Engage Your Willpower To Manage Diabetes: Five Proven Ways

Engage Your Willpower to Manage Diabetes: Five Proven Ways

Willpower, according to several dictionaries, is an energetic determination; the ability to control one’s thoughts, behavior, impulses or actions; and the strength of will to carry out one’s decisions, wishes and plans. Phew!
Exercising willpower is a tall order when needed to accomplish something we really want to do. It is a gargantuan order when required for something we never asked for in the first place, such as monitoring glucose, following strict dietary guidelines and losing 30 pounds.
Our Wayward Willpower
You would think healthy lifestyle choices would come naturally to humans, since most of us want to live long, productive lives and feel good while doing it. Yet we have evolved with a pleasure center in the brain that seems to make its own rules with a dubious regard for our health.
So how are we to care for ourselves when our willpower does not match the task given us, such as diabetes management? In her book, The Willpower Instinct, Kelly McGonigal gives us some clues:
The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism and stress ... these three skills – self-awareness, self-care and remembering what matters most – are the foundation for self-control.
The secret for greater self-control, the science points to one thing: the power of paying attention.
Five Ways to Engage Your Willpower
To shift our willpower into drive, we need to disengage ourselves from stress, self-criticism and temptation. Scientists are discovering the best ways for us to accomplish this, and the first thing to do is dump the guilt.
Willpower Engagement #1: Be Easy on Your Continue reading

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Diabetes Drugs Can Alter Intestinal Bacteria

In recent research, the composition and function of intestinal bacteria has been linked to various problematic health conditions, like diabetes, obesity and even celiac disease.
A new study sheds more light on the topic, suggesting that intestinal bacteria may indeed be altered by antidiabetic drugs like metformin - a factor that has not been taken into account before.
The research, from the University of Copenhagen, included data on 784 Danish, Swedish and Chinese patients - some of whom had type 2 diabetes and some of whom did not.
The study aimed to determined how changes in gut bacteria were linked to different types of medication.
Metformin causes favorable changes
Results showed that metformin, which is often used to treat high blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes, actually caused "favorable" changes in gut microbiota. The medication enabled the bacteria to produce more of a specific type of short-chain fatty acid that helps to lower blood glucose levels.
Senior study author Oluf Borbye Pedersen, from the University of Copenhagen, elaborated:
We weren't able to show that other types of antidiabetic drugs had any actual impact on the gut microbiota. When studying type 2 diabetes patients not being treated with metformin, we did, however, discover that they – irrespective of whether they were from Denmark, China or Sweden – had fewer of the bacteria which produce the health-promoting short-chain fatty acids. Whether the lack of certain combinations of fatty acid producing intestinal bacterial species is one of the factors contributing to type 2 diabet Continue reading

Are Detox Diets Safe for People with Diabetes?

Detoxification, or detox, diets are typically short-term diets that promise to rid the body of environmental toxins.
Most detox plans begin with a period of fasting followed by a strict menu of raw vegetables, fruit, juices and/or water. Many plans involve taking specific herbs or other supplements and may require a colon cleanse, otherwise known as an enema.
Detox diets are generally founded on healthy eating principles, but there is scant scientific evidence they eliminate toxins from the body. Still, giving the body a toxin house-cleaning is an appealing one, and there are many anecdotal stories about the positive effects of detoxing.
Before giving detox a try, first be aware of possible detox problems – some related to managing diabetes, and others to general health concerns.
Before You Detox: Be Aware
As you might imagine, some promoters of detox and detox products have profits first in their mind. Their promises of relief from various illnesses such as diabetes may be scientifically unfounded. They also might fail to warn people about the possible uncomfortable side effects of detoxing.
If you are interested in detox dieting, be wise, do some investigating, talk to your doctor, and consider the following:
People with diabetes need to be extremely cautious about detox diets since they typically involve increased carbohydrate intake (fruit, juices) and often eliminate protein-rich foods.
Those taking medication to control diabetes will need to be a wiz at monitoring and regulating blood sugar to navigate successfully through a detox diet. It is recommended you consult Continue reading

The Weight: Caregiver Fatigue And Diabetes

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When your kid's life is on the line, caregiving is a 24 hour job. What do you do when that job wears you down?
Happy Holidays! Folks is taking a break until January 2nd. In the meantime, enjoy this story from our archives. Originally published on November 16, it is one of our favorite pieces from 2017.
It’s 2:14 in the morning and a high-pitched beeping is coming out of an iPhone next to my bed. I groggily stand up, trudge upstairs, and save my son’s life again.
My son Henry has type 1 diabetes. It’s an incurable autoimmune condition that, if managed well, won’t have a significant impact on his quality of life. But managing it well presents its own challenges for my wife and I.
The thing with diabetes is that there are two dangers. If his blood sugar goes high, it’s not an immediate threat. Too much of that will cause his eyes to fail and his organs to shut down, but we catch that kind of thing pretty quickly and he’s very responsive to insulin. But if it goes low– and keeps falling–it can result in him falling into a coma and dying. When he goes low, he typically loses 50% of his brain functionality, meaning that he’s not always capable of treating it himself.
It happens all the time. And his sugar can drop really fast. We’ve been out swimming or hiking and he’s plummeted from the mid-80s to the mid-40s in ten minutes. Once he was at school and he dropped so precipitously that he wasn’t coherent enough to take sugar by mouth. The staff had to give him the Glucagon, an injection of sugar that will rapidly spike his blood glucose back up to safe Continue reading

Vitamin D can slash diabetes risk by 50 percent

Warding off diabetes might be as simple as taking your vitamins.
Research from the Vitamin D Society, a non-profit group in Canada, showed that maintaining proper levels of vitamin D can cut diabetes risk by up to 50 percent.
Glucose tolerance
Vitamin D Society's meta-analysis of 16 studies on 72,204 people found that subjects with with the highest levels of vitamin D had a reduced rate of type 2 diabetes. Vitamin D improves glucose tolerance and helps the body to secrete insulin.
Another study of U.S. military records found that non-Hispanic whites with vitamin D levels over 100 nmo/L had a 63 percent reduced risk for type 1 diabetes when compared to those with D levels less than 75.
“Based on the evidence, I believe if everyone achieved optimal vitamin D levels we could eradicate type 1 diabetes,” said Dr. Cedric F. Garland, a Professor from the UCSD Department of Family and Preventive Medicine.
Get your levels checked
The Vitamin D Society recommends that people get their vitamin D levels checked. Those with levels below 40 ng/ml (US) or 100 nmo/L (Canada) should probably supplement and/or get more sunlight to increase levels in the blood.
In Canada, the potential reduction of diabetes cases just from monitoring vitamin D levels could exceed 14 million.
“With over 28 million people suffering from diabetes in Canada and the U.S.A., the research presented here supports that optimal vitamin D levels have the potential to reduce this by 50 percent,” said Perry Holman, Executive Director for the Vitamin D Society.
The findings for the Vitamin D Society's research are Continue reading