You can always lower your blood sugar by taking insulin shots. However, if you have the usual kind of adult-onset diabetes, you’re probably already making more than normal amounts of insulin. As you know, excessive insulin causes problems of its own, including, weight gain, belly fat, cholesterol problems and sex hormone disturbances. If you want to get your metabolism working like Mother Nature intended, you need to lower your blood sugar and your insulin levels. You do that by eliminating the duo that causes adult-onset diabetes in the first place: the combination of muscles that don’t respond to insulin and too much sugar entering your bloodstream.
Unfortunately, there are no medications that restore muscles’ responsiveness to insulin. The only way to do that is to wake them up as discussed in Job 2, Activate Your Slow Twitch muscles.
However, there are good medications for reducing the amount of sugar entering your bloodstream. By lowering your blood sugar and your insulin levels they promote weight loss, reduce belly fat and prevent heart and kidney problems caused by diabetes.
They work in 3 ways: a) by keeping your liver from overproducing sugar b) by helping your kidneys get rid of sugar or c) by slowing the entry of sugar into your bloodstream from your intestinal tract.
Keeping Your Liver from Overproducing Sugar: Metformin
You need some sugar in your bloodstream for your brain to function properly, but you don’t need to consume carbohydrates to keep your blood sugar up. Your liver manufactures sugar and secretes it into your bloodstream to maintain a steady level between meals.
However, when you eat a carbohydrate, your liver is supposed to stop making sugar so your blood level doesn’t rise too high. The problem is that if you have type 2 diabetes your liver keeps making sugar even though there’s plenty of it coming into your bloodstream from your food. Metformin keeps your liver from producing sugar when there’s already plenty of it in your bloodstream. You might call it an “internal low carb diet.” By reducing the body’s need for insulin it lowers blood sugar, promotes weight loss and reduces belly fat.
Helping Your Kidneys Get Rid of Sugar: SGLT-2 inhibitors
If your blood sugar level gets too high, your kidneys let sugar out in your urine. A type of medication called SGLT-2 inhibitors help your kidneys get rid of sugar, thereby reducing your body’s need for insulin. These include Jardiance, Farxiga and Invokana. In addition to lowering blood sugar, they promote weight loss, reduce belly fat and prevent kidney and heart problems caused by diabetes.
Slowing Carbohydrate Digestion: GLP-1 analogs and acarbose
The faster you digest carbohydrates, the more they raise your blood sugar and your insulin levels. Sugar that enters your bloodstream quickly raise blood sugar and insulin levels more than sugar that trickles in slowly even if the total amount is the same.
The largest source of sugar in the American diet is starch, the main ingredient of flour, potatoes and rice. As soon as starch reaches your intestine, an enzyme called amylase breaks it down to pure sugar, which quickly enters your bloodstream. A diabetes pill called acarbose inhibits amylase and slows the digestion of starch. In addition to lowering blood sugar and insulin levels, acarbose promotes weight loss and helps prevent complications of diabetes including heart disease.
Another type of medication that slows carbohydrate digestion is the so-called GLP-1 analogs, which includes Byetta, Victoza, Ozempic, Trulicity and Ribelsus. These drugs close the valve that lets food out of your stomach, which slows the digestion of carbohydrates. In addition to lowering your blood sugar these medications encourage weight loss. One of them, Saxenda, is used as a weight loss drug even in folks without diabetes.
Which Medication First?
If exercise and diet don’t lower your blood sugar to healthy levels, current guidelines recommend that you start with metformin. If it doesn’t do the job, they suggest adding one or two of the others. If your blood sugar is still too high, it’s time to consider insulin. Insulin shots are much easier to take these days with the invention of insulin pens. The good news is that, these days, if you take good care of your diabetes you can live a normal lifespan even if it requires taking medication.
