Diabetic supplement warnings did not concern me when I went looking for a diabetes cure. If I had read something in a book, I simply believed it. And today online supplement ads are growing as fast as type 2 diabetes.
We have such a strong need to find answers that we want to believe what we are told. Fear of dying mixed with distrust of the whole medical establishment makes a feeding ground for a whole new industry of supplement sellers disguised as information websites.
An Example Taken From the News
The newspapers in San Antonio on January 2, 2012, reported the arrest of two men who were running a stem cell scam that targeted people with terminal illnesses, promising to save their lives.
Apparently they gave the impression that their stem cells had been approved by the FDA. Of course, it was not true, but the men took in about $1.5 million from hopeful victims of ALS, cancers and other incurable diseases.
One of the men, who called himself a doctor, was profiled on the TV show Sixty Minutes in 2010 because of the promise of healing with stem cells. Now he is wanted by the FBI.
This illustrates the need for wisdom. There is nothing wrong with looking for a cure, but caution and common sense have to be your constant companions.
Anything that really works is going to be trumpeted to the skies in these days of free internet access. If something helps I think a real cure will show up everywhere, not just in some obscure site that claims there is a conspiracy to silence them.
Outright lies are only one of the dangers you and I face as we look for natural things to help us with type 2 diabetes. Here is another of the diabetic supplement warnings you should heed.
Diabetic Supplement Warnings About Overmedicating
You are aware of the dangers of taking too much medication, right? Of course you are. But anything that is taken into your body can damage and even kill you if you use too much. Water, salt and oxygen are examples. Pick any one of those and look at the side effects of overdoing it.
Anything is lethal if you take it in a large enough dose. One world-famous medical examiner who has her own TV show was looking into a mysterious death and found that the woman had overdosed on vitamin supplements.
This was an extreme case, and it took a huge amount over some time, but she was able to take enough supplements to die from them. It is true that death by vitamin overdose is rare at about 1 in 40,000 accidental poisoning reports.
Vitamins are complex. Many of them work well together. For instance, calcium is absorbed better if you take it with some vitamin D, and it doesn't take a lot. Vitamin C increases your absorption of iron, and many GI doctors who diagnose anemia tell their patients to take orange juice with their iron supplement.
The multivitamin producers who understand how vitamins work together can give you a daily pill or liquid that uses this information. Find a good company and it'll be easy to supplement your daily vitamins without having to figure out safe and adequate dosing by yourself.
B-complex and C are water soluble vitamins, and they are not stored in your body, so any you don't use is filtered out through your kidneys. Fat soluble vitamins like A and D, however, are stored in your fat cells, so it is possible to overload your body with them.
That does not mean take all the Bs and C you want. Anything that makes your liver and kidneys work harder puts stress on a system that already is dealing with type 2 diabetes complications. So it makes sense not to overdo even the water soluble vitamins.
Another fact - all vitamins and minerals are better for us in their natural vegetable form. But the synthetic vitamins labs crank out are cheaper. And the metallic minerals are often used in supplements because they are cheap and readily available.
So eating superfoods in the form of vegetables and fruits as well as whole grains and unprocessed meat is the best way to get your vitamins and minerals. There is a page about the superfoods on my website if you want to find out more.
Diabetic Supplement Warnings About Cinnamon
While researching the benefits of cinnamon, which seem well documented, I found out that there is more than one kind. One is called cassia and another is Ceylon or "true" cinnamon. Since Ceylon cinnamon is more expensive you'll probably have to find it at a health food store.
The one we are most familiar with is the hot, spicy cassia cinnamon we get from our local grocery store. Its heat comes from coumarin, and this substance has effects you need to understand if you are going to use it as a daily supplement and not just a flavoring.
A few people are allergic to cinnamon, developing swollen lips and ulcerations. If this happens to you, you should not use it as a supplement. But that allergy is pretty rare and is not the reason some Europeans are warning people not to use it.
Coumarin was used in the form of bicoumarin as a chemical model for the medication warfarin, brand name Coumadin, because it has amazing blood thinning properties. Bicoumarin caused free bleeding in rats; it kept their blood from clotting.
Coumarin has been banned as a food additive in the U.S. because of this. Of course it is going to be hard to get enough coumarin to do any damage of that magnitude in the cinnamon you sprinkle on food, and research says it does not turn into bicoumarin in a human body as it did in rats.
But if you plan to take cinnamon pills long-term for diabetic blood sugar reduction, be aware that cassia cinnamon has coumarin at a 5% ratio, while Ceylon cinnamon has a 0.004% ratio, practically none.
Since cinnamon really does have an insulin type reaction in your body it will lower blood sugar a certain amount. But if you use it, know what you are getting and how your body will react. Talk to your doctor about it and tell her how much you are using. And watch your blood sugar carefully.
There is a lot of interest in coumarin as a cancer medication, and we'll keep watching it closely to see what happens next. Coumarin may be something you actually want to be taking, but the amount that's safe has not been determined yet.
We Need Diabetic Supplement Warnings
Our desire to find things that will cure, or at least help control, our type 2 diabetes has to be balanced with an equal amount of common sense and caution. And I have learned that no supplement provides a way around the need for exercise and a healthy diet. This is the proven road to remission for a type 2 diabetic.
It is the road I have chosen, although I am going to try taking Ceylon cinnamon for a month or so and see what it does for my blood sugar control. Everyone is different, and one person's success with cinnamon may not be matched by another. Still, I will report what happens on my website.
If you are doing the same I would be excited to hear what your results have been. Let's find the way through type 2 diabetes together.
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