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Its very true, a lot of sites at internet claim to have the cure for diabetes, and as mentioned by Dr.Bill generally this websites are full of "False-science" statements that can confuse people in order to make them buy their products. In any case any diabetic patient should know that only its Physician/Endocrinologist can give then the right treatment. Thanks for the article.
I have just discovered a cure for diabetes!! I have found that if you cut off a big hunk of your stomach (or put a band around it, etc.), this can turn a full blooded diabetic into a normal, healthy adult with a scar- ok, ok, it's a joke- nobody would ever carve up their stomach for a percent chance of curing diabetes...
Actually many diabetics do "carve up their stomach." It's called bariatric surgery
or lap band surgery. And it does seem to help a number of diabetics from what
I hear. Though I am a Type II Diabetic, I haven't done it because although I'm overweight, I'm not overweight enough to get it (must be 100 lbs or more overweight)and have my insurance pay for it. It's probably best though because I'd be afraid
that my body won't get the nutrients it needs without me spending even more
money then I already do for those nutrients in addition to my diabetic (and other)
medications. Any diabetics here that have experience (before and after) they would
be willing to share regarding how it changed their diabetes and complications?
Thank you so much, Dr. Quick, for telling folks this. It is very true, and many diabetics don't know it. Doctors don't tell patients this--maybe they don't want people to get discouraged, I don't know. But anyway, my theory is "the more a person is aware of what they are dealing with, the better they can deal with it." Diabetics need to know that they must develop a lifetime of of lifestyle changes; they cannot just take some miracle herb or miracle pill and think diabetes will go away. In fact, I believe it is also a progressive disease, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct? Incidentally, I'm a diabetic.
Thank you so much, Dr. Quick, for telling folks this. It is very true, and many diabetics don't know it. Doctors don't tell patients this--maybe they don't want people to get discouraged, I don't know. But anyway, my theory is "the more a person is aware of what they are dealing with, the better they can deal with it." Diabetics need to know that they must develop a lifetime of lifestyle changes; they cannot just take some miracle herb or miracle pill and think diabetes will go away. In fact, I believe it is also a progressive disease, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct? Incidentally, I'm a diabetic.
Although I certainly understand Dr. Bill's resentment of advertizing buzz regarding strong claims such as a "cure", I think a word with more empirical basis, in some folks' experiences at least, might be "reversal". If someone has managed, for instance, to control their A1C levels over a period of years by an active lifestyle and carefully controlled diet, and is consistantly living with essentially normal blood glucose levels, why would a description such as "reversal" not be accurate?
I could easily make a long rant against the medical community itself for the irritating literature our health organizations typically put out on diabetes...the suggestions tend to be weak and often encourage a passive, meek attitude toward the condition, expecting one to swallow your situation with mere acceptance. Think, for instance, how often you've read articles such as "Living with your diabetes"... This is no proper attitude- who wants to live with it? The proper attitude is: what do I need to do to fully reverse it? Turns out a commitment to exercise and controlling one's carbs down to whatever level works, can go a long way.
I think physicians should be encouraging their patients to adopt an aggressive stance; a meek one will get people nowhere.
Maybe "cure" is too strong a word, but "whup" isn't. Don't worry about "curing" it, just concentrate on "whupping" it. Folks should be fighters, regardless of what kind of "advise" the medical establishment is putting out. We all know how ridiculous some of the medical literature can be anyway; put your trust in your own experimentation, not in what some organization like the ADA tells you (who hasn't figured out a good attack on diabetes yet in spite of decades of research and funding).
more appropriate word might be "reversal". aggressive mentality is what we want to encourage in sufferers. I could easily make the same-length rant against the medical establishment literature, which
You have an interesting point as well. I have to say, the ADA is a group I do not support at all personally any more. They told me as a kid I'd be cured in ten years, so as a kid I figured, "hell, in ten years I'll be cured" so I ignored docs advice on diet, and my parents. Guess what? NO CURE in ten years from around 1974, the cure should have happened in 1984, 1990 in the least! LOL!
Trust medical people, trust the ADA, trust the "potion makers", trust the herbalizers and the "oil cloth" that if touched to the forehead cures diabetes? That is not wise at all!!! A person with diabetes has to gain wisdom enough to know who to trust, and who not! And the majority, even doctors and advisors like dieticians and more are in the game of diabetes for all the cash they can pull out of an ill persons wallet. Cure the disease? Hell, if they do that they loose the "cash cow"! Why would the ADA want to eliminate the source of the income they get? Why would the diabetes industry want a cure when they make millions, or even billions a year selling the insulin people need to survive?
I'm totally dependent on the insulin industry for survival, with out it I die. Type one will kill me, so they have a "captive audience" financially with people like me. Cure?
Over all the years in the "field" I've had diabetes, I've seen evil lurk in the field more often than good, darkness more than light, and things in shadow that love to rob and steal from my health and body more than help solve real problems. It seems the whole medical industry is more on the "take" than the "give" side of life. Then I get blamed on top of all that for having the problem in the first place, accused by relatives my "sin" did it when I was only a child with no knowledge of sin when I got the disease! LOL! Insanity!
Wisdom has to be used when dealing with diabetes, and each person with it, especially type one is in a real war with a real enemy that wants to deal a death blow if it can gain the chance. Diabetes teaches a human how to give a fight if they want to live. And diabetes itself lives by an opposing force of "get" your health. So "give" it hell for your life, and the more a person fights, the longer they live, and all with diabetes are forced to give, even things they would not if they didn't have diabetes.
People with diabetes have to "GIVE" to stop diabetes from killing them, and some times it is a lot more than any healthy human would even consider.
Witch doctors, be it thru "magic potions" or even real doctors with bad ideas, people with diabetes need to learn the Wisdom of what really living with the disease is all about, and how to know truth from lies in order to deal with the health issue they have at hand.
Survival. That is all a person with diabetes type one like me has for hope. Humans make the rest of it with witch doctor cures and real doctor idealogy that fit preconcieved concepts that a lot of times don't fit reality, all of it avoid. Use wisdom and fight the disease with what works and leave the rest alone if survival is the goal.
Diabetes is an "evil". LOL!
Later...
Good comments, DJ.
The sad thing is, you really can't trust either side- the supplement businesses all parrot each other with wild claims and little or no legit clinical support (does anyone here remember the cholesterol scam with the supplement policosanol?), while on the other side, the medical establishment puts out information that has been heavily influenced by Big Pharma, who of course does NOT want any low-priced competition against their mark-up on patented drugs. Then one realizes the drug approach never really solved any root causes anyway, all it does is hopefully help stabilize someone's condition for a few years... Not an ideal solution by any means.
The "help" available from any of these outside sources is a crapshoot :-)
I'm really with Jim and some of the others here! What I find is physicians and other health care professionals who tiptoe through, with two-lips—the realities of the disease we know as diabetes. So, whether it's the few who've fallen through the quacks, or the many religiously following their Doctor's cues of seeing this disease as somewhere between mosquito bites and bunions, there are problems with false messages from many irresponsible people, some with medical licenses and certifications to boot. In my part of Minnesota, we have many clinics and hospitals with diabetes programs whose D5 scoring (based on patients with <7.0 A1c; <100 LDL Cholesterol; BP @ 130/80 or less; Non-smoking; and taking an aspirin a day if over 45 years of age) is between 2% and 14%. In my opinion, that's a low bar to jump, given all the $$$ poured into those programs. Do they get the same amount of money as another clinic who has a 35% score? Probably! I'm not looking for conspiracy issues, but competency issues. So Dr. Bill, I want to know how much influence the web sponsors have in this partnership. Lyrica is listed above; Lantus elsewhere. There's others as well. When we read about the side-effects of some of these company's drugs, does that make them just as quacky as the cure boys who make your teeth grind? I wonder why Whole Foods, Pritikin, Canyon Ranch and other proponents of the healthy eating, active lifestyle movement do not advertise here. I'd guess some would even call them out for outrageous claims. Yet many doctors swear by those approaches to effective diabetes self-management, reversal, remission and even, maybe, sometimes—a cure! Even I do!
In college, a friend of mine who had type one diabetes stayed with me for two months. We realized diabetes was like a "death sentence", all we did was survive it. Because of his diabetes, he got a tattoo of an ancient symbol that means "to rot" on his arm. I got a tattoo of a skull and cross bones on my ankle and told him diabetes makes me feel like a "dead man walking"! LOL! Stupid I guess for the time of youth we was in, but even then we realized we was in a cursed situation with how the medical industry and doctors acted. In those days we could buy insulin with out a doctors prescription, so we could deal with diabetes with out ever seeing a doc if we wanted.
In todays world, that is impossible to do in the USA if you want to survive, you have to see a doctor in my state just to get insulin to survive.
I see the USA I grew up in changed from a democracy where people had real freedom to make choices on health care for themselves, to a system where if you don't see a "professional" they will not sell you insulin, so you have to die if you choose to avoid the doctors who have less experience in my case even when I was in college knowing how to deal with my disease diabetes! The doctors were actually "stupid", and I can say that from experience with them! LOL!
I find corruption leading this trend, and it forces people into a trap with this disease where they have only one way to deal with it. If they do not pay a doctor for a visit, they get to die with out insulin in my state, so what does that say between the time I was in college to today where NO doc was needed to where now a doctor is REQUIRED BY "LAW" to treat yourself if you have diabetes? And it is a disease doctors advise on, but don't actually treat! We as patients do it ourselves! The treatment part, so the law technically gets broken all the time because the doctors don't give the insulin and the rest? Right? LOL!
I truly find doctors a waste of my money and my time. They tell me nothing new, and get paid for a prescription, then a pharmacy gets paid for the medicines I need when all of that crap isn't necessary at all. Basically the doc office gets a hundred or more bucks to write a piece of paper for a pharmacy, check my chart, and send me on my way. Beauracracy, bull crap, and a way to force people to pay for things in order to survive that in my day was really "free"! We just had to go down to the local pharmacy and buy a bottle of insulin with out a hundred dollar note from a doc. I see freedom of choice in health gone corrupt, it is a money game and ever since the day that they made it impossible for me to buy insulin with out a prescription, corruption has been filling the industry of medicine up like a real poison making costs go up and insanity more prevalent with our current USA medical system.I won't be surprised at all to see a collapse like a stock market crash in the medical field the way things are going! LOL! Corruption leads to a weakend system from the inside out.
Basically, what I'm saying is after 35 years of this disease I know diabetes better than the majority of doctors that try to advise me on my health. Some are fresh out of school and say stupid stuff like my current doctor, that diabetes is "fun" and "curable" with insulin. With that I realize he has no "clue" what he is talking about, my personal diabetes doc. Basically I do what I need to survive, listen to him, then go about my business. The only reason I see my endochronologist currently is so I can get my insulin supplies and prescriptions. If I could get them with out him, I'd not use an endochronologist at all because most of the time his head is full of fantasy crap the education system has filled his brain with about diabetes that doesn't fit reality at all.
Diabetes for me has been "my problem" all my life with "me" having to deal with it. Most new docs are pretty ignorant at times about reality. That makes me get "riled up", the stupidity in the medical business of the people that are supposed to be "professionals". I've never liked "know it all" docs who don't listen to the reality patients have to reveal to them. By "know it all" I mean doctors who believe the fantasy the school they went to teaches them instead of what really dealing with diabetes in a real world is all about. They never listen, because they already "know it all". Suuuuuuuuuurrrrrrre! I mean sure they do, so much so if it wouldn't put in jail at times I'd like to punch them in the head to "WAKE THEM UP" to reality, but John Wayne tactics aren't applicable any more in "modern society" because people aren't allowed to "smack" idiots in the head any more. Too bad, the world might be a better place with less "shcool shootings" if teachers and such were allowed to "smack" sense into people to wake them up!
I don't know, it all disgusts me to see, the insane rules so that people are forced to do things they would not if the dumb rules of "beauracracy" and our "society" didn't exist for survival. I see it and believe personally it is wrong, a lot of these 'rules' like not spanking kids who think killing every one in a school will solve their problems, or smacking stupid docs into thinking with sense at times, not to hurt them, but to wake them up to reality! Now you go to jail if you do such a thing! LOL!
People with diabetes, I think should be able to buy insulin with out prescriptions. They shouldn't have to be forced to see docs to get it, and it looks like since the time that started things started getting even more stupid with how medicine works in the USA.A cure in this kind of medical environment, now that idea to me today, has got to be a joke! LOL!
So for me, an endochronologists after one visit was enough. After that,, the endochronologist basically was a waste of my time and money. (Once usually is enough for a lot of things in life) LOL!!!!!! And the first time I saw one was back in the late 80's. I got diabetes type one in 1974 and saw a general practicianer who covered it for me. In those days, not even meters to check bg was around. It has changed a lot. But hope for a real cure was around, a "developed industry" for diabetes hadn't really been established like it exists today. And you only had to see a family doctor when you got sick, or call him for a problem, and you didn't need prescriptions to buy insulin!
For me, change for the worse came when they started forcing people with diabetes to go to the doc for prescriptions for insulin. That was a turning point, and then diabetes industrialized, and it was over for civility in doing treatment with "sense". Now it is a lucrative corrupt business of profit and medical imprisonment of people with disease forcing them to go for treatment plans they other wise would not have to do if it was not made "illegal" to treat yourself! Another way for "medicine" to gain a buck and make it possible to force people with diabetes to go to docs when a lot of people could handle the disease themselves with out docs if they was allowed to buy insulin themselves! It has changed for the worse in my opinion as far as "patient rights" go! Cure in this environment? Hell, this is corruption at it's best, making people who already know how to treat diabetes and buy insulin have to pay MORE to see a doctor in order to get a drug to stay alive! They got me by the "balls" when that happened as far as my freedom goes. I wouldn't see docs for diabetes if that "law" for prescription to get insulin had not been formulated. Legal corruption basically in my opinion.
It all is corrupt in my opinion, an evil industry not set out for curing anything. I'm pessimistic about cures altogether from having lived with diabetes for so long. Action speaks louder than words for me as the saying goes, and I see no viable real action going on from these industries to really end diseaseas like diabetes and cancer. They reach out to grab as much profit from trying to "cure" it as possible with out ever reaching the cure! Why? They don't want to reach a cure because it would loose money, and money is GOD! LOL! In the USA it is at least!
Crazy world, changing for the worse in my opinion as far as the freedoms the country was founded on, the USA in 1776! Especially with dealing with health issues! LOL! But in 1776, people died if they got diabetes, so they would be mystified by our solutions in this day as well. But even so, once they understood I bet they wouldn't like how we do things either in medicine and other "areas" ethically! LOL!
The political and economic environment for diabetes in my opinion right now is a big driving force, and with it I doubt the 21st Century will see a real "cure". The environment is too corrupt for that to happen. Laws that legalize what is illegal and more are making it all "cure wise" a real laughable joke! Even the people in Washington on health care reform are making a "laughable joke" out of it from both sides. Cures in the USA?
Hell, China has already invented an artificial pancreas! I bet the FDA will not allow that to cross the border if it works! And from what I've read, it works!
Okay, cures are possible, but not in the USA with the FDA and Corruption that goes on in the medical "industry". Cures will never be possible when the leaders at the top are so corrupt they don't solve our problems. When that happens like it is now, even the society starts cracking up at the foundations and things go crazy and people get even more stupid. Even the leaders act "stupid" for political gain, not trying at all to solve problems. It is currently in the USA too insane at the moment in my opinion for medicine to really cure even itself! LOL!
I laugh, why? Because of the insanity in all of this crap dealing with diabetes, medicine, the USA and industry! A cure here will not be possible until the people wake up and make the leaders take real actions to solve problems at the end of a "big stick" it looks like!
Cures are just a dream right now, a fairy tale in the USA because this countries leaders have no vision at all. And I mean in medicine, industry, politics, all of it.
Hi,
Been seeing this kind of stuff for years. I've had type one for 35 years, and in all that time I've seen probably thousands of different claims from people for all kinds of "stuff" that cures diabetes. Herbs, spices, fish oil mixes, powders, ground up mixtures from India with ground cane in it, and all kinds of "witch doctor remedy" that never do anything but make some one who is trying to make a buck a buck richer when people believe the lie. I've also seen people say a cloth with oil rubbed on the forhead will heal diabetes and all kinds of insanity that never works.
So diabetes using these remedy types does end if you use them. You die, and diabetes is over with! LOL! Or you get tremendously sick and a doctor makes even more money than the people that sell the "witch doctor potion"!
I saw one time a doctor in Florida said he had a cure for diabetes by altering a gene in lettuce. Mice that ate it with type one diabetes were supposidly "cured". Haven't heard any more about that thing, probably another "witch doctor" concept that has flown the "coop"! Like a fox in a hen house knowing there are plenty of targets of opportunity that can't get away! Diabetes seems to work the same way with people that love to target the ill for profit.
Looks like you are getting an idea of what having diabetes is like. Fun isn't it? LOL!
There are a lot of "witch doctors", even my aun't has tried some dumb idea's for "healing me" through her religious beliefs that get on my nerves. Even she haas no idea what diabetes really is all about, and then she tells me my sin has caused the problem! LOL! When I was a kid at six, didn't know my sins would cause diabetes! I think she is really mixed up in the brain on that idea. I was so young, I had no concept of what "sin" or the idea of it was all about. Diabetes got me, sin or no sin at all!
There are all kinds of insanity that goes on around diabetes. A lot of it should be avoided if a person wants to survive the disease as long as possible. I'm glad I got to survive it 35 years. Even on dialysis, I hope I get ten more, maybe a transplant, and maybe I can prove the doctor wrong in Louisiana that once told me I'd live to be fifty. Maybe I can live to a hundred if I use "Wisdom" in what I choose to do health wise!
Diabetes and "witch doctor" remedy do not work together. All the potions and formula not studied in the right way can lead to worse conditions than diabetes if "Wisdom" isn't applied! LOL!
This kind of stuff I ignore, seen so much of it through my life it is easy to know the difference between truth and lies. If it was legal, I'd take out a shot gun and just shoot the "foxes" that try to rip people off with this kind of mess, but seems it isn't "legal" to kill evil people that rob the sick and make them even more ill with the "ill gain medicine & potions" they say will work.
Be wise and avoid the fox, and if you live some place where it is legal to shoot them, do it! LOL!
Later....
Hi Doc,
So having been living with diabetes for four years, maybe it makes you see it in a different light. Thirty five years in my experience makes a person hate the "fun" diabetes brings along. I've lived this type one and have gone through things like eye surgery where I had a vitrectomy and they cut open my eye. I think that was one of the worst times of my life, couldn't see, had blood in my eyes, had to go to UNC, and the Blind School in Raleigh, NC. The surgery itself felt like sand in my eye for two weeks when they sewed it up. And that was just one of the many things I've experienced in "horror fun" that I live with having diabetes. It is a really "fun" friend that wants to kill me all the time. One, all humans would enjoy having, a friend named diabetes that rides a human like a glued on monkey with a knife in his hand constantly cutting at you!!
Any way, my personal diabetes endochronologist thinks diabetes is a fun disease. He said so at a public speech for people in my town one time. He also thinks insulin is the cure. I still have to go see him, and I have to forgive him even though I strongly disagree with him on his insane idea that diabetes is "fun" and also that insulin is the "cure". For me, it has only been a tool I use to survive. Cure for me is when I don't need insulin, and fun for me is when this diabetes monkey is off my back. I do not like diabetes, nor do I enjoy having to deal with it with out a break, ever.
I just wonder some times how people who are recent, diagnosed with diabetes, how they think "hope" wise? A lot of people who are new to the disease don't think much of it, I was like that as a kid being promised a cure by the "ADA" in ten years. I didn't worry, ten years I figured the cure would happen. Why was I so enthused it would happen? The USA put men on the moon, sent probes to Mars, they invented Microwave ovens in my life time, cell phones, the internet! Surely diabetes could be cured!
Cure? I wonder how long it really will be. If it is cured, it will devastate the diabetes industry. A cure would wipe out many pharmaceutical remedies, wipe out the need for doctors, wipe out the need for transplants for failed organs, surgeries for eyes, laser surgeries for retinopathy and a ton of other financial viabilities diabetes brings. That would not be prudent for the FDA or the ADA or others that profit. Even cancer, will it be cured? Why? Ethics? Hell, there are no ethics in the USA any more, the medical business gets bought out, money talks and the greed rules for the "take".
Do you as a doc really think a cure will ever happen? What is your real perspective on that issue being a doctor yourself and now having diabetes yourself?
Tell us what you think about the possibility of a real cure? Where is the hope at?
Currently I'm on PD dialysis, use an insulin pump to control my diabetes, with out the insulin pump I could not do the PD because the fluid I use for dialysis has sugar in it basically, so the pump adjusments make it easier to cope with the dialysis. I'm stuck to a machine to survive, two now, one for PD, one for my insulin, and a lot of monitoring. The diet has changed tremendously due to kidney failure, a diet for diabetes is easy compared to what happens when you go on dialysis. Dialysis also ties a person down tremendously, the machine has to be with me where I go if I take a trip, or I have to do a manuel daily four times or more exchange instead of a nine hour while I "sleep" night routine of dialysis. Even that isn't "sleep" with a machine that makes noise, alarms when a line in kinked, and other problems. I've even pulled on my tubing making the hole in my abdomen bleed at times by accident through the night, not a fun thing.
So those of you who think diabetes is a "band aid" treatable disease, I have something to say. WAKE UP! Drink a huge cup of DIABETES COFFEE and realize the disease - if there is no cure in sight - needs to be treated as an "Al Queda" level threat that is no joke. When you are not paying attention, it will fly a jet liner into your building, or body, and kill everything it can get in its path.
Diabetes is not "fun", it is not "cured" by insulin alone, and it definitely is not my friend at any rate. I hate my enemy diabetes, and I hate it for any one else who has it, and would not wish it on my worst enemy except diabetes itself if diabetes could be an "entity".
I just wonder if a cure will ever happen in the 21st Century?
What do you think as a doc with diabetes? Will it make the extinction list of diseases when the 21st Century is over?
I highly doubt it myself, too much profit in it to cure it. But humanity could prove me wrong, thirty five years of it has made me very pessimistic to say the least, and I'm optimistic about a lot of things, just not diabetes! LOL!
I'd like to know what you really think on this cure thing? If it is going to ever happen or not in your mind? Your perspective as a doctor?
Cure was a magic word when I was a kid. Now I don't really like that word much any more because it always eludes my hope with diabetes! LOL!
Later...
I've addressed your question about cure in the 21st century in a followup SharePost:
Will diabetes be cured in the 21st century?
There will be no cure for diabetes because the drug companies and medical professionals make too much money treating it. They do not want a cure as it would lower their income significantly. Greed is the reason there will never be a cure - more drugs will come but never a cure of any kind - money is the reason - not technology or knowledge but greed keeping it from coming together - drug companies will do anything to keep the high dollar diabetic drugs on the markey avoiding any type of cure. It will never happen because of doctors and researchers that make billions of dollars selling treatments - not cures.
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Thank you very much dr. Bill for this useful and extraordinary Blog.
I have no comment to say, I just want to thank you.