When it comes to type 2 diabetes, genetics has a LOT to do with whether or not you develop the disease. And experts say environmental factors can play a role too.
Regular exercise and avoiding belly-fat-building inflammatory foods could help you keep your numbers in check. And that, in turn, might help reduce your risk.
But the truth is you could do EVERYTHING right and still develop the disease. Because there’s another often overlooked cause of rising blood sugars.
It turns out a bunch of common prescription meds could send your risk for type 2 diabetes skyrocketing.
In fact, so many drugs can drive up your risk for a diabetes diagnosis—over 300 of them—that there’s even an official medical condition called “drug-induced diabetes.”
Prescription drugs can have dangerous side effects
Check your medicine cabinet to find out if you’re taking any of these four common diabetes-linked drugs…
1. Antibiotics:
You probably know by now that antibiotics are far from risk-free. But it turns out it is not just antibiotic resistance and superbugs that you need to be concerned about.
Antibiotics are also associated with diabetes. And experts say the more of them you take, the higher your risk of developing type 2 diabetes rises.
According to research published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism people with five or more prescriptions for antibiotics in a year had a 50 percent greater risk of type 2 diabetes then folks with one or no prescription.
Researchers still aren’t exactly sure why antibiotics send your risk rocketing. But they think it likely has something to do with the destruction of the healthy bacteria in your gut. And that dangerous side effect could have other consequences too.
Learn to be very picky about when you take a prescription antibiotic.
For example, if you have a virus, skip it. Antibiotics don’t work on viruses anyway. And if you don’t have a serious infection consider trying a natural antibiotic such as oil of oregano or olive leaf extract instead.
And consider taking a probiotic whenever you take one, to help protect and restore your healthy gut bugs.
2. Diuretics:
Diuretics are often prescribed for high blood pressure. But taking them could have you jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because this blood pressure fix could raise your risk for diabetes by as much as 30 percent.
Talk to your doctor about trying natural diuretics instead.
For example, dandelion greens work well in a salad or brewed into tea. If those are too bitter, green tea makes a milder but often very effective diuretic also.
3. Prednisone:
Prednisone is a powerful anti-inflammatory and painkiller. But, unfortunately, it comes with a long list of dangerous side effects, including increased blood sugar.
The good news is blood sugars usually level off quickly once you stop taking the drug, so the damage isn’t permanent.
If you’re taking prednisone over the long term for inflammation talk with your doctor about tapering you off it and looking for alternatives. The results of studies looking at turmeric and inflammation are promising, for example. And research has found Boswellia, Cat’s Claw, resveratrol, and ginger are all effective anti-inflammatories too.
4. Statins:
Taking statin drugs could increase your risk for diabetes by a staggering 50 percent. Not only do these drugs increase your body’s insulin resistance, but statins also reduce your pancreas’ ability to produce insulin. It’s a diabetes double whammy.
And while they put you at risk, they target run of the mill LDL while ignoring the far bigger danger of small, dense, and OXIDIZED LDL.
Consider swapping statins for more fatty fish and whole grains, especially oat bran, instead. And nutrients such as the phytosterols found in nuts, the allicin found in garlic, and the antioxidants found in green tea can help gently lower cholesterol without dangerous side effects.
Don’t trade one health concern for another. And don’t let the drug that’s supposed to help you hurt you with dangerous side effects instead. Ask your doctor if any of your own prescriptions could be raising your diabetes risk. And if so ask for alternative options.
She is an advocate of self-education and is passionate about the power of group knowledge sharing, like the kind found right here on HealthierTalk.com. Alice loves to share her views on holistic and natural healing as well as her, sometimes contentious, thoughts on the profit-driven inner workings of traditional medicine.
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Re statins and diabetes:
It is important for the public to recognize that most of the “scientific” research in favor of cholesterol-lowering statins is flawed and fraudulent (read Dr. Uffe Ravnskov’s work).
The most reliable evidence has long tied statin use with memory problems, muscle disorders, liver damage, cataracts, nerve damage, arterial calcification, pancreatitis, erectile dysfunction, brain dysfunction, diabetes, and with an increased risk of cancer and higher mortality (statins only somewhat reduce the risk of non-fatal heart attacks).
The physiological mechanisms of how statins do serious damage are also well understood, such as by their impairment of oxidative cell metabolism, the increase in inflammation and cell destruction, the lowering of cholesterol and steroid hormone production, the promotion of pancreatic injury, etc. – rather thoroughly explained in this scholarly article on how statins, and a cholesterol-lowering popular diet pill advertised by Dr. Oz, promote diabetes at http://www.supplements-and-health.com/garcinia-cambogia-side-effects.html – look at Figure 7 to see how irrational it is to block the production of cholesterol!
Yet despite of the existence of that scientific knowledge, the medical business and the public health authorities keep ignoring it and continue to recommend statins to diabetics and make claims that they have a low risk profile despite that they are also significantly linked to cancer and higher mortality (just look at the propaganda put out by the Mayo clinic on statin drugs: “the risk of life-threatening side effects from statins is very low”).
And because of such medical propaganda, few people are aware that the medical claims of benefits of statins are mostly based on junk studies conducted by people with vested interests. And, logically, it’s mostly the corporate medical business and other people with similar vested interests tied to it (eg, mouthpieces, hacks) who promote the alleged value of these highly lucrative products.
Also, older people with HIGH cholesterol live longer than those with low cholesterol levels (see above mentioned article for numerous scientific study references confirming this).
Because the cholesterol-heart disease theory, or rather medical dogma, is wrong, the use of statins is also wrong by logical extension.
So the real truth is that statins have almost no real benefit in the very vast majority of users. They do more harm than good (read Uffe Ravnskov’s “The Cholesterol Myths” and Malcolm Kendrick’s “The Great Cholesterol Con”). It’s one of many “scientific” scams of the mainstream medical business.