I just read an article on Yahoo written by a guy talking about 5 supplements he would not do without. One of them was vitamin D in which part of what he says is that it can “prevent and even heal diabetes”. OMG seriously dude? I am sooo tired of all the misinformation out there. The bad part is that thousands of people are reading this and are thinking it’s true. It seems like a constant battle trying to correct misinformation and explain our disease. I am just feeling a bit run over and needed to vent.
Worthy of a vent. Hey, it’s easy to prevent & cure, why are we still diabetic? Leads people to believe we don’t have a serious chronic disease when healing is only a few supplement pills or diet away. Always have been snake oil salesmen & there will always be people trying to make a buck offering a cure for anything. Is very tiresome correcting the myths & misinformation.
The TV commercial that gets me going is the one stating no need to prick your fingers, send away for a free meter with Medicare. Shouldn’t bother me since it’s the least of what we’re subjected to, but it’s so misleading.
Ugh!! I so hate these articles. As a type 1 diabetic, I find that it’s these articles which lead to all those frustrating interactions I have with people when they learn I have type 1. I can’t tell you how many times someone will, upon learning that I have type 1 diabetes, start talking about all the “cures” they have read about online, the supplements, the diet, etc that will result in my not “needing” insulin anymore. Even after I explain that I have type 1 diabetes and must take insulin to survive, people will still insist that I should try this diet or that diet so that I can “get off” insulin. It is so incredibly frustrating and the media has totally perpetuated this myth. Honestly, it seems worse now than it did when I was a kid.
But I have been doing something I think we should all do - anytime I see an article like this, or any article that doesn’t differentiate between the kinds of diabetes, I send the author an email. I explain the difference between the various forms of diabetes and also explain that, for type 1 diabetes, there is no “cure” at this time, only treatment via insulin. Sometimes I get a reply back, sometimes I don’t. But it makes me feel better and hopefully leads to the author being a bit more informed.
I hate that TV commercial! Sure we don’t have to prick our fingers unless we want to know what our BGs are. haha
These things that ppl come up with…SHEZ!!! I honestly hope that ppl won’t fall for that but they will. I got a friend who is a Type 2 and she swears that she never had D till she quit taking her vitamans… Whatever I’ve tried to tell her different but no she won’t take it according to her the only reason she has Type 2 is b/c she quit tating her vitamins.
Well, it is easy to take some of the studies and misinterpret them. But before we dismiss the whole vitamin D thing, let me give you my understanding. Vitamin D deficiencies occur at substantially higher rates in people with diabetes (T1 too). Vitamin D is a factor in glucose metabolism, depressed Vitamin D can hurt your blood sugar management. Can it prevent or heal things? Not really. Does vitamin D deficiency “cause” diabetes? Hardly. It is really a matter of properly interpreting what the studies say. If we look at how the “establishment” has misinterpreted the links between obesity and diabetes, then it is easy to understand how “yahoo guy” can get off track.
Thanks for the info I was just told last month by my endo to start taking vitamin D after she got my lab results back. I couldn’t remember the reason though. She didn’t say it would cure me though.
Many people are Vit D deficient, so D testing is becoming a routine part of labs. Make sure you take Vit D3 in an oil cap. D3 is the form of D that’s effective. D2 is useless. I had to take 10,000 units a day for months to get my levels up. Ideal is being at 50 or above.
Very reasonable thing to vent about. If you go on Google’s “News” section and search diabetes - as I do near daily - you’ll see a plethora of articles with misleading headlines day after day. Silly things like “tomatoes cut risk of diabetes” or “obesity linked to diabetes”, a mixture of things that are incredibly obvious or just totally irrelevant and misleading.
Again, it’s partly about engaging with people we meet in conversations about it and informing them about the disease and correcting them politely when they seem to be confused or misinformed.