Archive for the 'Diabetes' Category

On Life, Death, and Fighting Food Cravings

Published
by
Lorelei F
on June 21, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Lorelei F

I think it is very fitting to speak about my dad in this blog this week. He passed away a week ago Monday, and it was truly a week of sadness and also soul searching for me. I thought about this blog a lot. My dad had chronic adult-onset diabetes, you see.

In the days of my childhood my dad and I had a great time together, and our time always included goodies. Ice cream, donuts, and candy bars were among our favorites. We laughed and sang and ate in a fairy tale world where I had never even heard of food addiction or cravings.

My dad and I both loved to eat, and it was one of the ways in which we bonded.

But as I watched my dad in the last years of his life, I remember thinking so frequently “What a price pleasure in food can exact.” As time went by my father could hardly walk due to his diabetes. He couldn’t see very well. Food began to have no flavor at all and he had a hard time swallowing. He spent his days dozing listlessly in a chair, and was sad beyond measure at the loss of all that he had ever enjoyed in life.

And the odd irony was that toward the end my father couldn’t even eat from the havoc to his body. And one might even say that in the end he died of starvation.

So what is there to say about all of this? I know for me I lived a full seven years with no traces of sugar, wheat, or flour in my body- as well as a whole host of other ingredients. And it took a lot of work because in truth there is hardly a box, can, or jar on a grocery store shelf that does not contain at least one of these ingredients, and usually they have a lot more than one. Now I live mostly craving- free, perhaps because it also takes seven years for the cells in a human body to replace themselves. Considering that the cells in your body literally become addicted to those substances, I probably don’t have any addicted cells left.

During the week after my dad’s death I did partake in some of the typical no-nos. I had some ketchup, which contains sugar. I had a few onion rings. My family, now used to a whole new me, was shocked. I feel that perhaps it was just my yearning to once again feel some comfort in food, as if my dad were back with me. But I know I tread on dangerous waters, and I don’t suggest you try it- especially if you still have most of your old, addicted cells.

So here is where I am left regarding this whole issue. My dad could not avoid his fate. He didn’t know about food addiction, or what to do about it. And so he followed an inevitable path to destruction. I have another possibility. I can stick to the foods that make me feel healthy and vibrantly alive and that do not cause cravings. And I can educate others on how to do the same. And I can hope that the grocery stores eventually begin to offer us more options. And by doing this, I can most fully honor my father’s love- and his greatness. For he was a truly amazing man, in every way.

About the Author:
For more help with addictions visit the sites of famed writer speaker and Second Hand Addiction Specialist, Lorelei F at fightingfoodcravings and at helpful-hints-for-quitting-smoking

Organic Milk Shown to be a Bigger Cause of Diabetes

Published
by
Russell Eaton
on May 26, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Russell Eaton

Diabetes rates are reaching epidemic proportions in developed countries where junk diets and obesity is common. Diabetes is a serious and debilitating disease caused by the body’s failure to control blood sugar levels. This is referred to as ‘insulin resistance’.

A study by the University of Cardiff in the United Kingdom (2007) stated that a daily consumption of a pint of milk a day protects men against diabetes and heart disease. However, a closer examination of the research reveals that the study is flawed and without merit.

Jon Barron (of The Baseline of Health Foundation) analyzed the data from the study and his comments are summarized in the five points below:

1. The study was published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health. It looked at how insulin resistance was affected by dairy milk consumption. A total 2,375 men were tracked between the ages of 45 and 59 over a 20-year period to see whether eating dairy products reduces the risk of insulin resistance. According to the study, the more milk they consumed, the lower the risk.

2. In fact, although the study tracked a decreased risk of insulin resistance with increased dairy consumption, it found little actual correlation between dairy consumption and the incidence of diabetes itself. There were only 7 more cases of diabetes among the lowest consumers of dairy versus the highest. The incidence of heart disease was not tracked.

3. Unfortunately, people who had diabetes at the start of the study were not included in the results. We therefore don’t know if their condition improved or deteriorated as a result of milk consumption. Such information would have been significant in determining the overall health value of dairy milk in relation to insulin resistance.

4. A big failing in the research was the lack of references to the overall diet of participants. The data only refers to the amount of milk and dairy products people were consuming, nothing else. If you drink more milk, you’re bound to drink less of something else. Conversely, if you drink less milk, you are likely to drink more of something else. If that something else is sweetened tea, coffee, soda pop, milk shake, etc. then that can be a major factor in the incidence of diabetes.

5. It seems that the so-called health benefits attributed to milk in the study may have nothing to do with milk at all. They may instead be a reflection of a better diet. It is likely that the men drinking milk were consuming less sugary foods, but the study doesn’t tell us either way. Clearly, without the data, the study is meaningless and misleading.

When you look at the research into diabetes there are many studies (too numerous to mention here) linking milk consumption with a higher incidence of diabetes, and there are virtually no studies suggesting that milk prevents diabetes.

In the book ‘Nurturing Traditions’ (1999), the author Sally Fallon makes the following comment:

‘There is some evidence that pasteurization alters milk lactase (a form of sugar), making it more readily absorbable. This and the fact that pasteurized milk puts an unnecessary strain on the pancreas to produce digestive enzymes, may explain why milk consumption has been linked to diabetes’.

This is confirmed by other research. It is known that lactose undergoes condensation and molecular changes as a result of heat treatment. Lactose in milk feeds glucose into the bloodstream, and this in turn can over time create insulin resistance.

The risk of diabetes is even greater for organic milk consumers. This is so because most organic milk (over 80 percent) is sold as UHT milk. In the USA virtually all organic milk is UHT! The ultra high pasteurization temperature of UHT is double that of regular milk. This means that organic UHT milk is more likely to overburden the bloodstream with glucose, increasing the risk of diabetes.

See below for information about a new book ‘Organic Milk Myth’ which covers this subject in detail.

About the Author:
Organic Milk Myth explodes the myth that organic milk is better for health by clearly showing that organic milk is, in fact, significantly worse for health compared to regular milk. See Organic Milk Myth now.

T+ Medical and LifeScan Team Up to Manage Diabetes

Published
by
Julia Hanf
on March 18, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Julia Hanf

Diabetes leads to increasing blood sugar levels, which ultimately ends up in deadly consequences to the body like loss of vision, heart diseases, kidney failure etc. Diabetes has severe effects on Insulin dependents rather than non-dependents.

Deficiency of Insulin causes Diabetes and Insulin is the hormone secreted by pancreas, especially the islets cell of pancreas. There are two major functions of Insulin. The first one is the breakage of the food into glucose which is the energy provider for our body and also helping in the movement of fats , glucose , proteins in the cells for the production of energy. Lowering the sugar level is the second major function of Insulin. There are two type of Diabetes - Type 1 & type 2 where Type 1 is the kind of diabetes where the body cannot generate Insulin and Type 2 is where the cells in the body are not able to utilize the insulin properly and in this type of diabetes its tough to know that you are suffering from it in the early stages and this hampers the body slowly & gradually.

Now you might be thinking, how you can treat this, right? Treatment is not that difficult provided you are maintaining your proper diet, doing regular exercise, stress controlling & Depression control. To maintain the equilibrium of the glucose level, it’s important to keep a well balanced diet. If you have to define the well balanced diet, it should be healthy diet which should be low in cholesterol, sugar, fats & must include the green leafy vegetables. For type 1 patients insulin is the most vital drug. Exercising would also help you in maintaining the blood sugar level. IF, by any chance the above precautionary measures are unable to solve the purpose then oral medication is the solution. Researches are going on and the scientists are really putting their hard work to develop a new method which is more effective to fight against this disease. Once this research is successful, there will be no need of taking Insulin shots and this technique is getting developed by transformation of the stem cells of human into mice.

More than 15 million Americans are suffering from diabetes and most of them are dependent on daily insulin shots. The key to control diabetes is to lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels and high cholesterol levels. Smoking triggers heart diseases and even greatly increases the risk for heart disease in diabetic people. Therefore diabetic people are advised to quit smoking in order to control the deadly heart diseases and high cholesterol levels.

LifeScan is a subsidiary of health care giant Johnson & Johnson. Lifescan supplies blood glucose monitoring systems which are used in hospitals, meters, test strips, lancing devices, and software which allow diabetics to test the blood sugar levels. t+ Medical is an institution which takes data from LifeScan and wirelessly transmits the information to a central database. t+ Medical has made it possible for people to view this information on their mobile phones and personal computers. Thus patients can monitor their diabetes through this technique. T+ was established in 2002. It provides technology and services catering to the treatment of chronic diseases. The aim of t+Medical is to help mankind fight these deadly diseases and develop cost effective technologies for the healthlthcare providers and diabetics.

Doctors & patients suffering from diabetes are going to be benefited with the venture between Lifescan & t+ Medical. Combination of two different technologies is generating some lifesaving services to the patients. LifeScan’s One Touch(R) Ultra(R) System is used by t+ to get the blood glucose readings. This device is pretty small and gives exact results within 5 seconds , so a pretty helpful tool to measure your blood glucose level.

About the Author:
Julia Hanf author of the book How To Play the Diabetes Diet Game and Win Through a real life crisis Julia figured out how to live diabetes free. Visit http://www.yourdiabetescure.com and learn more about your solution for diabetes.

Fighting back with Diabetes

Published
by
Julia Hanf
on March 12, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Julia Hanf

Many a times our parents and grandparents talk about a serious issue at our home which is known as ‘diabetes’. But does any one of us seem to be really interested in the topic. Have we attempted to gain the full knowledge of the disease? When the insulin in the body gets wiped out, the sugar level or the glucose level rises and as a result diabetes develops.

Regulating the sugar level of the blood is most essential to keep diabetes in control. Diabetes can lead to gaining of deadly diseases which may prove to be calamitous if diabetes is not controlled in time as the disease has some short-term effects like an eye-vision which is blurred, loss of weight, concentration loss, frequent urination etc. some of the effects which diabetes can bring forward if it is not controlled in time are kidney failure, heart diseases, eye diseases etc.

The age, lifestyle of a person and stage of the disease are three factors upon which the treatment of diabetes depends. In the beginning stages of treatment of diabetes, a healthy and nutritious diet and regular exercise are a must. In order to understate diabetes, the weight of the diabetic should first and foremost be brought in control. Or otherwise, oral medications and insulin can also be given if these steps to control diabetes are not effective.

More than 15 million Americans are suffering from diabetes and most of them are dependent on daily insulin shots. The key to control diabetes is to lower blood pressure and blood glucose levels and high cholesterol levels. Smoking triggers heart diseases and even greatly increases the risk for heart disease in diabetic people. Therefore diabetic people are advised to quit smoking in order to control the deadly heart diseases and high cholesterol levels.

Gymnema, bitter melon, bilberry, birch leaf tea, diaplex are some of the herbs and medicines for diabetes sufferers as prescribed by ayurvedic doctors. Sugar level in blood is reduced while lowering insulin resistance with the help of Gymnema. Sugar level is also reduced while pancreases help in more and more secretion of insulin. Hence, the body is in the position to make more insulin thereby improving the glucose level. The number of beta cells are increased in the pancreas with the help of a fruit named bitter melon. This is helpful in increasing the ability of the body to make more insulin. Eye-sight and blood vessels are also helped to improve through OPCs tannins and compounds which are found in bilberry fruit. Weight can also be controlled with the help of birch leaf tea.

Two of the major drugs which are given to diabetics are Insulin and Oral Hypoglycemics. Vitamin A, Vitamin D, Vitamin B1, Vitamin B6, Fatty Acids, Alpha Lipoic acid, Chromium, Vanadium, Zinc are necessary nutrients for a diabetic and hence should be given to a diabetic in each of his meals. One of the most important elements helping in prevention of side-effects of diabetes like eye diseases, kidney problems, is vitamin A. this is the most helpful elements of all in the process of controlling diabetes. More insulin is produced with the help of Vitamin D and Zinc. Moving the insulin to the cells is the process of vanadium. Metabolism of carbohydrates is the function of chromium. Energy is arrived from glucose in the body with the help of Alpha Lipoic acid. Cod liver oil, nutritional yeast, animal foods including raw butter, cream, cheese, raw meat and fish, beef and lamb, seafood like shellfish, unrefined salt for trace minerals, bone broths for minerals; unfiltered olive oil; molasses, egg yolks; and a variety of fresh and fermented vegetables are the minerals and vitamins included in a healthy diet.

The HemoglobinA1C test measures the body’s blood sugar level, which should be at or below seven percent (7%). Fifty thousand diabetic patients are being treated at New York City hospitals and they state that lower blood sugar alone does not aid in the control of diabetes. The use of an electronic patient registry, monitoring blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as getting eye exams and foot exams are essential in controlling this disease. These patients also believe that doctors should always attempt to lower high blood sugar levels unless there are factors that cannot be controlled, such as age, lifestyle, culture, or other chronic conditions involved.

About the Author:
Julia Hanf author of the book How To Play the Diabetes Diet Game and Win Through a real life crisis Julia figured out how to live diabetes free. Visit http://www.yourdiabetescure.com and learn more about your solution for diabetes.

Neuropathy Affects Millions of People

Published
by
Fabian Toulouse
on March 4, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Fabian Toulouse

Neuropathy is a mysterious disease. The Neuropathy Association calls it the most prevalent disease most people have never heard of. In fact, more than 20 million Americans suffer from some form of neuropathy. Neuropathy results from damage to peripheral nerves, often from diabetes. Symptoms may include pain, numbness, tingling, and poor balance. It shows up in the hands, arms, feet, and legs. The earlier it is diagnosed, the better it can be treated.

In neuropathy, three types of nerves can be affected. The sensory nerves, obviously, monitor sensation. Autonomic nerves control the function of internal organs. Motor nerves affect the muscles. As the nervous system is the communication network within your body, neuropathy might best be understood as a disruption of communications.

Most neuropathy patients are aged, and the care for their disease costs Medicare $3.5 billion yearly. Many people experience subtle sensations that come and go. For others, the disease may be debilitating. There are over one hundred types of neuropathy, including autonomic, cancer-related, compressive, hereditary, and diabetic. Few of these can be cured, but for those which cannot be, there are many ways of controlling the symptoms and reducing pain.

If you suffer from neuropathy, the best thing you can do for yourself is to become an energetic advocate for your own health. Do your own information search. Learn as much as you can about your symptoms and the various treatments that are out there. Be very honest with your doctor about the frequency of your symptoms. Insist that he be up front with you about your disease and what you can expect as it progresses. Also, make sure your physician has a file with your full medical history and is updated with every single medication and supplement you are taking. Be proactive: ask your doctor if there is anything you should be doing to help yourself. Finally, you may benefit from talking to others who suffer from neuropathy. Find out if there are any support groups nearby.

There is no substitute for educating yourself. Knowing more about neuropathy gives you a degree of control you may not otherwise have, and knowledge has a way of empowering you.

About the Author:
Visit RealFoodNutrients.com to find out a wealth about neuropathy and diabetes.

Diabetes Affecting Mostly African Americans

Published
by
Thulas Sukati
on February 21, 2008
in Diabetes
. 0 Comments
by Thulas Sukati

According to the National Diabetes Education Program, there is a current epidemic of diabetes among African Americans. There are certain factors that are believed to cause Type II diabetes, which accounts for nearly 95 percent of all cases of the disease. It is estimated that about 3.2 million African Americans have Type II diabetes and about one third of them are undiagnosed. This is most likely due to poor health care in certain communities, limited access to drugs that can potentially save their lives and less education.

Many people who live in poor communities, in addition to receiving substandard medical care, little education about disease and limited access to lifesaving drugs, also are inundated with fast food restaurants that seem to target certain ethnic groups. African Americans can prevent acquiring Type II diabetes in many different ways. One way is to take a look at the Glycemic Index and realize which foods are harmful to them and which to avoid. This small step may end up saving the life of someone who is on the verge of getting this potentially life threatening illness. African Americans need to realize that they are experiencing an epidemic of Type II diabetes in their community and do all that they can to stamp it out.

Depression in a Diabetic, a Killer

Many diabetics experience a period of denial when first diagnosed with diabetes According to the American Diabetes Association; people with diabetes have a greater risk for developing depression than other individuals. There are frequent doctor visits and there may be several different medication combinations needed before your blood sugar is kept under control. As the depression continues, people often lose interest in monitoring their blood sugar levels and may even skip their medication. Many people suffer from depression, but for a diabetic, it can be life threatening. Depression and diabetes is a dangerous combination.

If you feel you are suffering from some of the signs of depression, ask your doctor to recommend a therapist who is familiar in dealing with people with chronic illness. Therapy can be crucial for a diabetic patient who feels isolated because of all of the extra work involved in treating their illness. Any time someone is diagnosed with an illness puts them at risk for depression. Any time someone is diagnosed with an illness puts them at risk for depression. Their world has changed and no longer feels safe. Worse of all, they feel out of control.

Diabetic and Diet

Many people with Type II diabetes are often prescribed tablets or pills in an attempt to control their condition prior to having to use insulin Carbohydrates are a large group of foods that are necessary for a balanced diet. Carbohydrates are a complex group of foods and different groups cause different effects to the blood stream. While diabetics have a difficult time breaking down any carbohydrates in their blood stream, those with the highest Glycemic Index rating take the longest to break down in the blood stream and cause the most harm.

If you have recently been diagnosed with Type II diabetes and have been given medication by your doctor as well as diet suggestions, follow the doctor’s instructions. A diabetic diet should include limits on carbohydrates and increases in protein. It is unfortunate that so many people are continuing to be diagnosed with diabetes.

Foot Complications of Diabetes

This is one of the most common complications of diabetes, more than anyone, need to make certain that they address any problems with their feet early on as such problems can result in a life threatening condition. The injury may result in a blister or wound that will be slow to heal. The blister or wound becomes infected and the foot complications of diabetes begin. Because high blood glucose levels make it difficult to stave off infection, a diabetic with a sore on their foot must be treated differently than a person without diabetes. It begins to bleed and crack. Then bandage it, hoping it will heal. It does not heal and soon the wound becomes infected. Gangrene can kill a person, and the doctor knows this. So the person with diabetes has a choice, they can either lose their toe or their life. In most cases, they choose to lose the toe.

Avoid foods that are high in starch and sugars. The Glycemic Index is an excellent tool that can inform a diabetic about which foods should be avoided. Maintain your weight and exercise regularly. This will also boost your immune system. By complying with your physician, you can avoid many of the complications that accompany diabetes. If you or a loved one has this condition, see the doctor regularly and follow the plans to manage the disease.

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