Keep That 1876 Journal Handy, It Just May Help Treat Diabetes
Renewed interest has been generated in a drug called salsalate, similar to aspirin (salicylate), by Dr. Shoelson at the Harvard-affiliated Joslin Diabetes Center. The Wall Street Journal reports that, as an anti-inflammatory, salsalate may have the capability of reducing the inflammatory component of Type II Diabetes, and inexpensively. Not all diabetes researchers agree that inflammation is part of the diabetes picture, but blame it all on genes that regulate insulin and sugar metabolism.
Although I laud the efforts to bring cost-effective treatment of symptoms to the world, where is the work of addressing the basic cause? And it is not in blaming genes. For the most part, Type II Diabetes is a problem with sugar and carbohydrate intake. Sugar is pro-inflammatory, vitamin and mineral depleting, addictive, and interferes with many body systems. So many of my new patients on insulin smugly smile about how they can eat a dessert (like everyone else) and not cause severe rises and falls in blood sugar, just by administering more insulin to their body. It almost becomes a game. Well, refined sugar and its corn-sweetener cousin are harmful for all of us—make a decision today to leave them behind you. Our grandmas knew what they were talking about. We will benefit greatly by learning from the great health thinkers of the past.
My doctor says I can get all the vitamins and minerals I need from my food. What is your opinion on this?
I used to say the same thing to my patients, back in the days before I studied healthy alternatives. It is the party line of allopathic medicine, although that is starting to change. Here's the bottom line, and I'll follow up with some info on what allopaths are now doing:
2 responses so far ↓
1 Sharon Beyler // Jul 2, 2009 at 11:10 am
This was interesting. I agree with you Dr. Stan! Sugar and corn sweetner are where we need to start. And it is not easy! I have been reading labels carefully and almost everything in a package, jar, bottle etc has corn syrup in it. I bought a vegetable juice this last week without looking at the label. Got it home and corn syrup is in it!! Not at the top of the list, but still in it!! So we really need to eat less foods that are processed. Question I have as bad as sugar is, I understand the worse culprit is the corn syrup and that we would be better off with sugar in the processed food rather than corn syrup. Is this correct?
2 Dr. Stan Gardner // Jul 15, 2009 at 4:06 pm
Sharon, Corn syrup has 2 additional problems compared with sugar: 1) most of it is coming from genetically modified corn, which is scarey 2) the processing is adding mercury to the corn syrup, which is most harmful. So, I guess corn syrup is worse than sugar, but that does not make sugar any better than it is.
Leave a Comment