The Essential Diabetes Shopping List

Certain types of foods are better for your blood sugar than others. If you are diabetic and struggle with finding the right foods to eat or if you have a family history of diabetes, check out these food suggestions for the next time you go to the store. Registered dietitian and author of the book Skinny Liver, Kristin Kirkpatrick has tips and tricks to make sure your trip to the grocery store is beneficial to your overall health. Continue reading

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SERPENTINA: The Herb For Diabetes, Liver, Heart Disease, Kidney, Colds And Flu

Serpentina is a medicinal herb dubbed as the ‘King of Bitters’. Despite its bitter taste, it is widely sought after by diabetics because of its efficacy to lower blood sugar. This herb can be taken by itself or mixed with food to lessen the bitterness.
I once suffered from diarrhea. Aware of the potency of Serpentina, I took it by making tea (5 leaves of Serpentina to 1 cup of water) thrice a day. I had to eat a little chocolate in between sips just to finish a cup of it! The following morning my stomachache was history. I also noticed that I was healed from my cold and nasal congestion when I ate Serpentina leaves with honey. Because of this, Serpentina makes it to my go-to list for stomachache, common cold and asthma remedies. Some customers amusingly narrate to us how much they enjoy eating this fresh ‘Bile of the Earth’ together with their family. Happy customers, too, relate unbelievable healing results from stroke, insulin and lung infection.
This herb is popularly known in the Philippines as Serpentina but its name in the ‘List of Philippine Medicinal Plants’ is Sinta. It is known scientifically and internationally as Andrographis Paniculata. This traditional medicine is native to Sri Lanka and Southeast Asia, which is used as a cooling herb for fever and flu. Indian tribes also use Serpentina as treatment for liver problems and cancer in their Ayuverdic medicines. Serpentina’s popularity is not limited to its Southeast Asian roots though. It is also regarded as a remedy for common colds in Scandinavian regions.
The many names of Serpentina, Andrographi Continue reading

Eating fresh fruit every day and making lifestyle changes lower the risk of diabetes, study says

EATING fresh fruit every day lowers the risk of diabetes, say researchers.
The Oxford University team monitored 500,000 adult volunteers over seven years in China.
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Despite fruit’s recognised health benefits. Type 2 diabetes can be treated with healthy lifestyle changes such as eating fresh food.
But due to fruit's natural sweetness, there has previously been uncertainty around effects of its sugar content on diabetics.
The study revealed that people without diabetes who eat fruit every day stand a lower chance of developing the condition.
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Results highlighted a 12 per cent lower relative risk of developing diabetes, compared to those test subjects who never or rarely ate fresh fruit.
It also showed that people with diabetes stand less change of dying from the condition. They also develop a lower risk of vascular complications which can lead to amputations.
Diabetic test subjects who ate fruit each day showed a 17 per cent lower relative risk of dying from complications due to the condition.
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Study member Dr Huaidong Du said: "Participants completed a detailed questionnaire interview and underwent physical measurements and blood tests, with their health tracked subsequently for seven years.
"To our knowledge, this is the first large prospective study demonstrating similar inverse associations of fruit consumption with both incident diabetes and diabetic complications.
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"These findings suggest that a higher intake of fresh fruit is Continue reading

Diabetes, addiction and ageing: The shocking truth about sugar

Food companies were yesterday accused of ruining the nation's health by adding too much sugar to our foods. It's blamed for fuelling the obesity crisis, which is linked to a host of killer diseases, and one expert claims sugar is "the new tobacco". We reveal the shocking facts about the white stuff.
* Sugar was first imported to Britain in the 14th century from plantations in Madeira. Later it began to arrive from colonies in the Caribbean and was sold in loaf or cone form. Imports really took off in the 18th century but sugar remained an expensive luxury, costing the equivalent today of £50 a pound. But as more plantations were opened prices fell and sugar became a source of energy for the poor, replacing honey as a sweetener.
* The average Briton consumes 150lb of sugar every year. That's equivalent to about 34 teaspoons a day and is thought to be 20 times more than in the 1700s.
* Most of us don't realise how much sugar we're eating or where it comes from because it takes so many different forms and is present in so many everyday foods. Sugar occurs naturally in fruit but is added to biscuits, cakes, fizzy drinks and sweets during the manufacturing process.
All types of sugar can make us fat but we're encouraged to eat fruit because it also contains other important nutrients. Added sugars give us energy but have no nutrients. Experts say any more than 15 teaspoons of all types of sugar a day is unhealthy.
* Drinks often push up our sugar levels. A can of Pepsi or Coca Cola contains 9 teaspoons of sugar, while a tall Starbucks caramel frappuccino with whipped cream conta Continue reading

Diabetes could cause up to 12% of US deaths

The proportion of deaths attributable to diabetes in the US is as high as 12 percent—three times higher than estimates based on death certificates suggest—a new analysis shows.
For a new study, published in PLOS ONE, researchers used two large datasets that included more than 300,000 people to estimate the fraction of deaths attributable to diabetes among people ages 30 to 84 between 1997 and 2011. To come up with the estimates, researchers calculated the prevalence of diabetes in the population, as well as excess mortality risk among people with diabetes over five years of follow up.
The proportion of deaths attributable to diabetes was estimated to be 11.5 percent using one dataset—the National Health Interview Study (NHIS)—and 11.7 percent using the other—the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES). Among the subgroups examined, the attributable fraction was highest among individuals with obesity (19.4 percent).
The proportion of deaths overall was significantly higher than the 3.3 to 3.7 percent of deaths in which diabetes is identified on death certificates as the underlying cause.
“The frequency with which diabetes is listed as the underlying cause of death is not a reliable indicator of its actual contribution to the national mortality profile,” writes Andrew Stokes, assistant professor of global health at Boston University School of Public Health, and Samuel Preston, professor of sociology and a researcher with the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania.
They say their analysis indicates that diabetes was the thir Continue reading