5 Effective Therapies for Diabetes – 2024 Guide

From the past two decades, the number of treatments for diabetes has increased. But still, diabetes therapies are unclear. Both glycemic and nonglycemic metrics are judged because of their effects.

People can face two types of diabetes: Type one and Type two.

In this article, we try to give five best therapies for these two types of diabetes.

The Current Diabetes Treatment Landscape: Today’s Therapy Options

The development of diabetes medication has significantly advanced, and a large number of treatments are also available in today’s world. But the glucose-lowering therapies that we use today are still imperfect. Limited efficacy, unfavorable delivery methods, and acute side effects are the notable limitations for the therapies we use. Additionally, only insulin can be measured indefinitely with increasing biological effects.

Now we talk about 5 effective therapies for diabetes.

1. Insulin

Insulin therapy was invented in 1922, and it was discovered by Frederick G. Banting and Charles H. Best. This therapy has progressed considerably from the first bovine or porcine formulations. This therapy can consistently lower A1C with upward titration. The researcher still tries to improve this therapy to make it safer, and effective.

We can get five types of insulin. These are; regular, NPH, Rapid-acting analog, Basal analog, and premixed. People take this insulin through an injection that is painful for patients. In addition, these are not easy to use because of the errors of dosing.

For a human, Regular and NPH are two main types of insulin combinations. Insulin is befitted for ideal diabetes drugs because of their ability of glucose-lowering to an extent. However, people still face some limitations such as safety, tolerability, ease of use, etc.

2. Metformin 

Metformin therapy is mainly an oral drug for diabetes patients. It is mainly for type 2 diabetes, and people take it with proper diet and exercise. By decreasing gluconeogenesis, metformin lowers the glucose level of the body. It also decreases the A1C. However, this is a very affordable and well-researched therapy for diabetes patients.

3. Sulfonylureas

This type of insulin secretagogues is well studied, and, like metformin, it is also low A1C by 1.5%. It is a very affordable and generic therapy. These drugs are mainly used for second line therapy after metformin, and it contains glyburide, tolbutamide, glimepiride, and glipizide. vVa binding to adenosine triphosphate (ATP)-dependent potassium-ATP channel augments insulin secretion from β-cells by depolarizing β-cells.

With the class of drugs, medications that increase insulin output by the pancreas are called sulfonylureas therapy. Older generations of these drugs had a high risk of cardiovascular events. These drugs are helpful in reducing blood sugar but, on the other hand, also can cause abnormal blood sugar problems. Who are allergic to sulfa should not take this therapy. Gaining weight is a possible side effect of this therapy.

However, this therapy can cause weight gain hypoglycemia problems.

4. Glucagon-like peptide-1 receptor agonists

Glucagon has lots of glucose-lowering effects. It is mainly an endogenous hormone. Depending on the insulin secretion, this therapy increases glucose. However, this therapy reduces GLP-1, which is mainly affected for type two diabetes patients. It is an approved and well-researched therapy and very much effective for diabetes. It is minimally associated with hypoglycemia. This treatment is appealing both in terms of safety and efficacy.

5. Light therapy 

In today’s medicine, light therapy is one of the revolutionary treatments in the medical world. It helps to treat insulin sensitivity and comorbid depression in diabetes patients. Study shows that there is no better solution than light therapy to treat depression symptoms. It also treats the secondary outcomes of anxiety symptoms, diabetes distress, insomnia symptoms, objective sleep duration, sleep efficiency, mid-sleep time, FBG, HbA1c, hypoglycemic events, etc. It also helps to control the glycemic of the body.

Study shows that it is very much convincing for depression symptoms with noticeable insulin resistance.

By using an HEC, the whole body will be insulin sensitive because of the gold standard quality.

Though there is no proven evidence for type two diabetes by decreasing various depression syndromes, it can be helpful to control glycemic.

You can find more about light therapy here.

Tips: 

To maintain your diabetes, you should follow a healthy lifestyle and a perfect diet. If you are not conscious about your lifestyle and diet, no therapy will work properly.

1. Maintaining a healthy weight is a must for diabetes patients. By maintaining a perfect weight, one can control his diabetes without taking any therapy
2. Following nutritious food will also help to control diabetes. The basis of meal planning involves portion control and favoring healthful foods. The diabetes plate method is one tool designed to help people manage their calorie and carbohydrate intakes.
3. Proper exercise is a must for diabetes patients. Diabetes patients have to take some physical exercise or at least take a walk for 30-45 minutes regularly is mandatory.
4. Diabetes patients should not do smoking. It affects their blood sugar more.
5. Don’t take different therapy at a time. Take some advice from doctors and take the therapy which is consulted by your doctor.

Diabetes is a non curable disease. But people can manage it through therapy and a perfect lifestyle. Continuous monitoring of glucose is a must in diabetes. It will help to manage self-control management.

The therapies mentioned in this article are proven to be effective in many different cases, and real life diabetes patients have vouched for these therapies. However, it does not mean that all these therapies will work for you as well. Different people have different health conditions, and require different treatment.

You should not start taking any of these therapies on your own without consulting your doctor. While none of these therapies have adverse effects by default, your health condition might not be suitable to take them. Your doctor will be able to tell you if one of these therapies is suitable for you by checking your health condition first.

What do you think of these 5 unique therapies for diabetes? Let us know in the comment section.