1. Refined sugar - We all know that sugar, until it is in its most natural form, is bad for people suffering from diabetes. When consumed, refined sugar spikes the blood sugar rapidly. Sometimes even the natural form like honey can cause a sudden spike in the blood sugar levels. So, it’s better to avoid refined sugar by all means if you are a diabetic.
Metformin is a biguanide drug that increases the sensitivity of the body’s cells to insulin. It also decreases the amount of glucose produced by the liver.. In 1994, the FDA approved the use of the biguanide called metformin (Glucophage) for the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Today, this is still typically the first drug prescribed for type 2 diabetes.
Neem tree leaves have ingredients and compounds that lower blood glucose considerably. This property of neem makes it an excellent home remedy for diabetes. A glassful of neem leaves' juice when consumed first thing in the morning can benefit considerably. Regular and prolonged consumption can even trigger production of insulin and subside diabetes completely.
Taylor and his colleagues observed that people who were unable to restart normal insulin production had lived with diabetes for a longer time. Individuals who had lived with diabetes for an average of 3.8 years could not correct their condition through weight loss, while those who had it for an average of 2.7 years were able to regain normal blood sugar control.
Diabetes education is very important for any diabetic or a person who has a diabetic at home. The education helps an individual to know more about this dreadful disease. Once educated, the individual can control diabetes in a better manner. Administering insulin, medications, and understanding emergency situations like hypoglycemic attacks, etc. are major points of diabetes education. It also includes the diet a diabetic should avoid and have. Diabetes education is very essential for each and every diabetic and individual who has someone close living with diabetes.
This modality can be contrasted with the emphasis of conventional medicine, which is to cure or mitigate disease, as reported by the American Holistic Health Association. For example, a conventional practitioner will follow an established algorithm for diabetes management that includes a medically established protocol centered on monitoring blood sugar and prescribing medications to balance it. An alternative medicine provider takes a personalized, whole-person approach that may include a prescription for changes in diet and exercise habits, stress reduction, and other lifestyle considerations. (The table below offers a comparison of alternative medicine with conventional medicine.)
Insulin pumps are small, computerized devices, about the size of a beeper that you wear on your belt or put in your pocket. They have a small flexible tube with a fine needle on the end. The needle is inserted under the skin of your abdomen and taped in place. The pump releases a carefully measured, steady flow of insulin into the tissue. Insulin pumps can cost $6,000 to $10,000 for the pump, with additional costs for necessary supplies to use the pump.Using a pump means you will have to monitor your blood sugar level at least four times a day. You program doses and make adjustments to your insulin, depending on your food intake and exercise program. Some health care providers prefer the insulin pump over injections because its slow release of insulin imitates a working pancreas.
Another crucial element in a treatment program for diabetes is exercise. With either type of diabetes, check with your doctor before starting an exercise program. Exercise improves your body's use of insulin and may lower blood sugar levels. To prevent your blood sugar from falling to dangerously low levels, check your blood sugar and, if necessary, eat a carbohydrate snack about half an hour before exercising. If you start to feel symptoms of low blood sugar (called hypoglycemia), stop exercising and have a carbohydrate snack or drink. Wait 15 minutes and check again. Have another snack again if it is still too low.
A further danger of insulin treatment is that while diabetic microangiopathy is usually explained as the result of hyperglycemia, studies in rats indicate that the higher than normal level of insulin diabetics inject to control their hyperglycemia may itself promote small blood vessel disease. While there is no clear evidence that controlling hyperglycemia reduces diabetic macrovascular and cardiovascular disease, there are indications that intensive efforts to normalize blood glucose levels may worsen cardiovascular and cause diabetic mortality.
Most of us ignored the manual, just plugged it in and tried to figure out the rest. That’s why we all had the blinking 12:00 on. Today, most new electronics now come with a quick start guide which has the most basic 4 or 5 steps to get your machine working and then anything else you needed, you could reference the detailed instruction manual. Instruction manuals are just so much more useful this way.
Insulin therapy creates risk because of the inability to continuously know a person's blood glucose level and adjust insulin infusion appropriately. New advances in technology have overcome much of this problem. Small, portable insulin infusion pumps are available from several manufacturers. They allow a continuous infusion of small amounts of insulin to be delivered through the skin around the clock, plus the ability to give bolus doses when a person eats or has elevated blood glucose levels. This is very similar to how the pancreas works, but these pumps lack a continuous "feed-back" mechanism. Thus, the user is still at risk of giving too much or too little insulin unless blood glucose measurements are made.
As diabetes is a prime risk factor for cardiovascular disease, controlling other risk factors which may give rise to secondary conditions, as well as the diabetes itself, is one of the facets of diabetes management. Checking cholesterol, LDL, HDL and triglyceride levels may indicate hyperlipoproteinemia, which may warrant treatment with hypolipidemic drugs. Checking the blood pressure and keeping it within strict limits (using diet and antihypertensive treatment) protects against the retinal, renal and cardiovascular complications of diabetes. Regular follow-up by a podiatrist or other foot health specialists is encouraged to prevent the development of diabetic foot. Annual eye exams are suggested to monitor for progression of diabetic retinopathy.
Yet Gabbay says preliminary human studies with positive results, like this week’s in BMJ Case Reports, suggest the diet is worthy of further study in a larger population over a longer period of time. For now, he cautions people with diabetes, especially those on insulin and sulfonylureas to lower their blood sugar, against trying intermittent fasting before speaking with their healthcare provider.
Chong points to previous research in Circulation that describes the underlying mechanisms of sleep apnea. In people with sleep apnea, activation of the sympathetic nervous system — including increased heart rate, increased blood pressure, and constriction of blood vessels — all led to a higher risk of heart attack and stroke, which can be compounded in people who have type 2 diabetes (and thus already have a higher risk of heart disease).
Everybody and their brother is jumping on the Diabetes bandwagon. I remember when Dr. Neal Barnard and Dr. Gabriel Cousens were the only two advocating a vegan diet to reverse Type 2 Diabetes and nobody was listening. Now, it seems there is some Doctor who pops out of the woodwork who claims to have the “Real” cure. Bottom line a ketogenic diet is dangerous for diabetics. It has been proven through studies that high fat diets are detrimental for glucose control. Fasting is also hit and miss for glucose control. As each person’s body is different and responds differently, a keto diet may work at first, but over time blood sugar numbers will rise. I tried a keto diet for 8 weeks. First three weeks it worked great then my glucose numbers slowly started to rise and it started to get hard to control my numbers. Same with fasting. My body responds to eating smaller meals every two hours, 90% vegan and raw. I eat chicken and fish sparingly. It works for me. But, I have known many diabetics who ended up in a bad place on a keto diet. In the long run it is a big fail. There are no studies that support it, whereas there are numerous studies (even government funded studies) that support a vegan diet to reverse diabetes.
For type 2 diabetics, diabetic management consists of a combination of diet, exercise, and weight loss, in any achievable combination depending on the patient. Obesity is very common in type 2 diabetes and contributes greatly to insulin resistance. Weight reduction and exercise improve tissue sensitivity to insulin and allow its proper use by target tissues. Patients who have poor diabetic control after lifestyle modifications are typically placed on oral hypoglycemics. Some Type 2 diabetics eventually fail to respond to these and must proceed to insulin therapy. A study conducted in 2008 found that increasingly complex and costly diabetes treatments are being applied to an increasing population with type 2 diabetes. Data from 1994 to 2007 was analyzed and it was found that the mean number of diabetes medications per treated patient increased from 1.14 in 1994 to 1.63 in 2007.
The first step is to eliminate all sugar and refined starches from your diet. Sugar has no nutritional value and can therefore be eliminated. Starches are simply long chains of sugars. Highly refined starches such as flour or white rice are quickly broken down by digestion into glucose. This is quickly absorbed into the blood and raises blood sugar. For example, eating white bread increases blood sugars very quickly.
First, the health of your gut is critical to your overall health. This is because your gut is home of trillions of microbes called the gut microbiome. These microbes work in symbiotic and antagonistic relationships within your body. A 2017 study using multiple therapies to manipulate the gut microbiome composition, found they could impact the individual’s health more rapidly. This study also found manipulating the gut microbiome as an effective way to avoid insulin resistance and therefore prevent diabetes.
Diabetes has grown to “epidemic” proportions, and the latest statistics revealed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention state that 30.3 million Americans have diabetes, including the 7.2 million people who weren’t even aware of it. Diabetes is affecting people of all ages, including 132,000 children and adolescents younger than 18 years old. (2)
Fasting is the simplest and fastest method to force your body to burn sugar for energy. Glucose in the blood is the most easily accessible source of energy for the body. Fasting is merely the flip side of eating — if you are not eating you are fasting. When you eat, your body stores food energy. When you fast, your body burns food energy. If you simply lengthen out your periods of fasting, you can burn off the stored sugar.
While the Khan study looked promising, supplementary studies have failed to consistently show beneficial effects. Vanschoonbeek gave 1.5g of cinnamon or placebo to postmenopausal women over 6 weeks. There was no effect reported on blood sugar or blood lipid levels. Baker’s 2008 meta-analysis identified 5 trials including the Khan and Vanschoonbeek studies and concluded the following:
Insulin therapy requires close monitoring and a great deal of patient education, as improper administration is quite dangerous. For example, when food intake is reduced, less insulin is required. A previously satisfactory dosing may be too much if less food is consumed causing a hypoglycemic reaction if not intelligently adjusted. Exercise decreases insulin requirements as exercise increases glucose uptake by body cells whose glucose uptake is controlled by insulin, and vice versa. In addition, there are several types of insulin with varying times of onset and duration of action.
“I have many ways to help patients manage diabetes, but it’s very hard to reverse,” says Dr. Rita Louard, director of the Clinical Diabetes Program at Montefiore Health System in Bronx, New York. Still, some diabetes experts will use the word “reverse” when talking about this topic, Louard says, acknowledging the controversy that exists when discussing diabetes reversal.
Chronic exposure of β-cells to triacylglycerol or fatty acids either in vitro or in vivo decreases β-cell capacity to respond to an acute increase in glucose levels (57,58). This concept is far from new (59,60), but the observations of what happens during reversal of diabetes provide a new perspective. β-Cells avidly import fatty acids through the CD36 transporter (24,61) and respond to increased fatty acid supply by storing the excess as triacylglycerol (62). The cellular process of insulin secretion in response to an increase in glucose supply depends on ATP generation by glucose oxidation. However, in the context of an oversupply of fatty acids, such chronic nutrient surfeit prevents further increases in ATP production. Increased fatty acid availability inhibits both pyruvate cycling, which is normally increased during an acute increase in glucose availability, and pyruvate dehydrogenase activity, the major rate-limiting enzyme of glucose oxidation (63). Fatty acids have been shown to inhibit β-cell proliferation in vitro by induction of the cell cycle inhibitors p16 and p18, and this effect is magnified by increased glucose concentration (64). This antiproliferative effect is specifically prevented by small interfering RNA knockdown of the inhibitors. In the Zucker diabetic fatty rat, a genetic model of spontaneous type 2 diabetes, the onset of hyperglycemia is preceded by a rapid increase in pancreatic fat (58). It is particularly noteworthy that the onset of diabetes in this genetic model is completely preventable by restriction of food intake (65), illustrating the interaction between genetic susceptibility and environmental factors.
Exercise– Even the mainstream medical community recognizes the advantage of exercise, as it increases the muscles ability to use insulin and over time can help fix insulin resistance. All exercise isn’t created equal though and fortunately, smaller amounts of high intensity exercise have been shown to have a better effect on insulin levels (and weight loss) than an hour of daily moderate cardio. According to the Healthy Skeptic: “A pair of studies done at McMaster University found that “6-minutes of pure, hard exercise once a week could be just as effective as an hour of daily moderate activity“, according to the June 6, 2005 CNN article reporting on the study.” I recommend high intensity exercise anyway for its various health advantages, and it is great for diabetes control. too.
If the rapid changes in metabolism following bariatric surgery are a consequence of the sudden change in calorie balance, the defects in both insulin secretion and hepatic insulin sensitivity of type 2 diabetes should be correctable by change in diet alone. To test this hypothesis, a group of people with type 2 diabetes were studied before and during a 600 kcal/day diet (21). Within 7 days, liver fat decreased by 30%, becoming similar to that of the control group, and hepatic insulin sensitivity normalized (Fig. 2). The close association between liver fat content and hepatic glucose production had previously been established (20,22,23). Plasma glucose normalized by day 7 of the diet.
As of 2015 the guidelines called for an HbA1c of around 7% or a fasting glucose of less than 7.2 mmol/L (130 mg/dL); however these goals may be changed after professional clinical consultation, taking into account particular risks of hypoglycemia and life expectancy. Despite guidelines recommending that intensive blood sugar control be based on balancing immediate harms and long-term benefits, many people – for example people with a life expectancy of less than nine years – who will not benefit are over-treated and do not experience clinically meaningful benefits.
In addition, a strong partnership between the patient and the primary healthcare provider – general practitioner or internist – is an essential tool in the successful management of diabetes. Often the primary care doctor makes the initial diagnosis of diabetes and provides the basic tools to get the patient started on a management program. Regular appointments with the primary care physician and a certified diabetes educator are some of the best things a patient can do in the early weeks after a diagnosis of diabetes. Upon the diagnosis of diabetes, the primary care physician, specialist, or endocrinologist will conduct a full physical and medical examination. A thorough assessment covers topics such as:
Within the hepatocyte, fatty acids can only be derived from de novo lipogenesis, uptake of nonesterified fatty acid and LDL, or lipolysis of intracellular triacylglycerol. The fatty acid pool may be oxidized for energy or may be combined with glycerol to form mono-, di-, and then triacylglycerols. It is possible that a lower ability to oxidize fat within the hepatocyte could be one of several susceptibility factors for the accumulation of liver fat (45). Excess diacylglycerol has a profound effect on activating protein kinase C epsilon type (PKCε), which inhibits the signaling pathway from the insulin receptor to insulin receptor substrate 1 (IRS-1), the first postreceptor step in intracellular insulin action (46). Thus, under circumstances of chronic energy excess, a raised level of intracellular diacylglycerol specifically prevents normal insulin action, and hepatic glucose production fails to be controlled (Fig. 4). High-fat feeding of rodents brings about raised levels of diacylglycerol, PKCε activation, and insulin resistance. However, if fatty acids are preferentially oxidized rather than esterified to diacylglycerol, then PKCε activation is prevented, and hepatic insulin sensitivity is maintained. The molecular specificity of this mechanism has been confirmed by use of antisense oligonucleotide to PKCε, which prevents hepatic insulin resistance despite raised diacylglycerol levels during high-fat feeding (47). In obese humans, intrahepatic diacylglycerol concentration has been shown to correlate with hepatic insulin sensitivity (48,49). Additionally, the presence of excess fatty acids promotes ceramide synthesis by esterification with sphingosine. Ceramides cause sequestration of Akt2 and activation of gluconeogenic enzymes (Fig. 4), although no relationship with in vivo insulin resistance could be demonstrated in humans (49). However, the described intracellular regulatory roles of diacylglycerol and ceramide are consistent with the in vivo observations of hepatic steatosis and control of hepatic glucose production (20,21).
Ideally, insulin should be administered in a manner that mimics the natural pattern of insulin secretion by a healthy pancreas. However, the complex pattern of natural insulin secretion is difficult to duplicate. Still, adequate blood glucose control can be achieved with careful attention to diet, regular exercise, home blood glucose monitoring, and multiple insulin injections throughout the day..