PR Newswire today has an interesting read about a study recently done that shows how 80 Billion dollars of the federal governments money goes to treat people with diabetes. The staggering number shows just how large of a scourge is afoot.

There are approximately 20 million diabetics in the united states and that number is supposed to double by 2025. The cost of diabetes is certainly not going to go down if no steps are taken to change the system.

Again I think this is where some alternative treatments could bring that cost down. If people were not just prescribed drugs to lower cholesterol, blood pressure, etc and were instead given a personal trainer and some vitamins/supplements I think the associated health risks for diabetes related problems would drop and the diabetes related spending as well. The thinking needs to shift away from allowing people to think pills will solve their problem, away from spending monies on finding a “cure” (at least for type 2 diabetics. It is still worthwhile to find a cure for type 1, it is an autoimmune disease), and move towards finding ways to get people motivated, healthy and interested in taking steps to reduce side effects of diabetes.

I wish doctors would prescribe personal trainers and salads as opposed to Avandia.

Dexcom is already has one continuous glucose monitor on the market, so what is the big deal? Well, recently the FDA approved SEVEN which is Dexcom’s seven day continuous glucose monitor. The sensors last more than twice as long which means that it costs less than half as much.

Continuous glucose monitoring is really the holy grail of Type 1 Diabetes. It is actually more important than having an insulin pump, because knowing when your blood sugar is high or low requires a finger stick and a blood to be placed on a small test strip. That is hard to do when you are asleep. And if your blood sugar goes low when you are asleep it is very dangerous. I know from experience, and many times I start to get low blood sugar in my dreams and that is when I know that I need to get up and eat something. These continuous glucose monitors have a simple alarm that would wake you up when your sugar gets below a certain preset level.

Insurance companies still will not pay for a continuous glucose monitor. While I don’t like US health insurance companies in general, I sometimes have a hard time blaming them for something like this because Dexcom, Minimed and the other big pharma players that make a CGMS charge quite a lot for it. The Dexcom starter kit is $800 which isn’t too bad, but their sensors are a whopping $35/per! Considering that they only last 3 days, that is over $10 bucks a day in additional expenses that are not covered by any insurance company as they are waiting for studies to show how useful they are for diabetic complications. They should really just start paying for these things ASAP because they will prevent short term diabetic complications with low-blood sugar which probably costs them a boatload in hospitalization expenses.

And here is yet another drug that is getting some heat from the blogosphere and traditional media outlets for improper marketing and overlooking serious side effects that the drug is actually supposed to prevent. The final resolution is that GlaxoSmithKline’s Avandia will receive a “black box” warning label on the bottle stating that it might increase the risk of congestive hear failure, something that diabetics are seriously at risk for in the first place.

If only there was more sensationalism for things like Pomegranates which have recently shown to have anti-atherosclerosis properties. A vast majority of the drugs I read about on the market today attempt to lower cholesterol, reduce atherosclerosis and generally slow the progression of something like that. But to actually reduce it is unheard of, and there was a great study done in Israel showing that is exactly what Pomegranate Supplementation can do.

While some of these drugs might have their place for people in serious conditions, a majority of diabetics should get on this supplement to prevent and reverse what damage has been done so far. It just really gets me that doctors usually don’t talk about a very powerful aspect of good diabetic care which should be preventing damage done to the body by having elevated blood glucose.