2) TYPE 2 DIABETES CONTROL
d) Summary of How a Person with Type 2 Diabetes can Live Long
Think of diabetes control as a three legged stool: one leg is weight control, one leg is exercise, and one leg is diet (avoiding "feedlot" meats and grain based carbohydrates).
There are a lot of options that an individual with type 2 diabetes can work within. They can choose to be very rigorous, or they can choose to be not so rigorous. They can trade one set of restrictions for another set of restrictions. It is vital that the individual with type 2 diabetes settle into a reasonable set of treatments that they can live with for the rest of their life. Since everyone is different, the exact set of treatments selected needs to have some flexibility. So what are listed below are guidelines, not rules or regulations. In this book each guideline will be explained as to the underlying logic and each individual with type 2 diabetes can make up their own mind as to how far they need to follow the guideline. Most books on type 2 diabetes emphasis diet and medication as the major way to control type 2 diabetes. These books miss the boat. Fully 70% to 80% of the control of most type 2 diabetes consists of losing weight and exercise! Diet and medication make up the remainder.
As we will repeatedly emphasize, the chief killer of people with type 2 diabetes is heart disease. Again, think of control of type 2 diabetes as a three legged stool. One leg is weight control (controls both heart disease and insulin resistance), one leg is exercise (controls heart disease, weight and insulin resistance), and one is diet (controls weight, blood sugar levels, and heart disease). If the person with type 2 diabetes does all three, the person can live a long life. If the person with diabetes does only two, the chances of living a long life drop considerably, two legged stools don't work too well. One legged stools are even less stable. And most people use just a one legged stool, they try to control their diabetes through only diet (and a poor weight gaining diet at that). This one legged stool approach explains why we aren't doing too well treating type 2 diabetes. And if a type 2 diabetic doesn't utilize any of the recommendations, they can end up sitting on the floor of life with no legs, both figuratively and quite possibly literally.
Other authors list other requirements, other "legs" for the control of type 2 diabetes. Most list oral diabetes medications as very important, we de-emphasize their importance since they either have no effect or a negative effect on life expectancy of anyone with type 2 diabetes. DeWayne McCulley in his book "Death to Diabetes" lists eight necessary actions: Exercise, Nutrition, Blood Glucose testing, Record keeping/Analysis, Drugs and Medications, Mind and Spirit, Education, and Doctors Visits/Physical Exams. That is a reasonable list although he doesn't list what we feel is the most important item: namely weight loss. What we really like about DeWayne McCulley's book is his lists of the five "dead" foods: sugars, refined carbohydrates, trans fat, saturated fats and chemicals (coffee, alcohol, cigarettes, medications etc.) and his list of five "live" foods: vegetables/fruits, filtered water, lean protein, unsaturated fats, and organic whole grains. While we might not heartily endorse fruits and organic whole grains, it is a pretty good list. We do like his recognition that diabetes medications should be stop gap measures at best and that lifestyle changes are the most important actions.
It is interesting that most writers quite correctly emphasis that herbs are simply unregulated medicines. The "medicines" in herbs are largely chemicals that plants have developed to fend off insects and animals. As such they can be pretty potent chemicals and any given herb batch can have widely varying amounts of literally hundreds if not thousands of specific chemicals. There are several herbs which are now illegal in the USA because they killed people. Mr. McCulley quite properly de-emphasises modern medicines then seems to backtrack and emphasis herbs. This dichotomy is a little confusing. Neither modern oral diabetes medicines nor "herbal supplements" (save fish oil, flax seed oil, phytosterols and magnesium) have been proven by any statistically significant research that we could find to extend the life of anyone with type 2 diabetes. And how do you classify Metformin, a "modern medicine" which is chemically nearly identical to an extract of french lilac, or even injectable insulin, which is often chemically identical to what the human body naturally produces?
This chapter: 2) TYPE 2 DIABETES CONTROL
a) Introduction
b) The Range of Severity of Diabetes
c) Current Expectations for a Person with Type 2 Diabetes
d) Summary of How a Person with Severe Type 2 Diabetes can Live Long
e) Specifics of How a Person with Severe Type 2 Diabetes can Live Long
f) A Fatal Error: Relying on Diabetes Medication
g) The Consequences of not Controlling the Disease
© Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved.