This is the first of a four-part piece exploring the impact of chiropractic care on diabetics.

THE National Post reported in “Diabetes Breakthrough” that in a discovery that has stunned even those behind it. Scientists at a Toronto hospital say they have proof the body’s nervous system helps trigger diabetes, opening the door to a potential near-cure of the disease that affects millions of Canadians. Diabetic mice became healthy, virtually overnight, after researchers injected a substance to counteract the effect of malfunctioning pain neurons in the pancreas.

In allopathic medicine, a subluxation is a partial dislocation. In chiropractic, a vertebral subluxation is described as a spinal vertebra or motion segment that has lost its correct juxtaposition with one or both of its adjacent vertebrae to a degree less than a luxation (dislocation), in such a way as to impinge upon nerves and to interfere in the proper transmission of impulses, upsetting general health and causing dis-ease, which it is believed eventually leads to disease.

The Centers for Disease Control and Population quoted the following figures in its 2002 National Diabetes Fact Sheet:

* Six per cent of the population – 17 million people – have diabetes; the total medical cost of diabetes in the United States is US$132 billion;

* Diabetes was the sixth leading cause of death on US death certificates in 1999;

* Heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, blindness, kidney disease, nervous system disease, dental disease, difficult pregnancies, and amputations are some of the complications of diabetes;

* More than 60 per cent of non-traumatic lower-limb amputations were performed each year among people with diabetes, and the numbers continue to rise to present day.

Unlike type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease that shuts down your body’s insulin production, type 2 diabetes is directly caused by one’s lifestyle. Whereas type 1 diabetics need to inject insulin daily to stay alive, type 2 diabetics do not need drugs. In fact, taking drugs for type 2 diabetes can be far worse than the disease itself.

Avandia (rosiglitazone) was one example for what is wrong with the drug treatment of type 2 diabetes. After hitting the market in 1999, a 2007 study in the New England Journal of Medicine linked it to a 43 per cent increased risk of heart attack and a 64 per cent higher risk of cardiovascular death, compared to patients treated with other methods.

Avandia works by making diabetes patients more sensitive to their own insulin, helping to control blood sugar levels. In fact, most conventional treatments for type 2 diabetes utilise drugs that either raise insulin or lower blood sugar. Avandia, for example, reduces your blood sugar by increasing the sensitivity of your liver, fat, and muscle cells to insulin.

Millions of people have taken Avandia and have been exposed to these unacceptably high-risk side effects, with a drug that in no way treats the underlying causes of diabetes. More than 80,000 diabetics have suffered from strokes, heart failure or other complications including lethal heart attacks from using this drug.

It took nearly 10 years of the drug being on the market for the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to take action and restrict access to this dangerous drug. The European Medicines Agency simply banned it altogether.

Other studies have also confirmed that most drugs given to type 2 diabetics are at best worthless and at worst harmful or even deadly. The New England Journal of Medicine featured not one, or even two, but four studies backing up the conclusion that the path of conventional medicine is leading diabetics astray, and doing far more harm than good.

The studies revealed:

Using antihypertensive medicines to lower systolic blood pressure below a 120 mm Hg does nothing to lower a diabetic’s risk of heart complications;

Diabetics receive no health benefit from adding a drug to raise HDL “good” cholesterol levels if they’re already taking a statin to lower their LDL cholesterol levels;

There were no heart benefits associated with two different drugs given to lower high blood sugar levels;

Lowering blood sugar is not the correct strategy to overcome type 2 diabetes.

Diabetes is not a blood sugar disease. Therefore, drugs that focus on the symptom of elevated blood sugar, rather than addressing the underlying cause, are doomed to fail in most cases. Rather, type 2 diabetes is a disease caused by insulin resistance and faulty leptin signalling, (leptin is a hormone produced in your fat cells), both of which are regulated through your diet.

For the last 50 years or so, Americans have followed the dietary recommendations of a high-complex carbohydrate, low saturated fat diet – the exact opposite of what actually works for preventing and reversing diabetes. High complex carbohydrates include legumes, potatoes, corn, rice, and grain products. Save for legumes, you actually want to avoid all the rest to prevent insulin resistance.

The only thing rosiglitazone drugs like Avandia do is to help lower blood glucose, which has virtually no influence on the long-term damage due to type 2 diabetes. Most of the damage is caused by elevated insulin levels, which can be remedied with an optimal diet and exercise programme alone, if you’re compliant. And, of course, freeing the nervous system with chiropractic spinal alignments can facilitate success.

Don’t forget to “Ask Your Chiropractor” every week, where your questions may be published and answered in subsequent articles. Address questions to: Dr Chris Davis, the Spinal Mechanic at movethebone@gmail.com; or, Dr Michael Harvey, director, at dr.michael_harvey@yahoo.com or visit www.drharveychiropractic.com