Post by brentie on Feb 1, 2017 10:05:18 GMT -5
Apparently Matt responded too.
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Matt 'Mannkind Corp' Pfeffer eats a low-carb diet to manage blood sugar and does NOT take Afrezza!
start from the beginning, here, here and here !!
the email i got from matt pfeffer this morning in answer to the email i sent him the other day, in answer to...
Lana,
No, we have never compensated patients in any clinical trials with shares of stock. I am pretty sure compensation of any kind to clinical trial patients (except to supply them the medication used in the study and sometimes defray their direct costs for commuting to a trial site, etc.) is not allowed. We are in a very heavily regulated industry, as I am sure you know, and I am pretty sure this would be considered a conflict of interest. Regardless, we have never done it.
Thanks for hearing me out. I try very hard to restrict myself to a low carb diet and to avoid processed foods as much as possible, and am pretty outspoken about it to others. Because I travel so extensively, this sort of diet is the only one I have found that works well for me. I am not always successful, but mostly do a reasonable job. I am not currently considered to be a person who has diabetes, but I have been borderline for about a decade and am anxious not to progress. I have family members with type 2 diabetes and a member of my more immediate family has type 1 diabetes. I also consider myself pretty well informed both in the disease and the health field generally, having worked in it for roughly 30 years.
I appreciate your taking the time to read my messages.
Matt
to which i replied:
matt,
thanks for getting back to me. i really do appreciate everything you've said so far.
i didn't know you were borderline type 2 - thanks for bringing it up. that makes me wonder (and again, please don't feel obligated to answer)...
...do YOU take afrezza?
i know you say you try to keep to a low-carb no-processed food diet, but it can be very hard. i know from personal experience. the HARDEST part was NOT giving up processed food; the HARDEST part was coming to the realization and admitting that my very low-carb diet (of mainly salad greens and poached meat/fish and eggs, with fresh fruit to treat hypos, only) was giving me a very bad case of HYPOTHYROIDISM!! imagine my dismay.
for a type 1 diabetic, i was at one point (for a good 2 years) taking half my prescribed background insulin and ZERO meal-time insulin because given the very low-carb diet and all the exercise i was doing, the background insulin alone was enough to keep my blood sugar in range; in fact, i had MORE hypos then than i do eating a moderate carb diet (again, absolutely no processed carbs aside from the ginger chews i need for occasional nausea that comes with premenopause and occasional stubborn hypo).
that's quite a feat for an insulin-dependent type 1 diabetic!! but eventually, it did end up giving me hypothyroidism, so please be extra careful with low-carb diets. in my opinion, there is NO place for processed foods in anyone's diet; let alone a diabetic's because it doesn't help the situation; it can only add to it.
and insulin is NO excuse to eat the wrong foods, either. no matter how good your blood sugar control, your liver's toxicity is something else entirely! so, do be careful... and don't be afraid to eat fresh fruit and grains. our brain runs on glucose and when you don't get enough healthy sugar from natural sources like fresh fruit, it can lead to depression, anxiety and memory loss. (and a whole bunch of other nasty side effects you won't believe a seemingly healthy diet can cause!! again, i speak from personal experience.)
easy on the fats, as well; even good fats can cause inflammation when overdone and THAT leads to insulin resistance. basically, one avocado a day is healthy; but 10 avocados a day is deadly!! i'm sure you know all this, but you know how it is with us "health nuts" - we just can't keep our mouths shut
anyway, back to my original question: HAVE you in the past or do you now (even occasionally) rely on afrezza to regulate blood sugar when you succumb to food "temptation?" and... how does it make you feel (emotionally) knowing (if you DO take it), you could have achieved the SAME results by just taking a leisurely walk around the block?
no offense, just curious. you don't have to answer. just knowing you took the time to read and answer my other questions means a LOT to me - thank you
Lana
to which matt replied:
Lana,
I think most of the country, of a certain age (I am 59, turning 60 in a few months, I have to keep reminding myself) are what doctors like to call "pre-diabetic". To me, this just means early stage diabetes. The advantage of this stage is that you can more readily treat it with diet and exercise, which is a good thing. That said, for someone like me, I think it would be fabulous were Afrezza available for the occasional lapse. But no insulin, including Afrezza, is approved by the FDA for this purpose. That means that I would have to go to extreme lengths, probably with a doctor willing to overlook FDA guidance, to get the drug prescribed to me. In a tightly regulated industry like ours, even I have to go through normal channels to get Afrezza. I can't just call the factory and tell them to send me some. I have to get a doctor to prescribe it and buy it through normal retail channels. So while I will admit wishing I had Afrezza available to me many times, I have never used it in the manner you describe.
If you will allow me to digress for just a moment, there are several medical studies that have investigated the use of prandial insulin in the pre-diabetic setting. A typical study like this, done under very tight medical supervision and usual in a hospital setting, would provide a pre-diabetic patient with insulin needed exogenously, so their pancreas could take what was sometimes referred to as a "vacation". As you might imagine, a healthy volunteer in such a study would only put up with it for so long, perhaps a week or two, then they would go back to their daily lives. Afterwards, they followed the people in the study versus a control group to see if it made a difference. Surprisingly, it made a major difference in how long it took them to ultimately progress later in life. While so much of medicine starts out as conjecture and is hard to prove, the belief here is that giving the pancreas even a relatively short "vacation" like this must allow the eyelet cells to regenerate is some fashion. (Proving I have read your posts - perhaps it gives the inflammation a chance to dissipate instead?) Regardless, the long term effects were noteable.
I have read some of these studies (and could send them to you if you are curious) and been sorely tempted to replicate such a study on myself, using Afrezza, perhaps even over an extended period or even indefinitely, in the manner you describe. I aspire to live a very long and healthy life, not just for myself, but for my kids. I waited until rather late in life to have children, and now am blessed with boy-girl twins, age 12. I would really like to be around to see them have kids of their own, yet don't want them to be in any hurry to do so. That means I need to stay healthy for a good long time, I hope.
So far the above is mostly fantasy, but I may still approach a progressive doctor with the concept at some point...
So no, I don't use the drug in the way you describe, but wish I could. And were one of my children to be diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic (presumably at age 18, since it is not approved for juveniles, yet) I would not hesitate to get it for them. As much as we encourage our kids to eat a healthy diet, kids are kids, and of course they often do not. I would be happy that Afrezza could give them a shot at a normal life. I will spare you my thoughts on why I think Afrezza is such a blessing, as it seems so self serving, but having such a rapid onset of action and short duration, more similar to what a young healthy pancreas can do, potentially avoids so much of the complication and risks of insulin use.
Closer to home, my brother's wife has been on an insulin pump for decades (a version of the pump Al Mann originally invented.) She too now uses Afrezza, but not all the time, mostly because she has had trouble getting her insurance company to pay for it. (We are still working on that.) But she loves it for prandial control, compared to her pump. While theoretically, there is nothing better than a pump for basal control, especially if it has some closed loop element, like the new, but misnamed, artificial pancreas by Medtronic. But no injected insulin today, whether by needle of pump, shares Afrezza's kinetics. So in my opinion, for the right patient, there is no better option for prandial control.
Sorry for the long answer, but I do go on sometimes, particularly over a subject I am passionate about. Sounds like we share that trait.
Matt
to which i replied:
matt,
don't tell him i said this, but... i like talking to YOU a LOT more than i like talking to your colleague, mike (can't remember his last name; it's in my inbox, though). he emailed me, as well. he seems very angry about... a LOT of things *sigh* he also looks forward to the day his pancreas gives out so he can take afrezza. again, that kind of talk only makes mannkind look cheap to me. then again, i have NO pull / influence over anything that happens at or to mannkind. and nothing i may say should offend or threaten you, personally; and especially, not your company.
again, i take insulin so the risk of cancer is always there. that's why i can't stop anyone from taking afrezza. my beef is NOT the cancer scare, again, i'm living with the same kind of threat taking insulin; other than that, it really IS a BAD idea to put anything in your lungs that does NOT belong there (or any organ, for that matter). that's why i dislike insulin pumps and cgms. our body comes with it's own kind of "electricity" so all that interference from things like insulin pumps and cgms and even wearable tech just adds to the initial risk. that's another blog post entirely!
anyway, like i said, i'm not trying to stop anyone from taking afrezza; i just wish the people who do take it (and the clowns who dedicate their lives and portfolios to it) would at least be more TACTFUL in their approach. diabetes is a serious disease; and even so, even healthy people need to eat right, and anyone taking any kind of medication needs to be careful and dose accurately. the dose makes the poison!! if anything, my suggestions might help you better sell afrezza; diabetics don't REALLY want another excuse to eat bad food, believe me. eating pizza is not the equivalent of living large!! that's the wrong kind of mentality. eat to live, not the other way around!!
i'm glad you're working hard at bettering and maintaining your own health; that makes me think you care about other people's health, too!! health doesn't come in a bottle, a pill or a dreamboat - which, by the way, the name of the afrezza inhaler, dreamboat, again, makes the company look shady. it is NOT the DREAM of diabetics to eat bad food and use afrezza as an excuse to control resulting high blood sugar. people need to STOP thinking that bad food is a diabetic's main reason for living. the only way to achieve and maintain good health is by doing the work and making it easy, just makes being healthy less desirable. it's psychology, but you can't learn THIS psychology from a book!!
in a way, i'm glad i have diabetes; it opened my eyes to the way i was treating my body before i was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 17+ years ago. i fucked up my immune system, caught a virus that settled in my throat and just like that, was diagnosed at the age of 25. i should have taken better care of my health; you can't take your immune system for granted and you can't abuse it, either. it backfires, eventually.
my main point: taking afrezza should NOT be an excuse to eat bad food because, blood sugar control or not, in the end, the toxins will find some way to kill you. people DO die with perfect blood sugar, you know!! but when you eat the right food... there's no REAL need to take medication for blood sugar control, if you exerise (moderately) after meals. it can be as simple and enjoyable as a 20-minute walk at the park - skip the gym, skip the treadmill, you need OXYGEN to convery glucose into energy, something you can find outdoors, despite the smog
no offense, health should be everyone's main priority; not junk food.
thank you sooo much for taking the time to read my posts/emails; it means everything to me it means even more that you speak with respect and compassion. it feels nice when people aren't threatened by good health. thank you
Lana
p.s. i hope your children NEVER get diabetes, even if afrezza IS a miracle drug, which it's not. nothing is *sigh*
and if matt replies to my last email, i'll update this post. till then, stay tuned (maybe)...
lanaknows.blogspot.com/2017/01/matt-mannkind-corp-pfeffer-eats-low.html
Tuesday, January 31, 2017
Matt 'Mannkind Corp' Pfeffer eats a low-carb diet to manage blood sugar and does NOT take Afrezza!
start from the beginning, here, here and here !!
the email i got from matt pfeffer this morning in answer to the email i sent him the other day, in answer to...
Lana,
No, we have never compensated patients in any clinical trials with shares of stock. I am pretty sure compensation of any kind to clinical trial patients (except to supply them the medication used in the study and sometimes defray their direct costs for commuting to a trial site, etc.) is not allowed. We are in a very heavily regulated industry, as I am sure you know, and I am pretty sure this would be considered a conflict of interest. Regardless, we have never done it.
Thanks for hearing me out. I try very hard to restrict myself to a low carb diet and to avoid processed foods as much as possible, and am pretty outspoken about it to others. Because I travel so extensively, this sort of diet is the only one I have found that works well for me. I am not always successful, but mostly do a reasonable job. I am not currently considered to be a person who has diabetes, but I have been borderline for about a decade and am anxious not to progress. I have family members with type 2 diabetes and a member of my more immediate family has type 1 diabetes. I also consider myself pretty well informed both in the disease and the health field generally, having worked in it for roughly 30 years.
I appreciate your taking the time to read my messages.
Matt
to which i replied:
matt,
thanks for getting back to me. i really do appreciate everything you've said so far.
i didn't know you were borderline type 2 - thanks for bringing it up. that makes me wonder (and again, please don't feel obligated to answer)...
...do YOU take afrezza?
i know you say you try to keep to a low-carb no-processed food diet, but it can be very hard. i know from personal experience. the HARDEST part was NOT giving up processed food; the HARDEST part was coming to the realization and admitting that my very low-carb diet (of mainly salad greens and poached meat/fish and eggs, with fresh fruit to treat hypos, only) was giving me a very bad case of HYPOTHYROIDISM!! imagine my dismay.
for a type 1 diabetic, i was at one point (for a good 2 years) taking half my prescribed background insulin and ZERO meal-time insulin because given the very low-carb diet and all the exercise i was doing, the background insulin alone was enough to keep my blood sugar in range; in fact, i had MORE hypos then than i do eating a moderate carb diet (again, absolutely no processed carbs aside from the ginger chews i need for occasional nausea that comes with premenopause and occasional stubborn hypo).
that's quite a feat for an insulin-dependent type 1 diabetic!! but eventually, it did end up giving me hypothyroidism, so please be extra careful with low-carb diets. in my opinion, there is NO place for processed foods in anyone's diet; let alone a diabetic's because it doesn't help the situation; it can only add to it.
and insulin is NO excuse to eat the wrong foods, either. no matter how good your blood sugar control, your liver's toxicity is something else entirely! so, do be careful... and don't be afraid to eat fresh fruit and grains. our brain runs on glucose and when you don't get enough healthy sugar from natural sources like fresh fruit, it can lead to depression, anxiety and memory loss. (and a whole bunch of other nasty side effects you won't believe a seemingly healthy diet can cause!! again, i speak from personal experience.)
easy on the fats, as well; even good fats can cause inflammation when overdone and THAT leads to insulin resistance. basically, one avocado a day is healthy; but 10 avocados a day is deadly!! i'm sure you know all this, but you know how it is with us "health nuts" - we just can't keep our mouths shut
anyway, back to my original question: HAVE you in the past or do you now (even occasionally) rely on afrezza to regulate blood sugar when you succumb to food "temptation?" and... how does it make you feel (emotionally) knowing (if you DO take it), you could have achieved the SAME results by just taking a leisurely walk around the block?
no offense, just curious. you don't have to answer. just knowing you took the time to read and answer my other questions means a LOT to me - thank you
Lana
to which matt replied:
Lana,
I think most of the country, of a certain age (I am 59, turning 60 in a few months, I have to keep reminding myself) are what doctors like to call "pre-diabetic". To me, this just means early stage diabetes. The advantage of this stage is that you can more readily treat it with diet and exercise, which is a good thing. That said, for someone like me, I think it would be fabulous were Afrezza available for the occasional lapse. But no insulin, including Afrezza, is approved by the FDA for this purpose. That means that I would have to go to extreme lengths, probably with a doctor willing to overlook FDA guidance, to get the drug prescribed to me. In a tightly regulated industry like ours, even I have to go through normal channels to get Afrezza. I can't just call the factory and tell them to send me some. I have to get a doctor to prescribe it and buy it through normal retail channels. So while I will admit wishing I had Afrezza available to me many times, I have never used it in the manner you describe.
If you will allow me to digress for just a moment, there are several medical studies that have investigated the use of prandial insulin in the pre-diabetic setting. A typical study like this, done under very tight medical supervision and usual in a hospital setting, would provide a pre-diabetic patient with insulin needed exogenously, so their pancreas could take what was sometimes referred to as a "vacation". As you might imagine, a healthy volunteer in such a study would only put up with it for so long, perhaps a week or two, then they would go back to their daily lives. Afterwards, they followed the people in the study versus a control group to see if it made a difference. Surprisingly, it made a major difference in how long it took them to ultimately progress later in life. While so much of medicine starts out as conjecture and is hard to prove, the belief here is that giving the pancreas even a relatively short "vacation" like this must allow the eyelet cells to regenerate is some fashion. (Proving I have read your posts - perhaps it gives the inflammation a chance to dissipate instead?) Regardless, the long term effects were noteable.
I have read some of these studies (and could send them to you if you are curious) and been sorely tempted to replicate such a study on myself, using Afrezza, perhaps even over an extended period or even indefinitely, in the manner you describe. I aspire to live a very long and healthy life, not just for myself, but for my kids. I waited until rather late in life to have children, and now am blessed with boy-girl twins, age 12. I would really like to be around to see them have kids of their own, yet don't want them to be in any hurry to do so. That means I need to stay healthy for a good long time, I hope.
So far the above is mostly fantasy, but I may still approach a progressive doctor with the concept at some point...
So no, I don't use the drug in the way you describe, but wish I could. And were one of my children to be diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic (presumably at age 18, since it is not approved for juveniles, yet) I would not hesitate to get it for them. As much as we encourage our kids to eat a healthy diet, kids are kids, and of course they often do not. I would be happy that Afrezza could give them a shot at a normal life. I will spare you my thoughts on why I think Afrezza is such a blessing, as it seems so self serving, but having such a rapid onset of action and short duration, more similar to what a young healthy pancreas can do, potentially avoids so much of the complication and risks of insulin use.
Closer to home, my brother's wife has been on an insulin pump for decades (a version of the pump Al Mann originally invented.) She too now uses Afrezza, but not all the time, mostly because she has had trouble getting her insurance company to pay for it. (We are still working on that.) But she loves it for prandial control, compared to her pump. While theoretically, there is nothing better than a pump for basal control, especially if it has some closed loop element, like the new, but misnamed, artificial pancreas by Medtronic. But no injected insulin today, whether by needle of pump, shares Afrezza's kinetics. So in my opinion, for the right patient, there is no better option for prandial control.
Sorry for the long answer, but I do go on sometimes, particularly over a subject I am passionate about. Sounds like we share that trait.
Matt
to which i replied:
matt,
don't tell him i said this, but... i like talking to YOU a LOT more than i like talking to your colleague, mike (can't remember his last name; it's in my inbox, though). he emailed me, as well. he seems very angry about... a LOT of things *sigh* he also looks forward to the day his pancreas gives out so he can take afrezza. again, that kind of talk only makes mannkind look cheap to me. then again, i have NO pull / influence over anything that happens at or to mannkind. and nothing i may say should offend or threaten you, personally; and especially, not your company.
again, i take insulin so the risk of cancer is always there. that's why i can't stop anyone from taking afrezza. my beef is NOT the cancer scare, again, i'm living with the same kind of threat taking insulin; other than that, it really IS a BAD idea to put anything in your lungs that does NOT belong there (or any organ, for that matter). that's why i dislike insulin pumps and cgms. our body comes with it's own kind of "electricity" so all that interference from things like insulin pumps and cgms and even wearable tech just adds to the initial risk. that's another blog post entirely!
anyway, like i said, i'm not trying to stop anyone from taking afrezza; i just wish the people who do take it (and the clowns who dedicate their lives and portfolios to it) would at least be more TACTFUL in their approach. diabetes is a serious disease; and even so, even healthy people need to eat right, and anyone taking any kind of medication needs to be careful and dose accurately. the dose makes the poison!! if anything, my suggestions might help you better sell afrezza; diabetics don't REALLY want another excuse to eat bad food, believe me. eating pizza is not the equivalent of living large!! that's the wrong kind of mentality. eat to live, not the other way around!!
i'm glad you're working hard at bettering and maintaining your own health; that makes me think you care about other people's health, too!! health doesn't come in a bottle, a pill or a dreamboat - which, by the way, the name of the afrezza inhaler, dreamboat, again, makes the company look shady. it is NOT the DREAM of diabetics to eat bad food and use afrezza as an excuse to control resulting high blood sugar. people need to STOP thinking that bad food is a diabetic's main reason for living. the only way to achieve and maintain good health is by doing the work and making it easy, just makes being healthy less desirable. it's psychology, but you can't learn THIS psychology from a book!!
in a way, i'm glad i have diabetes; it opened my eyes to the way i was treating my body before i was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes 17+ years ago. i fucked up my immune system, caught a virus that settled in my throat and just like that, was diagnosed at the age of 25. i should have taken better care of my health; you can't take your immune system for granted and you can't abuse it, either. it backfires, eventually.
my main point: taking afrezza should NOT be an excuse to eat bad food because, blood sugar control or not, in the end, the toxins will find some way to kill you. people DO die with perfect blood sugar, you know!! but when you eat the right food... there's no REAL need to take medication for blood sugar control, if you exerise (moderately) after meals. it can be as simple and enjoyable as a 20-minute walk at the park - skip the gym, skip the treadmill, you need OXYGEN to convery glucose into energy, something you can find outdoors, despite the smog
no offense, health should be everyone's main priority; not junk food.
thank you sooo much for taking the time to read my posts/emails; it means everything to me
it means even more that you speak with respect and compassion. it feels nice when people aren't threatened by good health. thank you Lana
p.s. i hope your children NEVER get diabetes, even if afrezza IS a miracle drug, which it's not. nothing is *sigh*
and if matt replies to my last email, i'll update this post. till then, stay tuned (maybe)...
lanaknows.blogspot.com/2017/01/matt-mannkind-corp-pfeffer-eats-low.html
