Vitamins and Diabetes | Vitamins Diabetes Natural Cure

Vitamin B12 and Diabetes Treatment - What You Must Know

If you are a diabetic and have been taking metformin for at least one year, you need to check your b12 level. There is an associated risk of b12 deficiency. This does not mean you stop taking your metformin. Metformin is an excellent diabetic medication that can effectively and safely manage your type 2 diabetes. It has an excellent safety record.

The mechanism for the possible lower b12 level is decreased absorption. Calcium malabsorption (poor absorption) may also contribute. It has been shown that calcium supplementation may help to decrease the induced b12 malabsorption. Just how common this is in not known. Research is underway regarding the clinical or medical significance.

It is recommended that you have a b12 (cobalamin) level checked once per year when taking metformin. If your level is low, then discuss b12 supplementation with your healthcare provider. A quality sublingual supplement is usually adequate. This supplement should include the B complex vitamins such as B1 (Thiamin), B2 (Riboflavin), B3 (Niacin), and B6 (Pyridoxine) which are necessary for good absorption of B12. Folate is also a necessary ingredient of a quality supplement.

If calcium supplementation is recommended, consider taking a quality / certified pure coral calcium supplement. Certified pure means that correct methods of harvesting the calcium from coral have been followed and the unsafe heavy metals such as lead, mercury, and aluminum have been removed.

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Diabetes and Vitamin C

What if instead of taking Actos (pioglitazone) or Avandia (rosiglitazone) or Glucophage (metformin), the medication you really needed for blood sugar control in diabetes were vitamin C? A study coming from Iran suggests that for some diabetics, vitamin C might be as useful as many common medications.

Researchers at the Shahid Sadoughi University of Medical Sciences & Health Services followed 84 diabetics given either 500 mg or 1,000 mg of supplemental vitamin C every day for six weeks.

Taking 500 mg of vitamin C every day did not result in any measurable benefits. Diabetics taking 1,000 mg of vitamin C a day, however, had lower fasting blood glucose, lower triglycerides, lower LDL cholesterol, and lower HbA1C in just 42 days.

How much lower?

Average fasting blood glucose levels fell from 169.33 mg/dl to 144.80 mg/dl.

Average HbA1C fell from 8.82 per cent to 7.66 per cent. (This is better than most medications.)

Average LDL cholesterol fell from 130.95 mg/dl to 125.91 mg/dl.

And the drop in insulin levels was astonishing, from 16.91 microunits per ml to 8.77 microunits per ml.

When there is less insulin, there is less fat storage. Vitamin C should help diabetics keep from gaining weight.

These results suggest that many diabetics may benefit from vitamin C, but the results should be interpreted with some reservations. If you are already on one or several medications, the additional benefits of taking a 1,000 mg vitamin C tablet every day, at least in terms of your blood sugars, triglycerides, and HbA1c, may be limited. Also, vitamin in your blood interacts with the enzymes in blood glucose test strips so that the glucometer reading is low, while the actual blood sugar is higher.

It's also possible that using vitamin C for several months can, like using R-lipoic or alpha-lipoic acid, give you a reduction in HbA1C that doesn't really result from improved blood sugars. Doctors test HbA1C to get a rough estimate of how high or low blood sugars have run over several months. Strong antioxidants keep glucose from "sticking" to hemoglobin, so less HbA1C is formed at the same blood sugar level.

The effects of vitamin C on blood sugar measurements of various kinds may not be major, but they do tend to exaggerate the vitamin's benefits. Where vitamin C might really help you is to keep you from gaining weight.

Just get your C from an extended-release formula, and make sure you don't take more than 1,000 mg a day. You may, according to some other studies, get some benefits from just 250 mg a day.

Vitamin C is also important for diabetics' cardiovascular health.

That's because the amount of vitamin C a diabetic gets may also measure risk of stroke. Among the 20,649 participants in the Norfolk Prospective Population Study in the UK, those whose bloodstream concentrations of vitamin C ranked in the top 25 per cent were 42 per cent less likely to have a stroke than those in the bottom 25 per cent.

This finding does not prove that diabetics can prevent strokes by taking vitamin C, or even confirm with certainty that diabetics can reduce their risk of stroke by taking vitamin C. It is possible that there's some other element of a healthy lifestyle that goes along with getting enough vitamin C that's really protective. This study does show, however, that getting adequate vitamin C certainly does not hurt diabetics' cardiovascular health.
Savvy Natural Healer.

Diabetes and Vitamin E

Vitamin E is a term used to describe eight different chemicals performing the same function.

Many physicians and nutritionists typically refer to alpha-tocopherol as if it were the only component of vitamin E, but, the fact is, it's just the easiest form of vitamin E to measure. Vitamin E consists of not just alpha-tocopherol but a total of four "tocopherols" and four "tocotrienols."

Can supplementing with vitamin E help if you have diabetes?

The answer seems to be "it depends."

A study conducted in Israel and published in late 2007 found that taking 400 IU of vitamin E a day (and by "vitamin E," these researchers meant just alpha-tocopherol) could cut your risk of having a heart attack or stroke almost in half if:

You have type 2 diabetes,
You're over 55 years old, and
You have a special set of genes known as the Hp 2-2 genotype.

This means there are some people whose arteries vitamin E can help a lot, and others maybe little or not at all.

In Western societies, only about 36 per cent of the population has the Hp 2-2 genotype. (Scientists haven't measured the genotype in African and Asian populations yet.) The other 64 per cent won't benefit from taking alpha-tocopherol for their hearts.

Vitamin E, however, can have a much more direct effect on diabetes when it's used in "pharmacologic" doses.

An Italian study found that taking 900 mg (that's about 1200 IU) of alpha-tocopherol a day increased the ability of insulin to move glucose into muscle by about 30 per cent in type 2 diabetics. In this study, vitamin E performs better than any oral prescription medication for type 2 diabetes on the market, but....

The problem with taking a vitamin E supplement that's pure alpha-tocopherol at that dosage is that it can interfere with your body's absorption of the other forms of vitamin E (gamma-tocopherol in particular) and actually raise your risk of having a "sudden cardiovascular event."

You can avoid this problem by taking a supplement that contains at least gamma-tocopherol in addition to alpha-tocopherol, and preferably all eight of the chemical forms of vitamin E.

And if you have "just a touch of diabetes," that is, if you've been told you're "borderline diabetic" or if you have metabolic syndrome, consumption of all of the eight chemicals that make up "vitamin E" may be very useful to you.

A Finnish study found that high-level consumption of the four "tocopherols" and four "tocotrienols" that together function as vitamin E might reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes by about 30 per cent.

The Finnish scientists also found that high rates of consumption of a related antioxidant, beta-cryptoxanthin, might reduce the risk of developing diabetes by about 40 per cent.

What's beta-cryptoxanthin?

Well, it's not vitamin E, but it has some of the same functions as vitamin E. Beta-cryptoxanthin is chemically similar to beta-carotene.

Beta-cryptoxanthin, like beta-carotene, is a provitamin that the human body can use to make vitamin A. This hard-to-pronounce antioxidant seems to keep LDL cholesterol from changing into plaques and possibly to prevent the progression of arthritis.

And, for reasons scientists can't explain yet, it is associated with lower rates of diabetes. There's not known to be any downside to taking it. It tends to disappear from circulation in people who use large amounts of margarines with plant sterols to lower cholesterol, like Benecol and Take Control.

So what's a diabetic to do?

Mixed tocopherols and tocotrienols ("natural" vitamin E) is probably more beneficial for most diabetics. 400 IU a day is enough. 1200 IU a day is better. Do not take more than 400 IU a day of any supplement that's solely composed of alpha-tocopherol.

If you use Benecol or Take Control, be sure you get your beta-cryptoxanthan, either from a supplement or from regular servings of avocado, cilantro, serrano peppers, or (in moderation) grapefruit, oranges, or watermelon

Diabetes: African American Foe
Why African American and blacks in general are at risk of getting diabetes and what preventive measures that they can take