Stomach Stapling to Cure Diabetes

Written by: Jon Barron © 1999-2012 The Baseline of Health Foundation

Researchers in Australia are jumping up and down like kangaroos in excitement over new data that suggests that obesity surgery can eliminate diabetes far more effectively than other treatments. Dr. John Dixon of Monash University Medical School in Melbourne led a study that found that those Type 2 diabetes patients who had stomach-reducing operations were five times more likely to be diabetes free within two years than those who merely maintained a regimen of standard diabetes care. Of the 55 patients in the study, 29 underwent obesity surgery, and of those, 22 tested negative for diabetes two years later. Of the 26 patients who didn't have the surgery, only four achieved similar remission.
Obesity poses a primary risk factor for diabetes, and so losing weight is key to controlling the disease. Patients in the non-surgical group lost weight by instituting lifestyle changes, but they didn't lose nearly as much as those who had the surgery. And those who lost the most weight, ostensibly, became diabetes-free the quickest.
"[Obesity surgery is] the best therapy for diabetes that we have today, and it's very low risk," said study director Dixon in a CNN report. Dr. David Cummings of the University of Washington in Seattle adds, "We have traditionally considered diabetes to be a chronic, progressive disease…But these operations really do represent a realistic hope for curing most patients."
Is it just me, or doesn't it seem counter-intuitive to address a metabolic disease like diabetes by hacking away at the body with a scalpel?
First, let's look at the surgical risk factor. The research subjects in Australia underwent a procedure called stomach banding, in which a silicone band gets implanted around the upper stomach, limiting how much food patients can eat. Stomach banding incurs a fatality rate of one per 1000 operations and is the preferred obesity surgery in Australia. The US medical community usually opts for the more dangerous--and incidentally more expensive (i.e., more profitable) gastric bypass surgery -- with a death rate of one in 200. In bypass surgery, the stomach gets divided into two sections, with one made into a small pouch that's "stapled" off, thus limiting the amount of food that can be eaten. At the same time, the small intestines are shortened and attached to the pouch.
Many believe the fatality rate for gastric bypass surgery actually is much higher than commonly quoted. In older patients who undergo the surgery, the fatality rate soars to 50 percent. Given that most Type 2 diabetes patients fall into the "older" category, these figures hardly inspire confidence. I tend to side with those who claim that death rates from these procedures are underreported-- I personally know of two people who died after gastric bypass surgery.
Potential complications (other than dying) include severe malabsorption of nutrients, malnutrition, bleeding, infection, anemia, gallstones, unstoppable vomiting, and so on. And, for all this risk, the surgery doesn't last. Many patients experience disintegration of the bypass modifications over time. Staples decay, bands closing off the stomach fall apart, the stomach pouch stretches back to its original size, stomach contents leak into the abdomen. When these things occur, the operation must be reversed. What happens to the diabetes risk factor then?
In fact, bypass surgery doesn't cure diabetes -- it simply postpones the appearance of symptoms. Unless you address the actual causes of the disease, all you've done is delayed the reckoning. To be diabetes-free, you have to employ a multi-faceted approach--and bypass surgery ain't one of those facets. In addition to changing your diet and losing weight, you need to:

• Inhibit absorption of high glycemic foods
• Naturally reverse insulin resistance
• Repair beta cells in the islets of Langerhans in the pancreas to optimize insulin production
• Lower blood sugar levels
• Protect organs and proteins from damage caused by elevated levels of insulin and sugar.

The bottom line is that bypass surgery puts you at considerable risk, particularly if you're over 50, and still leaves you vulnerable to diabetes damage. As with most other health issues, you need to take a systemic approach -- not a magic bullet.

Diabetes Explodes

Written by: Jon Barron © 1999-2012 The Baseline of Health Foundation

Diabetes in Children
According to an Associated Press story just released, Dr. K.M. Venkat Narayan, a diabetes epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned that one in three U.S. children born in 2000 will become diabetic unless many more people start eating less and exercising more. Dr. Naryan went on to say that the odds are worse for black and Hispanic children, nearly half of them are likely to develop the disease.
The 33 percent lifetime risk is about triple the American Diabetes Association's current estimate.
Diabetes Statistics
Including undiagnosed cases, authorities believe about 17 million Americans, nearly 6 percent of the U.S. population, have diabetes today. If the CDC predictions are accurate, some 45 million to 50 million U.S. residents could have diabetes by 2050, said Dr. Kevin McKinney, director of the adult clinical endocrinological unit at the University of Texas Medical Center in Galveston. "There is no way that the medical community could keep up with that," he said.
And in fact, Dr. Narayan went on to say, "These estimates I am giving you now are probably quite conservative."
Jon's Commentary
The bottom line is that Type 2 diabetes is pretty much a self-inflicted disease. Unfortunately, the advice from the CDC indicating that all you need do to prevent it is "start eating less and exercising more" is woefully inadequate. Other significant factors in the onset of diabetes include:

• Regular consumption of hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oil can increase your risk of diabetes by 40% or more.
• Eating too many omega-6 fats relative to omega 3-fats can contribute significantly to your chances of getting diabetes. Increasing your consumption of omega-3 oils to correct that imbalance can play a key role in reversing the problem. Bottom line: eliminate bottled vegetable oils (other than olive oil) from your kitchen, and supplement with fresh cold-pressed flax seed oil or fish oil capsules.
• According to an article in the July 30, 1992 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, "Studies have suggested that bovine serum albumin is the milk protein responsible for the onset of diabetes... Patients with insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus produce antibodies to cow milk proteins that participate in the development of islet dysfunction... Taken as a whole, our findings suggest that an active response in patients with IDDM (to the bovine protein) is a feature of the autoimmune response." And according to Diabetes Care 1994; 17(12), more than 20 well-documented studies "have prompted one researcher to say the link between milk and juvenile diabetes is 'very solid'." Bottom line: as much as possible, eliminate dairy from your diet. Check out the Now Let's Talk About Dairy section in the April 7, 2003 newsletter.
• And it is certainly no secret that as refined grain and sugar consumption has increased in the United States, the incidence of diabetes and obesity has soared in lock-step. Health experts tell us that those who eat whole grains have a dramatically reduced chance of getting diabetes VS those who consume refined grains and sugars. What is less well know is that those who make whole grains and fresh fruit a significant part of their diet still have a higher incidence of diabetes than those who make carbohydrates a much smaller part of their diet. In the end, a diet of proteins, fresh vegetables (not counting potatoes), and natural fats (with minimal grain and sugar consumption) fare best.
• And then there's the colon. A Harvard's Nurses' Health Study reported that women with diabetes had nearly a 50% higher risk for colon cancer. Scientists suspect that higher insulin levels may be responsible for both. But natural healers have long proposed that correcting colon dysfunction reduces the rates of both. And in fact, anecdotal evidence with tens of thousands of people indicates very strongly that periodic colon detoxes reduce the incidence of both colon cancer and diabetes.
• And finally, liver dysfunction is directly tied to an increased risk of diabetes. Periodic liver detoxing can play a significant role in preventing and reversing diabetes.

In conclusion, Dr. Narayan, in his warning went on to say that globally, the World Health Organization has estimated that by 2025, the number of people with diabetes worldwide will more than double, from 140 million to 300 million. "They estimated that by 2025, there would be close to 60 million people with diabetes in India alone. That's about the size of Great Britain or France," Narayan said.
Bottom line: a self-inflicted epidemic like diabetes can never be controlled with "advances in medicine" -- only by fundamental changes in lifestyle. If you have not already done so, read Lessons from the Miracle Doctors and find out how to save both you and your children from being part of a worldwide catastrophe.

Learn how to Prevent Diabetes to Control Blood Sugar Levels

© 1999-2012 The Baseline of Health Foundation 

According to The World Health Organization, at least 171 million people worldwide have diabetes, and this figure is likely to more than double by 2030. Around 3.2 million deaths every year are attributable to complications of diabetes; that is six deaths every minute! Many do not realize that diabetes is largely a self-inflicted disease and can, therefore, be controlled naturally -- and in the case of Type II Diabetes, even be reversed. Below is a list of resources to help you understand the natural alternatives for regulating diabetes safely.

1. The Nature of Diabetes -- It's Echo Effect
Type 2 diabetes is not like any other disease. Most diseases such as cancer and MS are linear. In other words, you get the disease and it progresses in a straight line, from point A to point B. It may have regressions and remissions in which it backs up on its linear path for a bit, but then it picks up steam and once again proceeds on down the same track to its ultimate conclusion. Diabetes does not do that. Diabetes actually follows multiple, mutually reinforcing paths -- an echo effect if you will, with each echo reinforcing and amplifying all the other echoes, or "effects". This distinction is of vital importance because it mandates multiple points of intervention if you wish to reverse diabetes and not just slow its progression.
2. Natural Alternatives to Regulating Blood Sugar Metabolism
Once you begin to explore the world of herbs and supplements that relate to metabolizing blood sugar, you soon discover that there are literally dozens and dozens of them. The trick is in identifying which ones are most efficacious – and how they work in combination. If done correctly, these nutraceuticals don't just reinforce each other's benefits, they actually amplify them.
3. Diabetes Myths and other Fatal Mistakes
Forcing blood sugar levels down with medications does nothing to relieve the underlying diabetic condition. It merely suppresses just one of its manifestations. If you want to prevent and reverse diabetes, you have to reduce sugar intake, reduce insulin resistance, improve beta cell function in the pancreas, and protect and repair insulin/sugar damage to mission critical organs in the body. And you have to do all of these things all at once. Since diabetes is not a single straight-line progression disease, you need to stop every single "echo" simultaneously so that no aspect of the disease can reverberate and start the whole process moving downhill again. You need to stop it all or it will all start again.