MOST DOCTORS DON'T TREAT DIABETES CORRECTLY
Report #7283
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 Avandia or 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 4 mg of Avandia or 30 mg of Actos. I tell my patients to avoid exchange diets and send them to Diana's cooking school to learn how to add whole grains to every meal.
By Gabe Mirkin, M.D., for CBS Radio News
JAMA November 26, 1997
Checked 8/9/05; see report #D222.