Diabesity Tip 5: Why Medications Don't Fix the Problem

Now, in this segment, I want to discuss an important topic that may affect many of you and that's medication. Now there are several different classes of medication that are currently used in the treatment of diabetes and each has its own effects. Most patients who follow this program may need less and less medication and many, many may get off medication completely. Nonetheless, it's useful to know what's out there. Now, medication can be used alone or in combination and here are the main classes of medications used to treat diabetes. First is the biguanides, especially metformin or glucophage and it's one of the best medications to improve insulin sensitivity. Now, it's really the only medication I ever recommend for diabetes. It's well tolerated, it's been around for a long time, it's been well studied and it helps lower blood sugar by improving your cells response to insulin. As we will see in a moment, most of the other medications out there cause serious complications or actually make things worse by boosting insulin levels while they're lowering blood sugar, and that increases the risk of death and heart attacks. The next class of medications I want to address are the thiazolidinedione drugs or TZDs. These include things like Rosiglitazone and Pioglitazone or Avandia and Actos. This is a new class of medication for diabetes that can help improve the uptake of glucose by your cells. Now this is achieved by making you more insulin sensitive. These drugs also reduce inflammation and they can help improve metabolism and there are known side effects including weight gain and liver damage. Now Avandia has been shown in some studies to actually increase the risk of heart attacks. There are a whole bunch of older medications that are used called sulfonylureas or oral hypoglycemic drugs. These include things like glyburide, glipizide and glimepiride. I strongly recommend against these medications. They only reduce your sugar in the short term. They increase insulin production leading to worsening of the syndrome over time. They have also been linked to an increased risk of heart attacks. Next are the alpha-glucosidase inhibitors which include Acarbose. These can help lower the absorption of sugar and carbohydrates in the intestines reducing the absorption of sugar after meals. The next class of drugs are very new. They're called incretins. They're the new kid on the block and they work by stimulating the release of insulin from the pancreas. This helps keep blood sugar down but over 58% of those who take it experience nausea, and 22% have boming. Not a very fun way to lower your blood sugar. What's worse, long-term studies are not available to adequately assess the risks. Now, this may surprise some of you, but insulin is the last resort after all other measures have failed. Often, taking insulin leads to a slippery slope of weight gain, higher cholesterol, and higher blood pressure. Many patients have been able to come off insulin entirely if they're treated early and aggressively with lifestyle and supplements.