Why High Blood Sugar Is Not The Problem The current treatment approach for type 2 diabetes is based on the blood glucose paradigm. Under this paradigm, most of the toxicity of T2D is due to the high blood sugar (hyperglycemia). Therefore, it follows that lowering blood glucose will ameliorate the complications even though we are not directly treating the T2D itself (high insulin resistance). The ACCORD study was a test of this glucotoxicity paradigm, and unfortunately, a complete and abject failure. Patients were randomized to tight blood glucose control versus usual control, with the expectation that tight control would show tremendous benefits. Instead, the trial found none. Certainly, at very high blood sugars there is harm to the body. But at the moderate levels of blood sugar seen in controlled type 2 diabetes, there is no benefit to further lowering. If you lower the blood glucose with medications such as insulin, there is no benefit. So clearly, the damage to the body does not result from glucotoxicity alone. The problem is that insulin itself in high doses can be toxic. By 2016, a meta-analysis of all studies proved conclusively the futility of the blood glucose paradigm. Whether you are looking at overall deaths, heart attacks, or strokes, tight blood glucose lowering had no benefits at all. However, these failures were not enough to convince diabetic associations to embrace new treatment paradigms. They were set in their ‘glucose or bust’ mindset and nothing could change their minds. So they refused to change their treatment strategies despite proof that these were complete failures. So how do you treat the high blood sugars AND the high insulin levels, at the same time? That requires two things: put fewer carbs into your body, and burn more off. Put most simply, it requires a low-carb diet and intermittent fasting. See the full detail with references at http://ift.tt/2dvWLLQ #diabetes #bloodsugar
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