With all that's going on in the healthcare field, I started wondering if there are natural (non-pharmaceutical)alternatives to insulin. Is there a way to naturally control/lower blood sugar? My son has type 1 and the thought of not being able to access it for him, is scary. Who knows what will happen in the next year or so, but I am beginning to wonder what else can I do besides being so dependent on Novolog? Any input/ideas welcome.
No
There are no alternatives to insulin.
You can not eliminate the need for external insulin, but can reduce how much is needed by controlling carbs.
Before insulin was discovered, patients were put on 'starvation' diets, and maybe lived a year or 2.
What makes you think insulin will not be available in the next year or so ?
There is no alternative to insulin, There are snake oil salesmen and self proclaimed guru's claiming to have one but they are all just out to make a quick buck with no care about what harm they will do. For your son's sake stick to insulin and avoid the shysters out there.
Another name for type 1 is Insulin Dependent Diabetes Mellitus....because we are dependent on insulin to live. Before the discovery of insulin, everyone with type 1 died. As pointed out above, starvation diets kept people alive for a short period of time.....
Yes, it is very scary to know that you/your child is now dependent on an medication to live. It was very frightening to me to know that if, for whatever reason, I was stranded on a desert island, I would die.
Insulin *is* natural. The so called regular or R insulin is exactly chemically and structurally identical to the human insulin that your body produces.
The analog insulins (Humalog, Novolog, Apidra) are slightly modified insulins to speed up the action time and make it easier to control blood sugar. If you cannot afford
these, R insulin is available for about $25 a vial. It can be harder to use due to the delay before it works, but it will keep you alive.
Insulin IS the natural way to lower blood sugar. It's just that those of us with Type 1 don't produce it. Unfortunately, insulin is required for life, and if it's not produced internally (as in Type 1) it needs to be obtained from an external source.
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keeping you son well, healthy, eating right, and exercising properly can help reduce future insulin resistance but nothing can replace the need for insulin. If you had a few tons of water buffalo pancreas it can be extracted for use (see Eva Saxlhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eva_Saxl)
The natural alternative for insulin is.....insulin. People with Type 1 diabetes require exogenous insulin for survival. The alternative is death. The choice is simple.
Since this is all new to you....you may not have seen these pictures of life before and after insulin....
It's shocking, no ?
That's the same boy....
I've also heard that people who keep Paleo diets have lower insulin needs (meaning their basal rates and I:C ratios decrease dramatically, regardless of how many carbs they're eating), but they still need insulin.
There are no non-pharmaceutical alternatives to insulin; that's why it was such a miracle that Banting and Best figured out how to extract and purify it. Before that, everyone with T1 died within a couple of years. And that was WITH the starvation diet (no carbs, no protein, no fat) and tons of exercise. (And, by the way, the starvation diet was not at all pretty and the people usually had to be put on opium to help with the pain and starving-feeling.)
The word ‘natural’ has a lot of different meanings to a lot of different people. Link to Frontline special on natural drugs/vitamins