Diabetes Treatment
Diabetes Treatment varies from one patient to another depending on their general health, age, medical history, and whether they have complications and other medical problems.
For patients with insulin-dependent diabetes such as juvenile diabetes and gestational diabetes, it is important to take in injections of insulin, which can be short action or long action insulin injections. Insulin should be injected and never be taken in by mouth because it will be destroyed by the digestive system before it reaches the bloodstream. Insulin injections are usually taken three times a day and around mealtimes, but this may vary depending on the condition of the patient. As much as possible, the patient himself should be able to inject the insulin on his own in case that there is no one available to do it for him. A carefully planned diet should also be followed to decrease the patient’s blood sugar level.
Most of the patients with non-insulin-dependent diabetes or Type 2 diabetes are first instructed to reduce their blood sugar level by caloric restriction and proper exercise. The caloric content rather than the type of food eaten is the most important consideration, which is why a patient who has Type 2 diabetes does not necessarily have to remove sugar from his diet. If caloric restriction did not decrease the blood sugar level satisfactorily, patients are then given an oral hypoglycemic agent such as sulfonylureas. Although hypoglycemic drugs may directly influence the metabolism of glucose, they just simply act as stimulants for insulin secretion, so insulin injection is another option in case that this form of treatment still did not work.
Another way of treating diabetes is the transplantation of the pancreas. These beta cells are the ones responsible for the production of insulin. Immunosupressive drugs are given to patients who have just undergone a transplant of pancreas, since the immune system seeks to destroy the newly transplanted pancreas in most patients. Unfortunately, immunosuppressive drugs are not uniformly efficacious and have a variety of undesired side-effects, so more powerful and less toxic drugs are still under development for the purpose of optimizing the transplantation of pancreas.
June 10th, 2010 at
Another treatment for Type 2 diabetes that is fast gaining credibility is bariatric surgery. In a surprisingly high percentage of cases, severely and generally obese patients undergoing bariatric surgery for weight loss found that as a consequence, their Type 2 diabetes – for those suffering from the disease, as many obese people do – was either eliminated altogether or the symptoms drastically reduced. CBS Sixty Minutes aired a revealing video in March 2008 – it’s available on their site and on YuoTube.
In Costa Rica bariatric surgery is performed specifically to cure Type 2 diabetes in both obese and non-obese patients.
There are different surgical procedures involved, such as the gastric sleeve for obese people with Type 2 diabetes and the duodenal exclusion for non-obese people. Both are among the surgeries (gastric bypass, lap-band, etc. are others) that will do more than just put diabetes into remission – both have been proven to cure Type 2 diabetes with an 80-90% success rate!
The gastric sleeve (laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy) is one popular surgical procedure used to cure Type 2 diabetes in obese patients with a BMI of 30-35 and higher. Here the bariatric surgeon will remove approximately 60 to 80% of the stomach along the greater curvature, leaving only a small tube, or ‘sleeve’ for the new stomach pouch that extends from the natural stomach opening to the natural stomach outlet (pyloric valve).
The procedure helps limit eating by reducing the overall size of the stomach and helps control hunger by removing the part of the stomach that produces the hunger-stimulating hormone Ghrelin.
Non-obese patients undergoing duodenal exclusion (duodenal exclusion with a loop duodenojejunostomy) surgery to cure their Type 2 diabetes do not have their stomach touched. In this procedure, the surgeon will remove or bypass part of the upper small intestine or duodenum, so that food from the stomach goes directly into the lower small intestine – most importantly, removing the duodenum from the nutrient flow.
Stomach volume is kept intact, maintaining the caloric ingestion so that in many instances, the patient undergoing duodenal exclusion will lose less than 5% of her/his pre-op weight. This eliminates potential nutritional zig-zags and drastic dietary changes that may follow other types of bariatric surgery.
Both these surgeries are done laparascopically in Costa Rica by internationally trained surgeons in internationally accredited full service hospitals, and are performed specifically to cure Type 2 diabetes – unlike the U.S., Canada and some European countries.
July 19th, 2010 at
Although I’m not a diabetic, I have friends and family members that are. I’ve discovered a new drink that you take once a night. I believe in this drink and have asked my family/friends to start taking it. The name of the drink is Reklaim — and it comes in little powder packets. I’ve had several of the folks taking it say it’s lowered their blood sugar levels significantly. My understanding is that it contains a digestible form of inulin in the ingredients that helps flush excess sugars from the consumers’ kidneys.
The drinks are available online and various local, herbal stores. Their website is http://www.reklaimdrink.com and I understand they also sell it on Amazon.
I want to help lower the #s in diabetes — and if I can’t help lower them, I would like to help people control it. Try it out. Just trying to help others.