Tag : diabetes : Page 2

We human beings seem to like to label things – the simpler, the better! This urge to put everything into simple categories definitely applies to drugs and supplements – we like to think that Drug A always has one particular effect, and Supplement B has a different one. Just take this pill or use this crème and, voila, you always get one simple outcome.

That may be tidy, but it’s seldom accurate. In the real world, the drugs and supplements we take usually refuse to cooperate with this fantasy. Instead, one compound can have many effects – and many compounds can have similar effects. Often none of these interactions seem to correlate very well to the labels we put on them.

Since I stopped practicing general family medicine and started dedicating myself exclusively to aging issues, there is one disease process that comes up again and again.  It’s the one on which I probably spend the lion’s share of my time as a clinical physician. That process is adult-onset, or Type II, diabetes. No mistake about it, it’s a killer and in America’s adult population, it’s a full blown epidemic. 

People worry a great deal about cancer, but your chances of getting cancer pale beside the one-in-three shot you have of developing diabetes before you die. People tend to overlook diabetes since the disease has been manageable for decades. But managed or not, over the long term it will still ravage your heart, eyes, and circulatory system. 

The thing that’s so crazy about diabetes is that we still have a tendency to view and treat adult-onset diabetes as a purely genetic disorder. The truth is, however, diabetes is like heart disease