Most Doctors Don't Treat Diabetics Correctly
Report #7283
A report in the
Journal of the American Medical Association showed
that most doctors do not know how to treat late-onset diabetes.
After two years of therapy with insulin, more than 60 percent of patients
still had hemoglobin A1C levels above 8, which means that doctors
are not preventing the complications of diabetes such as blindness,
loss of hearing, nerve damage, strokes, heart attacks and kidney
damage. Hemoglobin A1C measures how much sugar is stuck on
cell membranes and is converted to a poison called sorbitol that
causes cell damage. Cell damage in diabetes is caused by high
hemoglobin A1C levels that are caused by high blood sugar levels
after eating. The higher blood sugar levels rise after eating, the more
sugar is attached to cells and the more likely cells are damaged. Normal HBA1C is below 6.
Doctors usually prescribe insulin and drugs that raise insulin make
diabetics hungry all the time. Then they prescribe a calorie-exchange
diet that prevents their patients from eating when they are hungry.
Instead doctors should prescribe Glucophage and Actos, the only
available drugs that lower high blood sugar levels without causing
hunger. Instead of prescribing a calorie-restricting exchange diet, they
should prescribe a high fiber, low-fat diet based on substituting
whole grains for flour.
Whole grains are like pellets that absorb up to five times their weight
in water and expand while they are in your intestines to make you
feel full. I try to work my patients up to taking 500 mg of glucophage
and 30 mg of Actos. I tell my patients to avoid
exchange diets and have them read
The Good Food Book to learn
how to use whole grains and make the food they should eat taste good.
More on treatment of diabetes
By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News
JAMA, November 26, 1997
Checked 11/9/09