Overtreatment putting type 2 patients at risk of deadly hypoglycemia
If you have type 2 diabetes, no doubt your doctor works hard at keeping your blood sugar numbers down.
But maybe he’s working a little too hard. And that could land you in the ER… or worse.
It’s a case of overtreatment that can kill. And kill quickly.
A new study from researchers at the Mayo Clinic and Yale have found that aggressively treating type 2 diabetes with multiple meds may do more harm than good.
And those who are older and have other health problems are the ones who are at the greatest risk.
“We may hurt patients in our desire to help them if we do too much.”
That’s how Dr. Rozalina McCoy, with the Mayo Clinic, sums up the frightening facts she recently uncovered.
What Dr. McCoy and her team did was to look at the data for over 31,000 Americans who have type 2 diabetes. And they found that overtreatment — or “aggressive” management of diabetes using multiple drugs — can put you in the hospital with hypoglycemia (blood sugar that’s too low).
And that’s happening to diabetics much more often than you may think.
For example, the researchers found that over a quarter of the people they studied were at risk for hypoglycemia due to overtreatment. And if you’ve ever had an episode, you know how frightening it can be.
Along with breaking out into a sweat, feeling dizzy, having a racing heartbeat and even possibly fainting, it can lead to seizures, coma — and even death.
And for those most at risk — which includes anyone over 75 and those with multiple health issues — the team found that pumping them full of all these diabetes meds increases their risk of suffering an episode by a whopping 77 percent!
If you’re wondering how those with type 2 diabetes end up on all these multiple meds that put them in jeopardy, well, over the last two years the FDA has approved nine new non-insulin drugs to treat the condition!
I’ve been telling you the horrible details of many of these risky new meds for some time. In fact, it got to the point a couple of years ago where I said I was starting to sound like a broken record when it looked as if the FDA was trying to set an all-time high for approving meds for type 2.
And that may be the key reason why so many diabetics are at risk for hypoglycemia.
Because with all these new drugs on the market it looks like doctors aren’t just picking and choosing — they’re picking and using every drug they can get their hands on.
That’s why it’s urgent if you are being prescribed multiple drugs for type 2 diabetes to have a talk with your doctor as soon as possible about ditching one — or more.
And be sure to know your numbers, especially your A1c. That will allow you to get a good picture of your blood sugar readings over the past few months.
In addition, if you’ve ever had an episode of low-blood sugar, remember that can make it much more likely that it will happen again.
Sources:
“Intensive blood sugar control may be too much for some with type 2 diabetes” HeathDay, June 6, 2016, consumer.healthday.com
