SEATTLE, WA – After years of obesity, a high calorie diet and limited exercise Mr. Krendall presented to his local ED after feeling, “crappy” for “a while.” Krendall had a fasting blood glucose of 512 mg/dL. “It turned out that it wasn’t really fasting, ” Milton Ramos, RN reported. “His idea of fasting included the consumption of a number of candy bars and that,” said Nurse Ramos referring to a Mountain Dew the size of a paint can.
“I don’t use sugar on everything, this is just weird, look at what I’m drinking right now,” said Krendall indicating the quart of Diet Coke at his bedside. “I make healthy choices.”
A few days later he presented to his first endocrinology appointment and reported that he was not taking his insulin. When asked why he replied, “I didn’t want diabetes anymore, so I stopped taking the insulin.” The statement stunned his endocrinologist Dr. Margaret Renee. “All these years I have been prescribing insulin thinking that it would help and I never knew it was the cause of the diabetes. All that money going into diabetes research and the cure was right there.”
This discovery has led other disciplines to review their treatment approaches. Dr. Kai Ming, an oncologist in Seattle has stopped chemotherapy on all his patients. “Mr. Krendall’s breakthrough has made me wonder, ‘If I stop the chemo, will the cancer go away as well?’ it is too bold a plan not to try.” Other providers are experimenting with stopping treatment to see if it stops a disease in its tracks. “At this time metoprolol and lisinopril prescriptions have disappeared as providers are seeing if ‘The Krendall Approach’ as it is being called now works for high blood pressure as well,” commented a pharmacist surveying his empty store.
Krendall is sanguine about his breakthrough. “I was just sick of doing stuff that was making me sick, that insulin was going to be the death of me,” he noted between mouthfuls of Doritos and soda. “I’m right back to where I was before that diabetes junk, I mean, except for this foot thing,” referring to his newly amputated right foot.
Despite some setbacks his endocrinologist is cautiously optimistic. “The patient is morbidly obese, in advanced kidney failure, with severe ischemic neuropathy and his blood glucose is still in the high 400s but, by his own admission, he does not have diabetes after he quit taking insulin. Look at all the advances being made after his discovery, I’d call that a win.”
