This one’s from the ever handy quack brigade that is Dr. Brownstein’s fans.
As ever? If you are diabetic then follow your medical dosage and check ups regularly. Not anything people like this say. Dr. Brownstein’s advice is deadly and wrong.
If there are American Colleges giving Brownstein accreditation and awards (his Websites claim he has) then sort yourselves out! This is an embarassment. This is a shocking lack of understanding of the topic that foreign doctors who often train with far less equipment are capable of understanding. This man is not even up to scratch at the level of Step 1 USMLE let alone the finished product and has no rational reason to be practising.
Why do Type 2 (adult-onset) diabetics have high blood sugar? Is it because they are lacking a prescription drug that lowers blood sugar levels? Of course not. Diabetics have elevated blood sugars because they have hormonal and nutritional imbalances often caused by eating an unhealthy diet. The conventional treatment for diabetes revolves around giving poor dietary advice–eat low-fat foods with lots of carbohydrates and use toxic artificial sweeteners– and the use of prescription medications that do not treat the underlying cause of diabetes.
Any doctor would know that Type II diabetes is otherwise called insulin resistant diabetes.
The receptor for insulin is being destroyed so the patient has sufficient insulin but insufficient end stage receptors that it can act on to take up glucose. There is a “third” type of diabetes called Diabetes Insipidus called by pitutary damage but that’s clearly not being preyed on here.
So what ensues is a horrendous piece of half-truths provided to get people to stop using real medicine and instead adopt the quackery. This has deadly effects.
You may not realise this but a fair amount of my patients are diabetic. Type II is pretty common in India and uncontrolled can lead to all sorts of problems. Most commonly?
They come in with cataracts, sudden weight loss and worst of all?
Diabetic Foot. Many of them require amputations.
See he leaves Type I diabetics alone because Type I without insulin is a rapid and clear deterioration of state which Insulin rapidly restores. Hard to push quackery there.
The issue with diabetics on medication is that it causes hypoglycaemia. So you need slow release carbohydrates. Complex carbs in other words to fuel your body. And as any first year medical student can tell you the aetiology of diabetic atherosclerosis which is exacerbated by high cholesterol diets.
In fact you are advised to take reasonable amounts of complex carbohydrates, low fat and high protein diets. And indeed it isn’t a hard diet to adhere to. See the thing to avoid is simple sugars which are released rapidly and cause spikes in your blood sugar causing hyperglycaemia. Hence the use of sweeteners.
You can reduce the burden of type II diabetes by reducing weight and maintaining a diet but in some cases the number of receptors falls below a threshold where you would require medication to keep them open and sensitise them.
Now if Dr. Brownstein can regrow insulin receptors? Why he would not be shilling on the Internet.
A recent article titled, “14-Year Risk of All-Cause Mortality According to Hypoglycemic Drug Exposure in a General Population” assessed the safety data of diabetic drugs over a 14-year time period. (1) The authors studied 3336 participants and 248 deaths over a 14-year time period.
The scientists compared the all-cause mortality risk in non-diabetic versus diabetic subjects. The found that untreated diabetics had a 222% increase risk of all-cause mortality. Diabetics treated with Metformin had 128% increase risk of death. Diabetics treated with sulfonylureas (e.g., Glyburide, Amaryl, Glucotrol, Glynase, DiaBeta) had a 70% increase in all-cause mortality. Diabetics treated with insulin had 329% increase in all-cause mortality.
There is no link to this paper and a google nets me nothing.
However? It makes sense. Diabetes increases co-morbidity and you are comparing fucking diabetics to non-diabetics rather than diabetics to untreated diabetics.
So I cannot analyse anything from the original paper but I can look at his own research.
1. He doesn’t mention diabetic/non-diabetic cohort
2. He has no baseline mortality for diabetics and is instead comparing diabetics with treatment to non-diabetics and suggesting you stop treatment because you don’t get equal results to the non-diabetic health group.
3. There is no age cohorts. Type II diabetics is a disease that affects you after 45 and logically speaking if we compare non diabetics as a whole to a bunch of 45 year olds a lot more 45 year olds would die. It is literally comparing one population of young people to another of older ones. Well 50 year olds have a much higher 15 year mortality rate than 10 year olds. Must be 18+ movies killing them.
4. This doesn’t compare non-treated diabetics to treated diabetes or pre-medication mortality. In addition there is not one analysis of glycated haemoglobin which shows glucose control over a period of 3 months and is an indicator of how well a patient has stuck to his medication and diet.
5. None of these drugs are given by themselves so there is overlap in mortality. Basically? Since Metformin is given to nearly all Type II diabetics, the fatality rate would be higher since the fatalities from poorly controlled diabetes would be added to it.
See that’s the thing. Brownstein is portraying “Being Treated with Medication as the Cause” not “Patient has diabetes and these are the mortality issues”.
Folks, these numbers should not be shocking. Conventional medicine has been focused on chemically lowering blood sugar numbers for many years. However, the elevated blood sugar numbers are not the problem in diabetes. They are the symptom that something is wrong in the body. Another way to look at elevated blood sugar is that it is the “idiot light” telling you that something is wrong in the body.
They aren’t shocking. The only reason they are shocking is that you have not linked to the actual article. I shall assume it’s error that drove your hand rather than the more insidious plan to avoid getting your arguments broken by real medics.
This is a bold theory. Blood Sugar Values Do Not Matter – Dr. Brownstein.
The following symptoms may be associated with acute or chronic hyperglycemia, with the first three composing the classic hyperglycemic triad:
- Polyphagia - frequent hunger, especially pronounced hunger
- Polydipsia - frequent thirst, especially excessive thirst
- Polyuria - increased volume of urination
- Blurred vision – Due to Macular Oedema or Cataract
- Fatigue – High Blood Sugar, Low Available Sugar
- Weight loss – Due to fat metabolism due to no available sugr
- Poor wound healing – Again see above, plus infections
- Dry mouth – Osmotic
- Dry or itchy skin – Osmotic
- Tingling in feet or heels – Neuropathy
- Erectile dysfunction – Neural
- Recurrent infections, external ear infections (swimmer’s ear) – Sugar is a growth medium so encourages bacterial growth.
- Cardiac arrhythmia
- Stupor
- Coma
- Seizures
But Brownstein thinks otherwise. A simple dose of insulin reverts this to normal.
This saves lives.
I am not saying that a type 1 diabetic does not need insulin; of course they do. Type 1 diabetics do not produce enough insulin. However, adult –onset diabetes, which is much more common, is generally not caused by a lack of insulin production. It is caused by eating a poor diet lacking basic nutritional items and containing too much refined sugar. This throws off the body’s ability to maintain adequate blood sugar control and the serum blood sugar rises. What is the solution? Eat a better diet, free of refined food and avoid all refined sugar. Eliminating all grains help. Correcting nutritional and hormonal imbalances further improves the condition. And, exercise also improves the diabetic condition.
This is frankly bollocks. What occurs here can lead to DKA. Diabetic Keto-Acidosis.
This is frankly abominable advice. To anyone who is interested? Type II diabetes is treated by a flow chart.
You start off with dietary control and see if the patient achieves glucose control with that. If not? You start with Metformin. If control cannot be achieved you get a Sulfonylurea and if those two don’t work together a Glitazone. There are other supportive drugs that do different things for individuals with Diabetes Type II. If all fails insulin therapy may work.
None of these will grow back the receptors that are destroyed. But they can make the receptors that you do have work better. Not taking these will result in poor blood sugar control.
The fact that Dr. Brownstein does not find blood sugar to be an important factor in Diabetes, a disease CHARACTERISED by poor sugar homeostasis. What Dr. Brownstein suggests will precipitate more hyperglycaemic instances and while diabetes is often silent it’s end stage effects are often noticed. Brownstein preys on you now, your later death is all on you. You won’t put two and two together and even if you do? He probably has disclaimers protecting him from medical liability for such idiotic advice.
It is sad that conventional medicine spends so much money on using ineffective drugs that do not treat the underlying cause of the problem. Diabetes is just another example of conventional medicine not addressing the underlying cause of illness.
Instead we should not take any medicine. That will teach conventional medicine.
There are enough of my patients who fall for these quacks who come in and have to be told the news.
That we have to amputate legs because of the arrogance of quacks.
Dr. Brownstein is just a witch doctor who bought himself a white coat and a stethoscope to flog nonsense.