With the soaring number of people being diagnosed with pre-diabetes the implications of early and aggressive treatment with medication may be anything but a lifesaver for the patient, but is going to ensure than big pharma remains profitable.
Always listen to the warning signs
The marker for pre-diabetes is a glucose level higher than normal, but not as high as in diabetes. Most conventionally-trained physicians would still consider you something between naturally healthy and off kilter. But, the truth is, pre-diabetics have a 50 percent higher risk for developing heart disease and stroke vs. non-diabetics.
Conventional medicine strongly suggests that we treat pre-diabetes “early and aggressively” with intensive lifestyle changes – including the use of toxic pharmaceuticals. The problem is diabetic drugs have proven to be largely ineffective in reducing the damage done to the cardiovascular system and (usually) make health problems worse – with a wide range of negative side effects like weight gain.
“Early” diagnosis promotes sick care – NOT health
The gold standard for a diagnosis of type-2 diabetes has changed over the last decade. A normal fasting level today is considered below 100mg/dl. A person with pre-diabetes has a fasting level between 100 and 125mg/dl. When the level rises to 126mg/dl or above, a person has diabetes.
Pre-diabetes is a premature assumption, it isn’t a opportunity to catch a disease earlier. In most cases, pre-diabetic conditions require lifestyle changes – not an increase in drug consumption.
Sickness makes pill pushers very happy
Pharmaceutical companies are salivating at the prospect of taping into a market with a potential customer base of 105 million in America alone and growing. There are an estimated 79 million of adults with pre-diabetes which represents a staggering 39% increase from 2008. What a dream disease for the pharmaceutical cartel.
In 2009, the U.S. diabetes market grew 17% from 2008, reaching 14.9 billion and worldwide it generates sales of more than $25 billion according to independent business information provider Visionagain, and by 2019 – Moringstar projects the worldwide oral drug market to grow to over $55 billion.
Is it a crime to profit without helping people?
Pharmaceutical companies are searching for more revenue as many of their high-priced drugs are coming off patent, and there will be generic versions ready to roll. This is why there is so much focus on the pre-diabetes market. Oral drugs like Actos, which are known to cause terrible side effects including bladder cancer, are being pushed for a solution to pre-diabetes even if it isn’t a solution for type-2 diabetes.
Guess what? Actos doesn’t improve the outcome for diabetics, yet in the U.S. alone it accounted for just about $1.8 billion in sales in the first half of 2010 and the total diabetes market in the first half of 2010 was $8.7 billion – nearly as much as the sum total of 2005.
Conventional science estimates that nearly 1 in every 3 adults could have diabetes by 2050. Let’s prove them wrong by encouraging our friends and family to live a healthy lifestyle filled with organic, fresh food and healthy living habits