Raena Morgan: How does diabetes affect cardiovascular health? Frank Murray: Well, heart disease is the number one cause of death among diabetics. Raena Morgan: Is it? Frank Murray: Absolutely. I'm amazed how a recent study, you perhaps read it was a National Institute of Health study that they shut it down after they had evaluated 10,000 people. They were evaluating the blood sugar levels and the cholesterol and high blood pressure. And all of a sudden, it sent shockwaves through the diabetic community. They shut it down. They said that the lowering blood sugar caused heart disease. Raena Morgan: Really? Frank Murray: This has really thrown the community upside down. People with diabetes say, "My God, I thought you were supposed to lower blood sugar to prevent heart disease!" And here these people are saying, "Well, hello, haven't they read the studies? Heart disease is the number one cause of problems with diabetics." So they have shut it down. They'll have a convention in June to debate it and find out what's going on. But we know you should get your blood sugar around a 100 and if it gets higher and higher you can collapse and go into a coma, if it's very high. Raena Morgan: But, if it's too low? Frank Murray: Well, they said if you're getting it low, quite low, you're susceptible to a heart attack. But here is the fly in the ointment, out of a 1000 people there was a treatment group with the qualities I just mentioned, and a control group. And out of a 1000 in the treatment group, 14 people died of a heart attack. But in the control group, 11 died of a heart attack. That's really not very different. Raena Morgan: No. Frank Murray: So, I don't know why all the ruckus, but diabetics and their doctors are really confused now. What's going on here with getting the blood sugar low? But, I think they missed the boat with this. As I say, heart disease is already the number one cause. But here is the other thing in this study, that people had diabetes for over 10 years and were not in very good health anyway. So I think they need to go back to the drawing board with this particular study. But, as I say, it's thrown chaos into the diabetic community.
