Are Diabetic Drugs Causing Cancer? New Research

Could your medication be causing cancer? Unfortunately, it's true. In this study there was only a single medication for diabetes that didn't increase cancer risk.

First of all, let me point out just how incredibly dangerous the diabetic AND prediabetic states are for human physiology. There is arguable nothing more damaging to our health, even cigarette smoking. Yes--more dangerous than smoking. Of course, a smoker who is prediabetic or diabetic will have a very high risk of most chronic diseases.

The diabetic state is one that we constantly fight against. In reality, it is our protection against starvation and hardship. Sound strange? It is, looking at today's society, where calories are in abundance and there is no metabolic cost to get them (compare walking to the fridge vs hunting a boar for days...). With the exception of the past 100 years or so, starvation was the norm. Our bodies are extremely well developed at surviving adversity, so we do well with this scenario.

This also smashes the "bad genes" concept. Those most prone to diabetes actually have the toughest genes--genes designed to store calories for a rainy day. But that rainy day never comes in today's society because lots and lots of poor quality calories are found everywhere.

So back to this particular article. Based on increasingly strong links between diabetes and many types of cancer, the researchers looked at how much diabetic medications may be contributing.

Certainly, diabetes itself and the elevated insulin that accompanies it will increase the risk of cancer. Insulin is a proliferative hormone and causes cells to divide more. More cell division increases the risk of an error. An error may lead to cancer. You get the picture.

Diabetic medications, with the exception of metformin, doubled the risk of being diagnosed with cancer. If one of these diabetics that got cancer was on insulin, their risk of dying was 400% greater.

For anyone that thinks that diabetic drugs are lifesavers needs to read this article. The ONLY thing that is a lifesaver is to make the appropriate anti-diabetic lifestyle changes such as..

Merely chewing more times before swallowing has consistently shown to improve the way our bodies respond to the food we it, steering our physiology away from diabetes and towards health.

Eat more nuts. Make sure there are NO added oils--just raw nuts or roasted and salted with no added oils like cottonseed or peanut oil. These will undo the benefits of the nuts.

Avoid artificial sweeteners like the plague. Despite the common use and recommendation of artificial sweeteners like aspartame and sucralose, study after study confirms that these compounds actually promote diabetes, likely by disconnecting our taste from our response to calories.

Try supplements. Many supplements have been shown to help diabetes such as magnesium, fish oils and folic acid. These can be powerful aids to your dietary changes.

Calorie restriction. Cutting back on our calories while increasing the quality of those calories (i.e. your 1200 calories per day comes from broccoli and not from a value meal) is the single most powerful change that can impact diabetes. Study have shown that diabetics on insulin can be off their insulin in one week with controlled calorie restriction.

The list is actually quite endless and each change compliments the other. But it is not a single change, but rather changes in diet, chemical exposure, stress levels and exercise that all come together as a powerful tool to steer us away from diabetes.

However, for those of you thinking that maybe metformin doesn't look to bad after reading this study needs to look at the cost comparison between lifestyle changes ($1100) and metformin ($31,300). Again, lifestyle wins hands down. For more than a decade, Dr. Bogash has stayed current with the medical literature as it relates to physiology, disease prevention and disease management. He uses his knowledge to educate patients, the community and cyberspace on the best way to avoid and / or manage chronic diseases using lifestyle and targeted supplementation. His areas of greatest expertise include the diabetic progression as neurodegenerative conditions such as migraines, seizures, epilepsy, Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease.