Scary Diabetes Stats To Torture You Before Turkey Day

Scary Diabetes Stats to Torture You Before Turkey Day

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With Turkey Day mere hours away at this point, you’ve probably already got buttery mounds of mashed potatoes, savory stuffing, herb-basted turkey, and creamy pumpkin pie on the mind. Now, we love America’s most glutenous holiday as much as the next guy, but with November also being National Diabetes Awareness Month, we’ve got to level with you: America has a bit of a weight problem.
To run the numbers on this issue, we turned to WalletHub, who just recently released their 2017 round-up of America’s Fattest States, along with an interesting infographic breaking down some of the most surprising and interesting facts and statistics about diabetes in the United States. To say America is struggling with its weight is not to say our great nation has made no strides in obesity and diabetes research: the American Diabetes Association has invested nearly $800 million in research since 1952 (funding nearly 5,000 diabetes research projects during that time), the Joslin Diabetes Center enjoys a $40 million annual research fund, and the estimated funding for diabetes research from the National Institutes of Health in 2017 is over $1 billion. There are currently 351 federally funded scientists out there doing crucial research into diabetes causes, prevention, and treatment, and 99% of scientists funded by the ADA continue diabetes research for 5 or more years.
Still, even with so much great work from scientists, medical institutions, and other organizations, diabetes can seem somewhat abstract to those without any firsthand experience with the disease. On the s Continue reading

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Five Common Grain Myths

There’s a good chance that, at one point or another, you’ve wondered about eating certain foods. If you have diabetes, foods that contain carbohydrate (also known as carb) come to mind. And one type of carb food that never fails to spark debate is grains. There’s the camp that disparages most grains, in general, proclaiming that they’re bad for diabetes because they’ll send your blood sugars sky-high. On the more moderate side of things, the argument is that refined grains are to be avoided, but whole grains are OK (in limited amounts). And then there’s the rest of the folks who feel thoroughly confused. Is it OK to eat pasta? What the heck is farro, anyway? Read on to learn more.
Whole grains defined
According to the Oldways Whole Grains Council, a whole grain has “all three parts of the original grain — the starchy endosperm, the fiber-rich bran, and the germ.” The bran is the outer layer of the grain; the germ is the “embryo,” which contains B vitamins, vitamin E, phytonutrients, antioxidants, and fat, and the endosperm is the germ’s food source that contains carbohydrate, protein, and some vitamins and minerals. Once a food manufacturer starts stripping away any part of a whole grain, it’s no longer, well, whole. Now it’s refined. And that’s when the grain starts to lose many of its healthy attributes.
Whole-grain myths
People who have diabetes should avoid all grains and grain foods. This particular fallacy stems from the fact that grains contain carbohydrate. Carbohydrate (in many people’s minds) is bad. They raise your blood sugar, rig Continue reading

Medications that actually help with Type 2 Diabetes

Medications that actually help with Type 2 Diabetes
As we saw in our previous post, standard medications such as insulin, sulphonylureas, metformin and DPP4’s can reduce blood glucose but do not reduce cardiovascular disease or death. Yes, your sugars will be lower, but no, you will not be healthier. Whether you take the medications or not, you will suffer the same risk of kidney disease, heart disease, stroke and death. So why take these medications at all? Well, that is a good question, for which I do not have a good answer.
But why don’t these drugs work? It gets back to understanding what, exactly, insulin resistance is. High insulin resistance leads to high blood glucose, which is called type 2 diabetes. But it can be most easily understand as overflow of sugar (both glucose and fructose) in the body. Not just the blood, mind you. The entire body.
Our body is like the barrel in the picture. As we eat glucose and fructose, it can hold a certain amount. Glucose may be stored as glycogen in the liver or turned into fat via de novo lipogenesis. However, if the amount coming in far exceeds the amount going out, soon, the storage capacity of the barrel and will spill out.
We have two compartments for the glucose. In our body, and in our blood. If our body is full, incoming glucose spills out into the blood, which is now detectable as high blood glucose.
So, what happens when your doctor prescribes insulin? Does it get rid of the sugar from the body? No, not at all. It merely takes the sugar in the blood, and shoves it into the body. Sure, the blood has less glucose, but Continue reading

Weight Loss Health Benefits: Drinking Water Instead Of Diet Beverages May Help Diabetes Patients

Being overweight puts you at risk for serious health problems such as Type 2 diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. According to the American Diabetes Association, dropping just 10 or 15 pounds can make a big difference for your longevity. Patients with Type 2 diabetes looking to drop weight may want to swap out diet beverages for water, suggests a new study published in Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism.
Researchers found that participants who switched to water and stopped drinking diet beverages experienced a decrease in weight and body mass index. They also saw greater improvements in fasting blood sugar levels and insulin sensitivity.
Researchers studied of group of 81 overweight and obese women who all had Type 2 diabetes who participated in a 24 week weight loss program. Participants were asked to either substitute water for diet beverages or continue drinking the diet drinks five times per week after lunch for the duration of the trial, the study reported.
In 2014, 29.1 million people in the U.S., or about 9.3 percent of the population, suffered from diabetes, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported, so the results could have wide-ranging implications for those with Type 2 diabetes.
This study is part of a growing body of research showing that major health risks, especially for women, are associated with consuming diet beverages. Recent findings have also linked both diet and regular soda to possibly compromising a woman’s fertility and chances of successful artificial reproduction.
An older study published back i Continue reading

Pre-diabetes label 'worthless'

Labelling people as having pre-diabetes is "unhelpful and unnecessary", researchers claim.
The definition, given to people on the "cusp" of type 2 diabetes, has no clinical worth, a joint UK-US team argues.
There is no proven benefit of prescribing drugs as many will not develop diabetes, the researchers write in the British Medical Journal.
But a charity said being identified as being at high risk was helpful.
It offered the chance to reduce risk by eating a healthy diet and being physically active, said Diabetes UK.
'Medicalisation' concerns
People with pre-diabetes have no symptoms of ill health, but their blood sugar levels are at the high end of the normal range.
The term is not recognised by the World Health Organization but has been used in many scientific papers.
Eating a healthy balanced diet, low in salt, sugar and fat and rich in fruit and vegetables, as well as being physically active, is the best way of reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetesBarbara Young, Chief executive, Diabetes UK.
According to a new wider definition of pre-diabetes, adopted by the American Diabetes Association in 2010, a third of adults in England and half of those in China fall into this category.
Prof John Yudkin, of UCL, and colleagues at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, US, said current definitions of pre-diabetes risked "unnecessary" medicalisation and created "unsustainable burdens" for healthcare systems.
He said for pre-diabetes, the risk of developing diabetes was probably 10%-20% over 10 years.
"Pre-diabetes is an artificial category with virtually zero clinical relevance," Continue reading