As much as I rail against the American
Diabetes Association (ADA) and their guidelines, it is still
important to know what they are advocating. Their guidelines are not
safe for managing type 2 diabetes and using their guidelines will
generally allow for the progression of diabetes to the complications.
The ADA guidelines will not allow you to be a long-term healthy
survivor with a long-term A1c of 7%. Yet this is what they promote.
Even the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists (AACE) and
their guideline of an A1c of 6.5% is not ideal.
Considering that the A1c range for
prediabetes is a reading of 5.7% to 6.4%, it would be prudent to have
an A1c reading of less than 5.5% or lower. This is the reason I do
not follow the teachings of the ADA. They seem quite willing to
allow and advocate for people to allow for the progression of
diabetes. It is also true that the advice given is to prevent
doctors from being sued because they encouraged patients to work to
have A1c's that put their patients in jeopardy of hypoglycemia. It
is also true that most physicians do not stay current with even these
poor guidelines so the patient is the one that pays the price with
poorer health and the complications of diabetes.
With the above in mind, I feel that
since the AACE has chosen to eliminate the page of type 2 diabetes
resources, that as a blogger, I should start listing some of the
resources that people with type 2 diabetes can use to start educating
themselves. I have used and still review the listings even though I
am not following their guidelines, but I still have hope that
someday, they may improve. I also feel that because many physicians
use these and insist that their patients follow them, we need to know
where they are obtaining their numbers they throw at us. Even the
endocrinologists seem to become upset when you get A1c's that are
below 6.5%.
Some of this I know is because of my
age and the lack of research including people over the age of 65.
Researchers love to discriminate against us and are literally afraid
of people over the age of 65 because we may have multiple health
problems and failing cognition. Yet we are asked to take medications
for which no research has been tested as to how we handle the
medications and whether the medication may increase our cognitive
decline. Almost 100 percent of studies and trials exclude persons
over the age of 65. Rarely, and I mean rarely will you find a study
that includes people up to the age of 70 or 75. Even the Food and
Drug Administration does not seem concerned that people in the age
group that will be heavily prescribed the medication are the ones
excluded from the trials.
The following is a starter list for
beginning your education: (Note: I have not listed them in any
particular order as each has its positives and negatives.)
#1. www.diabetes.org
This is the home page for the American Diabetes Association.
#2. http://www.cdc.gov/diabetes
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
I find this more helpful for living
with diabetes, but still follows many of the tenets of the ADA.
#3. http://ndep.nih.gov
National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP), This site is a
partnership of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the CDC, and
over 200 public and private organizations.
#4.
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/diabetes.html
Medline Plus, This is presented by the National Library of
Medicine, and features many links to other helpful resources.
#5. http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov
National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse, This is presented by
the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the National Institute of
Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK). My go to page
in this site is
http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/medicines_ez/index.aspx
for the diabetes medications, both oral and insulin. See my blog here for other sites not on this list.
#6.
http://www.everydayhealth.com/type2diabetes
Everyday Health, This is generally an excellent site and at the
same time a very aggravating site and pulling your cursor across the
advertisements activates them and they are very intrusive and about
the only way to avoid them is to restart the site and make sure that
you keep the cursor away from them. It provides excellent news and
information about diabetes and also provides links to MedPage
Today’s trusted sister site.
One of the favorites on this site is
this,
http://www.everydayhealth.com/health- report/type-2-diabetes-control/why-your-type-2-diabetes-treatment-plan-is- unique.aspx
It talks about treatment being
individualized and this is because each patient is unique. This is in
conflict with the dogma of ADA which tries to make everything into a
one-size- fits-all treatment plan.
#7.
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes/DS01121
The Mayo Clinic, and
http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/diabetes/DS01121/TAB=expertblog
#8. http://blog.joslin.org/
The Joslin Diabetes Center Blog, and http://www.joslin.org/
The Joslin Diabetes Center
#9.
http://www.medscape.com/resource/diabetes-type2
Medscape Today News, This requires a membership which is free to
patients and the articles are often very interesting.
The above list is just a few of my
sources that I enjoy reading. If you find them useful, you may wish
to bookmark them to check them on a regular basis. Where the above
sites have newsletters. I have subscribed to make sure I catch the
latest news and research articles.
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