Ever wonder how Eli Lilly was able to get away with the Zyprexa scandal? A former member of the Lilly neuroscience team put it simply: statistics are like prisoners -- torture them long enough and they'll tell you what you want to hear. This YouTube video gives 6 jaw-dropping minutes of priceless pharmaceutical rep training on how to overcome sales resistance.

Quite remarkable is the coaching Lilly provided their pharmaceutical reps in dismissing the feedback they were receiving from doctors. Lilly told reps to ask doctors (in no uncertain terms) do you want a thin psychotic patient or a healthy fat patient? I think the operative word here is healthy. Does Lilly believe that excessive weight gain, insatiable hunger and Type 2 diabetes are healthy?

In Type 2 diabetes - the blood sugar rises, and spills into the urine, because the body resists insulin and resists its transfer of glucose out of the blood and into the cells of the body. The most important organ in the body – the brain – is protected by this insulin resistance. This is a protective reaction to prevent too sudden a fall in blood glucose, which can cause the brain to swell up with water! If too much glucose suddenly leaves the bloodstream the other sugars in the brain (sorbitol and fructose which are relatively unaffected by insulin) cause water to flow into the brain to correct the osmotic imbalance -- so the brain runs the risk of sustaining injury = too much sugar + too much insulin causes too much water.

Those of us who know what it's like to correct a high sugar with insulin know what it's like to feel bloated as our sugar comes down too quickly. The body is designed to protect its brain by only slowly reducing glucose in the blood and for any excess glucose to be flushed out in the urine. This is a temporary fix for a temporary carbohydrate overload. My billion dollar question is this: Have Lilly pharmaceutical reps been trained to dismiss the side effects of GM insulin (genetically modified to overcome insulin resistance) since it was first introduced in 1983? I'm curious how Lilly justifies diabetic complications.

Researchers defined a link between high insulin levels and defective lipid metabolism but the cause may not be exactly what you think. According to a study published in June, 2005 -- this could be due to their choice in blood sugar lowering medication.

The conclusion of the study identified obese insulin-resistant subjects taking metformin (brand names Glucophage, Diabex, Diaformin, Fortamet, Riomet, Glumetza) and rosiglitazone both improve insulin sensitivity (increase insulin production) but DO NOT improve lipid metabolism. Rosiglitazone (brand name Avandia) may have a detrimental effect on chylomicron metabolism

Blood vessels of insulin-resistant rats build up a substance called chylomicron cholesterol following a high fat meal. Because the rats are insulin-resistant, more insulin (in the form of an anti-diabetes pill) is required to clear sugars and fats from their bloodstream. Higher insulin levels reduced the rate of chylomicron removal from the blood stream following a meal. This slower clearing rate increased the chylomicron particles sticking around the blood vessels, leading to arterial plaque build up and heart disease.

Knowing that high levels of insulin are associated with elevated levels of chylomicron cholesterol, researchers will use this information to try to figure out how this happens.

Why would they do that? The answer was already explained in June, 2005. Oh it must be because arterial plaque builds differently in Australian's on anti-diabetic pills than it does in American's on anti-diabetic pills. We should all thank the good folks at GlaxoSmithKline, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Pfizer and Merck. Without their medicine -- how would anybody ever know about this stuff? First you're on an anti-diabetic pill, then you're on cholesterol lowing pill, what's next? Of course -- the blood pressure!!

How many people are Gold Star type 2 diabetic patients?