13) TYPE 2 DIABETES SUPPLEMENTS
a) Introduction
There are only a few supplements which have been shown by legitimate research to have a limited but positive effect on the large blood vessel "heart" disease (macrovascular disease) inherent in type 2 diabetes. As 75% of all individuals with type 2 diabetes die from heart disease, they must do all they can to avoid this type of disease, and taking supplements is easy. But it is important for those with type 2 diabetes to understand that supplements cannot replace weight loss and exercise. Weight loss and exercise have much more powerful influences on both diabetes and heart disease than do supplements. And there are no supplements which have been shown to have a positive effect on the "small blood vessel" types of disease processes inherent with diabetes. These include such disease processes as kidney disease, blindness, mental decline, neuropathy, impotence, etc. Carbohydrate diet control is the major contributor to small blood vessel disease in type 2 diabetes.
This list of effective supplements in this ebook is much smaller than the list of even most major medical societies. Medical societies don't seem to want to oppose the findings of any of its members, even if those findings aren't really based on well founded statistical research. It seems to be a "professional courtesy" sort of a thing. Even well respected peer reviewed medical journals seem prone to publish reports with shaky foundations, as long as the reports "do no harm". A classic example of this seems to be phytonutrients from purple fruit such as blueberries. The data says it won't hurt you, and there is some "expert opinion" that they will help you. There is just no good research showing they will help you.
Phytonutrients seem to be based on the premise that the darker the purple pigment of the fruit the better the fruit is for you. But there are many purple fruits such as chokeberries which are deadly poison. Many other supplements are just plain based on the profit motive. There is a huge industry in the USA dedicated to coming up with "herbal supplements" for everything that ails the human body. In the USA 20 billion dollars a year is spent on "alternative medications and treatments". My research says that 99% of that expenditure is unnecessary. A good portion of that industry is tasked with coming up with "weasel wording" that avoids the FDA ban on claiming curative powers for something which hasn't been proven to be cure anything. It is also interesting to note how a cure for arthritis will be repackaged and touted as a cure for diabetes. It seems that each of these herbs is capable of curing tens if not hundreds of diseases.
Per Wikipedia:
The gold standard for pharmaceutical testing is repeated, large-scale, randomized, double-blind tests. Some plant products or pharmaceutical drugs derived from them are incorporated into medicine. To recoup the considerable costs of testing to the regulatory standards, the substances are patented and marketed by pharmaceutical companies.
Many herbs have shown positive results in-vitro, animal model or small-scale clinical tests but many studies on herbal treatments have also found negative results. The quality of the trials on herbal remedies is highly variable and many trials of herbal treatments have been found to be of poor quality, with many trials lacking an intention to treat analysis or a comment on whether blinding was successful. The few randomized, double-blind tests that receive attention in medical publications are often questioned on methodological grounds or interpretation. Likewise, studies published in peer-reviewed medical journals such as Journal of the American Medical Association receive more consideration than those published in specialized herbal journals. This preference may be due to the possibility of location bias for such trials. One study found that non-impact factor alternative medicine journals published more studies with positive results than negative results and that trials finding positive results were of lower quality than trials finding negative results. High impact factor mainstream medical journals, on the other hand, published equal numbers of trials with positive and negative results. In high impact journals, trials finding positive results were also found to have lower quality scores than trials finding negative results. Another study reported that some clinical studies of herbal medicines were not inferior to similar medical studies. However, this study used a matched pair design and excluded all herbal trials that were not controlled, did not use a placebo or did not use random or quasi random assignment.
Herbalists criticize mainstream studies on the grounds that they make insufficient use of historical usage*, which has no relevance to the medical efficacy of a product's usage. They maintain that tradition can guide the selection of factors such as optimal dose, species, time of harvesting and target population.
Dosage is in general an outstanding issue for herbal treatments: while most medicines are heavily tested to determine the most effective and safest dosages (especially in relation to things like body weight, drug interactions, etc.), there are fewer varieties of dosages for various herbal treatments on the market. Furthermore, herbal medicines taken in whole form cannot generally guarantee a consistent dosage or drug quality, since certain samples may contain more or less of a given active ingredient.
* The author can't help but wonder what herbalists would have to say about the thousands of years of "historical usage" of ground deer horn as a remedy for fevers in China.
Most supplements are based on the placebo effect, they work for awhile because the person taking them expects them to work. In the book "Snake Oil Science, The Truth About Complementary and Alternative Medicine", by R. Barker Bausell (Oxford. 324 Pages. $16.47 from Amazon), Dr. Bausell, a renowned professor and statistician at the University of Maryland, goes into some depth into the "bad science" behind all alternative therapies, including such alternatives as herbs, massage, acupuncture, holistic medication, and chiropractic medicine. This is one brave man. He then quite slyly recommends in his last chapter that anyone who likes alternative medications "go for the gusto" and try and make the placebo effect last as long as possible before stopping the use of their alternative medication of choice. It is a great book that anyone with health problems using alternative medications ought to read. It is certainly a lot cheaper than some of the alternative medications I've seen. Dr. Bausell shares some of the problems I had in putting this ebook together, it is oftentimes very difficult to determine the legitimacy of any given piece of research. There are a lot of ways to cover up bad research.
Having said all those negative things about supplements, there are a very few supplements for which there is meaningful statistical evidence that they help with the disease of type 2 diabetes. These few supplements are nowhere near as effective as weight loss and exercise but they can help in the big picture. They are fish oil, flax seed oil, nuts (phytosterols), aspirin, magnesium, vitamin C, vitamin E, vitamin D and reasonable amounts of water.
Current Chapter: 13) TYPE 2 DIABETES SUPPLEMENTS
a) Introduction
b) The Benefits of Fish Oil
c) Issues with Fish Oil
d) Flax Seed Oil
e) Bad Omega 6 oils
f) Nuts and Phytosterols
g) Aspirin Therapy
h) Magnesium
i) Vitamins C, D and E
j) High Water Intake© Copyright 2009 All Rights Reserved.