That same study reveals home birth death rate is 450% higher than hospital.

That is the study you want to use to defend home birth?

According to the CDC, the neonatal death rate for low risk white women* at term is 0.38/1000.

According to the Mana Study:
The overall death rate from labor through six weeks was 2.06 per 1000 when higher risk women (i.e., those with breech babies or twins, those attempting VBAC, or those with preeclampsia or gestational diabetes) are included in the sample, and 1.61 per 1000 when only low risk women are included.

I actually got that from "Citizens for Midwifery"

Their own figures show the death rate to be 4 times higher, even for low risk.

It's really quite simple as far as I'm concerned. After everything is else is said and done, you have a better chance of a healthy baby and mother in a hospital. Babies that could be saved at a hospital die because they are at home. Until you can argue the reverse, I'm still in the hospital camp.



* the majority of the participants in the Mana study where low risk wealthy white women, so it's a fair comparison.

This girl is going to grow up fat and with diabetes.

Just read through this whole damn thread. And damn was that tiring. It's been a while since I've spoken up about anything on ye olde 'Sift, and now seems like a good time to do so.

Hi there, I'm a Type 1 Diabetic, and completely dependant on a regular dosage of insulin via a pump. I've been Diabetic for the last 15 years (diagnosed at age 15 during March Break of Grade 9). Thirteen years ago I was put on a pump because I was taking 9 shots a day to try and manage my wildly out of control "beetus". I was on a good diet as well, with few heavy carbs, but my body has a hard time maintaining a good balance of insulin sensitivity.

Now, on to the idea that Type 1 Diabetes can be "cured" or "treated" without insulin... Bollocks. Plain and simple.

Almost two years ago I set it upon myself to get fitter and healthier. I have never been overweight, just the less-than-average amount of fat I would say, but I was bored with how things were going and decided to try something new for my fitness routines; I went 100% Paleo.

Yeah, for almost two years I have rarely (and I mean rarely) eaten anything aside from fruits (one serving a day, two if I'm deserving of it) veggies, nuts and protein. Nothing processed, as little preservatives and chemicals as I can manage (I read *a lot* of nutritional labels when shopping for new foods) and I buy most of my meat and veggies from local farms and farmer's markets.

Has this helped my Diabetes? Extremely marginally. My insulin sensitivity has increased by a fraction... But that's it. Has my pancreas started creating its own insulin? Not a chance in hell.

While doing this whole paleo eating lifestyle I've also been doing a lot of intervals and weight training, and I've made some great strides. But back to the original idea of getting back to "natural" ways of living/eating and "curing" my diabetes? Yeah, no dice there, ladies and gentlemen.

I cannot be without my pump hooked up to my body for more than two hours before I would need to be sent to the hospital. Nothing I have done, with all my dedication, determination, and strong will, has made my Diabetes any "better" than it was when I was first diagnosed. If anything, it has taken more of my time and money and energy to get where I am now, with nothing to show for it from my condition's perspective.

If anyone, anyone at all, thinks they can cure Diabetes Mellitus by eating better and taking better care of themselves I'll suggest this: remove your pancreas and see if your body builds you a new one while you're testing out your hypothesis, because in all seriousness and fairness, that's what it's like to be Type 1. My body killed my pancreas making it a useless, lifeless organ. It will *never* awaken again to produce my own insulin without the help of true science and excellent doctors.

So, you know what I've done, and can take it from me that it will not cure you of your Type 1 Diabetes. Now I want you to tell me what I'm not doing to help "cure myself".

I'm an open-minded skeptic.

... But I'm not so open-minded that my brain will fall out.

Hopefully the douchbag that thinks type 1 diabetes is curable will go to some of the summer camps I have volunteered at, where all the kids are type 1 diabetic...God bless them...and maybe he can give them all the cure..or work with them to cure themselves...or whatever...how can you have such awesome knowledge and not devote your life to sharing it?

Hmm, at best you might convince a few poor souls to stop there medication...I guess a corpse doesn't have DM1. Nice cure.

Douchbag.

@Bruti79
right on.
thanks for replying.

neuroscience is your answer in regards to consciousness eh?
how...unsatisfying.
the answer is no answer at all man.

let me try for you:
we dont know.
BUT we are making great strides in neuro transmitters and neuroscience and microbiology that it is possible that one day we WILL know.
but as of today?
we dont know,and what we dont know is a LOT.

see? better.

and your response concerning love!
breath-taking!
"We fall in love, or hate, or feel "meh" about something because of the stuff in our brain that makes our personalities"

how romantic!
ok..its not.im just being a huge ass.
in fact i am being a wicked smart-ass period.
thanks for putting up with me.

it irks me when people talk in regards to consciousness or love with a conviction that i know is not warranted.
but thanks for being a good sport about it.

in regards to type 1 diabetes.yeah...no diet is going to reverse that.sorry timmy.

maybe you thought i was trying to sell ya a bill of goods.i wasnt.
check that video out.
its a lecture by a doctor whose field is in disease and microbiology.
HE is the guy who proved that a plant based diet can reverse type 2 diabetes (not in all,but many)AND how a plant based diet can help prevent cancer and sometimes cure it.

he is entertaining,witty and its super informative.

if i didnt love double bacon cheeseburgers so much i would go vegan,but whenever i know i am eating too far on the crappy scale i watch that video and it pulls me back to reality,or the meat lovers pizza.
whatever..dont confuse me with details!

i know better than to try to get you guys to listen to my fluffernutter philosophies.
you guys are all about your religion..i mean science..yes.science!

it is all pretty exciting to me as well.
thanks man.stay awesome.

So, basically what you're saying is that you really are a fucking idiot.

You're claiming physical effects. It doesn't matter if they come from a spiritual thought process or karma or whatever, you're claiming a physical effect (the curing or prevention of diabetes and cancer) which means it's measurable and testable.

A simple test would be to take a medical history for a load of people in America who are living the spiritual lifestyle and believe the rubbish (the more people the better). Then take a medical history for a corresponding control group, this would be people living in the same areas, eating at the same places with the same type of exercise regime and so on. If - as you claim - the spiritual aspect of your life protects you from illness then the spiritual people should show a lower incidence of illness.

Please tell me what's wrong with that? It's science and it's testing the effect you claim.

Oh yeah, you won't. I forgot about the whole fucking idiot thing...

Alright,

this Wikipedia entry is a good start on the neuroscience and chemistry that goes on inside our brains when love happens:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_basis_of_love

As for the chemistry of conciousness, I'd recommend the book Neurochemistry of Consciousness: Neurotransmitters in Mind. I believe it's a free download on most readers. It's also a neat read.

It is exciting that we are those things. Because we all have roughly the same physical materials in our head, and we are all different people. The majority of us have the ability to record, interpret and recall information and stimulation, and it's all those chemicals and receptors in our heads.

We fall in love, or hate, or feel "meh" about something because of the stuff in our brain that makes our personalities. Even identical twins are still different people. That's amazing to me. The fact that we even reproduce at all, it takes a lot of work on a cellular level to even have a kid. That is amazing to me.

I have yet to see any proof that this is a god or a soul. What we can do is, look inside someone's brain and measure what's happening and what reactions we have. We can see it, we can observe and form conclusions from it.

We know that if you give a type I diabetic insulin, that insulin will act as a replacement inside their body. We also know, from the news, that if you try and think positive about getting that pancreas to work again, it fails to do so.

So, when someone says, that spirituality can cure disease, all I ask for his some hard proof. Not a bunch of hokem.

That's straight up crazy talk.

You can't show any physical proof or tests to show that it works. Yet you say it does, because of what proof or evidence? If you say it happens, show the examples. Let them be put up for inspection and debate.

As for "spiritual elements" like love and fear, they aren't spiritual. They are a series of chemicals in our brain going off. I remember a joke a friend of mine said once, when someone once said: "You can't measure happiness." To which he replied, sure you can, just measure the amount of dopamine they've got going through their head.

We're a series of hormones, fluids and matter. All of it can be measure and calculated. If someone had their cancer or Type I diabetes cured by faith, why would that not make the news? Why would that not be the most promoted thing in the medical industry?

Faith can help your mental state and make you feel better. Feeling happier and better about yourself does have an effect on your general health, but it is not a cure for disease.

um
As mentioned, diabetes mellitus type 1 is genetic, you need regular insulin injections because, without it your blood sugar levels will be sky high, and sugar in the blood leads to glycation. Glycation is where sugars attach to proteins (such as the ones in your red blood cells) and then become useless/damaging. The amount of glycation is measured by a test called the HbA1C, something diabetics will be familiar with. Glycation cannot be avoided by faith...

The comment @Sniper007 made about curing diabetes is almost true however, as it has been demonstrated time and time again (in studies for over 20 years) that calorie restricted diets (and to a lesser extent weight loss) can basically cure diabetes (type 2). It is thought that one of the main reasons for this is that it helps to reduce adipose tissue (fat) that has been laid down in places like the pancreas and liver. A small reduction in the adipose tissue in the pancreas helps it regain much of its lost function. This calorie restriction doesn't appear to work in all type 2 diabetics, but it does work in many.

Info about the adipose tissue deposition/pancreas issue.
dvr.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/09/10/1479164112455817.full.pdf+html
http://www.endocrine-abstracts.org/ea/0015/ea0015s39.htm

I wonder how many people commenting here went and looked up information on diabetes just to argue

Wow, just wow.

Where is there any proof of this? Find me one type I diabetic who eliminated their diabetes without a pancreatic transplant, and I'll give them the world's greatest human trophy.

So far, ever in the history or medicine, no one has had their type I diabetes eliminated by belief. Please show me where this has happened and I'll say you're right. Again, I'm a Type I, and I take very good care of myself. I have poor genetics, which caused cancer in my saliva glands, but it was poor genes, not a poor life style.

The only time I've been in a hospital was for the diagnosis of diabetes and the surgeries for cancer. Aside from those three incidents, I lead a damn great and healthy life style. Where in your theory did I get my illness from. Science tells me it was poor genes and mutations, the second cancer was from the radiation to treat the first one. A risk I had to take into account.

Where do you get your information from? It is flawed and not based in reality. It's that kind of decision making that makes the world a dangerous place.

If you're going to make a claim like that, even when it flies in the face of logic and reason, you better have some damn good proof to back it up.

Actually, I think people have been pretty good about attacking your arguments. I'm sorry if you feel persecuted, but you can't expect to make blatantly wrong statements and not get called on it.

The placebo effect is real, but it is also limited. Show me a study where the placebo effect has managed to make someone with type 1 diabetes produce insulin. I did actually look for one, but couldn't find anything.

As to your assertion that traumas can "point to something the individual should learn about how to live their lives", that is nonsense.

What lesson should a pedestrian that was hit by a drunk driver learn?

Or maybe people who play contact sports should learn to just sit on the couch?

I'm just going to save everyone else the bother and call you a fucking idiot right away.

In Type 1 diabetes the body doesn't produce insulin. It's not just a little short, it has none. You can't survive long without insulin, not in any semblance of normality. Regardless of diet, you simply can't. Like you can't survive without oxygen. No amount of eating your greens will stop you drowning.

If you can find us a proper scientific double blind controlled study that shows that a placebo can make the pancreas of a type 1 diabetic produce insulin then I'll take back the fucking idiot bit. If you can't, you've just proved the fucking idiot bit.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that after your next reply, the fucking idiot bit will remain.

No-one's saying a good diet and exercise aren't important, of course it is. But to say it can perform the miracles you're attributing to it is absurd. You even mention Cancer, as if it's a result of poor life choices. It's true that you can get cancer from poor life choices, but that's not the same as saying if you don't make poor life choices you can't get cancer.

Fucking idiot.

Show me the science (proper science) and I'll gladly retract all the nastiness. I challenge you to prove me wrong.

The notion that diabetes is totally preventable is, of course, absurd. But, because more than 90% of diabetics are type II, and probably 90% of them could prevent the disease through risk factor modification, diabetes is largely a preventable illness. Roughly 20 million US citizens are afflicted by self-induced diabetes.

Thanks for all the personal attacks and presumptions. It's... distracting.

If the term 'controlled' is more fitting for you, then so be it. But yes, even type 1 diabetes can be eliminated. Look into the placebo effect - the power of a peron's beliefs. It is a very real, demonstrable, repeatable effect. And it has far more efficacy than most medications being produced.

In a way, the diabetes isn't the problem, but is one more symptom of the actual root of the problem. Runny noses, fevers, sore throats, lesions, pain - even traumas such as broken bones, cuts, and bruises - none of these are the problems themselves, but mere symptoms which point to something the individual should learn about how to live their lives.

Diabetes is no exception. Nor is cancer.

If you treat the 'issue' as something that's intrinsic, genetic, inevitable, and beyond the power of the individual to control or cure, you've essentially doomed that person to blind random fate. I prefer to place the power and thus responsibility for healing squarely on the shoulders of the one who's experiencing the problem. That makes far more sense to me than placing that power and responsibility into the hands of insurance companies, governments, congressmen, doctors, or choas.

Oh, and since you bring it up, Cacao (not chocolate) may in fact help diabetic symptoms! :-D Not really sure, haven't done much research on that one.