Deaths Halt Diabetes Study

Deaths Halt Diabetes Study

The U.S. government abruptly halted aggressive treatment in a major study of diabetes and heart disease after a surprising number of deaths occurred among patients who pushed their blood sugar to very low levels. The 10,000-patient ACCORD was designed to investigate whether lowering blood sugar levels to below the current recommended target would help protect patients at high-risk of heart attack. However, the study was halted 18 months early, following 257 deaths among aggressively treated patients, compared to only 203 among diabetics given more standard care. Although aggressively treated patients were actually less likely to suffer heart attacks, any heart attacks they did suffer were more likely to be fatal. A close look at the multiple medications patients used, including the drug Avandia that is suspected of being a heart risk, showed no sign that any were to blame.

Dr. Mercola's Comments:

One concept that I strive to make well-known, which has the potential to save hundreds of thousands and even millions of lives, is that diabetes is not a disease of blood sugar. Rather, it is a disease of insulin – of insulin resistance -- and perhaps more importantly, of faulty leptin signaling. Until that concept becomes well-known in both the medical community and by the public at large, this misconception will continue to be promoted in studies such as the one above, revealing the inadequacy of current conventional medical treatment for chronic diseases such as diabetes, and their erroneous advice about nutrition. Typically, conventional treatment is focused on fixing a symptom, in this case elevated blood sugar, rather than the underlying disease. Symptoms are generally the way that nature has taught our bodies to deal with a disease – the real underlying biological or physiological problem. Similarly, treatments that concentrate merely on lowering blood sugar for diabetes while raising insulin levels, can actually worsen rather than remedy the actual problem of metabolic miscommunication. It just trades one evil for another...Read More...