[Diabetes-talk] Victosa

[Michael Park]

Debbie.

For what it is worth, I have contracted an extraordinary large number of 
infections over the last year or so. I have been on extensive 
anti-biotic treatment for a while and have been battling high blood 
sugars since. Over this time, for instance, I have seldom had fasting 
sugars below 126.

Not that I have a lot of money, but I am one of the fortunate few here 
in South Africa who has the luxury of a specialist diabetic nurse 
care-giver, who has decided to put me onto probiotics to try and restore 
all of the good bacteria which have been destroyed as a result of 
copious anti-biotic treatment.

Probiotics are rather revolutionary for this part of the world, but then 
my nurse care-giver, who has been in the nursing profession for the last 
52 years, has been equally revolutionary in some of her treatments of 
me. I don't want to dwell on the things she did, in a lot of detail 
here, but she did sort out a problem I had with hypoglycaemia, which the 
doctors were unable to sort out.

Her putting me onto probiotics did raise a couple of eyebrows, but it 
seems like the problem is going to solve itself once again.

What I am on about here is that although it is still early days, it 
seems that the probiotics have already contributed to me having lower 
blood sugars. This morning, for instance, my fasting sugar was 105, the 
lowest it has been in 12 days. This is particularly heartening as I am 
trying to keep my fasting sugars between 90 and 108 and I am trying to 
manage my full daily averages somewhere between 90 and 117.

I don't want to go into a whole diatribe here, but apparently organisms 
called probiotics are in the front line of helping our bodies to fight 
infection.

I am not saying that this is the case, but high sugar readings could be 
due to latent infections which may not manifest themselves in terms of 
things like high temperatures, inflamation and the like. If there is any 
inflamation, it may not be obvious.

Another cause for high sugar readings, and as I say, I am only guessing 
here, as I am still doing trials on myself, could be the fact that the 
bacterial culture in the intestines, may have become so replete as a 
result of prolonged anti-biotic treatment, that this too, could make an 
impact on blood sugar levels.

Apparently, from what I understand, the bacteria perform certain 
digestive functions that the body itself cannot perform. Lactose (milk 
sugar) is broken down into lactic acid rather than into glucose with 
these bacteria present and to my mind, this would necessarily impact on 
blood sugar levels. The bacteria particularly responsible for breaking 
lactose down into lactic acid, are bacteria known as Lactobacilli. 
Lactic acid is eventually passed out of the body as a waste product.

I am sending you a link to a web page which contains a whole series of 
articles on probiotics and which comes from a health web site that I 
regard as being a web site of repute. The link is
http://www.health24.com/natural/Probiotics/17-1940.asp

The list of articles on the subject are far more informative than I 
could ever hope to be in the course of this post.

I am presently on a probiotic called Probiflora, and I am using the 
maximum strength capsules which contain nine different probiotics. I 
take one capsule in the morning, an hour before I have breakfast. I do 
my fasting sugar before I take the capsule, because it is my belief that 
the capsule will actually lower my sugar before breakfast. My 105 
reading I mentioned earlier, was taken before I took my Probiflora this 
morning.

If you are also intent on going the probiotic route, there are a couple 
of things that you should bear in mind.

The first is that the probiotics have to go via the stomach to the 
intestines. Unfortunately, the peptic acid of the stomach destroys 
probiotics and there is a reasonable chance that many of the probiotics 
ingested, will not make it alive to the intestines. It is therefore 
imperative that you should take probiotics on an empty stomach and leave 
at least an hour to allow the maximum number of probiotics to pass 
through the stomach into the intestines.

The second thing is to make sure that when you ingest probiotics, that 
you ingest a live culture. Dead probiotics will do nothing for you.

Besides probiotic capsules, unsweetened or sugar free yoghutt contains a 
large amount of probiotics. If you are going for the yoghutt, avoid the 
sweetened yoghutt as this may elevate blood sugar levels. Also make sure 
that the yoghutt is labelled "live culture".

I don't know what the supermarket situation is over in the USA, but 
there are certain supermarkets that I would not trust when it comes to 
cultures supposedly still being alive. You might have to check out for 
that one as well.

Finally, in order to insure that the culture stays alive, your probiotic 
capsules should be kept in a cool, dry place.

Sincerely.

Michael Park.
I am not an expert, because "ex" means "has been" and "spert" is "a drip under pressure".


On 2012/02/29 06:32, Debbie wrote:
> Is anyone using Victosa to help with lowering blood sugar?  A close friend is on three other medicines for Type II diabetes, and the physician is wanting to start them on insulin.  They've introduced Victosa as well,to see if the readings will come down from 180 to the preferred reading.
>
> I know you can't diagnose and treat, but you all may know if something might be effective.
>
> Debbie
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