The War on Blood Sugar

Diabetes is really just sugar ending up in the wrong places, so there isn't one drug for it. There's a drug for each place. This episode walks the whole body and picks up one tool at every stop. We start at the liver with metformin, the drug almost everyone gets first, then move to the fat and muscle with the glitazones, the pancreas with the sulfonylureas and meglitinides, the kidney with the SGLT2 inhibitors, and the gut with the alpha-glucosidase inhibitors. Then we finish with insulin itself, the one that replaces what's missing instead of nudging what's left. Every drug gets explained by the organ it works on, so the mechanisms, the side effects, and the reasons one gets chosen over another all follow from a single idea. Once you know the address, the drug explains itself.