March 26, 2004
Alternative Therapies and Explanations, Other
Question from Dana Point, California, USA:
Have you ever heard of Omnitrition? I recently put my husband on several of their products and he is doing so great. His blood sugar numbers are down by 30 mg/dl [1.6 mmol/L] points before meals and he has a lot more energy. He took regular diabetes health pack vitamins before, but they didn’t have this effect. I had a nutritionist look at the ingredients on these products and she said they were fine, but that there was too much caffeine in it. Will the caffeine hurt him more than the supplements help him?
Answer:
Modest amounts of caffeine in the diet of people with diabetes is not a big problem, as long as they do not have known cardiovascular disease. In the presence of cardiovascular disease, the caffeine has the effect of increasing the heart rate, increasing the heart’s oxygen demand, and could potentiate chest pain or a heart attack.
JTL
