Many people become even fatter after they start to take medication to treat their diabetes because almost all drugs used to treat diabetes make you hungry all the time and cause your liver convert extra calories to fat. Diabetics are at increased risk for strokes, heart attacks, nerve damage, blindness, deafness, kidney failure and burning feet.
This is caused by blood sugar levels rising too high after meals and causing sugar to stick to cells and be converted to a poison called sorbitol. Doctors can measure nerve damage by getting a blood test called hemoglobin A1C that measures how much sugar is stuck on cells.
To keep your blood sugar level from rising too high after you eat, your pancreas releases insulin that drives sugar into your cells. But, insulin and all pills that raise blood levels of insulin make you hungry all the time and increase your chances of getting a heart attack. So, the main goal of treating diabetes is to keep blood sugar levels from rising too high after meals with as little insulin as possible.
Glucophage, Actos and Avandia (2) lower blood sugar and blood insulin levels. Doctors should try to control blood sugar levels as much as possible with these three drugs.
1) R Lazarus, D Sparrow, S Weiss. Temporal relations between obesity and insulin: Longitudinal data from the normative aging study. American Journal of Epidemiology 147: 2 (JAN 15 1998):173-179.
2) T Sir, T Castillo, S Munoz, G Lopez, M Calvillan. Effects of metformin on insulin resistance in obese and hyperandrogenic women. Revista Medica de Chile 125: 12(DEC 1997):1457-1463
