Diabetes Treatment

Diabetes is a common condition which effects your ability to metabolize and clear glucose (sugar) from your blood.  Over time, the sugar builds up in your blood and causes circulatory problems.  Think about water, or plain fluid, vs sugar syrup.  The fluid with the excess sugar, the syrup, is not going to flow as well.  In many ways, diabetes is just that simple.  

Not all treatments for diabetes involves pills or shots.  In fact, for type 2 diabetes (adult onset) the best and most durable way to treat the excess sugar is to cut the sugar out of your diet, to lose weight, and to get more exercise (burn up the sugar).  Often, diabetes can be effectively cured with this approach!

At Hampstead Internal Medicine we are really excited when we are able to cure diabetes without pills or insulin involved at all.

Sometimes, medications are required, and this is ok as well.  We often use medications as a bridge - meaning the medications get your sugar under control while you are working to change your lifestyle and cut the sugar out of your diet.  The most common medication in the US for type 2 diabetes is metformin.  This is because it is relatively safe (though no medicine is 100% safe) and has fewer side effects than most other medicines.  It also works pretty well.  It is almost always the first line treatment for adult onset diabetes.

After metformin, there are lots and lots of other options to treat diabetes.  There are different pills, both expensive and generic, there are insulin shots (long acting and short acting) and injectible therapies that are not insulin.  I will not discuss them all here, but I will say that at Hampstead Internal medicine, we are big advocates of using GLP-1 agonists.  These are usually injectibles.  You may have heard of them.  Common brand names include Ozempic or Mounjaro.  We like these medicines because they only have to be given once a week instead of every day, they typically help folks to lose weight, and they do not drop your sugar too low.

Every person is different and if you come to Hampstead Internal medicine we will have a discussion about which therapy is right for you.  We have patients who are doing well on almost every therapy.  Still, these new medicines have revolutionized treatment of type 2 diabetes.  We can usually help people to lose weight and often dramatically decrease the meds required to control their diabetes.  The only downside is that these meds are really expensive.  Often insurance companies put up false barriers such as prior authorization or just flat out deny payment for meds.  Still, our care managers are good at getting these meds approved, or enrolling you in a program through the manufacturer, so that you can get them at an affordable rate.

If you have diabetes come see Doctor Manning and Holly Kilian at Hampstead Internal Medicine and lets talk about options to get your diabetes under great control.