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While you will find many statements on the internet to the contrary, cinnamon has never been demonstrated to have any ability whatsoever to lower blood sugar. Oatmeal is a terrible choice for diabetics. It will raise blood sugars in them dramatically. There are no magic solutions to reducing...

Are you on any medications for your diabetes?

I read the clinic's language, "ongoing management of three hormone prescriptions" and "Hormones are an additional cost paid directly to the pharmacy," to mean that the clinic's ongoing fee of $90/month covers appointments and labs and they write prescriptions, but that the patient pays the costs...

It's not a matter of a few exceptions. While many Type 2 diabetics are obese, the majority of obese patients don't have diabetes. I agree there's been an increase in both the incidence of diabetes and obesity over the last 50 or so years. But we disagree about the relationship between them...

You are correct, and I applaud your attention to detail. But I try to avoid using the term "risk factor" in public discussions, as lay people tend to misunderstand it, thinking it means causative, rather than correlative. It is true that there is an association between obesity and Type 2...

That's not what I said at all. I'm sorry if you find the number of words daunting, but it's a complicated subject. Read my response to DragonBits if you want a more thorough explanation. Your friend's progression to diabetes is quite typical. Glad he lost weight. Maybe when you say he...

The etiology of diabetes mellitus (all types) is generally unclear. Type 1 is characterized by a complete or nearly-complete destruction of the body's pancreatic beta cells (somewhat simplified, these are responsible for the production of insulin). It appears to be an autoimmune disorder. It...

Wow, that's quite a convincing argument. Basically, "I know I'm right so you're an idiot." Let's instead try to have an adult discussion. Such anecdotes in no way prove that these subjects became diabetic from eating sugar. There is simply no clinical evidence to that effect. They didn't...

Contra common wisdom, obesity does not cause diabetes. Most overweight persons are not diabetic, although many type 2 diabetics are fat. It is the other way around: diabetes causes weight gain, most likely related to cellular insulin resistance preventing glucose from being burned for energy...

An observational study, not a randomized, controlled trial. Useless for any purpose other than proposing clinical trials. Here's an example of a randomized, controlled trial: The ALLHAT-LLP trial, the only large clinical trial of statins not funded by a pharmaceutical company. That trial's...

Apparently, you're not willing to "plow through" any studies. You really ought to have a defensible intellectual position if you're attempting to refute someone else's. Based on what? Your statement is simply a conclusion. Your argument, such as it is, is utter ad hominem. I.e., they must...

Yes, the food pyramid, with a base of "at least 11 servings of healthywholegrains" is one manifestation of the "diet-heart hypothesis," which traces back to Ancel Keys and his "Seven Countries" study. His hypothesis was that higher levels of dietary fat raise cholesterol in the blood and leads...

You have it backwards. It is not incumbent on those who question a drug's efficacy to conduct studies showing why it is not effective. On the contrary, those who propose a drug therapy have the obligation to defend it by providing sound studies demonstrating statistically significant benefit...

Agreed. No statistically significant benefit from taking statins except in middle-aged males with existing cardiovascular disease (secondary prevention), and even there a very weak association (very high NNT). No benefit whatsoever in women or the old, even if they've already had a heart...

Fruit, in general, is not "good" for diabetics.

Are these tests available to consumers through LabCorp/Quest?

The key word here is "association." At the end of the day, this is just more in the category of "lab A is associated with disease B, therefore changing lab A should help disease B." Perhaps. It's an interesting hypothesis (i.e., basis for an experiment), but demonstrates absolutely nothing...

This is a classic case of researchers presenting statistics so as to seem to assign them a relevance they simply do not merit. This was a meta-analysis. It is well-known that there is a tremendous risk of researcher bias in such analyses (they get to choose which studies are included and which...

That's meaningless if there's no statistically significant correlation with all-cause mortality.

N.B.: "In the adjusted analysis, this association was not significant for all-cause mortality (HR 1.25 (0.66–2.38), P=0.479)"

I hear you. I crashed my ferritin by donating blood. I'm now cautiously supplementing with low-dose iron while keeping an eye on hematocrit and hemoglobin. So far, so good, but yes, it's a delicate balance. You might want to consider pulling your ferritin and other iron labs, and if they're...

I've never subscribed to the notion that rt3 must be beaten into submission (somewhat similar to the case of e2 in trt). My view is closer to that of the sponsor of the Tired Thyroid site. Alleviate symptoms and try to have both free t3 and free t4 usually somewhere between 2/3 and 90% of...

How do you feel? All things being equal, if those were my labs I would consider asking my doctor to up my Synthroid considerably. What does your doctor think?

There are no magic solutions to reducing blood sugars. Berberine is not something to fool around with. It does seem to work to some degree, but it may do so by affecting your liver in potentially dangerous ways. It has not undergone the rigorous testing process to which all FDA-approved...

First and foremost: you need to know what your blood sugars actually are. Get a blood sugar meter and some test strips, no prescriptions required. The Freestyle Freedom Lite meter (that’s the one I use) and Freestyle Lite meter (slightly smaller), both from Abbott Laboratories, are highly...

HgbA1c is a surrogate marker. It is useful for keeping an eye on relative progress. And if you test it under the same relative conditions each time, it is fine for that purpose. It measures glycation products associated with red blood cells. But HgbA1c may, or may not, accurately reflect...

You're pre-diabetic. How old are you?

A fasting glucose of 122 mg/dl and an HgbA1c of 6.2% are unambiguous indicia of diabetes. Take your condition as a challenge. Diabetics who achieve normal blood sugars can lead long and healthy lives. Here's a good place to start learning about diabetes and controlling blood sugar...

What is your diabetes treatment protocol?

Much more functional. Thanks.

Why should I have to read all the threads in a forum? I just want to read the ones that interest me. I don't think I ever mentioned the columns. Two columns is fine; that's a matter of style. All I'm saying is that in the old site I didn't have to sign in and could simply scan the main forum...