The Everything Guide to Herbal Remedies (15 page)

Diabetes is a chronic, incurable disease involving elevated levels of blood sugar, or
glucose.
Rates of diabetes are skyrocketing. According to the CDC, about 24 million Americans now have diabetes, which is more than three million more than just two years ago; that’s nearly 8 percent of the population. What’s to blame: a high-calorie, high-fat diet and lack of physical exercise.

Diabetes is a disease involving insulin, which is a hormone produced in the pancreas that regulates glucose. Insulin helps move the sugar from your gastrointestinal tract (it comes from the carbohydrates you eat) to the cells throughout your body.

There are two main types of diabetes: type 1 (also known as insulin-dependent diabetes), which usually develops in childhood and involves an inability to produce insulin, and type 2 (or adult-onset diabetes), which develops in adulthood. Type 2 is significantly more common—it represents more than 90 percent of all cases of diabetes—and typically begins with
insulin resistance,
a disorder in which the cells stop using insulin properly and continually signal the pancreas to produce more. As the demand rises, the pancreas gradually loses its ability to meet it and full-blown diabetes sets in.

Diabetes is associated with insulin shortfalls, which can be the result of insufficient production, inefficient action, or both.

Without enough insulin, glucose stays in your blood, where it can create short-term problems like fatigue and thirst. Over time, excessive glucose can cause blindness, kidney damage, CVD, and circulatory problems that can lead to lower-limb amputations.

Conventional medicine treats diabetes with insulin, which is given to some people with type 2 diabetes and everyone with type 1. Diabetics also get oral medications such as metformin (Glucophage, Riomet) and glipizide (Glucotrol), which are hypoglycemics (they lower blood glucose levels); other drugs increase insulin sensitivity and decrease carbohydrate absorption.

People who take insulin (sold under the brand names of Apidra, Humulin, Novolin, and others) can experience mild allergic reactions or low blood sugar, the symptoms of which can include sweating, anxiety, nausea, and rapid heartbeat. Side effects of hypoglycemic drugs can include diarrhea, nausea, stomach pain, and vomiting. Herbal therapies for diabetes, prediabetes, and insulin resistance include these:

The liver processes blood as it leaves the stomach and intestines, breaking down nutrients and drugs and filtering out toxins. Chronic liver disease affects one in ten Americans and kills 27,000 of them each year. Any disease of the liver can inhibit its ability to process and eliminate drugs—both pharmaceuticals and medicinal herbs—meaning they can accumulate and reach toxic levels. If you’ve got any liver issues, talk with your doctor about taking any medicine or supplement, and avoid alcohol (your liver won’t be able to process that drug properly, either).

If you regularly drink more alcohol than your liver can handle, the alcohol overload can cause several diseases.

• Fatty liver disease
affects almost all heavy drinkers and involves the accumulation of excess fat cells. Symptoms can include abdominal discomfort, although many people won’t see any signs at all. It will improve if you stop drinking.

• Alcoholic hepatitis
affects up to 35 percent of heavy drinkers and creates nausea, abdominal pain, fever, and jaundice (a yellowing of your skin and the whites of your eyes). The damage can be reversed if you eliminate the alcohol but can lead to progressive and permanent liver damage if you don’t.

• Alcoholic cirrhosis
affects about 20 percent of heavy drinkers, most often after ten or more years of serious imbibing. In cirrhosis, normal liver tissue is replaced with scar tissue. Symptoms are similar to those of alcoholic hepatitis (see above), but the damage is irreversible.

This is caused by a virus—commonly known as hepatitis A, B, or C—and typically produces fever, headache, fever, and jaundice. Symptoms and treatments vary:

• Hepatitis A
(HVA), which is generally transmitted through contaminated food or water, typically clears up after six months without causing permanent damage.

• Hepatitis B
(HVB) can be acute (short-term, without any lasting problems) or chronic (ongoing and possibly leading to cirrhosis, cancer, or liver failure). It’s transmitted through bodily fluids and from mother to baby during childbirth.

• Hepatitis C
(HVC) is transmitted via blood and often produces no symptoms (meaning it can go undetected for years). Hepatitis C damages the liver and can lead to potentially fatal liver diseases.

Hepatitis A is generally treated with a vaccine, which can help thwart the infection. Doctors typically let an acute hepatitis B infection run its course without any drug treatments; chronic HVB and HVC infections may be treated with antiviral drugs called
interferons,
which can cause muscle pain and other side effects.

If you’ve got liver disease, you should definitely follow your doctor’s advice (and take the meds that are prescribed), but you can also use herbs to support your liver and its functioning. For example:

The 100-plus diseases known as cancer share a common cause: the growth and spread of abnormal cells, which are created when the cells’ genetic material is mutated though a process called
carcinogenesis.
This upsets the normal balance between the birth and death of cells—termed
apoptosis—
and creates a process of uncontrolled proliferation and tumor formation.

Cancer can be traced to internal factors (genetics, immune conditions, or hormonal problems) and external factors (smoking or exposure to chemicals, radiation, or infectious agents). All of these things can act together or sequentially to create disease.