From The Book of Blood Sugar 101 what They do not tell you about Diabetes by Jenny Ruhl Two large studies published within weeks of each other in early 2008 came to dramatically different results on this question. Sadly, because most doctors have time only to read the headlines and don’t look into the details of these studies, many patients are being given the toxic—and inaccurate—advice to keep their A1cs high to protect their hearts. The first published study, called ACCORD, found that a population of people with diabetes and heart disease who had followed an aggressive program of lowering blood sugar had slightly more heart attack deaths than a control group who pursued laxer blood sugar control even though the group who followed the aggressive program attained an average A1c of 6.4%. However, the second study, ADVANCE, which had enrolled twice as many subjects as ACCORD and lasted longer, found no increase in deaths in the group of participants treated more aggressivel...