New info on fighting type II diabetes…..

Today's post: Thursday, 1-17-2008

(We start with the most important info. But to many of you, it’s old news. The new info is in the article I include at the end of this post.)

Many people today get no exercise. Even more unfortunately, many still drink soft drinks even though there is solid evidence that doing so helps make you fat & sick. Add sedentary jobs &, for most people, getting to & from work with no walking needed.

What does that give you?

This recipe is perfect for creating what is called insulin resistance & unhealthily high levels of blood sugar. So, it’s no surprise that many people are arriving there. And, for most people, as they get older, if that process once starts & gets through the undesirable level to the early stages of type II diabetes, they will often damage their health before they find out what the cause is.

(Since diabetes harms the capillaries that are the part of the blood delivery system where the blood actually delivers food & oxygen to your cells & removes CO2 & wastes, it causes serious harm. Diabetes also apparently makes cardiovascular disease develop faster & become more deadly.

If left undetected &/or if left untreated, it produces effects like fatal heart attacks, blindness, & cuts off circulation to your feet enough to cause the need for amputation. It also ruins your kidneys forcing you to be on dialysis or die.)

The best news is that all this is quite preventable.

The first line of defense is to get your blood sugar levels tested every year or two or twice that often if you are more than a bit too fat.

There are two tests to get each time, which are your fasting glucose level & your HBA1C.

Ideally, you want your fasting glucose level to be 99 or less.

Levels between about 100 & 119 are a warning light & suggest you take action to bring the level down. And, the higher the number in that range, the more undesirable it is. 120 & over may be type II diabetes. Somewhere slightly above that over 126 or so, most doctors will diagnose you as having type II diabetes.

However, since the fasting glucose is a snapshot of a particular time, it may read as much as 10 or 15 points above what is typical for you, so unless you are well over 126, most of the better doctors will look at your HBA1C reading before deciding.

The HBA1C reading is so valuable precisely because it DOES reveal what your typical blood sugar readings have been over the last 60 to 90 days.

If it’s 6.0 or higher (about 5.0 to 5.8 is desirable), your blood sugar level has been too high, & most doctors will diagnose you as having type II diabetes.

(HBA1C measures the blood that is stuck on the surface of your red blood cells. The reason it gives you the moving average of the last 60 to 90 days, is that’s because that’s about how long your red blood cells live.)

In today’s world NOT getting these two tests with reasonable frequency is about as safe as driving on the freeway without being able to see out of your windshield.

It tends to result in avoidable injury or death.

So the first way to fight back is to get both of these tests at least every two years.

And, if you are fat, don’t exercise yet, &/or drink soft drinks more often than two or three times a week, every 6 months to a year is safer.

The second line of defense is even more important as it prevents the problem to begin with.

The bad news is given our current economy & lifestyles, it’s a bit more of a challenge to do.

At least it has extra benefits such as becoming much less fat; having more energy, & improving your sex life.

The two biggest parts of it are to:

1. Get a minimum of regular exercise each week.:

a. Do progressive strength training at least two days a week with at least one day off in between for at least 20 minutes. More is better; but you may find that level a lot easier to fit into your life, particularly at first.

b. Do some aerobic exercise at least three days a week. Vigorous interval training seems to work the best; but even walking for 20 minutes each time is enormously better than no exercise at all.

c. Limiting watching TV also helps as you burn less energy watching TV than you do sleeping !! And, it’s a great way to find the time to exercise if you watch a lot of TV now.

2. Cut out & sharply reduce eating sugars that come with no nutrition & fiber in the same food.

Doing otherwise not only produces type II diabetes, it makes you fat & has been implicated as a likely cause of Alzheimer’s disease.

a. Soft drinks are so bad in this regard, the most it’s likely safe to drink is two or three a week. None ever is far safer. Oddly, the evidence of the studies is that diet soft drinks have the same effect. Water, tea, & coffee without sugar are far better substitutes,

b. Candy & desserts do taste really good. But eating two or three a week or less is far safer than eating two or three a day as many Americans do now.

c. People did NOT evolve eating grains. Early on when most people ate food made from whole grains & everyone got LOTS of exercise, grains seemed an OK food to eat.

Eating refined grain foods with little or no exercise in your life, however, is NOT safe.

The safest strategy is to eat very little in the way of grain foods; &, except for quite rare treats, NEVER eat refined grain foods.

(Since, so far, well over 90 percent of fast food & restaurant sandwiches are made with refined grain bread, this means ordering your sandwiches “Atkins style” with no bread. This saves the food place money, so only the stupidest with give you a hard time about serving you that way. You may need to be careful they really believe you & serve you as requested though as many are not used to the request as yet.)

c. Eat a LOT more vegetables. Many people eat none if you don’t count potatoes & potato based French fries. Eat at least two servings a day; & 5 or more is better.

d. Eat well from health OK protein foods & moderately from health OK fats & oils.

Wild caught fish high in omega 3 oils has both. So do nuts, which have strong health benefits if you aren’t allergic. Grass fed only beef has both. Beans & lentils are excellent as they have both protein & fiber. Avocados & extra virgin olive oil are excellent. Some lean poultry & eggs are good in moderation.

The bad news is that you may like to eat the kind of “semi-foods” that were popular & which you may be used to & feel deprived that the blood tests show you should stop eating them.

The best way to look at it is that these foods never were safe for people who get little or no exercise to eat. The good news is that you now know this is so; & the tests prove it’s happening to you. This actually gives you a considerable advantage over the unfortunates who don’t yet know any better.

What about drugs & supplements?

There is a safe diabetes drug when taken in small doses called Metformin. But many people cannot abide the side effects of large doses. And, some of other drugs have worse side effects. To be fair, the damage of really high levels of blood sugar is even worse.

Cinnamon spice & the supplements alpha lipoic acid & chromium polynicotinate do seem to help.

For some new info on two drugs it may be best to avoid & an even more powerful supplement, check out this article that came out last Friday.

"This article appears courtesy of Early to Rise's Total Health Breakthroughs, offering alternative solutions for mind, body and soul. For a complimentary subscription,
visit http://www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com"

“Friday, January 11, 2008

Diabetes and the Drugs to Control It Could Shorten Your Life

By Shane Ellison

I'm often asked, "How can I live to be 100 years old?" My answer is simple, "Just say no to prescription drugs and learn how to control insulin and blood sugar."

Why? Because the populations that live the longest are naturally highly sensitive to insulin.

Conversely, those who die the youngest from conditions such as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even cancer are grossly insensitive to insulin or are taking a prescription drug.

In the US, the biggest threat to longevity is type II diabetes caused by high levels of blood sugar and insulin resistance. It has become a nationwide epidemic that can steal 11 to 20 years from a person's lifespan.

To curb the threat, physicians are madly prescribing anti-diabetic drugs like Avandia and Actos. With so many people using them, scientists have learned two valuable lessons about longevity.

First lesson: You cannot use these drugs to increase lifespan.

In addition to eliciting a moderate drop in blood sugar, anti-diabetic meds damage the cardiovascular system.

According to a recent study, Avandia users had a whopping 30-40% increased risk of heart attack and other heart-related adverse events (heart failure) compared to patients treated with placebo.(1) This risk is due to the drug's effect of lowering vital hemoglobin levels.
Hemoglobin is used by the body to transport oxygen throughout the entire 100,000 miles of veins, arteries, and capillaries in the adult body. Without hemoglobin, a condition known as ischemia sets in. This is a fancy term for "suffocation." Clinically, heart attack or heart failure can be the result.

The prescription drug Actos has the same mechanism of action as Avandia -- they both work to reduce insulin resistance. Not surprisingly, it also carries the same risks. Health Canada sounded the alarm about this class of drugs as early as 2001! But unfortunately, the warning has not yet reached the American public.

Commenting on this unannounced danger, the U.S. Congress stated that, "the FDA's apparently callous disregard for the safety of diabetics taking Avandia is very reminiscent of the Agency's failure to move on Vioxx when substantial safety signals first became known. Like Vioxx, Avandia may have unnecessarily risked the lives of tens of thousands of Americans."(2)

Second lesson: You can fix insulin receptors naturally to increase lifespan.
This simply means that insulin receptors found on individual cells have the ability to be "re-tuned" to the insulin message. We learned this from anti-diabetic drugs that can increase insulin sensitivity by jump starting inactive or dying cells. But this benefit from drugs doesn't outweigh the risk of heart attack. Fortunately, if a drug can do it, so can Mother Nature. This is a little-known fact in medicinal chemistry.

Mother Nature always provides the "lead" in the meticulous process of drug discovery. Meaning, before there is a man-made drug for a given ailment, there is a natural substance that will do the same thing.

In the process of designing anti-diabetic drugs, Big Pharma surveyed a myriad of natural products to find a lead compound that re-tuned the insulin receptor. Among them was a substance called corosolic acid, derived from the banaba plant(3) grown in Southeast Asia.

Corosolic acid has proven safe and effective for increasing insulin sensitivity. Remarkably, users have been shown to not only lower blood sugar and insulin levels but also melt fat and build muscle in the process.

But what's really important is that by taking corosolic acid instead of anti-diabetic drugs you will lower the risk of heart attack and naturally improve insulin sensitivity. That means years may be added to your life!

Of course, lifestyle habits such as regular exercise and minimizing sugar intake are pre-requisites to the success of increasing insulin sensitivity and significantly extending your lifespan.

(You can find corosolic acid as an ingredient in several natural products sold in health food stores for glucose control and weight management.)

1. http://www.fda.gov/bbs/topics/NEWS/2007/NEW01636.html
2. http://blogs.wsj.com/washwire/2007/05/21/congress-steps-up-scrutiny-of-fda/
3. Katsuji H, et al. Journal of Pharmacological Sciences Vol. 93 (2003), No.1, pp. 69-73.
[Ed. Note: Shane Ellison is known as "The People's Chemist." He holds a Master's degree in organic chemistry and has first-hand industry experience with drug research, design and synthesis. He is the author of Health Myths Exposed and The Hidden Truth about Cholesterol-Lowering Drugs.”

X * X* X*

Note that most of the supplements at the health food store are NOT labeled as “corosolic acid” but as banaba extract or banaba leaf extract.

The info I found suggests that it is so effective, you may be wise to start with a minimum amount unless your blood sugar readings are dangerously high.

Here’s why. If in your body it cuts your blood sugar level by 20 percent, that’s good if you were at 120 fasting glucose since you will now be at about 96 which is far safer.

However, if you were at 104 &, in your body, it cuts your blood sugar level by 25 percent, you would be at 78 & possibly feel dizzy and spacey from too low blood sugar.

So, try a little to see how you do before you try larger amounts unless your levels are really high.

And, be sure to follow the steps in the most important section anyway as they both give you the most effective health protection & have other health benefits besides – even if the banaba extract is effective for you.