Type 2 diabetes is nearly always a preventable disease and is usually reversible using lifestyle strategies by themselves. There are dozens of medications available to treat elevated blood sugar levels, but nearly all of them have common potentially serious "side effects." There are also a wide range of nutritional supplements that are equally effective and far safer that will be reviewed.
The importance of a low carbohydrate diet, stress reduction, regular exercise, getting 8 hours of sleep at night, avoiding toxic chemicals, managing weight, and having meaningful purpose in life are the keys to successful treatment.
Lifestyle is a powerful antidote to inflammation. All the pharmaceutical drugs used to treat type 2 diabetes have significant side effects that are potentially serious. The common drug classes used to treat diabetes are reviewed. Some of these drugs increase the risk of heart attack and death by more than 50%.
Type 2 diabetes is largely a disease of lifestyle, especially diet and exercise. However, stress, sleep, and certain pharmaceutical drugs predispose to developing it. The metabolic syndrome is discussed and the concept of insulin resistance is reviewed.
A French study on 66,000 middle aged women over 14 years that was published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in February of 2013, showed that drinking 12 oz per week of a diet soda increased the risk for type 2 diabetes by 33%. Increasing the amount to 20 oz per week increased the risk to 66%.
An article published in May of 2012 in Nature Medicine reported that a chemical (methylglyoxal) that is produced excessively in people with painful diabetic neuropathy, appears to attack and modify a protein in nerve endings that causes nerves to become hypersensitive to pain, heat and cold. This may lead to investigating ways to increase an enzyme, glyoxalase, which removes methylglyoxal and could reduce or eliminate pain.
