Over diagnosis—Diabetes

This is a series of key points from the 2013 book, Overdiagnosis, Making People Sick in the Pursuit of Health, by H. Gilbert Welch of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy. A few years back, medical authorities lowered the definition of diabetes from a fasting blood sugar of 140 to 126. That instantly created 1.7 million new cases of diabetes. Subsequent studies tried to show that strict control of the HBA1C level that measures the glucose level over a 3-month period would reduce the incidence of complications from diabetes. However, those who had HBA1C levels of 6.5 actually had an increase in certain complications over those with levels of 7.0. The logical reason (not yet proven) is that the drugs used to “over treat” these newly classified patients cause more problems than they prevent. By the way, the TACT trial on EDTA chelation therapy showed a dramatic decrease in future heart attacks for diabetic patients. Celebration of Health Association website