Since the publication of the previous edition of Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution in 2007, many new developments have occurred in the field of diabetes research, and as each significant one has come along, I have further refined my techniques for normalizing blood sugars. This newly revised and updated edition discusses new medications, new insulins, new dietary supplements, new hardware (tools for the diabetic), and other new products. It also explores new methods that I have developed for more elegantly controlling blood sugars.
Exciting new approaches to weight loss will be found here, including the use of new, injectable medications (incretin mimetics) that are wonderfully effective for alleviating carbohydrate craving and overeating.
This newly revised and updated edition builds upon the prior three editions of this book and upon my three earlier books about diabetes. It is designed as a tool for patients to be used under the guidance of their physicians or diabetes educators. It covers, in a step-by-step fashion, virtually everything that must be done to keep blood sugars in the normal range.
In these pages I attempt to present nearly everything I know about blood sugar normalization, how it can be accomplished and maintained. With this book, and with the help of your physician or diabetes educator, I hope that you will learn to take control of your diabetes, whether it’s type 1 (juvenile-onset), as mine is, or the much more common type 2 (maturity-onset) diabetes. To my knowledge, there is no other book in print addressed strictly to blood sugar control for both types of diabetes.
This volume contains much material that may be new to many physicians treating diabetes. It is my hope that doctors and health care professionals will use it, learn from it, and do their best to help their patients take control of this potentially deadly but controllable disease.
Although this book contains considerable background information on diet and nutrition, it is intended primarily as a comprehensive how-to guide to blood sugar control, including detailed instructions on techniques for painless insulin injection and so on. It must, therefore, leave out other related issues (such as pregnancy), some of which require their own volumes. My office telephone number is listed several times in this book, and we are always happy to hear from readers who seek our latest recommendation for a blood sugar meter, other equipment, or new medications.
I urge you to visit the website for this book, www.diabetes-book.com. The site contains some of my recent articles, a history of blood sugar self-monitoring, links to other sites, testimonials from readers who have tried the program, an opportunity to share your own experiences in an ongoing chat group for diabetics and their loved ones,* and more. The site also permits you to forward information by e-mail to anyone you think could benefit from this book.
Recent news releases and advertisements have described “developments” and products that are not mentioned here, and you may be curious about them. If a medication is not discussed here, then it is likely I have deliberately omitted it as either useless or potentially harmful, or it was not available when this volume was written. There are many drugs, old and new, used in the treatment of diabetes. Some, like metformin, or Glucophage, are truly wonderful, but others, such as the sulfonylureas, are insidious and can impair your body’s remaining insulin-producing capability, if it has any. I have omitted anything I think is either too far into the future to be of near-term consequence or is simply not going to be effective at getting you on track. I have neither the time nor the space to attempt to debunk every “miracle cure” that comes along, most of which are neither miraculous nor cures.
Should you become pregnant while on this program, of all the medications mentioned in this book, metformin, aspirin, and insulin are the only ones that have been tested in pregnant women. Nevertheless, check out all your medications with your obstetrician and pharmacist—ideally before you become pregnant.
Many thousands of diabetics have successfully used this program. Like them, if you, with your physician’s help, seriously follow these guidelines, you should be able to avoid the discomfort of inappropriate blood sugar swings. You may even be able to prevent or reverse the development of many of the grave complications long associated with chronically high blood sugars.
Finally, much of what I will cover in this book is in direct opposition to the recommendations of the American Diabetes Association (ADA) and other national diabetes associations. Why? Because if I had followed those guidelines, they would have killed me long ago. Such conflicts include the low-carbohydrate diet I recommend; the avoidance of certain oral agents (such as sulfonylureas) that impair surviving insulin-producing beta cells in type 2 diabetics; my preference for certain insulins over others, which I avoid; my desire to preserve remaining beta cells (an alien concept to traditional practice); and my insistence that diabetics are entitled to the same normal blood sugars that nondiabetics enjoy, rather than the ADA’s current insistence upon higher levels.
Most important, unlike the ADA guidelines, ours work.