Guide for treatment of diabetes

There are so many names used to describe this new epidemic… insulin resistance, diabesity, adult onset diabetes, type 2 diabetes. Whichever name is used… all have the same issues.

Type 2 diabetes is the leading chronic condition this century. Do you know from 1983 to 2009 the number of people with type 2 diabetes worldwide increased from 35 million to 240 million? This is higher than the number of people affected by the HIV virus!

Don’t you think we should be wondering why this is happening? Why are you putting yourself at risk for this condition and its associated complications, why are you cutting your life short?

Although type 2 diabetes is more than high blood sugar levels; it involves all of the following which are almost always traceable to excessive levels of sugar in your blood stream for many years. High blood sugar levels gradually damages your blood vessels and nervous system

Type 2 diabetes affects both your small and large blood vessels. Nearly all type 2 diabetics have:

Cardiovascular Disease: Approximately one third have known heart disease. If your heart stops beating or if major blood vessels clog, you could die. Strokes are a major killer… stroke is up to four times more likely if you have type 2 diabetes. Heart attacks are a prime cause of death in middle-aged people with type 2 diabetes. A recent study showed that up to 50% of heart attack victims had high blood sugar levels at the time of their heart attack.

High Blood Pressure: Seventy-five per cent of people with type 2 diabetes have high blood pressure. Your blood pressure is a prime indicator of your heart health. Fats as well as high blood sugars cause your blood vessels to constrict… usually your health care provider will treat you and keep your blood pressure at 130/80 mmHG or less.

Blindness, kidney failure, nervous system damage, gum disease, dementia and cancer are all outcomes of uncontrolled blood sugar levels.

What is your approach to treating your type 2 diabetes? Is it to take anti-diabetic drugs or insulin? Do you take anti-hypertensives to lower your blood pressure? Statins to reduce your cholesterol level? Do you realize this is treating the symptoms rather than the cause? High blood sugar levels are symptoms of a metabolic process that is out of whack… lowering your blood sugar levels with drugs does not deal with the issues that caused the high blood sugars in the beginning.

The core of treatment for type 2 diabetes and all it encompasses, is the food you eat… what you eat affects your weight, your blood pressure, your blood sugar and cholesterol levels. These may all drop significantly with a weight loss of 10 to 15 pounds (4.5 to 7 kgs). Add 150 minutes a week of physical activity to your treatment plan and you are well on your way to preventing damage to your blood vessels and getting to the real reason you developed type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes mellitus results from either hypo-secretion or hypo-activity of insulin. After a meal, when insulin is either absent or deficient, blood glucose levels remain high because glucose is unable to enter most tissue cells. Insulin is needed for uptake by cells to happen.

Ordinarily, when blood glucose levels rise, hypoglycemic hormones are not released, but when hyperglycemia becomes excessive, you start to feel nauseated. The nausea causes your body to enter the “flight-fright-frolic” response. This is a series of changes brought about by the autonomic nervous system and prolonged by certain members of your endocrine system. The results are inappropriate because they normally occur in the hypoglycemic or fasting state to make glucose available. The nausea triggers glycogenolysis, a breakdown of glycogen, lipolysis, a breakdown of fat and gluconeogenesis when the liver creates glucose. These cause the already high glucose levels to soar even higher and excess glucose begins to leave the body in the urine which is called glucosuria.

When simple sugars, such as glucose, cannot be used as cellular fuel, more fats are mobilized and broken down for fuel. The fats produce a high fatty acid level in the blood, a condition called lipidemia or lipemia. The presence of acids in the blood increases a persons free H+ ion count which results in a lower than normal pH. This is referred to as acidosis. In severe cases of diabetes, blood levels of fatty acids and their metabolites (acetoacetic acid, acetone and others) rise dramatically. The metabolites, collectively called ketones or ketone bodies, are organic acids. They work to push down your pH even more. Your acidosis becomes more severe. Since this is due to ketones the acidosis is renamed ketoacidosis. Excess ketones spill over into the urine from the kidneys. This is called ketonuria.

Severe ketoacidosis is life threatening. One of the very good reasons to see a Diabetologist if you suspect you are starting to lose control of your condition. The severe swings in the pH of the body is a disruption of your normal homeostasis.

The severe ketoacidosis causes the nervous system to initiate rapid deep breathing (hyperpnea) to blow off carbon dioxide from the blood with the net result of temporarily increasing your pH (buffers the blood). If ketoacidosis continues unchecked it will disrupt heart activity and oxygen transport, severely depress the nervous system which leads to coma and death

Fighting diabetes with medication is natural. Yet people seek other remedies, especially the natural ones because of one reason. Natural products or ingredients do not have the characteristics of creating more problems while doing away with the current insistent one. In quest of such natural products man has run from pillar to post and have checked thousands of articles.

Naturally Produced Material – L-Carnitine
L- Carnitine is one of the most naturally produced nutrients in human body. Playing vital role in metabolism of both fatty acids and other food components, it ensures that such fats are not stored in the body as it increases the chances of diabetes. By oxidizing the fat in human body it helps maintaining of appropriate body weight. Since L-Carnitine prevents body fat, it also consequentially prevents diabetes spreads. That is why L-Carnitine in diabetes treatment has proved quite effective.

Positive Aspects of L-Carnitine
Functioning of heart can substantially improved with the use of L-Carnitine. Improvement in heart functioning of the diabetes patients is caused by improvement of the glucose oxidation process in their bodies. Process of glucose utilization can be enhanced by 8% with the recommended doses of L-Carnitine for the patient. Similarly, effective addressing of the problems of resistance to insulin that is mostly present in type 2 diabetes patients is possible too. Insulin resistance is reduced considerably by L-carnitine and it has proved to be good solution for the type 2 diabetes. Combination of L-carnitine for diabetes treatment with lipoic acid could be very effective since it enhances the function of the body cells producing energy burning out higher amounts of glucose as well as fatty acids.