Common drugs for type 2 diabetes and their side effects

SULFONYLUREAS:
 These drugs stimulate pancreas to release more insulin. They include chlorpropamide (Diabinase), tolazamide (Tolinase), glipizide (Glucotrol), tolbutamide (O

rinase), glimepiride (Amaryl) e.t.c Side Effects include weight gain, fluid retention, and a slightly increased risk of a cardiac event such as heart attack.
MEGLITINIDES: These drugs stimulate your beta cells to produce insulin, they include repaglinde (Prandin), nateglinide (Starlix), and mitiglinide. Side effects include diarrhea, headache, and a slightly increased risk of a cardiac event such as a heart attack.
BIGUANIDES; The only drug now available in this group is metformin (Glucophage). Although the mechanism of action is not fully understood, metformin probably works by making your cells more sensitive to impulime be reducing glucose production in your liver. Metformin doesn't cause weight gain or fluid retention. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea and a metallic taste in the mouth. People with heart failure or kidney disease should not take this drug.
THIAZOLIDINEDIONES: Also known as TZDs or glitazones, these include rosiglitazone (Avandia) and pioglitazone (Actos). These drugs improve your sensitivity to insulin. They are usually prescribed in combination with other diabetes drug. Side effects include weight gain, fluid retention, anemia, and liver problems. These drugs can be very risky for people with heart failure.
COMBINATION THERAPY; The combination of metformin and glyburide (Glucovance) is often used to increase insulin sensitivity and to help your pancreas release more insulin. Side effects include diarrhea and hypoglycemia
 INSULIN: If your diabetes has progressed and you can no longer produce much or any insulin, you may need to administer additional insulin. Insulin use is complex; miscalculated doses an lead to hypoglycemic episodes. Side effects: insulin usually causes weight gain.

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Fats and Diabetes

If you have rudimentary understanding of fats, you've probably picked up the standard take on the subject. That is, saturated fat is bad and mono and polyunsaturated fats are good. That popular oversimplification is very misleading. For one thing, all naturally occurring fats are actually mixtures of different kinds of fatty acids. The fat found in beef, for instance, contains a mixture of saturated and mono unsaturated fats, in fact, there's actually more unsaturated fat (whether from monos or polys) in beef than saturated. Beef fat is solid at room temperature, however, so it's misleadingly lumped into the saturated fat category.
The dietary advice comes down especially hard on saturated fats. That's because a diet high in saturated fats and cholesterol from animal foods is often linked with heart disease. But that link is tenuous at best. The much-touted connection between saturated fat and cholesterol in the diet and high cholesterol levels and heart disease is a lot less solid than you might think. Respected science writer Gary Taubes pointed this out in a watershed article published in the New york Times Magazine in July 2002,
entitled "What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?' One significant problem with most studies that claim saturated fats raises cholesterol levels is that they don't take into account carbohydrate consumption. Saturated fat can indeed raise blood cholesterol when it's eaten in the content of a high-carb diet. To date, in studies, saturated fat had little impact on cholesterol levels.
In these same studies, dietary fat had little or no effect on raising blood lipids. You should eat a balance of fats, fortunately, Mothers nature makes that easy for you. You may not know, for example, that in 3.5 ounce pork chop containing 22grams of fat, only 8 grams are saturated. Another 10 grams are monounsaturated fat and the rest are polyunsaturated fat. You don't have to worry about achieving a good balance fats if you simply eat a variety of protein foods and also consume olive oil, olives, avocados, and nuts.
If you've been diagnosed with the metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, or diabetes, your lipid levels and insulin/blood sugar levels aren't what they should be. But avoiding foods containing cholesterol and saturated fat isn't the answer, in fact, avoiding protein rich, fat rich foods in favor of carbohydrates could well make your health problems worse. What will help get your blood sugar under control and improve your blood lipids is balancing dietary fats.

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SPOT HIDDEN SUGAR IN FOOD PRODUCTS

Those with Diabetes, impaired insulin or blood sugar metabolism should always check the label of the food products they consume that claims to be low in sugar.
Think those cookies sweetened with concentrated fruit juice instead of white sugar is healthier for you? Think again. Sugar is sugar, wether it is called fructose, sucrose, glucose, or lactose. Ditto for words like syrup or concentrate. Those who plan on losing weight should bear it in mind that every teaspoon of sugar contains 4 grams of carbohydrate and has a glycemic index rating of 100. That means the sugar you consume, especially when it is in liquid form such as soda pop, turns into sugar in your blood stream almost as soon as you swallow it.
Beware of words like no sugar added or contains only natural sugar. Always check the label, the product may still contain a lot of carbs in form of some sort of natural sugar that can upset your insulin/blood sugar levels and start the roller coaster again.
Food manufacturers have a lot of different ways to sneak sugar into their products under another name. If you spot any of these words on the ingredients list, the product contains added sugar.
Look for these in the food product ingredients:

Brown sugar                               Honey                    
Brown sugar                               Invert sugar
Cane juice                                  Lactose
Corn sweetener                          Levulose
Corn syrup                                 Malt
Corn syrup solid                         Maltose
crystallized cane juice                Malt syrup
Dextrose                                    Maple sugar
Evaporated cane juice                Molasses
Fructose                                    Rapadura
Fruit juice concentrate              Raw sugar
Fruit syrups                              Rice syrup
Galactose                                  Sucrose (table sugar)
Glucose                                     Sweetened carob powder
Glucose derived syrup               Treacle
Golden syrup                             Turbinado
High fructose corn syrup

No matter what it's called added sugar is not acceptable for diabetic patients and those who wants to maintain their blood sugar level.

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TYPE 2 DIABETES AND YOUR CHILD

One of the distressing things about 

Type 2 diabetes

 in young people is that it so quickly leads to serious complications, even more so than Type 1. Because of this, it is essential that we recognize the warning signs leading to diabetes at the earliest stage possible and intervene swiftly.
One recent Swedish study of kidney disease in young people with diabetes was especially chilling. The study looked at 469 people who were diagnosed with diabetes between the ages of 15 and 34. Of the group, most had Type 1; only 43 had Type 2. Over a nine-year period, 5.6 percent of the people with Type 2 diabetes developed kidney disease.
Another study of the same group of patients showed a similar situation with diabetic retinopathy (an eye disease that can lead to blindness). Fifteen Percent of the people with

Type 2 diabetes

had severe retinopathy,while only five percent of the people with Type 1 had retinopathy, and most of those with Type 1 had a milder form.
Both these studies show how dire the consequences of Type 2 diabetes are when it occurs in young people. In most cases of chronic disease, being young provides some protection. Overall, in cases of early-onset Type 2 diabetes, this protection is simply lost. Compared with people who developed diabetes in later middle age, young people with diabetes are 80 percent more likely to end up needing insulin.
The risk of a heart attack is also much higher. Older adults with diabetes have just under four times the risk of having a heart attack as someone their age without diabetes; young people with diabetes have 14 times the risk of having a heart attack as someone their age without diabetes.
The complications don't stop there. A long-term follow-up study of First Nations (native Canadians) children looked at a group of 51 patients who were diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes in 1986; at the time, all were under age 17.
When they were contacted 15 years later, two had died while on kidney dialysis, three were currently on dialysis (one of them had become blind), and another had had a toe amputation. Of 56 pregnancies among the patients, only 35 resulted in live births.
Kids with Type 2 diabetes often end up taking the sorts of medications we usually associate with older adults. It's not uncommon to find 15-year-olds taking metformin (Glucophage) for their blood sugar, along with one or more drugs for high blood pressure and a statin drug for high cholesterol. Diet, exercise  and supplements (if needed) may preclude the use of medications. Life style changes are always a better approach.

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EXERCISE AND YOUR BLOOD SUGAR

Researchers have known for decades that exercise helps to improve insulin resistance by making your muscles more responsive to the effects of insulin. So, if you have signs of the metabolic syndrome, pre-diabetes, or diabetes, your primary motivation for exercising is crystal clear. But exactly how much improvement can you expect? In an attempt to answer that question, researchers recently conducted a meta analysis of clinical trials on the effect of exercise in patients with Type 2 diabetes, They looked at the results of 14 different studies using moderate exercise alone, the patients in the study didn't take any drugs to treat diabetes and they didn't change their way of eating  The result? Not a lot weight loss, but significant improvement in blood sugar control as measured by the glycated hemoglobin (AIC) test. In fact, the improvement was enough to make a dent in the risk of diabetic complications. And that was just with exercise alone! Just imagine what can happen when combined with diet control.

OTHER REASONS TO EXERCISE

1. To build and tone muscle
2. To improve insulin sensitivity
3. To help maintain weight loss with a more liberal food plan
4. To help prevent diabetes if you don't have it
5. To help lower blood pressure
6. To help improve blood lipids and clotting factors
7. To help maintain balance and joint support to prevent falls
8. To maintain bone density
9. To improve energy levels, mood, and ability to deal with stress
10. To improve cardiovascular fitness and longevity.
11. To avoid obesity
THE RIGHT PROGRAM FOR YOU
Almost everyone can find an exercise plan that is safe and achievable but I strongly advise you to consult your doctor before you begin. If you have been completely inactive or have a heart condition, it is absolutely essential to do this. You may need a stress test to check if you can exercise safely. These tests are usually easy to do, so don't hesitate to ask for one. You may be asked to exercise by walking on a treadmill or riding a stationary bike while hooked up to a heart monitor. Some times a doctor may also use a medication or a sound wave test to provide additional information about your heart function while exercising. It is necessary to consult your doctor before engaging in any exercise especially if you have been inactive or have a heart condition. If you are physically sound you can engage in exercise that improves cardiovascular fitness (aerobic) which includes; running, jogging, brisk walking, bicycling, in-line skating, weight lifting, push-ups, and swimming.

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CONSEQUENCES OF CHILDHOOD OBESITY

Children who weigh too much get a head start on chronic diseases that ordinarily only develop much later in life. To take just one example, up to 20 percent of obese kids have hypertension.
A recent estimate based on NHANES 111 data says that among all kids ages 12 to  19, about 4.2 percent already have metabolic syndrome. And among overweight adolescents, a staggering 28.7 percent already have it. That means that about 910,000 American teens are already at risk of heart disease,diabetes, and premature death.

The problem is even more severe in minority communities. In Nigeria obesity is more common with kids from wealthy families. Among overweight Latino children, nine out of ten have at least one risk of heart disease and Type 2 diabetes,and three out three out of ten have three or more risk factors for the metabolic syndrome.

Impaired glucose tolerance is now common among obese kids. In one study at Yale university, 25 percent of obese children ages 4 to 10 were glucose intolerant; 21 percent of obese teens were glucose intolerant. And in the course of the study, the researchers found that 4 percent of the teens already had diabetes and didn't know it.

Heart disease and diabetes aren't the only health problems overweight youth face, they are most likely to suffer from asthma due to the increase in inflammatory chemicals caused by elevated levels of insulin. They also often end up having bone and joint problems for the same reasons. Overweight girls tend to reach puberty and begin menstruating at a younger age. This means that they stop growing sooner than other girls and end up as short, overweight adults. They're also likely to suffer from poly-cystic ovary syndrome (PCOS). The underlying metabolic imbalance, combined with a probable genetic component that causes PCOS, makes these girls much more likely to become diabetic as they get older.

Children's mental health can suffer as much as their physical health.

Obese kids are greater at risk for emotional problems and low self-esteem,

and can become isolated and depressed, especially if they're teased about their weight. The flip side of this is that behavioral problems, such as being hyperactive or depressed, can lead to obesity. A study in 2003 showed that normal-weight kids diagnosed with behavioral problem were five times more likely to become overweight over the next two years than youngsters without a problem. Why do these children gain weight? Late Dr Atkins believed it's because they're "medicating" themselves with high-carb (carbohydrate) foods as a way to deal with stress and unhappiness, yet the very foods they use to comfort themselves only make the problems worse. And, according to a recent study, severely obese children (and their parents) rated their obesity as affecting their quality of life to the same extent as that experienced by children going through chemotherapy.

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TYPE 1 AND TYPE 2 DIABETES

Type 1 diabetes, sometimes called juvenile diabetes is a condition whereby blood sugar levels are above the normal range, this happens when the body is no longer producing the hormone insulin, which carries glucose into your cells where it can be converted into energy. In type 1 diabetes, the cells of the pancreas stops producing the hormone insulin, which is necessary for moving glucose into the cells, where it is burned for energy.

Type 1 diabetes
sometimes starts in childhood,

people with this form of diabetes require lifelong insulin administration and careful dietary management to survive. Recently, it has been reported that stem-cell transplants have been successful in curing this disease. Type 1 diabetes accounts for about 5 to 10 percent of all cases of diabetes. The cause of this disease is in most cases an autoimmune disease in which the body mistakenly attacks and destroys the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. Type 1 diabetes usually strikes very suddenly-the person may appear fine one day and be sick the next day.
95% of the people with diabetes have type 2, a disease quite different from type 1. In the cases of the type 2 diabetes, the individual still makes insulin, in fact, he or she may have a huge amount of it-but the cells respond more slowly to its presence. This slowed response is called insulin
resistance.
Type 2 diabetes was primarily a problem for older adults. It was very rare for children and people in their twenties or even thirties to have type 2 diabetes,today even children being diagnosed with this disease. The major cause of this recent development are obesity, a sedentary lifestyle and a high carbohydrate diet.Kids with this disease are more likely also to have a family history of the disease. Dr Robert Atkins in his book "ATKINS DIABETES REVOLUTION" discussed how type 1 and type 2 diabetes can be prevented and treated through diet and lifestyle changes.

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DIET FOR DIABETIC PATIENTS

In the light of the foregoing facts, the diabetic, and for for that matter everyone else, should adopt a diet that will bring him to his ideal weight and hold him there. It should be a diet that also contains all the essential elements in proper proportions for health. In many of our homes there is far too much use of fried foods, butter, margarine, sugar and polished rice. The use of fats should be definitely restricted, as should also the use of sugar, and this includes honey.
Saturated fats are now known to contribute to hardening of the arteries and since diabetes also contributes to the same, it is doubly important that they should not be used by a diabetic patient. Saturated fats come from animal sources and unsaturated fats from vegetable sources. Even the latter should be used cautiously, for they may also contribute to increase of weight. It is customary in some places to serve very sweet drinks. Some even mix sugar with milk. This is a bad combination and should be avoided.
The amount of protein needed in the body was once estimated to be about 120 grammes a day but now half of that quantity is considered adequate. Recent investigations have shown that it is very possible to get adequate protein if a variety of vegetarian foods is eaten. Such a diet, supplemented with milk, assures one, of good nutrition. It provides the further advantage of eliminating or greatly reducing the intake of animal fat. A recent study of vegetarians in California revealed that vegetarians suffered less coronary disease than non-vegetarians, and heart attacks among them.
Canned fruit or fresh fruit makes a good dessert for the diabetic. The canned fruit should be the kind to put up without sugar, and if sweetening is necessary one can use sucaryl(Abbott). Unfortunately most desserts are high in fats and carbohydrates, so one must be careful about them. It will be better for us to do away from desiring very sweet foods and juices. Sugar should never be added to milk even for non-diabetic.
Suggestive diets are not mathematically accurate. No one can nor should measure everything he eats with the accuracy of a chemist. One should. However, educate himself to know the amount of food he can take and then test periodically to see if he is "spilling" sugar.
If after cutting down down a seasonale amount one still has excess sugar in the urine, he should see his physician to make an adjustment. The amount of food eaten should be enough to satisfy one and cause him to reach and maintain his health.
From all indication, the best diet for a diabetic patient is a vegetarian diet.

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IS DIABETES HEREDITARY?

The actual cause of diabetes is unknown, but herdity is one of the main factors contributing to it's development in the body. The only thing you can do about heredity is to pick out a different grandmother and grandfather, obviously, that is fraught with great difficulty.
Diabetes is transmitted as a recessive characteristic. That is, it tends to disappear from the family tree if non-diabetic blood is introduced. The incidence of diabetes can be expected from the following indicated marriages:
union of two diabetics: All offspring will eventually develop diabetes if they live long enough.
union of a diabetic with non-diabetic from a diabetic family: One half of the offspring will develop diabetes.
Union of two non-diabetic from diabetic families: One fourth of the offspring will develop diabetes..
Union of diabetic with a non-diabetic from a non-diabetic family: None of the offspring should develop diabetes.
It is to be noted that occasionally diabetes will appear in families where no diabetes has been previously known.
In view of the above facts it well to inform people of the possibilities of heredity in this disease.
The actual cause of diabetes is unknown, but heredity and obesity are two main factors contributing to the development of diabetes in the body. The only thing you can do about heredity is to pick out a different grandmother and grandfather! Obviously., that is fraught with great difficulty, so you may be stopped on this one. But when it comes to obesity there is something you can do.
An important observation in connection with exercise has been made. Those who do not get exercise in their work usually are the ones who have diabetes. They sit around and put on weight. Every diabetic and non-diabetic should get daily.

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ALL YOU HAVE TO KNOW ABOUT DIABETES

Diabetes is a disorder in which the pancreas does not produce enough insulin for the body's needs. Contrary to what some may have believed about diabetes, it is not a condition in which the kidneys are diseased. The pancreas is a fairly large gland located behind the stomach. When it does not produce enough insulin, all the sugar in the blood is not utilized and thus it begins to build up an over supply which the kidneys have to throw off as excess.

Some symptoms that may cause one to suspect diabetes are passage of large amounts of urine, increased thirst, excessive appetite and loss of weight and strength. Others are itching of the skin, infections that do not heal, disturbances of vision, numbness and tingling and neuritic pain, especially in the legs.
PRECAUTIONS:
The patient should be extremely careful not to injure his feet. He should wear shoes or sandals and be careful not to trim the toe-nails too close or injure the skin while trimming them. While there are exceptions, most diabetics have decreased resistance to infection. For this reason their wounds or bruises should be well treated and covered. Under no circumstances should the patient allow anyone to talk him out of taking his medicine or adhering to his special people. He must report regularly to his doctor regularly for check ups.
TREATMENT:
If tests confirm the presence of diabetic condition, treatment with injections of insulin is indicated. These make up for the deficiency of this protein pancreatic hormones in the body.
We must emphasize that diabetes cannot be cured. That is, we have no way of causing the pancreas to secrete more insulin. The treatment indicated above merely controls the condition for the day. For this reason a person taking insulin should plan on taking it as long as he lives. To the new diabetic this may sound discouraging but after one has taken it for a time it becomes the least of his worries. All you have to do is take the above precautions and don't hesitate to call your doctor when you notice some changes in your body.

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