Natural Treatment for Diabetes (Type 2)

Natural treatment for diabetes mellitus focuses on addressing the causes of diabetes and offers safe, non-toxic and effective ways to keep your blood sugar under control and reduce the need for medication. In fact, appropriate lifestyle and diet have been shown in several studies to be more effective than drug therapy. If you suffer from type 2 diabetes, there is hope. Targeted lifestyle changes, the appropriate diet and nutritional supplementation can help you live a life free of complications.

What is Type 2 Diabetes? Symptoms and Diagnosis

Type II diabetes, also called non-insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM) or adult-onset diabetes, is a chronic disease affecting millions of Americans. This disease is characterized by high levels of blood sugar or glucose. While a certain level of sugar in the blood is essential for life, abnormally high levels can damage tissues in many parts of your body, making diabetics at a greatly increased risk for things like heart attacks and strokes, kidney damage and failure, nerve damage (neuropathy), and eye problems (retinopathy).

Normally, your body controls the levels of blood sugar by secreting a hormone called insulin from your pancreas. Insulin tells your cells to take sugar out of the blood and use it or store it, thus keeping blood glucose at a normal level. There are two kinds of diabetes mellitus. In type 1 diabetes - also known as insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (IDDM) or juvenile diabetes - the pancreas doesn't make enough of this hormone. In type 2 diabetes, the cells don't respond to the insulin despite the fact that insulin levels may be very high. The old distinction of type I as juvenile diabetes and type II as adult-onset has fallen out of favor as greater numbers of American children are diagnosed with type II diabetes.

Symptoms of diabetes include excessive thirst, excessive hunger, frequent urination, fatigue, blurred vision, frequent infections and poor wound healing. The most common test used to diagnose diabetes is a blood test for glucose levels. This test is usually done fasting (meaning you haven't eaten for at least 10 hours) and needs to be repeated at least twice to confirm the diagnosis. After someone is diagnosed with diabetes, doctors may order another test, called glycosylated hemoglobin A1C (usually A1C for short), to measure the long-term effectiveness of therapy.

Conventional medical care for type 2 diabetes focuses on pharmaceutical interventions with may include drugs like metformin, sulfonylureas like glyburide or glipizide, and eventually even insulin shots to try to control blood sugar levels. Unfortunately, these drugs do carry a significant risk of side effects and do not address the core causes of diabetes mellitus.

Type 2 Diabetes: Treatment with Holistic Medicine and Natural Remedies

Perhaps more than any other common life-threatening disease, type 2 diabetes is a disease of lifestyle. In ancient China, diabetes was known as the "Emperor's disease", because only the nobility developed this problem. Today the lifestyle of an average American citizen rivals that of an emperor in ancient China, putting us all at risk for developing this condition. To understand how the way we live contributes to increased blood sugar, we need to look at the basic ways in which blood sugar gets raised.

In short, these can be simplified as:

1. Eating too much sugar
2. Making too much sugar
3. Not using enough sugar

The first point is perhaps best known. Most diabetics know that eating sugar raises blood sugar. What is perhaps less well-understood is that foods that aren't necessarily sweet may turn into blood sugar quite quickly while the sugar in certain sweet foods may be absorbed very slowly. Factors that influence how certain foods effect blood sugar include the amounts of fiber in a food, its protein and fat content, the degree of processing and refinement. Although avoiding sweet things is certainly very important, to achieve better control over blood sugar it is important to take a more sophisticated approach to what and how much we eat.

The second point is often less understood. Your body, and most significantly your liver, makes sugar from energy it has stored up and releases this into your blood stream. Why does it do that? In response to stress, your liver releases sugar. This is designed to help you, if you needed to fight an enemy or run from a predator, a quick shot of sugar will give your muscles the energy they need to prevail. In modern times, stressful situations generally do not require a physical response so that sugar, though released into your bloodstream, is not quickly used up and contributes to a higher blood glucose.

The third contributing factor to elevated blood sugar is not using enough sugar. In type 2 diabetes, the body's cells do not take up sugar the way they are supposed to in response to the hormone insulin. This has been termed "insulin resistance" or a lack of "glucose sensitivity". The cells have more sugar than they need and resist absorbing more, pharmaceutical drugs are essentially focused on forcing more sugar into the cells, which is counterproductive in the long run. A better choice is to use that excess energy and the best way to accomplish that is through exercise. It should not be surprising that the major risk factor for developing diabetes is obesity. Obesity and diabetes go hand in hand, and exercise is a primary therapy for both.

Like the ancient Chinese emperors, the average American has an abundance of food, is stressed out and doesn't get much exercise. An effective natural treatment for diabetes focuses on addressing these three issues while also taking specific steps to avoid and resolve complications and improve and optimize nutritional status.

In addition to lifestyle and diet, certain nutritional supplements and many herbs have been shown to help your body use sugar and insulin more efficiently. These are also important for the holistic treatment for diabetes.

If you are suffering from type II diabetes and would like to get better, make an appointment today. If you do not live in the New York City tri-state area, but are still interested in alternative medicine for diabetes, phone consultations are available. Please call 917-267-WELL or email  This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .