Many times throughout the course of my day I will have to tell someone that they are headed for diabetes.  Doctors use all kinds of terms for this:  Pre-Diabetes, Glucose Intolerance, Insulin Resistance, or Borderline Diabetic.  In essence, they all mean the same thing. This is very difficult to tell my patients.  I know that this will strike fear in their minds.  Most of the time, there is a fear of losing control of their health or control of their life.  Many of my patients will feel hopeless and worried. There is a concern of long term medications for the treatment of hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, or eye disease.  Families worry about the health of their loved one. The cycle continues.

I think most patients have some family member that has had diabetes.  We all have the genetic predisposition to a certain degree. If you have been reading my Daily Dose for a few weeks, you have undoubtedly read about the typical diet that we as Americans eat.  I have discussed the link between carbohydrate use and abuse with elevated insulin.  Remember, it is the Standard American Diet, or S.A.D.

I want to introduce you to a new term that is being utilized in cutting edge medicine. That term is Diabesity.  This is the condition of metabolic imbalance and disease that ranges from very mild to super severe.  Diabetes that is insulin dependent is the end result.  I have enclosed a chart that was created in a study by world famous diabetic endocrinologist Dr. Barbara A. Ramlo-Halsted.  If you study this chart you will see that the fasting blood sugar elevation, that is the typical diagnostic criteria of diabetes, elevates much later in the natural progression of diabetes.  As you can see, the Endogenous Insulin, or the body's natural production of insulin, elevates much quicker than the fasting blood sugar.  Most of my patients in the weight loss and the hormone practice will get blood test to measure these numbers. It is very rare to find a patient that is obese that has a normal insulin. It is this problem that leads to the "inability" to fight obesity alone.  There is a primitive need for the body to protect itself. It is very efficient at self preservation.  The first thing that has to be done is to decrease the endogenous insulin level. 

There was a landmark study that was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.  The name of the study is the ACCORD study.  This study was very instrumental in outlining why conventional therapies of diabetes do not work.  In this study, there were two groups of patients. One group had aggressive control and lowering of their blood sugars. The other group had less aggressive regulation of their blood sugar.  To the researchers surprise, there were more deaths in the tightly controlled group of patients.  This study was actually stopped after three years because it became obvious that there were more deaths from the aggressive treatment of the disease.

These facts were surprising to most endocrinologists.  However, to the functional medicine providers for which I belong, it was not a big surprise at all!  You must read tomorrow's Daily Dose to know why!  Remember, if you want to do something about your weight, you have the choice. You are in control, you just might need some help.

To Your Health,

Dr. Michelle Haendiges