Let me begin by welcoming you to this blog about diabetes and health. I myself was diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic over seven years ago. I’ve come to recognize that the standard approaches, while ok to alleviate symptoms in the short term, have very serious limitations. I have come to believe there has to be a better way of controlling blood sugar than taking more and more pharmaceutical drugs. So, that’s one major focus of this blog.

Over 20 million Americans now have diabetes at an estimated cost of over $100 billion annually. Diabetes is the leading cause of kidney failure, amputations, and blindness in adults. Over 20 percent of patients with diabetes have some relatively serious form of visual impairment. Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of new cases of blindness in people age 20-74 years in the United States. In 2002, 3 million adults with diabetes age 18 years and older reported visual impairment (i.e., trouble seeing even while wearing their glasses or contact lenses).

Diabetes patients also have been shown to suffer disproportionately from cognitive impairment, physical handicaps and other disorders that make it difficult for them to perform independent self-management. As many as 40% of patients with diabetes can have impaired cognitive skills or poor health literacy skills that make self-management challenging.

Most likely, you’ve read these depressing facts in one form or another already. These inescapable facts about diabetes all suggest the need for discussion and information. There are plenty of strategies and approaches out there for people with diabetes. Many go against the grain of such venerable organizations as the American Diabetes Association and in my opinion, that’s probably good.

It’s an unfortunate fact that diabetes has become a huge money-maker for loads of pharmaceutical corporations though very little progress has been made toward a real cure for the condition. The truth is that there are lots of alternative ideas floating around about nonpharmaceutical and potentially very effective means of getting your blood sugar under control that can decrease and, for some, completely negate the need for perscription medication. This has to be better than drugs like Avandia that can easily kill you.

Another major topic in need of constant discussion and update is that of blood glucose testing. Blood glucose meters are so available today that it’s hard to make an informed choice about what to buy. A choice made today may well be superseded by something new next week or next month. We’ll help you keep up with this here at the blog.

Please be sure to read the first two posts. The first is an article I wrote about discussing this blog in more detail. Perhaps you saw that article and it’s why you came here and if that’s the case don’t worry about it. But if you haven’t seen or read it, please do because it has a lot of basic information that is important to know.

The second post is an article that focuses on blood glucose meters. I hope you find that it pulls things together and gives you the basics you need to make informed choices about the meter that is right for you. Please check out both posts, and if you see more that just means maybe you are not one of the very first visitors to this blog.

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