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Urdu“It is totally clear that real efforts to help the nation’s 34 million people with diabetes bring down their blood sugar is a highly potent and feasible way to slash their excess risks of COVId deaths and complications. Excess blood sugar actually increases COVID receptors in the body,” said Chris Norwood, Executive Director of Health People: Community Preventive Health Institute in the South Bronx and a panelist on Thursday’s webinar. Norwood says, “Every Health Department in the country owes it to the public to act on this information and make it known and understood.”
Other panelists include Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who taught himself proper nutrition and not only reversed his own diabetes but helped his 80 year old diabetic mother improve her health to the point she could stop using injected insulin; Robert Lustig, MD, internationally recognized endocrinologist and expert in metabolic disease and Professor Emeritus at the University of California, SF; Arti Thangudu, MD, founder of Complete Medicine in San Antonio, Texas; and two Bronx diabetes peer leaders who have slashed their own blood sugar levels.
As Dr. Lustig underscores virtually all the major COVID-related chronic conditions—including diabetes, hypertension, heart disease and obesity— are “metabolic diseases,” accelerated not only by sugar but processed food, “these foods spike insulin and blood glucose levels, as well as inflammation altering the immune response and increasing the risk of a more severe COVID-19 infection,” he adds. In the absence of proper action by Health Departments to alert the public how to use better nutrition as a protection against severe COVID sickness, Dr. Lustig’s public health nonprofit, Eat Real, recently issued its own national alert.
In addition, as we head toward the second wave of COVID, with hospital ICUS across the country already filled by thousands of serious COVID cases, national and local efforts to help people will reduce blood sugar—thereby significantly avoiding complications if they do contract COVID— are a major strategy to prevent hospitals from being completely overwhelmed.
Dr. Thangudu, founder of a Lifestyle Medical Practice in San Antonio, emphasizes that clinicians need to work with patients to improve nutrition, exercise and overall health. “Patients with diabetes can profoundly reduce their COVID-related risks,” she adds.
“Bringing down blood sugar just makes you feel so much better,” comments South Bronx peer leader Loretta Fleming, who reduced her own A1C (blood sugar) level from 11 to 6.4, bringing it well within the range shown to protect people from the worst COVID outcomes.
