New Diabetes Treatments

• Unravel a 4” x 4” piece of gauze into a long strip and coat it with Vaseline. Place it around the outside edges of the wound, like a donut.
• Cover the wound with ¼-inch of sugar. (The Vaseline “donut” will keep it in place.)
• Place a 4” x 4” sponge on top of the wound. Bandage it firmly but not too snugly with a cling dressing.
• Change the dressing every one or two days. Remove, irrigate with water, saline, or hydrogen peroxide, pat dry, and repeat steps 1–3.

• Background retinopathy, which occurs when the blood vessels are damaged, but there is no problem with vision.
• Maculopathy, which happens as a result of damage to the macula (a small area in the center of the retina that provides central vision and helps us to see fine details), and leads to impaired vision.
• Proliferative retinopathy, which develops as a result of poor blood flow and oxygen delivery to the eye

Finally, a reason to feel good about my daily venti dark roast fix.

A new meta-analysis from the Archives of Internal Medicine showed a nice correlation between coffee consumption and the risk of type 2 diabetes.

For every cup of Joe you drink, your risk goes down 7%. Not bad.

This review included data from over 500,000 people, with over 21,000 cases of type-2 diabetes. Of the 31 studies reviewed, 18 looked at regular coffee consumption, six focused on decaf, and the remaining seven studies included tea drinkers.

Bottom line, everyone with a mug holds a natural diabetes treatment in their hands. 

It's not just regular coffee drinkers who can beat diabetes. Three to four cups of decaffeinated coffee were associated with a 33 per cent lower risk of type 2 diabetes, compared to non-coffee drinkers. And three to four cups of tea dropped diabetes risk by one-fifth as well.

Now if I've learned anything, it's to take a meta-analysis like this with a grain of salt. And if this were the only reason to drink coffee, I'd proceed cautiously. But it isn't.

Coffee has been championed by researchers as a natural way to maintain blood sugar and reduce diabetes risk before, because coffee has been shown to increase insulin sensitivity. Previous studies have shown that a high intake—at least six cups a day—lowers the risk of type 2 diabetes by 54 percent in men and 30 percent in women.

Dr. Whitaker has written about the health benefits of coffee for years, including research showing coffee reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease by as much as 80 percent and even protects against other neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s.

Coffee improves concentration and alertness, boosts mood, and decreases suicide risk. In fact, coffee aroma alone can relieve stress in animals. (Count me among them.) 

Did you know that coffee can also halt a full-blown asthma attack in its tracks? And drink coffee before a workout and you'll enjoy both increased endurance and less muscle pain.

There are even studies that suggest coffee will make you live longer!

Of course, if you're exercising, preventing diabetes and enjoying your day feeling alert and in a great mood, you can't help but live longer, right? Pour me another cup...




 

If managing diabetes was simply a matter of controlling blood sugar, that would be one thing. But the condition is often accompanied by other troublesome complications, one of them being diabetic ulcers—wounds that heal slowly or not at all.

The good news is that there’s a far better natural treatment for these painful, persistent sores than today’s antibiotic therapies, and it’s one I’ve been using at the Whitaker Wellness Institute for more than 20 years. It’s a simple sugar dressing.

When white sugar or honey is packed inside and on top of a diabetic ulcer, it dissolves in the fluid exuding from the wound and creates a hyperosmotic, or highly concentrated, medium in which bacteria cannot exist. Scientists have tested the viability of many types of bacteria, including Klebsiella, Shigella, Staphylococcus aureus, and Streptococcus pyogenes, and none of them have been able to survive in a honey or sugar solution.

In addition to curbing infection, this therapy facilitates healing in other ways. It draws fluid out of the wound, which reduces swelling. It provides a covering or filling and therefore prevents scabbing. It encourages the removal of dead tissue to make way for new growth. It promotes granulation, which is the formation of connective tissue and blood vessels on the surface of a wound. Finally, it supports the growth of new skin covering the wound.

Although we use them specifically to heal diabetic ulcers, sugar or honey dressings can be used to treat any kind of open wound or burn. However, they will not work on abscesses or pustules that are covered with skin. Also, do not use them on a bleeding wound, because sugar promotes bleeding. (By the way, sugar and honey are perfectly safe to use on diabetic wounds because they do not enter the bloodstream.)

Here’s how to use sugar to treat a diabetic ulcer:

• Unravel a 4” x 4” piece of gauze into a long strip and coat it with Vaseline. Place it around the outside edges of the wound, like a donut.
• Cover the wound with ¼-inch of sugar. (The Vaseline “donut” will keep it in place.)
• Place a 4” x 4” sponge on top of the wound. Bandage it firmly but not too snugly with a cling dressing.
• Change the dressing every one or two days. Remove, irrigate with water, saline, or hydrogen peroxide, pat dry, and repeat steps 1–3.

This is one diabetic complication you don't have to live with. Give this approach a try. I think you’ll be happy with the results.

 

Harvard researchers recently conducted a placebo-controlled study examining the effects of insulin and metformin, a popular diabetes drug, on inflammation. Individuals with diabetes tend to have high levels of C-reactive protein and other markers of inflammation, which—in addition to elevations in blood sugar—put them at increased risk of heart disease.

When you think diabetic complications, you probably think of amputations, kidney failure, and blindness. However, cardiovascular disease is the most serious and one of the most common complications—three out of four people with diabetes die of heart attacks or other cardiovascular problems.

The Harvard study tested the presumption that diabetes drugs would lower inflammation and therefore protect against cardiovascular disease. However, when results were published in the September 16, 2009 issue of JAMA, the researcher team was surprised to find that although insulin and metformin lowered blood sugar, they did not reduce inflammation. They stressed that diabetic patients need to adhere to other therapies to reduce risk of cardiovascular events. 

No Surprise

How anyone could be surprised at such an outcome is beyond me. Just last year, the large, government-funded Action to Control Cardiovascular Risk in Diabetes (ACCORD) trial found that that study participants taking intensive drug regimens had a dramatically increased cardiovascular death rate. In fact, this arm of the study was terminated 18 months early to prevent aggressive drug use from killing even more people.

But we’ve known about the fatal cardiovascular complications of diabetes drugs since 1969, the year that results of a study called the University Group Diabetes Program were made public. Like ACCORD, this clinical trial had to be stopped two years early because participants who were taking the drugs had a 250 to 300 percent higher death rate than those taking a placebo.

Safe, Effective Options

So what’s the take-home lesson here? There are far better ways to lower blood sugar that also decrease inflammation and protect against cardiovascular disease. I’ve been treating patients who are dealing with diabetes for more than 30 years. If they come to the clinic on oral medication, we stop it on sight. If they’re on insulin and they’re overweight, we stop the insulin as well.

In their place, we institute a program of regular exercise, a therapeutic diet, weight loss, and targeted nutritional supplements. Yes, this is a new concept. Patients are conditioned to trust their doctors, who have convinced them of the absolute necessity of taking prescription meds to lower blood sugar. However, once they hear the truth about diabetes drugs, most of our patients opt to stop their medications and adopt a much healthier treatment approach targeted at lowering blood sugar and reducing risk of heart disease and other complications.

Next week, I’ll give you the particulars of the Whitaker Wellness Institute’s approach to treating diabetes. For more information now, visit www.whitakerwellness.com.

 

While green tea gets all the attention these days, it may be the humble black tea that proves to be most healthful for diabetics, according to a new study in the Journal of Food Science.

Researchers at Tianjin Key Laboratory in China examined green, oolong and black teas, keying on each tea's polysaccaride content. Polysaccarides are believed to be useful in treating diabetes because of their natural ability to limit the absorption of glucose.

The researchers found that the polysaccharides in black tea had both the most glucose-inhibiting properties and strongest antioxidant power. Their ability to scavage free radicals should be of great interest for those seeking alternative treatments for diabetes, or building a healthy diet plan that includes natural protection against arthritis, Alzheimer's and other diseases associated with aging.

“Many efforts have been made to search for effective glucose inhibitors from natural materials,” says lead researcher Haixia Chen. “There is a potential for exploitation of black tea polysaccharide in managing diabetes.”

Dr. Whitaker has long been a proponent of drinking tea, particularly green tea, with its high concentration of antioxidants and unique components like ECGC, which has thermogenic properties (meaning it helps your body burn more calories -- gotta love it).

Now no matter which variety of tea you choose, you know you're doing yourself a favor and making managing diabetes a bit easier.

Just don't make the mistake of thinking "sweet tea" makes the grade. A large McDonald's Sweet Tea packs a walloping 59 grams of sugar. I for one, am not loving it.
 

Here's a simple recipe for preventing Type 2 diabetes and heart disease: pour glass of tomato juice. Drink. Repeat.

Metabolic Syndrome -- which for many is the first step towards obesity, Type 2 diabetes and heart disease -- may be prevented by upping your antioxidant carotenoid levels, according to a recent study from the University Medical Center Ulrecht in The Netherlands.

In the study published in the Journal of Nutrition, Dutch scientists report that those with the highest carotenoid levels had a 58 percent decreased incidence of Metabolic Syndrome, drastically reducing their future risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Higher levels of carotenoids, including beta-carotene, lycopene, lutein and zeaxanthin, were associated with smaller waist size and less body fat, as well as lower triglyceride levels. Waist size above 40" in men (35" in women) and increased triglyceride levels are two major signs and symptoms of Metabolic Syndrome.

The highest levels of protection seem to come from lycopene and beta-carotene, with lycopene in particular associated with a 45 percent lower incidence of the syndrome.

Clearly if you're looking for a new diabetes treatment or a simple lifestyle change for better health, getting more lycopene in your diet is a healthy place to start. Lycopene, which is abundant in tomato juice and widely available in supplement form, not only lowers your risk of diabetes, heart attack and diseases of the prostate, lung, colon, stomach, and pancreas, but studies have also found it can significantly decrease exercise-induced asthma too.

Metabolic Syndrome is particularly dangerous because so many have it and don't even realize it.  As many as 75 million Americans have the risk factors associated with Metabolic Syndrome (also known as "Syndrome X") which include low HDL cholesterol, high fasting blood glucose levels and blood pressure above 135/85.

Taking steps to manage blood sugar and reduce weight can not only prevent Metabolic Syndrome, but the more serious Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular problems that so often follow behind it.

Who knew that an alternative treatment for diabetes could be as close as your next V-8? Just make it the low sodium variety, please.

 

The connection between exercise and diabetes treatment and prevention is not exactly new news, but this is: a new study shows that less than 10 minutes a week may actually be enough to make a difference!

Researchers studying Type 2 diabetes at Scotland's Heriot-Watt University assigned 16 subjects in their 20s to very short exercise sessions, lasting only 30-seconds each. In addition to a set of 4-6 sprints, subjects drank a 75 gram glucose solution, to determine how long blood sugar and insulin levels remained elevated, and the impact of intense exercise on glucose control.

The result: after only two weeks, blood sugar levels decreased 12 percent, and the duration of elevated blood sugar decreased 37 percent.

While we all know exercise has tremendous benefits -- not just to manage diabetes and control blood sugar, but to treat and prevent heart disease and boost overall health -- we still come up with excuses not to do it.

Exercise dramatically improves diabetes and insulin resistance. It actually acts like insulin -- exercising muscles take up glucose. Furthermore, the benefits are lasting because exercise increases insulin sensitivity.

Exercise also helps you lose weight, key to managing diabetes and blood sugar control. In an NIH study, regular exercise (just 30 minutes, five days a week) and a low-fat diet resulted in an average sustained weight loss of 10-15 pounds. This alone can prevent or reverse diabetes.

Walking, jogging, cycling, swimming --what you do doesn't matter as long as you actually do it. Dr. Whitaker recommends you aim for at least 30 minutes, five days a week, and if you can add a session or two of weight training, so much the better.

But this new research shows that even a few sprints around the block, a quick bike ride or a run up a hill or set of stairs can deliver lasting health benefits too.

No excuses -- start moving. I'll race ya!