Alternative Diabetes Treatment:

Type II diabetes is is a disorder that is generally accepted, as a problem of Insulin Resistance. It is my belief, that the longer you have had it, in an unchecked condition, the harder it is to reverse.

Diabetes can be helped. However, it require a commitment on the part of the sufferer. Such is the case with prediabetes, which affects nearly 60 million Americans, in which a person has elevated glucose levels, but is not yet classified as diabetic, via an A1C test.

While diabetes is definitely no fun to live with, it is often very manageable. There are a number of medications for diabetes, and many patients have progressed to the point that they must take them. However, I would like to talk about only the vitamins and supplements that address the particular problems.

The main issue for people with diabetes is that high blood sugar levels cause dysregulated oxidative reactions in the body. To combat the free radicals contributing to this oxidation, it is necessary to take more antioxidants than diet alone commonly provides. Also worthy to note is that about 80% of type II diabetics are overweight. What makes it worse is that insulin used to treat the disease, can cause weight gain.

Being deficient in vitamins and some minerals such as chromium, a trace element, can cause insulin resistance and increase blood glucose. According to the USDA Human Nutrition Research Center, diabetics who are deficient in vitamins and minerals significantly increase fasting blood glucose levels. There are actually other more efficient delivery systems for minerals than the picolinate salts used in research. Consult your alternative physician, for these other options.

Always discuss every medicine you take or are considering, with your physician. Your doctor needs this information and in the case of diabetes, it is especially critical. The reason is that one substance might offset or enhance the effectiveness of another and at the very least, your doctor may want to alter the dosages of your medication or supplements. You also should know that diabetics should avoid taking unprescribed glucosamine, a popular supplement used as a remedy for osteoarthritis. According to a report from the National Institutes of Health National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine presented at the 2004 American Diabetes Association meeting, glucosamine can make insulin resistance worse.

Those with diabetes should make any necessary changes in lifestyle, such as eliminating sugar from the diet, use Stevia as a natural sweetener, to bring about better health. Diabetes is a disease of poor nutrition and lack of exercise. Both situations that people have the power to turn around. Eat well, exercise regularly, take your vitamins daily, in addition to the other supplements you need and you should be able to greatly improve or even eliminate adult-onset, or type II diabetes.

Drinking Calories
by David Mendosa
Thursday, September 6, 2007

Nutritionists used to say that a carb is a carb is a carb. Now that they understand the glycemic index they know that’s not true.

They also used to say that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie. But now we have evidence that this isn’t true either.

It depends whether the calorie is a solid or a liquid one. A new study demonstrates that when we take our food in liquid form rather than in a solid one, we consume more calories that day.

When we drink our beverages like soda and juice and particularly smoothies, they do satisfy our thirst. But they don’t satisfy our hunger. So the calories from drinks just add on to the food calories we take in to our bodies.

The new study validates the little-noticed earlier work carried out in the lab of obesity researcher Barbara Rolls, which came to a similar conclusion. “Calorie intake increased significantly when people drank a beverage containing 150 calories with lunch, compared to when they had a calorie-free beverage.”

Dr. Rolls reported this finding in her book The Volumetrics Eating Plan (HarperCollins, 2005). Thanks to correspondent Pam Cobo for recommending the book to me. It also has more excellent recipes than practically any book I have read lately. It is so good that I have already ordered her earlier book, Volumetrics: Feel Full on Fewer Calories (HarperCollins, 2000).

Personally, the only beverages – except for an occasional nip of single malt Scotch whiskey – that I drink are water, sugar-free lemonade, tea, and coffee, all straight up. So this research won’t change what I drink.

But the calories in beverages account for one-fifth of the total American calorie intake, according to the August issue of the Mayo Clinic Health Letter. Sweetened sodas and fruit-flavored drinks are the main sources of those calories.

The reason that our bodies fail to recognize the calories in our drinks probably lies in our genes. For almost all of human history the only beverage our ancestors ever drank was water, which among its many advantages is free of any calories. Chalk up another reason to drink water.

Here are some of the symptoms and conditions of Diabetes:

Kidney Failure
Blindness (retinopathy) (cataracts)
Amputation (removal of extremities)
Nerve Damage (peripheral neuropathy)
Impotence (inability to achieve an erection)
Accelerate Internal Ageing
Hardening of the Arteries
Increased Cardiovascular Disease
Excess Weight
Death

The apple a day theory. There has been some research, that shows that eating apples, can lower the blood glucose levels in diabetics. A study published in the "Annals of Internal Medicine" showed that apple pectin, helps to reduce blood sugar levels in diabetics.

Bilberry leaf tea is high in chromium, which is said to reduce blood sugar levels, and has therefore been suggested as a treatment for high blood sugar in diabetes.

Here are some of the vitamins and supplements that you might try, with the approval of your Alternative Doctor