Earlier, a correspondent wrote that she doesn't want any medications that "shake down" her pancreas. She wanted to use alternative herbs instead.

“But complementary and alternative medicine is a medication,” Dr. Laura Shane McWhorter replied when I passed on that comment. She is a professor at the University of Utah’s College of Pharmacy and the author of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) Supplement Use in People with Diabetes: A Clinician’s Guide.

“Many people believe that these products are not drugs," she told me, "but they have pharmacological ingredients.” She added that, for example, we got both metformin and aspirin originally from herbs.

Those alternative herbs haven't been tested nearly as much as prescription medicine. They generally aren't standardized either.

But we do have one natural choice that's well tested and has no side effects. It is a very low-carbohydrate diet. Regular readers will remember that I have written many articles here about the reasons for and advantages of this means of controlling our diabetes.

I don't recommend that you or anyone with type 2 diabetes stop taking their prescribed diabetes medication when your A1C level is above 6.0 or 7.0. Especially now in light of these three new studies, the only medication that I can comfortably recommend to bring your A1C level within that range is Byetta.

But then carefully consider that you can totally relying on a low-carb diet -- as well as exercise. After years of taking many different diabetes drugs, I know from my own experience that a very low-carb diet combined with regular exercise is both the safest and the most effective way to control my blood glucose level.