How To Keep Kidneys Healthy With Diabetes

The kidneys are responsible for filtering waste from the bloodstream and keeping urination healthy.
Diabetics may be more prone to kidney damage. Luckily, there are steps you can take to ensure that your kidneys function at optimal levels.
Control Blood Sugar Levels
Perhaps the most important thing to do to ensure kidney health is to maintain good blood sugar control. Excess glucose in the blood can damage the ability to filter waste properly. As a result, protein can leak from the blood into your urine.
Since diabetes is one of the leading causes of kidney disease, it's important to take blood glucose management seriously.
Monitor Blood Pressure
Blood pressure can also affect kidney health. According to the American Heart Association, high blood pressure is the second leading cause of kidney failure.
Since kidney health is closely associated with circulatory health, high blood pressure can cause artery damage, which inhibits the kidneys' ability to filter blood properly.
Check your blood pressure regularly. If it is consistently high, speak with your doctor about your options.
Eat a Kidney Friendly Diet
You can improve your kidney health by making some small tweaks to your diet.
While you should discuss any major dietary changes with your physician (since they can affect your blood sugar), the following rules generally apply when it comes to eating a kidney-friendly diet:
Reduce protein intake, particularly from animal sources. High-protein diets can put additional stress on already overworked kidneys.
Cut back on sodium. Too much salt can raise your blood pressure and adv Continue reading

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Statin Scam Exposed: Cholesterol Drugs Cause Rapid Aging, Brain Damage And Diabetes

Statins are prescribed to patients who suffer from high levels of “bad” cholesterol, as it lowers the harmful levels, and reduces the risk of having heart issues.
Lately, statins have come under fire as a study concluded that they do more harm than good. A lot of people take statin drugs such as Crestor, Lipitor and Zocor. In the United States, prescription drug spending rose to $374 billion in the year 2014 (the highest level of spending since 2001). Statins make up for a huge portion of spending, and consumers who take these drugs are going to have a lot to worry over than the damage to their wallets.
The American Journal of Physiology, conducted a study that states that statins "...impact on other biologic properties of stem cells provides a novel explanation for their adverse clinical effects." Specifically, the study states that such adverse effects include advancing the "process of aging" and also notes that "...long-term use of statins has been associated with adverse effects including myopathy, neurological side effects and an increased risk of diabetes." Myopathy means skeletal muscle weakness.
Statins make cells unable to repair properly, create nerve problems and destroy memory
In the study, experts suggest that the health issues incurred due to statins, have been downplayed in the recent years. People who do take these drugs usually report having fatigue, cataracts, muscle pain, liver damage and loss of memory. These drugs have been proven to mess with cells in a way that heir main purpose is to reproduce and the process of body repair is blocked. Professor Continue reading

Study: Statins Do More Harm Than Good and Increase Memory Loss, Diabetes and Cancer Risk

Heart disease is one of the leading causes of death in the United States, with approximately 610,000 Americans dying from it every year. It has become a popular theory that high cholesterol levels can have an adverse impact on your heart health, so, to combat this, many people turn towards cholesterol-lowering drugs to lower their risk of heart disease.
However, it turns out that one of America’s most popular cholesterol-lowering drugs, statins, are not only ineffective at reducing the risk of heart attack in certain populations but also cause a variety of unpleasant side effects and has even been linked to cancer.
Are Statins bad? Cholesterol And The Body
Cholesterol is classified as a sterol, which is a combination of a steroid and alcohol and not technically a fat. There is a lot of confusion when people talk about “cholesterol levels, ” and it’s important to understand that you don’t actually have cholesterol in your blood.
For cholesterol to be transported around the body in our blood and blood vessels, it has to be carried around by special little proteins called lipoproteins which are made in the liver. Different types of lipoproteins are classified according to their density. You may be familiar with the two most important lipoproteins in regards to cardiovascular disease low-density lipoprotein (LDL) and high-density lipoprotein (HDL).
Kris Kresser uses a great analogy of cars on a highway to get an understanding of how lipoproteins impact heart disease. If you imagine your bloodstream is like a highway, the lipoproteins are taxis that carry the cholester Continue reading

How Aboriginal Plant Extracts Might Treat Diabetes

A new study has found that traditional Aboriginal and Indian plant extracts could be used to manage type 2 diabetes by reducing instances of weight gain, hypertension and immune suppression.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing metabolic diseases in the world, so coming up with better treatment options has never been more important. Especially since current drugs are known to cause weight gain, making them far from optimal for patients to use long-term. So Vandana Gulati, a pharmacologist at the Swinburne University of Technology in Australia, investigated the anti-diabetic potential of seven Australian Aboriginal medicinal plants and five Indian Ayurvedic plants to see if they could offer a new solution.
Seven of these extracts have widespread use in Aboriginal communities, while the other five are used in traditional holistic Indian medicine known as Ayurveda. Ayurvedic medicene evolved in India more than 5,000 years ago, with many considering it the world's oldest healthcare system.
Gulati wanted to see the plants' influence on how our body processes glucose and forms fatty tissues - a process known as adipogenesis. "The Australian Aboriginal plants were selected on the basis of availability and their known medicinal activities," she writes in the BMC Complementary and Alternative Medicine, while the Indian Ayurvedic plants were selected based on their reported anti-diabetic potential.
Ethanolic extracts of the plants were derived and tested on the fat cells of mice. "We found that some of the plant extracts stimulated glucose uptake in fat cells while others reduced f Continue reading

Johnson & Johnson’s new diabetes drug linked to coma and death

A Philadelphia man is suing Johnson & Johnson, claiming the pharmaceutical giant’s diabetes drug, Invokana, damaged his kidneys. Invokana is made by Janssen Pharmaceuticals, a Johnson & Johnson subsidiary.
The commonly-prescribed drug had only been on the market for two years before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration determined it caused “too much acid in the blood and serious urinary tract infections,” according to reports, resulting in the required placement of a warning label on its packaging last month.(1)
Enforced by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the new drug warning applies to an entire class of diabetes medication called SGLT2 (sodium-glucose co-transporter) inhibitors, for which Invokana is included. SGLT2 inhibitors work by preventing sugar from being reabsorbed into the bloodstream.
Series of side effects plague common diabetes drug, yet it remained on the market
On Dec. 4, 2015, the FDA forced Johnson & Johnson and other manufacturers of SGLT2 inhibitors to warn consumers via labeling that the drugs may cause ketoacidosis, a serious condition that can cause diabetic comas and death, according to the American Diabetes Association.(2)
Invokana has been linked to other complications, as well. In 2015, it was reported that Invokana could increase the risk for developing kidney problems, including “kidney failure or impairment, dehydration and fluid imbalances, kidney stones, urinary tract infections and abnormal weight loss.”
In 2013, shortly after the drug’s release, the ADA determined that Invokana increased men and women’s risk for develo Continue reading