Friends who offer "cures" for Diabetes

Community
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Mistermister,
Hormone levels are fine as well as all internal organs including thyroid.
I'm lucky all these years to have a doctor order extensive tests and to have an insurance plan pay for them. I'm cramming everything in this year as our plan is likely to have restrictions
Testosterone is normal for my age of 63.
That steak sounds delicious!
Concerning eggs,my previous neighbor had hens and gave us eggs regularly. Boy were they good.
Just finished some Ronzoni linguine with pasta sauce, steamed brocolli and carrots. I'll take a brisk walk now and check in two hrs.
I've had great luck w/Dreamfields spaghetti too. Just wish I could get a couple of diabetics in the neighborhood to go in on a small case of their lasagna.
I'm just grateful that the old pancreas and the multitude of internals is still cooperating. I just need to pamper them more. My liver's happy in that I've not drank in 10 yrs. I'm a beer away from going back to daily imbibing. I do wish I could hold it to a shot of whiskey now and then and an icy beer.

Especially grateful that I'm a T2.

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Well said!

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Thanks to diligent diet and treatment, I've seen a reversal of complications, but it is not total.

I am convinced I can forestall further complications, but only with continued insulin and a very-low-carb diet(I try to keep below 30g per day). My underlying diabetic condition cannot be reversed -- it can only be managed.

(I've been tested for Type 1. Tests were negative. Still, I'll probably be on insulin for life.)

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Tell them thanks for their interest and caring, that you will consider the information they've brought you, along with all available options as well as those with rigorous scientific evidence behind them. :-)

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Nobody says anything to me. I have to remind them occasionally that I'm diabetic. I need to remind myself more often. That's what A1C's are good for.

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I LOVE THIS!!!! We need to start another discussion exclusively for posting clever, witty riposts to this sort of question. Extra points for being so entirely off-the-wall that, when delivered dead-pan it's believed simply on account of its craziness.

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Oh please. Go away. This sort of criticism is not welcome, and it's profoundly ignorant.

T2 can be controlled by diet and exercise. It can not be prevented. Diet and exercise can mask it for a long time, allowing one to live with decent BG. However, those people will still be diabetic -- if they eat a giant piece of chocolate cake, their BG will soar 1 hour PP, and will be abnormally high 2 hr PP. That is nothing like what the BG response of a non-diabetic has.

Again, diet and exercise doesn't prevent T2 diabetes, nor does it "cure" it. It treats it, just as insulin does.

Indeed, many of us are of the opinion that as soon as any "pre-diabetic" indication for a T2 appears, they should start managing the condition with insulin, providing much better outcomes in preserving beta cell function, normal blood sugar levels, and with far less impact on Quality of Life than the straightjacket of pills/diet/exercise.

None of this is to say that diet and exercise are wrong or bad... These are important dimensions of anyone's life. No different for a diabetic.

What you seem to be missing is the obvious: If a person has to follow a special, restrictive diet regimen, and must follow a certain exercise program, to keep their blood sugar normal, they are not "cured" or not "sick" with this disease -- they most definitely are. Otherwise, they wouldn't have to watch what they eat and make sure they exercise properly to keep their BG under control, would they?

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You are ignorant about this to a comical degree.

T2 has a genetic defect at its root. Period.

It is a fact that there are millions of T2's walking around out there in America that have no idea that they are already a diabetic -- their pancreas is dumping way more insulin to control BG all the time than a non-diabetic, yet it's up to the challenge, so they maintain normal BG... for years. Often many years.

Yet, they're still diabetic. Their glucose metabolism is not functioning properly. It simply is still within the range it can handle, but is working overtime 24/7.

Your crap about people causing this themselves by not "eating right" is so much verbal effluent. Plenty of us eat right and are not obese, yet are T2 anyway. During those years we didn't know, we burned out our alpha cells, eating healthy -- which included normal, healthy carb load -- which slammed our BG metabolism.

Again, unaware of it.

"Eating right" for a T2 means low, very low, or in some cases no carbs. Honestly, you can shove that diet in your nether regions. That's a very twisted idea of what is required for a "healthy" diet.

T2's want to be like everyone else. You know, the healthy, trim people that eat a good diet, but now and then can have a big Pacific Cookie Company cookie as a treat. Well, no matter how well a T2 is controlling their disease with diet and exercise, if they have that cookie, their BG will soar.

After all, Homer, they're a diabetic, get it?

Ironically, the only way to treat the condition so that a T2 can live as close to a "normal" life as possible, and have that piece of pie once in a while while still eating very healthy, they must treat themselves with insulin.

Only then can they eat the cookie, and control thier post-prandial blood sugar so it looks like a "normal" person.

You obviously not only know nothing about T2, what you do "know" is just ignorance. You'd do far better to keep your yap shut about T2, and stick to discussing T1.

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Again, the irony here is going on insulin immediately upon DX, and keeping that a part of the treatment regimen for life, will slow the progression of the disease dramatically. This is because it relieves pressure on beta cells, so they don't become "exhausted".

My own recent experience: T2, DX'd 15 years ago. Due to some personal crises, I went off the wagon about 18-24 months ago and started completely ignoring my diabetes. Also started treating the blues and depression with food.

Fast-forward to 6/2013 and I nearly crashed. I'd been drinking fluids like I had a giant hole leaking everything out of my gullet. 2+ gallons of whatever (water, gatorade, etc.) a day. Clear sign of high BG. This had been going on for a year.

Also was vomiting 2-3x a week. Eating made me nauseous. No appetite. I could go on and on with the dozen or so other symptoms, but most of you know what a steaming pile of horse dung one feels like with high sugars.

Anyway, wound up in the ER 6/2 with BG in the high 400's. Undoubtedly it had been 200-400 for months and months, probably over a year. While I had continued my glipizide and metformin this whole time.

Went on insulin, voluntarily, after this. My endo was sure I could get everything back under control with a careful diet, exercise, and oral meds. Was probably right. But "under control" in our current medical standards for T2's means A1c <=7%. That's it. Not good enough for me, I wanted normal blood sugar. Studied, set my ultimate target at <5.5% and no 2 hr post-prandial above 140 mg/dl. No way to do this as a T2 without insulin, either exogenous, or through stimulating the pancreas into overdrive. Okay, now to the point of this story: After starting exogenous MDI, Humalog for bolusing and a Lantus basal, I figured out my I:C at 1:3, correction factor 1:10. That was the state of my beta cells 3+ months ago. After agressively treating with exogenous insulin, my beta cells have had a chance to rest and recover. My I:C has gradually climbed to 1:5, correction factor now 1:13. I began pumping, and have continued to give the ol' pancreas a lot of rest. Here's the kicker: That lovely little organ has recovered enough now that I can eat an entire glazed donut, without bolusing and with basal delivery turned off, and have BG not go above 180. I haven't seen a 200 for almost 2 months now. Right after I first got BG under control (fasting <100) after June, that donut would still shoot me to over 250. There is no question my pancreas has recovered some. But only because I was able to take pressure off it. Ironically, so long as a T2 goes without exogenous insulin they're stressing beta cells that much more, and pushing progression. I'd say even simply going on a single injection of long-acting once a day with sufficient levels to allow the pancreas to basically sit on the sidelines for basal delivery would help a lot for all T2's.

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Dave, if you're not doing MDI to manage your BG, push your health team hard to get on it.

I'd go further, and advise you to be relentless about getting a pump and CGM. I'm T2, do not require either but pushed to get them, and it has changed by life. On Omnipod and Dex G4.

My BG is close to normal (not quite there, I'm new at this, and still tuning overnight basals, for example).

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No, your profound ignorance is in calling a very restrictive diet and required exercise regimen a "cure".

A person who loses a leg in a car accident isn't "cured" by a wheelchair, just because they can get around when they couldn't without it. It's an adaptation.

What you're talking about is nothing different. The "cured" diabetics you're talking about are just as diabetic as before, they've simply chosen a particular mode of treatment to manage their condition.

If they have a piece of chocolate cake at their parents 50th wedding anniversary, their BG will still shoot through the roof.

Why? Because they aren't cured. They're a diabetic -- for life.

So what this really comes down to is simple arrogance, and lack of civility on your part. Because other's aren't willing to trade the negatives of shooting insulin for the negative of living on pressed wheat grass juice and steamed oak leaves, you criticise their choice. As if what you would choose is superior or something.

T2 diabetes can not be cured. It can be treated and managed. There are a variety of strategies for doing so. That which you advocate is simply one of them, but is no more a "cure" than injecting insulin, achieving normal BG levels, and declaring oneself "cured".

Frankly, this ignorance is so simple and obvious I can not believe your claim to have so extensively researched this topic, read scholarly journal articles, etc. Sounds much more like what you've read are all the "alternative" sites/books/etc. that claim to cure T2 diabetes.

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Can't really cover reliably with insulin, either. All it does for me is put off the big spike, but I'll be higher than I should be for up to a week afterward. Overestimating carbs can cause a low.

I might have been able to prevent my diabetes if, when I was very little, my family knew that none of us could eat carbs. Period. That means a restricted diet -- not a "sensible, normal" diet -- from childhood. In the 50s - 70s, nobody would have considered that a good idea. Even today, very few people, if any, would raise their children that way.

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"Did you know ulcers used to be a big problem until they realized it was a bacteria, now they are a thing of the past."

Yes, and it was Western Medicine that discovered that, don't you know? As soon as the discovery occurred and was confirmed, the cure was embraced enthusiastically by the entire healthcare industry.

They somehow forgot about all their conspiracies to deny us cures for things, so they could keep making the big bucks keeping us sick, eh?

"I believe something like a bacteria or virus is what causes our bodies to attack our own cells."

And you believe this because... What? Try as I might, I can find no research pointing to anything definitive on this theory. Sure, it's a hypothesis, and is being investigated, but nothings come up yet. At all.

I suspect your belief is driven by your ignorance, just as your goofy T2 theories.

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I understand that doing lines of powdered bat guano will not only cure your diabetes, it will cure a random person's somewhere as well.

So, you have a responsibility to them as well as you. Get snorting :-)

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Please get back on your meds. Paranoids do not mix well here.

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I think calling people names, like “paranoids” is a violation of the “terms of service” or whatever they call it here. This seems to be an atypical thread in that people keep trawling through it and calling each other names. I’ve found that launching data at people is a much better solution to offensive “curism” than name-calling. We have data out our wazoos and it’s a great weapon!

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Thanks Susan, that's good advice. :)

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Hey Dave, a lot of his posts were removed because he resorted to some nastiness out here. He is not on the site anymore either. I went to try and have a private conversation with him, but his page has been shut down.

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Well, make sure you don't follow any treatment regimen from a Western Doctor or go to a Western Hospital for that DKA.

Remember, they don't really know anything about this disease. They're just in it for the money.