quotable quotes - September 2010
the good doctor, on education
"Almost no one is uneducated regarding diabetes. Instead, the problem is that so many people are mis-educated about diabetes."
- William Polonsky, PhD, CDE (University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA), at this year’s American Association of Diabetes Educators (AADE) 37th Annual Meeting in San Antonio, Texas in August.
combination therapy, much earlier, please
"For cardiac disease, you are immediately put on an ACE inhibitor as well as a beta blocker and a diuretic. In diabetes, we say that we can’t treat a particular mechanism until it gets worse. Until endocrinologists get as smart as us in internal medicine, this is a problem."
- Mark Stolar, MD (Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Chicago, IL) disparaging the 12- to 36-month average delay for people with diabetes on oral agents to advance from single drug therapy to combination therapy at AADE this past August.
on weight gain – doctors are getting sicker and sicker of it
"Weight gain is like any other bad side effect with a drug. If I see weight gain in my patients, I will stop the drug – I don’t think it’s worth it when it takes such a significant psychological toll."
- Nancy Burkhalter, PharmD, RPH, CDE (Eisenhower Army Medical Center, Augusta, GA), fielding a question on weight gain during a session on drug therapies at AADE in August.
on incretins – the phrases get more powerful
"Incretins: These agents are the single greatest advance in type 2 ever ..."
- Dr. Steve Edelman, MD (Taking Control of Your Diabetes [TCOYD] founder, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA), speaking about major changes in diabetes over time at TCOYD Providence, RI in early September.
