That seems to be the state of affairs all over. It's too bad. Some of the drugs are insane! My wife keeps track of these sorts of things and she has told me about some pretty destructive drugs out there now. I can't imagine why anyone would take them.

I suppose so. Myself, I hesitate to even take an aspirin anymore. If I have a pain or something, I will wait it out instead. I haven't seen my doctor since I told him where to shove his pills (I wasn't rude, but felt like it after he practically yelled at me for stopping taking diabetes and cholesterol meds).

If you can afford to waste money on drugs and booze, than you can afford to not take them and use it to improve your life in a more positive way. It's too bad people feel there is no other way out, when there is.

And I am speaking from experience as I was addicted to pills about... 34 years ago (yeesh, that made me feel old! ). I was popping way too many of them and even had a stroke which I never told any doctor about, but it scared me into getting off of them (half my body was paralyzed for a while).

Plus I find all the meds and drugs in this world never help, but if you stay on them they almost always make things worse.

I'm an active lurker if that helps.

You started it! He did, but I purposely refrained from mentioning that (though I don't feel comfortable not giving Him credit where it is due). Just remember that YOU started it this time!!!

I am perfectly normal and healthy now. I am more careful with my diet than before, but I am not overly strict. I give 100% credit to... you know who... for healing me.

I don't take any medicines anymore, at all and I am fine. Considering I was on 4 pills a day for diabetes until I started to pray about it (sorry to bring it up, but I did) and a couple months after I started praying I was off the meds and perfectly fine. I had two more check-ups with my doctor and confirmed that. The first time he examined me he didn't know I hadn't taken meds for months, I wanted him to examine me without knowing. I told him after he said my numbers were good that I hadn't taken meds in months. He was furious, ah well. The next exam he had to admit that I was fine and there were no more problems. I have never been back since, and that was 3 years ago. Before I had him as a doctor, I didn't have a family doctor for over 10 years and I was fine. I only seen him for the diabetes and nothing he done for me was helpful at all.

Looks like a nice area. Have you tried Google street view?

I agree about food. I researched it a little when I got diabetes and was shocked about what I seen.

For example, compare the sugar content of low fat foods especially. You get flavour in one of two main ways in many foods, fat, or sugar. Fat is actually not bad for you, that is a myth. Sugar is really bad for you though. Numbers to keep in mind when you check the labels is that 4 grams = 1 teaspoon. When you check something like chocolate milk, a 1 litre carton will have around 28G of sugar PER SERVING (per 1 CUP!!!) which is 7 tsp of sugar... PER CUP! And people give that to their children for school! It would be healthier to give them coffee for school!

Look at other low fat items when you are shopping, they will generally have a higher sugar content than their counterpart. It's their way of putting flavour back in when fat is reduced. I have even seen close to 2tsps of sugar per serving in vegetable juice! It's insane. So I tend to drink more water and coffee (1 tsp/sugar total, or about 1/2 tsp per cup) these days.

The thing about fat is that fat does not produce insulin like sugar does. The energy from fat is used right away, so you tend to stay full longer. Your body uses insulin to store energy as fat, so you gain weight more with sugar and it also leads to diabetes and heart problems. This is why low carb, high fat (LCHF is you search it online) diets work so well. You don't count calories, and you can eat until you are full, you don't go hungry and you lose weight because the types of food you eat fill you up, you stay full and you use the energy right away, so you don't tend to be as sleepy feeling, lethargic... but more energetic etc.

Our dietary pyramid we see is upside down. It tends to have more breads and other carbohydrate items and less meat when in fact we should have fewer carbs and more meat. To remember what to avoid, just remember GPS (fewer Grains/breads, Potatoes/root veggies with starch and Sugar).

I now avoid dietary foods like the plague, drink far less soda-drinks, though I still do have some once in a while and less breads. Potatoes are my weakness though, so I have a tough time cutting them out.

The Fifth Estate done a great program on sugar, including secrets the sugar industry knew for decades on how sugar increased your risk of heart disease... check it out, it's quite the eye opener!

Wow, I just checked out this episode of the Fifth Estate on teh vitamin industry and it will shock the shit out of anyone who watches it. I was never one to take them, and now I am glad. It's unregulated, which I didn't know about, and much of what you are sold is not what you paid for plus there is no evidence they do any good at all (which is what I already thought as I can't see how replacing a healthy diet with pills would ever help).

This is a MUST WATCH for everyone... I really need to remember to watch this program... this and Market Watch and two good ones. I often wonder how the Fifth Estate remains on the air with all the stuff they have uncovered.

While I agree, the thing about fruit is that it comes packaged with the fibre we need to help our bodies absorb it slowly and naturally, so I don't worry about fruit, so long as you eat it naturally. Fruit juice is just as bad for you as cola for example, because the juice has been separated from the needed fibre.

What I learned while I had diabetes is that fibre slows your body's absorption of sugar. Huge problems arise when we drink sugar drinks like cola or fruit juice because we're not getting the fibre with it. I was shocked to hear a scientist say this: "God packaged sugar with the fibre we need" (her words not mine, she wasn't a religious person, replace that with "nature" if you wish). And this is true. Have you ever seen sugar cane, the plant white sugar comes from? It's like a tree, you would be hard pressed to eat enough of it to equal a teaspoon of sugar... probably break your teeth trying! My grandfather brought some back in the '70s and showed me. So it's true about the fibre, so I don't have a problem with fruit. In fact, when I get a craving for sugar I will often grab green grapes. If you look at the number of grapes you need to eat to equal one glass of grape juice, you will see you could never eat that many, which should give most people a clue that they shouldn't drink just the juice.

I also use honey in things like herbal tea. Honey is sweet, but unlike sugar, it is actually very good for you and even has been shown to have certain medicinal properties. I personally like apple/cinnamon herbal tea (gonna make some now actually) with honey.

Edit: and before you decide to go out and eat healthy, check out this report on chicken sold at various fast food joints. I was not surprised to discover that Subway chicken was actually only 50% chicken and the rest was filler. Years ago they were caught selling "Multigrain buns" which were in fact, white bread with food colouring.

Watch the video I posted. There are no regulations covering vitamins and supplements in the USA at all (they mention the United States in that as well as Canada).

Just make sure you get your vitamins from a reputable company. If there are enough complaints, the FDA will investigate. It has happened a few times.

Vaccinations is another sore subject. People talk of all the bad things about vaccinations.

1. Yes, mercury is used in the preservative Thimerosal. Mercury isn't as harmful as people make it out to be. Also, there are preservative-free vaccinations.

2. You CANNOT get the flu from the vaccine. You can have a reaction and get flu-like symptoms, but this is usually mild compared to the actual flu.

3. Autism ... Most evidence says Thimerosal cannot cause autism, but still not fully proven.

Most important!!!

4. Tens of thousands of people die each year due from the flu alone. Mostly children (not fully developed immune system) and elderly (compromised immune system).

Could the vaccine have helped these cases? I would say "Maybe". You can still get the flu even though you had the vaccine, but the odds of getting the flu go down dramatically.

I prefer the flu shot over possible death.

Because of how long it takes to make the vaccine, they have to make an educated guess on what strain will be prevalent when the season starts. Some times they make a bad guess.

A couple of years ago the strain didn't change. Do we still need the shot? No one could answer that, so we got the shot again.

So long as there is money to be made in selling treatments for symptoms of diabetes, I doubt there will ever exist an outright cure. Even if a cure were to be made, it would surely be "watered down" and administered in multiple steps to allow for maximum profits. Thank God for people like Jonas Salk who opted not to pursue patenting the polio vaccine (something estimated to be worth $7 billion had it been patented!), instead saying it belonged to the people.

Unrelated: You can get Steam copies of Shinobi and Streets of Rage 2 for free right now by checking out makewarnotlove.com.

I find it funny when people talk about cures for diabetes.

Insulin is a naturally occurring hormone that processes the sugar in the blood and puts it into muscle tissue for use. It is created in the pancreas.

Type 1 Diabetes: is due to the pancreas not producing insulin. This usually happens early in life (nicknamed childhood diabetes) due to an autoimmune disorder that at one point attacked the pancreas.

Type 2 Diabetes: is due to insulin-resistance of the body. This occurs later in life and is due to excessive body weight and little to no exercise. There are 2 subtypes: insulin-dependent and non-insulin-dependent. Most people start at non-insulin dependent. Eventually the pancreas will fail and they will need to supplement with insulin.

In both cases: once the pancreas stops, there is no insulin.

For Type 1, you can get a pancreas transplant. However, it is very risky. Usually, the less risky option is a insulin-for-life lifestyle.

For Type 2, exercise and diet initially help. For newly diagnosed patients this is enough to reverse the diagnosis. However, this is always a temporary reversal.

One interesting fact: if you live long enough every single person would develop diabetes.

I agree with Edgar on this one. For the overwhelming majority of people, vaccines are the way to go. There are quite a few people these days who refuse to have their kids vaccinated, and we're seeing diseases that were once wiped out making a return as a result. Is that just a coincidence?

There are risks associated with everything though, so no doubt some people will inevitably have a negative reaction to some vaccines. For the great majority though, vaccines are totally fine. I'd prefer to get a tetanus shot every decade instead of actually getting tetanus and dying from it.