foodconsumer.org: Plant-based diet effective in treating diabetes, PCRM says

Plant-based diet effective in treating diabetes, PCRM says
================================================================================
admin on 08/07/2010 13:12:00
 
The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine released a statement on its
website saying it filed a lawsuit against Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
commissioner Margaret Hamburg, M.D., for failing to act on a PCRM administrative
petition that requests the agency to tell diabetes patients that plant-based
diet is as effective as oral diabetes drugs.
The PCRM early filed a petition to request the government agency to alert
diabetes patients to safe and effective alternatives for diabetes treatment
after reports emerged to suggest that diabetes drug avandia increases risk of
stroke, heart failure and death.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia to
ask the FDA to require wording on the label that not only tells diabetes
patients that "Avandia can cause or worsen heart failure", but also alerts them
to safe dietary alternatives to Avandia and other diabetes medications that may
boost the cardiovascular risk and death.
In the statement, the health advocate says that a 2006 study funded by the
National Institutes of Health discovered that a low-fat plant-based diet was as
effective as oral diabetes medications at lowering blood sugar and cholesterol
in diabetics.
In July, researchers reported that there is sufficient evidence that Avandia was
linked to life-threatening side effects that "might have killed or injured tens
of thousands of people," the organization says.
The FDA committees had a joint meeting in July and found Avandia, made by Glaxo,
increased heart risk, but still recommended that the FDA should allow the
medication to be sold on the market.
“A plant-based diet is as effective as drugs for lowering blood sugar, and
much more effective for trimming body weight,” said PCRM president Neal
Barnard, M.D. “Doctors and patients need the facts.”
In the lawsuit, the PCRM says it petitioned the FDA to require a disclosure in
the labeling of drugs like Avandia that would state that "a low-fat plant-based
diet has an efficacy and safety profile that can be as favorable as, or more
favorable than, oral diabetes medications."
At the annual meeting of the American Association of Diabetes Educators this
month, Dr.  Barnard was said to present his research on how a vegan diet can
prevent and reverse diabetes and some other researchers will also present their
reports on how a vegan diet can be used to prevent the disease that affects 20
million Americans.
By Jimmy Downs