Diet, Exercise Beat Drugs at Combating Type II Diabetes

This week the British Medical Journal published a meta-analysis of the best approaches to treating type II diabetes. What the heck is a meta-analysis? It is where a research group looks at all the previous studies they can find on a particular subject and puts them all together to see how much the studies agree. This particular meta-analysis looked at all the ways to treat type II diabetes, whether it were drugs, herbs, diets, exercise or combinations.

Diet, Exercise better than Drugs.

The researchers found that lifestyle approaches (diet and exercise) were at least as effective as drugs in treating type II diabetes. This is an incredible finding because it provides scientific evidence for what many of us interested in natural approaches have already suspected. Furthermore, the report concluded that lifestyle approaches had far fewer side-effects than drug therapies. This finding is not too striking but good to see the science nonetheless.

So why are drugs so heavily used in treating type II diabetes when they appear to be unnecessary in so many cases? There are a couple of main reasons. First, people want a quick fix. Drugs provide that. Second, people don't want to work that hard to get better. Drugs, also provide that. They are easy and relatively fast.

But the flip-side of the coin is, why would you willingly take a drug for the rest of your life and suffer the side-effects when you don't have to? It all goes back to basic psychology. People do things to get pleasure and avoid pain. In many cases, the pain of lifestyle adjustment outweighs the pain of drug side effects and the pleasure of not needing drugs.

Change is the only OptionThe irony is that anyone who actually makes the necessary adjustments, starts to exercise and eat better, actually gets so much more pleasure. If people could just magically expose themselves to the increased pleasure that they would experience by living better they would have no problem getting started. You have to create in your mind a future that you know gives you much greater pleasure than you are experiencing now and realize that the only way to achieve that is to change your lifestyle.

If you have type II diabetes I hope that you will take this new evidence to your doctor and find a way to improve your condition and wean yourself off all the drugs. Work with your doctor to increase your exercise routine, eat better, take high quality nutritional supplements and cut back on the drugs. If your doctor is so pro-drug that they are blind to these approaches then GET A NEW DOCTOR. You deserve to live the rest of your life moving toward more pleasure and away from pain. Don't give up the fight.