2) CONTROL OF TYPE 2 DIABETES
g) The Consequences of not Controlling the DiseaseIf diabetes is not controlled with weight reduction, exercise and diet, the following are just a few of the many serious consequences that occur:
1. Heart Disease (by far the number one killer of people with diabetes)
2. Neuropathy (numbness in extremities)
3. Kidney Failure requiring dialysis or kidney transplant
4. Blindness (Retinopathy)
5. Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD; leg ulcers, amputation, etc)
6. Cognitive disorders (senile dementia, Alzheimer's, etc.)
7. Impotence (vagus nerve damage, low male hormone level and lose of blood flow to genital region)
8. Stroke (blood clot in the brain)
9. Delayed Stomach Emptying ("Gastroparesis")And this list goes on and on. Delayed stomach emptying doesn't sound too bad. It is bad. If a diabetic is on insulin it becomes very difficult to predict when ingested food will be digested, and thus becomes very difficult to avoid both high and low blood sugars. Gastroparesis also just hurts, the stomach doesn't like it when it can't empty. One of the most ignored consequences of uncontrolled diabetes is the fatigue, depression and low quality of life of someone with uncontrolled diabetes. They just don't feel well. And they typically attribute such feelings to "just getting old". It just doesn't have to be that way. As we have mentioned several times, heart disease invariably accompanies diabetes. So anyone with diabetes also needs to be treating heart disease by aerobic exercise, not eating fats, not eating refined carbohydrates (i.e. triglyceride control) and taking cholesterol and blood pressure medicines. This heart disease and blood lipid control aspect of type 2 diabetes is why the American Diabetes Association (ADA) lists avoiding eating saturated fat as a very important aspect of diabetes treatment. This is also why the ADA recommends eating whole grains and high fiber carbohydrates and avoiding refined carbohydrates. I only wish the ADA were a little stronger in their recommendations in the area of refined carbohydrates. Most "whole grain " products actually aren't very "unrefined", they still have been very "refined" by selective breeding over the past hundred years or so.
So let us say a person with type 2 diabetes won't lose weight, won't exercise and won't control their diet (avoiding grain based carbohydrates and feedlot saturated fats) and they depend on diabetes medication alone to keep the disease at bay. Now the medication will seemingly keep the disease at bay for a few years, at least the blood sugar will seem to be under reasonably good control. Then, one day, the person with diabetes will get a heart attack, stroke, blood clot in the leg or another serious sign that the major blood vessels in the body are badly damaged by the same factors that caused the diabetes and also that the major blood vessels have been damaged by the diabetes itself. And it will be too late; at that point there is probably no way of reversing the damage (it is much easier to reverse small blood vessel damage than large blood vessel damage). A rapid downward spiral can then ensue, ending in death. And the cause of death will be listed as heart disease or stroke on the death certificate, not diabetes.
Next Chapter: THE BASIC CAUSES OF TYPE 2 DIABETES
a) Underlying Mechanism of Type 2 Diabetes
b) Symptoms of Type 2 Diabetes
c) Tests for Diabetes
d) Insulin Resistance
e) The Complexity of Diabetes
f) Poisoning of Body Protein
g) Diabetes, Protein Poisoning and Cognitive Thinking
h) Protein Poisoning and A1c
i) Well Cooked Meat and Protein Poisoning
j) Beta Cell Death in Type 2 Diabetes
k) The Hypoglycemic Spike Effect
l) The "Dawn Phenomenon"
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