News -- How high blood sugar and type 2 diabetes harm you....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 7-12-2011

This topic is so important I somehow thought I’d done a post on it when I first saw it a bit over a month ago.

Oops! I looked and apparently did not.

It’s been known that type 2 diabetes (excessively too high blood sugar all the time) does two things.

It gradually tends to destroy all your capillaries.

And, it multiplies your risk of heart attacks and heart disease. (In men, it at least doubles the risk and quadruples the risk in women.)

A new study found out a major reason and perhaps THE reason this happens.

Since your life and health depend on good blood circulation, would you inject lots of tiny bits of superglue directly into one of your major blood vessels?

Would you repeat it every day?

Likely you would choose not to do that!

A new study finds that excessively high blood sugar does exactly that to you.

The original story appeared at the end of last May.:

“Scientists Discover 'Ultra-Bad' Cholesterol FRIDAY, May 27, 2011

(HealthDay News) -- A new, "ultra-bad" form of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol has been discovered in people with a high risk for heart disease, according to British researchers.

They found that the cholesterol, called MGmin-LDL, is super-sticky, making it more likely to attach to the walls of arteries and form fatty plaques, which could lead to heart attacks and stroke.”

MGmin-LDL is normal LDL cholesterol with sugar attached.

They found this kind of LDL much stickier than normal LDL and much more likely to build fatty plaques, narrow your arteries AND begin to clog up your capillaries resulting in reduced blood flow. Then, if the process continues too long, you are in serious trouble!

This kind of LDL becomes irregular in shape and larger. This makes it sticking more likely. Worse, it makes your large particle LDL which is normally harmless as bad for you as the small particle LDL that otherwise causes heart disease. Ouch!!

This research, released online May 26 in Diabetes, has huge implications in the treatment of heart disease and type 2 diabetes.

There was one piece of good news.

“The researchers said, the results of their study shed light on how a common type 2 diabetes drug, metformin, fights heart disease by blocking the transformation of normal LDL into the super-sticky LDL.”

People who take metformin should likely supplement with 1,000 mcg a day of a sublingual B12 supplement or get periodic B12 shots if they take metformin. A new study found that taking metformin can deplete B12 otherwise.

But with that exception and keeping the dose low enough to avoid side effects that are quite rare at lower doses, metformin is quite safe unlike most of the newer drugs to lower blood sugar.

And, because it has been around for decades, it’s also inexpensive.

It also directly lowers blood sugar and your HBA1C readings.

What if your HBA1C is higher than 7.0 even taking metformin at a low or moderate dose twice a day?

It’s not complicated. But it can be a challenge to do if you aren’t used to it.

There are these parts.

1. You need to eliminate or close to eliminate the foods that slam blood sugar too high and too fast.

White rice, all refined grains, potatoes without the skin, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweeteners – which means all soft drinks—and most real sugar need to disappear from what you eat and drink. This includes cutting back on most real fruit juices. Cranberry juice is far less harmful and vegetable juices are OK. (The average person now eats a bit over 7 tablespoons a day of sugar. The safe amount even for healthy people is less than a seventh of that.)

Similarly, you need to cut back a lot on whole grains since they also do this. (Eating oatmeal that is NOT the instant kind on some days may make sense to keep as a whole grain since it reduces LDL cholesterol.) But if you do eat any grains, eat ONLY whole grains.

One of the good news results is that many people will gradually lose over 40 pounds or more of fat without hunger if they do this.

2. Adopt a real food diet with extra nonstarchy vegetables. Eat the DASH II diet with extra unstarchy vegetables and only use olive oil. Or eat the Mediterranean diet with extra nonstarchy vegetables and far less pasta.

(These two styles have a lot of overlap in the actual foods.)

Focus on eating health OK protein foods too including beans and lentils; raw, unsalted, nuts if you aren’t allergic; wild caught fish (farmed is usually full of pollutants and has less omega 3 oils); eggs from free range chickens; very trim, skinless poultry; and only 100% grass fed beef and lamb in moderation.

People who eat this way also are:

less fat, less likely to get Alzheimer’s disease, and have lower blood pressure – even if their blood sugar was normal to begin with.

Even better, you can eat well to very well with the tastier recipes available eating this way.

And, it’s literally life-saving to eat this way for people with high blood sugar.

3. Gradually work up to doing at least 3 sessions of vigorous interval cardio and at least 2 sessions of strength training each week. Do some brisk walks too if you possibly can.

Start slowly, build up very gradually, rest in between sets even if only slightly to catch your breath and let your heart rate slow. Start each session a bit slowly.

And, go even a bit easier at first until you have eaten right for a few months.

Such exercise turns off insulin resistance and directly burns up the excess blood sugar in your blood too.

The combination of even some of these 3 strategies often works wonders.

One man found that his blood sugar went from diabetic levels to normal in just a few weeks from completely stopping eating white rice and weight lifting 3 days a week. He liked being stronger; but the not eating rice was a hassle since his culture and all his family traditionally ate rice every day.

The strategy that works best is to do the things you can easily do immediately.

And, gradually make upgrades that you keep doing.

(I’ve cut the amount of sugar I eat in half three or four times now, for example.)

4. Do the safe things that lower LDL cholesterol.

The dangerous byproduct is made from excess sugar plus LDL. So while you are reducing your blood sugar, lowering your LDL too makes sense!

Eat beans and lentils, eat whole apples occasionally, try unsweetened applesauce with cinnamon, eat old fashioned oatmeal occasionally, and take sterol supplements.

(I take 4 a day of the Natrol cholesterol balance sterol supplement as one of the things I did to go from LDL of 130 to 73 without drugs.)

Regular exercise as we describe in #3 above also lowers LDL and triglycerides and increases HDL in addition to lowering high blood sugar.

But it gets better, the more years in a row you do it, the better your results get!

And, it gets better than that, such exercise directly slows aging.

Taking 300 mg niacin supplements once after your two largest meals for a total of twice a day and two 300 mg supplements of the slow niacin release inositol hexaniacinate or “no flush” niacin is safe for most people. (It’s safest to have your doctor test your liver function from time to time if you do. But that’s enough to lower your LDL and boost your HDL and less than the level that causes more liver problems.)

And, it is dramatically safer and cheaper than statin drugs.

(It’s not yet known among doctors, but only a minority of people benefit much from statin drugs. All the rest are more protected by niacin and get something like 1% protection from statin drugs. The genetic test to see if you are in the minority that statins will help only costs about $150. And even then, the side effects from statins can be serious enough, you should try every thing else first.)