http://type2diabetestreatment.net/diabetes-mellitus/ask-dmine-give-me-insulin-or-give-me-death/
Happy Saturday! Welcome to Ask D"Mine, our weekly advice column hosted by veteran type 1, diabetes author and community educator Wil Dubois. This week, Wil offers some thoughts on diabetes management when insulin isn"t on board... at least, when it"s not (yet) on someone"s medication list for diabetes.
Got your own questions? Email us at AskDMine@diabetesmine.com
Dennis, type 2 from South Carolina, writes: I just want to know how to control type 2 diabetes without insulin.
Wil@Ask D’Mine answers: Die young. That’s the only way to control type 2 -- at least in the long run -- without insulin. I know that sounds harsh, but a lot of people seem to need a reality check on the subject of insulin. We get your question here at Ask D’Mine at least once a week.
Let me lay out the facts as clearly as I can. To paraphrase Patrick Henry: Give me insulin or give me death. Only in our case it’s a biological imperative, not a moral imperative. Practically all living creatures need insulin to survive. Humans, armadillos, pelicans, trout, and even fruit flies.
What does your body’s native insulin do? Insulin is a key player in ensuring that your body’s cells get the fuel that they need so that they can do their various jobs to keep you alive. You can think of insulin as the key to the body’s banquet hall. What good does it do to have heaping piles of food on the table in the banquet hall if the door is locked and no one can get in to eat?
So in order to live, you must have insulin.
How does this connect to diabetes and diabetes treatment?
If you have type 2 diabetes (or even pre-diabetes) it means there’s not enough insulin action in your body because the insulin-producing pancreas can no longer keep up with your body’s needs. How on earth does that happen? Well, it’s called insulin resistance, and it’s the underlying cause of type 2 diabetes. If you have insulin resistance, your body doesn’t use insulin very well, so the pancreas over-produces to try to keep up, but eventually it burns out. It’s as simple as that.
Of course, if you have no insulin at all, like those of us with type 1 diabetes, you need to add some. Quickly. But if you’re just a tad lacking in insulin, other options can come into play. There are a host of drugs available that can stretch that not-quite-enough insulin in your body a little farther. Or you can change how much sugar is coming into the system by modifying how you eat. Or you can reduce the underlying insulin resistance by losing weight.
All of those things are good and fine, for a while.
The fact remains: type 2 is progressive. It gets worse every day of your life. Insulin resistance will keep getting stronger and the pancreas will keep getting weaker. At some point no number of pills and no amount of weight loss can hold back the tide of rising insulin resistance. At that point you have only two choices: Take insulin, or die.
Yet, so many people are afraid of insulin. They see it as the enemy, a sign that they"ve failed in managing their diabetes and now they"re forced to do what happens to all of those who do poorly and get the "bad kind of diabetes" (i.e., the kind where you need to take insulin).
I’ve actually met any number of people who have sincerely told me that they would rather die than take insulin. To me that seems like a particularly gristly form of suicide. Death by diabetes is both slow and painful. Literally. It can take years. On the way you’ll have crippling phantom pains from fried nerve cells. You’ll go blind, lose toes, then feet, and maybe even your legs. Your stomach will slow to the point that you won’t be able to eat solid foods. You’ll catch every cold and flu that comes your way. Your kidneys will fail. You’ll have several heart attacks.
You’d rather suffer all that than take the most natural medicine available?
That’s right. You heard me. If you pop a dozen herbs and supplements a day to be “healthy,” but swear off insulin, you are a hypocrite. Taking insulin is simply supplementing what nature put there in the first place.
Most of our non-insulin diabetes medications are work-arounds. They are gaming the system to make up for the lack of insulin rather than just supplementing what you are low on. If your car is a quart low on oil, does it make more sense to add some oil, or to try to run the engine at lower power to compensate? The same is true of diabetes and insulin. What’s wrong with just taking what you need? If your body needs more insulin to stay healthy, quit fooling around and just take the damn insulin! It doesn"t even have to involve needles, seeing how a new inhalable insulin called Afrezza came to market last year.
You need to accept the fact that you will need to take insulin eventually, unless you die young. I mean, who knows? You might be shot by a SWAT team in a case of mistaken identity (hey, it could happen), or be run over by a FedEx truck while out jogging for your health (ironic, but possible). But you can’t count on something like that happening, so it’s always a good idea to maximize your health, to live well during whatever period of time the universe grants you.
Why wait until the last second, or later, when damage has already started? Anyone can start insulin at any time in the course of his or her diabetes. It doesn’t need to be the medicine of last resort. I would argue that it should really be the medicine of first resort instead. That makes sense to me, especially given that taking insulin is pretty much inevitable anyway, and that insulin has few side effects, and virtually no contraindications with other medicines. Plus, as I pointed out, it’s natural.
I say face up to it, and instead of asking how to control type 2 without insulin, ask your doctor if starting insulin sooner is right for you.
This is not a medical advice column. We are PWDs freely and openly sharing the wisdom of our collected experiences — our been-there-done-that knowledge from the trenches. But we are not MDs, RNs, NPs, PAs, CDEs, or partridges in pear trees. Bottom line: we are only a small part of your total prescription. You still need the professional advice, treatment, and care of a licensed medical professional.
Disclaimer: Content created by the Diabetes Mine team. For more details click here.
Disclaimer
This content is created for Diabetes Mine, a consumer health blog focused on the diabetes community. The content is not medically reviewed and doesn"t adhere to Healthline"s editorial guidelines. For more information about Healthline"s partnership with Diabetes Mine, please click here.
Type 2 Diabetes TreatmentType 2 Diabetes Diet
Diabetes Destroyer Reviews
Original Article
#DiabetesMellitus
No comments:
Post a Comment