present such small absolute numbers instead
Also note, the intensive treatment arm (group) was NOT compared to no treatment. My guess is those people did better than even the modest treatment. In other words, diabetics need to be managed exclusively without drugs.
When we have honesty, my sarcasm will hopefully wane, too.
More on diabetes and the failure of the standard of care next time... ;)
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