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Extreme diabetes management

H

HpprKM

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Self absorbed and rude people! Motorists who are oblivious to the rest of the world, and really don't give a ****!
Having read today's article on the safety of extreme diabetes management has left me very confused, on the one hand it is suggesting that aiming to get HbA1 targets to under 7 per cent (when my GP told me that my 5.6 was a little high and that it is preferable for diabetics to have a reading of under 5), but it ends with the information that there is no explicit reason given for results of study, and that it questioned the use of the now banned Avandia
Generally studies have found lowering of HbA1c values to be positive, however, some question marks have arisen about whether certain therapies may carry more danger.

The ACCORD study, discussed in further detail below, is an example of a study in which death rates were noticeably higher in the intensive therapy group.

No explicit reason was given for why and, within the medical profession, this has lead practitioners and consultants to question whether HbA1c targets under 7% should be achieved.

However, a number of commentators have since questioned the involvement of the now banned drug Avandia in the study and contest that a lower HbA1c, in itself, should not be isolated as the reason for the higher death rate.
Click to expand...

So what are we to make of this? Do we ignore it and go on striving for low results by medication, low carbing etc - or do we need to be concerned? Maybe it is me being thick, perhaps someone more knowledgeable on the subject, because even after almost 4 years of being diagnosed T2 I still find the whole thing confusing :oops:
 
Apologies if this subject already raised - I did not find it!
 
:)
 
I think so, but the article implied that having bs lower than 7 may cause harm to the body. At least that was my translation of it, maybe I got it wrong, and I am sure there was more to the original source for the article - that may have gone on to discuss the possibility of cardiovascular disease.
 
Hiya!

Yeh, I read that and thought what a poorly written/edited article it was. It seemed to confuse a number of issues. I think the conclusion was that were two studies - one was based on the now-banned drug, Avandia; in that study, the control group with low BGs (who were mainly the Avandia users) kept dying (a 20% higher death rate than the control group whose BGs were higher i.e. the non Avandia users). So the study was ended prematurely (presumably to avoid further deaths!). The second study did not use Avandia and got very different results (i.e. people with low BGs did not keep dying!). The article seemed to be trying to say that therefore low BGs could be the cause of the coronary problems the people in the first study died of. It later implied that it was more likely the deaths were linked to Avandia. It then went on to state diabetics should keep BGs below 7 as that is the magical figure at which complications are usually seen. All in all a very confused and confusing article which gave no evidence of a link between low BGs and coronary problems.

My advice would be ignore the article (except don't use Avandia of course!); keep BGs as low as you can and certainly under 7, but weigh up the risks of hypos against the benefits of very low BGs and try to reach a compromise between the two.

I do wish DiabetesUK would take more care with their articles. Diabetes is confusing enough for most people without this kind of nonsense.

Smidge
 
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