Philip Raskin, M.D. Answers Questions On: Type 2 Diabetes

As with Type 1 diabetes, if people with Type 2 diabetes don’t take care of their sugar, they can end up having eye disease (diabetes is the leading cause of new blindness in the United States); they can experience kidney disease and need dialysis or a renal transplant; and they can end up with nerve disease, which can precipitate ulcers and lead to amputations.

Any way you can lose weight helps. Diet and exercise can sometimes be useless in terms of getting people to lose weight. Certain people just can’t. They have to essentially eat nothing to lose weight. Bariatric surgery works to help people lose weight, and when you lose weight, your diabetes goes away.

The tools are better. We have better insulin that is more pure and can be faster acting, depending on the kind. There used to be two pills for diabetes; now there are six. There are insulin pumps and blood glucose monitors that measure blood sugar continuously – or, if the patient monitors it intermittently, it requires only a little drop of blood. So treatment hasn’t changed that much over the years, but our tools have gotten much better, and they continue to improve.