Allies Voice: Preventing Diabetes Complications with Nature
Straight from the horses mouth - the research presented at the JDRF conference discussed the Medalist Study from the Joslin Diabetes Center in Boston. Apparently individuals with established type 1 diabetes (even those who have lived with it for 50 years or more) are still capable of producing insulin. The Joslin Study also found that even after 50 years about 30% of the patients studied didn't experience common complications such as eye, kidney or nerve disease often seen nowadays. Here's the fact-based evidence that helped these people avoid complications - starring "Mother Nature".
What is conveniently neglected in this JDRF presentationis the fact that insulin production MEANS C-peptide production. C-peptide is critically important in preventing and reversing long-term complications from Type 1 diabetes. FACT: people without diabetes have high blood glucose, too. However their beta cells produce insulin and C-peptide in equal amounts to prevent the damage from glucose fluctuations caused to the cells of their eyes, kidneys, and peripheral nerves. C-peptide also helps keep the inflammation markers low - preventing risk of heart and stroke related complications. C-peptide facilitates glucose clearance and causes red blood cells to release adenosine triphosphate (ATP), a known stimulus for the blood vessel dilator nitric oxide (Diabetologia 2008, 51, 175). C-peptide causes these effects by activating the GLUT1 transporter, a protein that shuttles glucose across cell membranes. (No wonder C-peptide reduces protein loss in the urine).
Back to the Joslin Study...again conveniently dismissed is the fact that ALL of the 30% of people complication-free after 50 years of Type 1 diabetes began insulin-treatment on ANIMAL INSULIN. Beginning insulin treatment on a natural insulin, rather than a genetically-modified analogue, helped to cease the beta cell attack - therefore allowing continued beta cell activity from DAY 1 of insulin treatment.
To further support this hypothesis - let's evaluate the trend of diabetes treatment and outcome since the introduction of insulin analogues:
- Rate of complications increasing: Limitations Among Adults With Diabetes in the U.S. Population, 1997–1999 Diabetes Care 2003
- Diabetes death rate rising: Death rate from diabetes was significantly higher than reported the year FOLLOWING the introduction of genetically modified insulin analogues
- Analogues reduce "Honeymoon Period": analogue requirement has a detrimental influence on Honeymoon Period
The only type of insulin SOLD 50 years ago was ANIMAL INSULIN.
- It was more lipophilic (fat-loving) and sufficiently fed the brain and central nervous system (CNS)
- It protected beta cells from further destruction and suppressed the autoimmune attack
- It allowed the patients to continue making INSULIN AND C-PEPTIDE from their own beta cells
- Eli Lilly said it had NO THERAPEUTIC VALUE (ie. Smoking gun)
When you commit a crime - the only way to protect yourself is to destroy the evidence (animal insulin and C-peptide)
The insulin industry is made-up ANALOGES. Here's why...
- HYDROPHILIC *water-loving*… only feeding skeletal muscle - NOT CNS cells!
- DANGEROUS, mind-numbing, speed-defying… starving the brain and CNS of much needed glucose
- Insulin-receptor impairing (causing insulin resistance and beta cell destruction)
- GENETICALLY MODIFIED - causing the insulin receptor cells to deny its own endogenous insulin!
- e.COLI and YEAST cultured 'junk' (great for inflammation)!
First rule in DIA-business: deny, deny, deny...
The question is Allie, why only 30% of those w/T1DM for 50+ years are free from Complications?
Why not all, since all of them were on Animal-derived Insulin that did contain C-peptide?
Today's Physicians are trained in the use of GM Insulin for their patients. As a result, we as patients with T1DM do not have any advocates for us in the Medical community when it comes to the benefits of C-peptide which many Physicians only see as a *marker* for Insulin availability and nothing more.
Many of us w/T1DM are not able to procure Animal-derived Insulin for many reasons. So until "They" make this Insulin available to us again(I started out on it) or until C-peptide can be manufactured as a stand alone injection then all is for naught...........sigh.
Reply to this
Hi BetterCell – the 31 amino acid structure of HUMAN C-peptide is different from the sequence and structure of bovine and porcine C-peptide. HUMAN C-peptide is therapeutic for HUMAN cell membranes, whereas C-peptide from pigs and cows is preventative for HUMAN beta cells. This allows the beta cells to continue producing insulin WITH C-peptide. Do not confuse the value of beef or pork C-peptide as therapeutic – it is *preventative*…allowing the residual beta cells to provide the protection from complications of diabetes. Remember the keyword here is DIA-BUSINESS. If you take away the body’s ability to *protect* itself from damages – you have a new DRUG to sell your ‘captive audience’.
Reply to this
The bigger issue here is why has the medical profession refused to consider these issues ... what reason could they have for their refusal to consider sound medical evidence? I don't have an answer for this, but it seems to me that the ADA, the AMA, the FDA, the NIH and countless other associations of doctors have played a major role while simultaneously choosing to dismiss any evidence which may suggest otherwise. One really has to wonder whether the Oath of Hippocrates actually means anything to these doctors?!
Reply to this
Hey Scott – it appears the AMA is now taking a stand, considering their livelihoods are up against a $50,000 malpractice premium. Many physicians have to face the reality of ‘closing their doors’ because they can no longer afford to practice medicine. The liability of ‘practicing’ is, in fact, getting out of hand. Medicines are not therapeutic – as they once had been – and actually cause more harm than good for many patients… especially Type 2 diabetes on analogues. C-peptide is the ‘Holy Grail’ ignored for decades in diabetes treatment. Honeymoon Periods were suppressed – damaging existing beta cells. This ‘treatment’ exacerbates the final-outcome of diabetes complications. The Hippocratic Oath has been denied and ignored for the last 25 years in diabetes treatment. This should have NEVER HAPPENED! But now doctors are levied with a malpractice insurance premium that may force many of them to shut their doors.
Reply to this
Allie,
You need a bigger megaphone. Unfortunately, those sites backed by our charities and the diabusiness community seem to have a wider audience—and they are all hearing-challenged.
BetterCell may have hit the nail on the head in terms of the fact that 30% of those achieving 50-year Medalist status were found to have Beta cell activity. The question becomes: Is beta cell activity the ONLY protective anti-inflammatory response that goes on within individuals with diabetes? Some of us have much more reactive immune systems than others, who do not appear to have ANY allergy problems. Another part of the 30% observation might be that THEY were the only ones who remained on animal insulins (they’d rather fight than switch); or those who have switched in the last seven or eight years have been “protected” but may be facing problems further down the road as they continue to use artificial synthetic insulins (as do the other 70%). I suspect alpha cells within the pancreas also produce other (to-date-unknown) other beneficial products. Scientists/the medical community have acted like the beta cells within a pancreas are existing in a vacuum—not wanting to recognize other cells within that organ may play a key role in protective mechanisms.
Scott, the ADA, the AMA, the FDA, the NIH, individual doctors, research scientists are all influenced by their everyday experiences. The business community has known for a long time that MONEY is the root of all influence. As a former college professor, I can tell you that moral terpitude regarding a university system is incorporated from the top down (the regents, the president . . . all the way down to department chairmen)—all have been BOUGHT by corporate America. Buildings being named after corporate donors, the Nike Swoosh on every athletic jersey, shoes, etc., stadiums/fields with corporate logos . . . these were the rewards that blossomed when corporate dollars supplanted waning government funding. The professors who did not kowtow to corporate interests no longer received raises, promotions, or any consideration in the directions a supposedly independent educational system should take to benefit the public (and science). We already know that those in charge (as department chairmen at NIH, administrators, etc.) have been influenced by corporate dollars.
There is one other point I find extremely interesting. In most cases in the business world, the CEO is an MBA from one of our ivy-league schools, and it doesn’t matter whether he is running Home Depot, Exxon Mobil, or a pharmaceutical corporation. The ONLY goal is continued higher and higher profits for the shareholders. Show me a CEO who cares whether his company kills thousands of people, if the bean counters have assured him that the bottom line remains healthy, and I will show you a CEO on his way out the door.
Reply to this
The drug benfotiamine has been found to slow, block, or reverse diabetic complications by blocking the metabolic pathway by which excess glucose is transformed into advanced glycation endpoints, which are thought to be the proximal cause of complications (See NATURE: MEDICINE, February, 2003, article by Michael Brownlee). But it is also known that the metabolic pathway in the conversion of excess glucose in vivo to AGEs depends on the appropriate natural enzymes being available in the patient's body, and patients vary greatly in their natural supply of various enzymes. So, it seems reasonable to suppose that type 1 diabetics who survive long-term without complications probably naturally have a deficient supply of one or all of the enzymes necessary to transform excess glucose into AGEs. Since many animals survive quite well with blood sugars many times higher than humans without ever showing diabetic damage, we can infer that excess blood sugar in itself is not harmful, but is only dangerous when combined with the enzymes necessary for transforming it into something toxic, which these animals probably lack.
Reply to this
Hey Sanktpauli – That’s a profound observation! It seems as though B1 and B6 have been the preferred combo to combat the toxins from glucose metabolism. Perhaps a secondary vitamin / enzyme combination (to be administered with a trailing half-life from insulin) would be a *perk* in preventing diabetes complications? I also recently came across a study that noted Captopril is as effective in preventing kidney damage / hyperfiltration in Type 1 diabetes. Your thoughts? (2004) http://ndt.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/19/6/1385
Reply to this
The class of drugs known as acetylcholinesterase inhibitors, of which captopril is one, have been known since 1996 to have a mildly protective effect in diabetic renal disease. However, the clinical practice since that time has been somewhat disappointing, since all captopril and its cousins have proved able to do is to slow down diabetic renal failure, rather than to stop it.
Benfotiamine is chemically related to thiamine but is not just a concentrated version of it, though it promotes concentration of thiamine around nerve cells. Its most dramatic effect is in disrupting the pathway from hyperglycemia to advanced glycation endproducts and thus stopping complications before they can even start. In theory, if benfotiamine works, it would be possible for diabetics to let their blood sugars run to any level they want to guarantee they would never experience hypoglycemia, and then still avoid the complications of hyperglycemia by disrupting the metabolic pathway that produces them. The only limit on the blood sugar level would then be the danger of hyperosmolar coma from too much sugar in the blood, but since this does not set in until a blood sugar level of around 600 is reached, it should be easy to avoid.
Given the exhausting, life-disrupting, injurious, and extremely dangerous nature of attempting to stop complications by strict blood sugar control, why not let a few pills, having no known side-effects, taken twice a day replace this usually futile effort? Remarkably, every endocrinologist and diabetologist in North America I have discussed benfotiamine with has been totally disinterested in it, while every patient is wildly enthusiastic about it. So much for the much-touted 'therapeutic alliance' which is supposed to exist between doctor and patient!
Reply to this
People are more passionate about food than Insulin.
The French would have come out of their homes by the millions to protest any alteration in their (and mine) cocoa bean.
The clamor against Insulin analogues is not there amongst the population with Diabetes who are Insulin dependent (T1DM) or who also use Insulin as an adjunct along with their oral medications (T2DM).
Reply to this
Sanktpauli—
The article you cite on benfotiamine is very interesting. I have been taking this fat-and-water soluble form of Vitamin B1 for two years—a time when I joined Life Extension (supplement programming). They had a long article in their monthly magazine about the benefits of this product and the fact that this was a known preventer of diabetic complications and a pharmaceutical product given to diabetics in Europe.
None of this is mentioned by any of our charities, our medical community or research groups because it is counter-productive to the health INDUSTRY. Thiamin HCl may or may not be a part of the puzzle to prevent diabetic complications. It’s rather obvious to me that those who tout bG control numbers and faster-acting insulins are basically wanting to appear god-like in their knowledge and use these numbers basically to control the patient’s protocol. This, in essence, does very little to control the outcome.
Reply to this
I have gone around to every diabetologist and endocrinologist I know in North America and literally forced them to accept photocopies of the various articles appearing in renowned, peer-reviewed medical journals proving that benfotiamine blocks the development of diabetic complications regardless of blood sugar levels. In every case I have been met with the doctor's total unfamiliarly with benfotiamine and utter disinterest in it. But I ask myself, how is this possible, given the miracle benfotiamine could represent if it works, compared to the extremely toxic, difficult, and often lethal alternative of strict blood sugar control? I think the answer must lie in the bizarre ideology of the medical profession, which is only interested in applying the existing and ineffective recipes by rote so as to avoid conflicts with the FDA and professional disciplinary boards. While you the patient want to save your life, your doctor just wants to preserve his career and get rich quick, and the gulf between your goals destroys the therapeutic relationship.
Reply to this
Allie, you are promoting a lot of discussion about the right/wrong ways to deliver us from the ravages of diabetes. As many people know, this doesn’t necessarily mesh with current medical philosophy.
Merrill Goozner (Gooznews.com) discussed “real science” and the fact a dispassionate search for truth is ultimately divorced from preconceived bias or monetary gain. Can anyone of us believe the healthcare industry—at least that portion focusing on diabetes—is any better than the tobacco industry.
Knowing that REAL scientific evidence was coming down the pike, the tobacco industry sponsored grassroots (Astroturf) advocates to disseminate THEIR propaganda. They selected their own doctors to dispense “the truth” as defined by BigTobacco. They hid important data, and misinterpreted/misrepresented other findings. In short, they kept raking in the dollars while delaying a day of reckoning when the message “smoking is harmful” was irrefutable. They succeeded for more than 2 decades, and they laid down a very good roadmap for successors to follow. The insulin cartel won’t have to create a non-profit; they have already bought one (or two). They won’t have to subvert doctors to disseminate an industry-friendly message; they have infiltrated our universities and teaching hospitals so that the key opinion leaders teach the next generation flawed science.
How long before a whistleblower or a real scientist steps forward to tell the world about the victimization of diabetics? How long before it is determined that diabetics DO need the C-peptide that has been arbitrarily discarded by rDNA insulin manufacturers? How long before it becomes known that fast-acting insulins—even when delivered by pump technology—may provide “good numbers” but not necessarily good results. When will someone begin asking the right questions?
Much of our discussion goes back to immunogenic/antibody response that is receiving more and more attention related to causation and continued worsening of diabetic complications. Does anyone have more information regarding the good, the bad and the ugly related to antibody response? At one time, it was thought some of the good antibody response to natural insulins helped protect the diabetic from serious, large fluctuations in blood glucose. Of course, no one seems to know the exact chain of events (including enzymatic responses) that eventually leads to other diabetic problems.
Does anyone else see a certain level of lunacy in the fact that transplantation or xenotransplantation will CURE a defective system where the total extent of the defect is not known? Perhaps we should all look more closely at the work of Dr. Hammerman, Washington University in St. Louis. Has anyone read his papers and thought possibly that using embryonic porcine tissue that has not been genetically coded (other than the fact it comes from the area of the embryo where pancreatic cells develop) may be closer to a cure since the whole pancreas might be involved?
Reply to this
I have often remarked the same paradox in most reasoning about diabetic complications. The actual disease of diabetes is the immunological process which causes the death of the beta cells. Then, as a SIDE-EFFECT of this beta cell destruction, the blood sugar rises. From Faustman's work we know that the initial disease process which attacked the beta cells never ceases. From other auto-immune diseases such as Wegener's Vasculitis, Lupus, Henoch-Schoenlein Purpura, Goodpasture's Syndrome, etc., we know that autoimmunity never limits its attack to just one organ, but always attacks a whole panoply of tissues, although it usually concentrates on one or two over the others. So putting all of this together, why do we assume that all of the further damage caused by diabetes arises not from the continuing auto-immune disease itself, but instead solely from one of its side-effects, the elevated blood sugar?
All the work I am familiar with involving xenotransplantation of islets uses only primordia, i.e., fetal tissue which still has only a minimal immunological signature. The fact that all of these implants decline rapidly in function, usually lasting for only a few years, even when largely shielded from the patient's immune system within a differentially permeable membrane, suggests that the immune attack on the transplanted tissue may be continuing. Since this would produce an inflammatory state in the entire body which is extremely unhealthy, and as damaging to the arteries as uncontrolled diabetes, I worry that this whole approach may only recreate the problem of complications via inflammation that it removes via blood sugar control.
Transplanting a whole pancreas is riddled with technical problems, since the pancreas produces fluids which have to be drained through an artificial channel made into the bladder. The ability to control blood sugar just by implanting islets is a great advantage in diabetes compared to other organ deficiency diseases, where the whole organ is needed. Also, transplanting a whole pancreas means exposing the graft to the full action of the body's immune system, which in turn requires immunosuppressive drugs, which are themselves more damaging to the body than uncontrolled diabetes, so the entire therapeutic approach makes no sense. And yet still millions of research dollars are being wasted on this approach.
Reply to this
While the absence of c-peptide probably plays some role in the development of diabetic complications and the loss of residual beta cell function, this role should not be overstated. We know that the same characteristic vascular and neurological lesions of diabetes existed before the insulin era (von Helmholtz drew a perfect picture of diabetic retinopathy with his ophthalmoscope in 1880) and these lesions also existed during the animal insulin era before the development of GM insulin. When Leonard Thompson, the very first diabetic treated with animal insulin, died from a motorcycle accident while still quite young, he was autopsied and found to have extremely severe arterio- and atherosclerosis, even though he had never taken GM insulin.
When I was first diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic in 1966 and was admitted as a patient to one of the leading diabetes clinics in the world, I saw many blind patients and multiple amputees, and the whole spectrum of diabetic complications was an everyday reality, even though GM insulins were still many years in the future. The only cases not yet in evidence then were diabetics wasting away from the living death of dialysis, since they were still not accepted as dialysis patients at the time, because this was regarded just as a cruel way to prolong their suffering.
I used only animal insulins from 1966 to 1976, when I started GM insulin, but when I was measured for my c-peptide level in 1981 it was found to be zero. Either the GM insulin had destroyed the residual function remarkably quickly, or it had already been destroyed on animal insulin alone.
Reply to this
The main focus of business is to “Maximize Shareholder Value.” So, big pharma is doing its job by designing patented drugs for profits. Protect the pipeline at any cost and the shareholders will be happy. When patients have no choice, the goose that lays the golden eggs is safe!
Can change ever happen? That depends.
First, the diabetic public has to realize that there will be no Iron Man or Incredible Hulk jumping on the scene to "save them" and bring back animal insulin or bring to market c-peptide or a cure.
Second, the diabetic public has to realize that the change cannot come from big pharma. Doing so would open them up for enormous liability. Change has to come from within the diabetic community and from a start-up pharmaceutical.
Third, the diabetic community has to get organized and speak up with one voice. Unite and fight for your rights. This is a fight for your life. Until you do, nothing will change. Think about how insects attack their enemies - swarming ants or bees can fend off a much larger attacker by uniting their resources and fighting together for their lives.
What do I suggest?
1) Brent wrote to Allie "You need a bigger megaphone." I agree. I believe in the concept of "six degrees of separation." There have to be readers of this site who have contacts in the media (TV, radio, magazines, newspapers). Get in touch with them and have them read this site. Have them contact Allie. Give her access to a bigger megaphone (if that's ok with her).
2) Find celebrities to support change. Celebrities are publicity magnets. Jenny McCarthy turned on the spotlight on autism. Michael J Fox turned on the spotlight on Parkinson's. Type1 diabetes has no high profile promoter. All the diabetic celebrities I know are paid to promote a product or service. They’ve figured out how to mosey up to the diabusiness trough and get paid for their disease.
3) Finally, when the time comes that someone is visionary enough to figure out how to bring animal insulin or c-peptide to the US market, make sure you support that company. It will be an outsider fighting the odds. It will have big pharma to fight off. The charities will be against it as they get pressured by their contributors to denounce it. The FDA with its notorious red-tape and long standing cozy relationship with big pharma will hamper its success. Finally, there will be the doctors, diabetes educators and diabetics who need to be reeducated to the new (old) insulin and its benefits. From a pure profit perspective, this is too difficult. For this to succeed, the diabetic community will have to support it from its birth - "it takes a community to bring about real change."
The winds of change are blowing. I am constantly hearing from diabetics "what have you done for me lately" to their doctors and drug companies. The real question should be "what have I done for myself lately". Speak out. Speak up. Fight back.
Reply to this
Cashpotato—is your ‘name’ an indication that you work for the diabusiness community? Where have you been since 1993, when a group of older diabetics discovered, through internal memos, that Lilly and Novo decided to withdraw all natural insulins from the marketplace in order to eventually form a market based totally on PATENTED analogs. This ‘loose conspiracy’ later included Sanofi-Aventis, and was the beginning of capitalizing on the hugely profitable chronic disease called diabetes.
With the help of an investigative reporter in Tampa, Florida, we put together a series of TV commentaries which explained the plight of people with diabetes who could not use rDNA insulins. By the time the third segment aired, the investigative reporter and the station had been pressured by Lilly to discontinue all efforts on our behalf. There was hope that this local Fox station would then run a well-done piece of investigative reporting nationally. You know what happened with that idea!
This same group of individuals, along with many others over the years, have tried the many suggestions you outline. In fact, with excellent support from scientific literature, we have asked regulatory agencies to take another look at the safety of these products. We have contacted media (from Jeff Swiatek at the Indianapolis Star, David Wills at the L.A. Times to every major television network). We have contacted celebrities ranging from Mary Tyler Moore, a former Miss America, celebrity athletes, Halle Berry, etc. We have contacted published, investigative authors like John Cornwell (The Power to Harm) because they already have an audience. We have contacted people like Michael J. Fox and other disease-specific spokespeople, suggesting formation of a coalition to give voice in opposition to today’s 10-minute-medical wonders. We’ve contacted legislators, time and again; we have testified in Washington; we have sat down in legislators’ offices; and we have even tried to make inroads at the state level.
The best example I can give you of what happens with any life-threatening disease is a recent contact from a person in the AIDS group. The moment it was discovered that life could be extended with therapeutic drugs, the research in AIDS (for a cure) became much less important and R&D money and focus shifted to therapeutic drugs—not a cure. Does this remind you of another disease?
Charities like ADA and JDRF, originally well-intentioned advocates, have become Astroturf mouthpieces for industry. They depend on corporate dollars to sustain their own corporatism. Consider JDRF--originally formed by parents who sought a CURE for their children--has transformed its original CURE mission. The children whose parents sought a cure now hear that a cure is no longer ‘around the corner’ but instead, ‘on the horizon.’ Is that progress?
Reply to this
Interestingly enough, Merrill Goozner (gooznews.com) recently reviewed a book "Reasonable Rx: Solving the Drug Price Crisis" written by by Stan Finkelstein & Peter Temin.
He writes that the physician-economist team calls for a breakup of the pharmaceutical industry into separate manufacturing and R&D parts. His other book review was of David Michaels' "Doubt Is Their Product" and Thomas McGarity and Wendy Wagner's "Bending Science", all of which argue that the corporate influence on medical research skewer corporate campaigns to undermine sound science. Therefore, the idea that Finkelstein & Temin's thesis may, in fact, provide a potential solution.
Reply to this
The New York Times /well.blogs.nytimes.com
has written an extensive article today about Diabetes. It is mostly geared to IRD(aka T2DM) but still a good read with video and a comment section included.
My comment appears as #33.
Reply to this
Here is an article which I would like to share with all of you w/T1DM.
As all of us now know, there is not much available to us besides GM Insulin, ACE Inhibitors, Statins as far as Management is concerned. I have always been interested in Neutraceuticles, herbs, good nutrition and exercise to further prevent the ravages of Diabetes and its Complications.
Here is a current article which just appeared in Acta Diabetologica on the benefits of Thiamine and Benfotiamine which Brent and Sanktpauli are already familiar with:
TY - JOUR
JF - Acta Diabetologica
T1 - Effects of thiamine and benfotiamine on intracellular glucose metabolism and relevance in the prevention of diabetic complications
UR - http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00592-008-0042-y
M3 - 10.1007/s00592-008-0042-y
AU - Beltramo, Elena
AU - Berrone, Elena
AU - Tarallo, Sonia
AU - Porta, Massimo
N2 - Abstract Thiamine (vitamin B1) is an essential cofactor in most organisms and is required at several stages of anabolic and catabolic
intermediary metabolism, such as intracellular glucose metabolism, and is also a modulator of neuronal and neuro-muscular
transmission. Lack of thiamine or defects in its intracellular transport can cause a number of severe disorders. Thiamine
acts as a coenzyme for transketolase (TK) and for the pyruvate dehydrogenase and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase complexes,
enzymes which play a fundamental role for intracellular glucose metabolism. In particular, TK is able to shift excess fructose-6-phosphate
and glycerhaldeyde-3-phosphate from glycolysis into the pentose-phosphate shunt, thus eliminating these potentially damaging
metabolites from the cytosol. Diabetes might be considered a thiamine-deficient state, if not in absolute terms at least relative
to the increased requirements deriving from accelerated and amplified glucose metabolism in non-insulin dependent tissues
that, like the vessel wall, are prone to complications. A thiamine/TK activity deficiency has been described in diabetic patients,
the correction of which by thiamine and/or its lipophilic derivative, benfotiamine, has been demonstrated in vitro to counteract
the damaging effects of hyperglycaemia on vascular cells. Little is known, however, on the positive effects of thiamine/benfotiamine
administration in diabetic patients, apart from the possible amelioration of neuropathic symptoms. Clinical trials on diabetic
patients would be necessary to test this vitamin as a potential and inexpensive approach to the prevention and/or treatment
of diabetic vascular complications.
ER -
Reply to this
I am always astonished by the excessively cautious and glacially slow response of Anglo-American medicine to any new approach to diabetes treatment, such as is manifested in the last line of this abstract. All medical care is ultimately based on a risk-benefit analysis, and since it is abundantly established that living with diabetes under conventional therapy is profoundly dangerous, chronically toxic, and ultimately lethal, then medicine should positively LEAP at the chance to try ANYTHING different, since doing nothing amounts to doing positive harm. This conservative attitude is especially absurd with respect to benfotiamine, which has been available over-the-counter in Europe since 1959, which has no known side-effects, and which has never generated a single reported clinical case of toxicity. A large part of the reluctance to accept it may be that its general use over all this time makes it a non-patentable medication, which means minimal profits for any drug company selling it, and if something like that really worked as dramatically as benfotiamine promises to do, then it would drive off the market all the comparatively useless and expensive patented drugs, as well as potentially put out of business the whole Diabetes Police Industry -- that is, the purveyors of blood sugar testing strips, meters, together with idiotic diabetes educators, diabetologists, as well as a large proportion of endocrinologists.
Reply to this
Well said Sanktpauli and very correct.
I remember what it was like when Vitamin E came to everyone's attention here in the USA.
The response from the Medical Community was to label anyone who took it, a *Health Nut* and label it as a Sex Vitamin since it was not approved for use by anyone within the Community.
I did not wait for anyone with a long white lab coat to sanction its approval.........I took it!! and waited to see if it indeed had a positive impact on my existing sexual vigor. It took about 10-15 years for the Medical Community to finally say something good about it after first coming to everyone's attention.
I reaped the benefits by choosing for myself as well as trusting in myself.
Reply to this