DIABETES RESEARCH RIGHT NOW! #4: The Most Effective Weight Loss Wonder Drug Yet About To Arrive and WHAT Does THAT Have To Do With Diabetes????

From the first moment I discovered I had been diagnosed with DIABETES, I joined a HUGE “club” that has been rapidly expanding since t stopped being a death sentence in the early 20th Century. Currently, there are about HALF A BILLION PEOPLE who have Type 2 Diabetes. For the past 3500 years – dating back to Ancient Egypt – people have suffered from diabetes. Well, I’m one of them now… Not one to shut up for any known reason, I added a section to this blog…

Every month, I’ll be highlighting Diabetes research that is going on RIGHT NOW! Harvested from different websites, journals and podcasts, I’ll translate them into understandable English and share them with you. Today: Tirzepatide – The Most Effective Weight Loss Wonder Drug Yet About To Arrive and WHAT Does That Have To Do With Diabetes????

“Butsch, of the Cleveland Clinic, said he is hopeful insurance companies will cover tirzepatide. “We’re seeing really for the first time highly effective anti-obesity medications,” he said. “The benefit is real.”

“A review published last year in the research journal Obesity found that health care professionals hold implicit and/or explicit weight-biased attitudes toward people with obesity… Bias and stigma about obesity run rampant throughout the medical community…’It’s evident across all health professionals, including physicians, nurses, dietitians and others,’ said Lisa Howley, an educational psychologist and the Association of American Medical Colleges' senior director of strategic initiatives and partnerships.”

Most of you are aware that there’s a current shortage of certain diabetes drugs – because they’re being prescribed by doctors for use as a WEIGHT LOSS drug for people who are NOT diagnosed with diabetes. “The current shortage of semaglutide (Ozempic), an important diabetes drug, has an unusual origin: too many people without diabetes are taking it.”

THE HECK!?!?!?!?!

So, doctors and producers are diverting a medication THAT CAN SAVE A LIFE because certain people are TOO LAZY TO EXERCISE OR NOT STUFF THEIR FACES AT EVERY BUFFET FROM HERE TO ETERNITY OR WANT TO SPEND TWENTY HOURS A DAY NOT WATCHING THE TV THAT’S ON IN FRONT OF THEM WHILE THEY TEXT AND PLAY PHONE GAMES.

Do I sound a teensy bit judgmental here? I am. I feel I’m entitled, though. First of all, I AM one of those who (used to and still DO sometimes) am too lazy to exercise, LOVE to stuff my face at a buffet, I’ve NEVER spent much time watching TV (even when I was single), and I DO text and play phone games while I’m watching TV or a movie…so, I’m not judging from a point of some sense of superiority.

I sound a LOT judgmental…(just so you know, the other blog I write is called POSSIBLY IRRITATING ESSAYS (https://faithandsciencefiction.blogspot.com/), I admit it.

And the fact is that, I sort of get the idea taking care of obesity BEFORE it becomes a true medical condition manifesting as Type 2 Diabetes: “Dr. Holly Lofton, the director of the weight management program at NYU Langone Health, regularly prescribes the new drugs to her patients but many, she says, are denied coverage by their insurance. ‘Patients tell me that it appears to them as if insurance companies want to wait until they get so sick that they have more of a necessity for a medication,’ she said.” It’s not a documented study, but it’s certainly a perspective of people.

A doctor writing on the Health Harvard tells this joke: “Drug ads often urge you to ask your doctor if a treatment is right for you. But we already know a key piece of the answer for Ozempic: if you don’t have diabetes, don’t ask for a diabetes medicine to help with weight loss. There are better ways to get the help you need to reach a healthy weight if you are overweight or obese. Talk to your doctor about a full range of treatment options.” Of course, the “full range of treatment options” means: diet, exercise, and living a healthy lifestyle”.

It's perhaps my jaundiced perception and possibly irritating opinion that Americans (me included), and the wealthiest of other countries around the world), don’t WANT anything that smacks of NOT being able to do whatever they want; eat whatever and however much they WANT, and living HOWEVER THE HELL THEY WANT TO – and then taking a shot to keep them slim and trim and healthy.

I’ll also point out that there have been NO long-term studies of the effects of drugs like OZEMPIC and the newest drug Tirzepatide if it is used for extended periods of time…because as a dieter myself, I KNOW that once we reach our target weight, we throw the lifestyle out the window and we’re soon right back where we started.

“A phase 3 clinical trial found a high dose of tirzepatide helped patients lose 22.5%, Wegovy and Saxenda reduced body weight by around 15% and around 5%, respectively.” Ozempic will help you lose 10%...so what drug will the TARGET MARKET go for? DUH! The one that has the potential for you to drop 52 pounds and only have to get your shot once a week!

My wife however, notes, that when she used Ozempic to treat her Type 2 diabetes, it made her extremely ill.

I wonder why they don’t put that in the actual commercial? Hmmm…probably because showing someone barfing on TV wouldn’t help to sell their product…[Who me? Sarcastic? Not at all!]

Link: https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa2206038, https://www.healthline.com/health-news/diabetes-the-top-discoveries-and-developments-of-2022, https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/weight-loss-drug-affordability-rcna60422 , https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/what-happens-when-a-drug-goes-viral-202302212892 , https://www.myjuniper.co.uk/articles/expected-weight-loss-on-ozempic#:~:text=About%20a%20third%20of%20people,using%20Ozempic%20for%20weight%20loss.
Image: https://asploro.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Diabetes-Research_Open-Access.jpg

GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…DIABETES #6 Part 2: What Do the Numbers On Your Glucometer MEAN???

For the first time since I started this column eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes two weeks ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes.

You’re Welcome to join me! Part 1 of this post is here: https://breastcancerreaper.blogspot.com/2023/02/guys-gotta-talk-aboutdiabetes-6-part-1.html

So WHY exactly is my blood sugar important?

That’s like asking, “Why do I have to put unleaded gasoline in my car?”

Duh! So WHAT if I put Leaded gasoline in my car, isn’t all gas the same? It’s NOT the same! Here’s a micro-history of why: “In search of cheaper compounds, a gasoline scientist discovered that adding tetraethyl lead (TEL) to gasoline would also increase the octane rating (which determines how violent the explosion of the gasoline is – the more explosive it is, the more power it creates.

NASCAR racecars use “Sunoco Green E15, a 98 octane, unleaded fuel blend specifically engineered for high-performance engines and race cars.” The best you can get at the pump is 91 octane.

Anyway, “At the time adding TEL seemed like the perfect solution because it was cheap and you only needed a very small amount to boost the octane power. However, it immediately released lead into the air as invisible smoke. The inventor nearly died of lead poisoning during his research, which caused significant migraines. During production, it immediately caused worker deaths in production plants.”

The sugar in our blood is what powers our bodies. EVERYTHING we do uses GLUCOSE. It is NOT the same a SUCROSE, which is like the sugar in a cube or that some people spoon into their coffee…

By the way: USING SUCROSE (also known as table sugar) DOES NOT CAUSE DIABETES. Eating Twinkies (which are, admittedly DELICIOUS), but that’s because each Twinkie has 33 grams of sugar in it. NO IDEA how much that is? It’s eight sugar cubes. In each one.

So, what happens then? The sugar (cubed or not!) hits your stomach acid, which tears it apart. Sucrose is a sugar that’s made up of two little hexagram boxes that hold onto 12 Carbon atoms, 11 Oxygen atoms, and 22 Hydrogen atoms. It gets torn by your stomach acid into two hexagram boxes. BUT you get two new sugars from the break up!

One is glucose, which you need to run your body. It has 6 Carbon atoms, 6 Oxygen atoms, and 13 Hydrogen atoms. The rest plus a water molecule, make FRUCTOSE (which is also called “fruit sugar”), and that hangs around for bit then the body lets it go.
Your body can do three things with the newly changed glucose: it can use it right away; it can store it in the liver (there it’s called glucogen and can be changed to glucose again really fast). The last thing it does is gets stored…in my flabby belly!

So we have glucose, now what? THIS is where insulin comes in and can work for you to either store your glucose or use the glucose. In someone whose body works the way it’s supposed to, there’s a good level of insulin in the bloodstream. It’s the way our body works – you get glucose IN, and insulin snags it and gets it to where it’s SUPPOSED to be – muscles for either use or short-term storage; the liver for longer-term storage. Insulin lives in the Beta Cells of your pancreas – it’s a sort-of triangle shaped thing that lays on top of your actual stomach (the ORGAN, not like my jiggle pile of flab!)

So, I’m 12 and I eat my Twinkie. Thirty-three grams of sucrose (plus some more complicated CARBOHYDRATES, which are also broken up into various sugars and eventually end up as sucrose and glucose – the body’s very efficient that way! But THAT’S why eating carbs can also affect your blood sugars!) Anyway, the sugar hits the blood, wakes up the Beta Cells, who send out squirts of insulin. Healthy Beta Cells check the level of glucose every few seconds and adjust the squirts to match the amount of glucose in my blood because...insulin travels through the bloodstream, escorting the glucose and telling a the cell’s “doors” to open to let the glucose in. Once inside, the cells change the glucose into energy to use right then or store it to use later.

That was when I was 12…

At almost 66, my Beta Cells are TIRED. Fact is, most people didn’t do anything bad – it’s just a fact of aging that the pancreas is slower to respond than it was when I was standing on the edge of puberty!

But I’m insulin resistant and that changes how glucose is moved around. My body is no longer able to use its own insulin very well. Glucose can’t enter the cells where it's needed, so the amount of glucose in the bloodstream goes UP. The fancy name is hyperglycemia, we know it as, “Dang! My blood sugar is so HIGH! I gotta test it again.”

When blood sugar levels reach 180 or higher, the kidneys try to get rid of the extra sugar through the urine, stressing the kidneys; which leads to disease. When blood sugar levels are close to normal, it means the body is getting the energy it needs to work, play, heal, and stay healthy. If they’re too high? Lethargy. Slow-down of my body’s ability to heal itself when I get injured or even if I have to deal with something like COVID-19. Continued high blood sugars will ruin my chances of recovering my health and staying healthy as I age…

Resource Data: https://www.forbes.com/health/body/best-glucose-meters/; https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg; One Touch Verio Test Strip: https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcShHtmHsdoaRg877fv-9VN4tmZwWUqQY9BavQ&usqp=CAU
Image: https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg