Well this study again debunks all the myths and so called experts with their approach for treating this disease. One thing is for sure that no one has definite answer either it’s you or your doctor.
Aggressively treating diabetes doesn’t prevent heart problems and deaths any better than standard treatment for lowering blood sugar, Australian researchers reported Friday.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080607/ap_on_he_me/med_diabetes_heart
Hi:
Do you think maybe that it only happened to some for a Good reason. All Types 2’s react differently to Diabetes and it’s treatments as do Type 1’s.
Most Type 1’s are okay using intensive therapy to bring down their sugars(I did it myself because I had to and I was Fine) while a minority injure their eye vessels, or make injured ones worsen, etc.
So isn’t it possible this only happens to a minority of Type 2’s with the intensive therapy?(Granted, even one is too many). The problem then would be how to discover who would be injured or die from IT beforehand which is quite impossible at this time, I think. Unless the Drs./Researchers have noticed other similarities in the minority Type 2’s bloodwork, etc. I believe the answers are all in the blood/DNA.
The problem in this study, as in the U.S. one is that "Doctors used a variety of diabetes drugs and insulin to try to get blood sugar levels down ". Jenny has blogged about this. She writes “The glaring omission in this study is this: There was no control group which lowered their A1c without the use of drugs. All the participants were taking drugs, lots of them. So we have no true way of knowing if it was the lowered blood sugar or the drugs causing the excess mortality. This really is a shame as many of you reading this are people diagnosed with diabetes who have lowered your blood sugars below 7% using carb restriction and exercise alone. So there is no reason that such a control group could not have been included. But this study only involved people taking drugs, so we can be pretty sure that the people with lower blood sugars in this study took MORE drugs than those with higher blood sugars.” You can read her blog at: http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2008/02/my-take-on-accord.html
I have blogged about this at http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com.
Note that lowering A1c to 6.5% (which was the definition of “Normal” in this study, though most definitely NOT normal) cut kidney disease by 20%.
But they were using a very high carb diet with a sulf drug which is KNOWN to increase heart attack. Plus, there is solid data showing heart attack risk rises as blood sugar goes into the pre-diabetic range. These are Type 2s who probably had A1cs well over 6% for years before diagnosis. Most do, since only the fasting test is used to screen.