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Can You Afford Your Meds?
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By Kalia Doner
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Diabetes Focus Fall 2009
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Are you one of the millions of people with diabetes who are cutting down on vital oral and injected medications because of the expense? A couple of years ago, a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine looked at more than 11,500 diabetes patients and found 21 percent did not take their blood pressure–lowering, cholesterol-lowering or blood glucose–lowering pills regularly. The result was they had higher blood pressure, LDL cholesterol and A1C levels (a measure of blood glucose over time).
Now, with the economic downturn, Steven Edelman, M.D., a University of California, San Diego, endocrinologist and founder of Taking Control of Your Diabetes, reports that in the southern California clinic he runs with his medical students, “a third to a half of these people haven’t been taking their meds at all.” And the Associated Press found that across the United States, emergency rooms are seeing ever more people with diabetes who are off their medications. In fact, many of the folks turn up with blood sugar so high they are hospitalized for days. So, if you think you can get away with taking half your medications or testing less frequently, you’re wrong—maybe even dead wrong. The same Archives study found people who did not adhere to their drug regimens had a 58 percent greater chance of ending up in the hospital and an 81 percent greater chance of dying than those who did adhere.
If you have trouble paying for your medications, the experts suggest that you take the following steps: Talk with your doctor; ask for samples; discuss using generic substitutes; and contact the pharmaceutical companies that make your prescribed drugs—many offer financial breaks or assistance to folks who need them.
If you are obese and suffer from insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes, you may be fueling your health problems by eating too much meat protein along with a high-fat diet. Researchers have found that in an obese body, eating certain kinds of protein (think red meat) along with a lot of fat can lead to insulin resistance. The key to increasing insulin sensitivity is to reduce fat intake and limit protein intake to what is needed to maintain a healthy weight.
Newly diagnosed with type 1 diabetes? Getting an infusion of your own stem cells may trick your body so that healthy levels of insulin production are sustained for two to three years—or longer.
This controversy-free procedure (at least as far as stem calls are concerned) is still a long way from being used in the U.S., but the results of a study of the procedure, conducted by researchers from Brazil’s School of Medicine of Ribeirão Preto and the Division of Immunotherapy at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago are impressive.
Nicotine in cigarette smoke stimulates insulin resistance and abnormal glucose tolerance.
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Let’s get this straight: Antioxidants are good for you—except when they are not. Seems these powerful destroyers of free radicals (the body’s own rust-makers) can—if taken as vitamin E and C supplements—undo the insulin- and glucose-regulating benefits of exercise. If this seems confusing, grab a carrot and a slice of avocado (good food sources of antioxidants, which you should keep eating) and see if you can digest this explanation: “Exercise causes repeated boosts of free radicals,” says researcher Michael Ristow, M.D., a professor in the department for human nutrition at the Institute of Nutrition at Germany’s University of Jena, “which, according to our study results, induce a health-promoting adaptive response in humans.” How does that happen? Short-term doses of free radicals may act like a vaccine to protect the body from chronic stress. Apparently, the body activates a defense system against the free radicals; it metabolizes carbohydrates more efficiently and diminishes the negative effects of stress. If you block the free radicals, you block these benefits of exercise.
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