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.)

Lose fat and think better too....

Today's post: Monday, 1-26-2009

In a recent article in the online Health Day news, they reported a study that found that people who had high blood sugar simply did NOT think as well as people with normal blood sugar levels. Their blood sugar was measured by their HBA1C tests, which tests their average blood sugar for the last 60 to 90 days by measuring sugar on their red blood cells that live that long.

They thought more slowly; didn’t remember as well; and were less able to multitask. Ouch !!

Besides that, the article noted that people with such higher blood sugar were 1.5 times as likely to develop some kind of senility. (We did some recent posts on that, why it’s so, & some of the recent research on it.)

But other than the drugs that lower high blood sugar, which are not very good so far with many undesirable side effects and expensive, other than lower dose Metformin in some people, how can you bring down your blood sugar if it’s high?

1. Start lowering it the minute it tests as high. (High enough to prompt action is a fasting blood sugar of 100 or more or an HBA1C reading of 5.9 or more, possibly even 5.8.) That’s because it takes very little more to begin to put you into type 2 diabetes and the related insulin resistance, which can be harder to reverse. But at lower levels of high blood sugar, it almost always is reversible.

2. Take as much action as you can to lower it and get your HBA1C retested after 3 or 4 months to see if it worked.

For best results, get an at home fasting blood sugar test device and supplies through your doctor or HMO. With that, you get instant feedback on what makes your blood sugar worse and what makes it better. Bread, soft drinks, and other high glycemic index foods plus NO exercise tend to make it worse while zero and low glycemic index foods and vigorous exercise from brisk walks to strength training to interval cardio make it better.

3. But the best news is that if you do the things that make your blood sugar go down to where it should be, you’ll also become less fat, healthier in several ways, & your sex life is likely to improve!

That’s because when your blood sugar is just right you tend to lose excess fat; & when your blood sugar is high, you definitely GAIN fat.

Since we just posted on just this set of things last Friday, to save you time if you didn’t see that post, here are some of the key things in it that can also help you lower your blood sugar if it’s high.: (I add some extra info after these 3 sections as well.)

2. One of the very best and most effective ways to lose fat, lose belly fat, and reduce all these risks is to do regular exercise that includes some progressive strength training and interval cardio every week.

Both the total amount of calories burned even in low key exercise and activities such walking and light housework and the amount of vigorous exercise you get that causes you to exert an extra effort or to stop afterwards to catch your breath make a difference. But if you can do the more vigorous exercises several times a week without overdoing it, you’ll burn the most calories and remove the most belly fat.

Both interval cardio and progressive strength training cause increased metabolism and calorie burning for up to SEVERAL HOURS after you stop doing them. Even better they tend to reverse insulin resistance and high blood sugar and prevent their return if you keep doing vigorous interval cardio and progressive strength training each week.

Even better, such exercises help to both relieve stress and to increase the amount of stress you can handle without feeling overstressed and in need of comfort food.

(These kinds of exercise done regularly every week do an extremely effective job in lowering high blood sugar and insulin resistance. Few drugs come close. One man with type 2 diabetes virtually wiped it out with just strength training alone. You may need more than that. But you WILL see positive results from this kind of regular exercise.)

3. To the extent you can manage it, eating or drinking zero or very low glycemic index foods and drinks over 95 % of the time while avoiding artificial sweeteners -- both will help you lose fat all over and will help you lose belly fat.

Health OK proteins and fats and oils essentially get a zero glycemic rating. (They work in enough other ways to remove belly fat and protect your health, we list them in our next way to lose belly fat by themselves. But they work and fit very well here also.) The more zero glycemic foods you eat, the lower your overall glycemic index of what you ingest will be.

The very low glycemic index foods include virtually all nonstarchy and/or green vegetables.

The very low glycemic index foods also include some fruit such as whole apples and cherries and blackberries. Most other whole fruit is relatively low in glycemic index; but enough higher to eat once or twice a day rather than more often.

The lowest glycemic index beans are lentils; but the other kinds of beans are low.

Barley is the only grain that has a truly low glycemic index. But eating only whole grain foods and about a third as many grain foods as most people do now or less -- & as whole grains only -- can also help.

The second way to eat a low glycemic diet is to stop eating or drinking virtually ALL high glycemic index foods. Or to eat them extremely rarely. Since the body acts as if you ate sugar if you eat things that are sweetened by non-nutritive sweeteners, they fit in this category also.

This means essentially NOT eating any refined grain foods whether it’s bread, cereal, baked goods, or snack foods. And it means virtually never drink any soft drinks. This means NOT eating or drinking anything sweetened with high fructose corn syrup and eating very few things sweetened by sugar.

(Since many people still have no clue how fattening and bad for your health these things are, that’s why we suggested taxing them in yesterday’s post.)

Bottom line, if you eat or drink them now, and stop doing it, it’s an excellent way to lose belly fat!

(Similarly, zero, low, and some moderately low glycemic foods tend to give you normal blood sugar levels while the high glycemic foods virtually always give you high blood sugar readings.)

4. Eat more health OK oils and protein foods and mostly stop eating bad ones.

a) Monosaturated oils tend to help you lose belly fat according to the Flat Belly Diet book, which is still relatively new. Monosaturated oils also increase your HDL or don’t lower it and they lower LDL. People who are working to lose weight or fat who have some of these monosaturated oils each day, oddly enough, lose more fat; and of even more importance, they are dramatically more likely to keep off the fat and weight they lose.

They are in extra virgin olive oil, avocados, and nuts. These foods are so nutritious and have so many other health benefits they’ve been called superfoods. Eat any of them you aren’t allergic to and you’ll have better health and less belly fat.

b) Omega 3 oils lower inflammation and triglycerides and help you think better, feel better, and handle stress without getting so angry or irritable you make your problems worse!

The safer and more effective omega 3 oils are in:
DHA from algae and well purified fish oils (both available as supplements);
wild caught fish, particularly salmon, mackerel (NOT king mackerel), and sardines;
walnuts;
and some green vegetables and greens, particularly one called purslane.

Conversely, AVOID getting as many omega 6 oils and saturated animal fats as you can.

c) Omega 6 oils come from grains and most oils other than olive oil. They tend to increase inflammation and may help cause cancer, particularly if heated. Unlike monosaturated oils and omega 3 oils, they do not help you lose belly fat or protect your health.

Eating some omega 6 oils is OK in whole grains. Omega 6 oils cause health problems, including obesity if you eat 20 times that much, as many people still do. Omega 6 oils are high in animals fed grains instead of their natural diets. This means most meat in stores is higher than it should be in omega 6 oils since the animals it’s from were fed almost only on grains.

So mostly avoid meat from grain fed animals; eat whole grains only moderately; eat no refined grain foods; and avoid soy, canola, safflower, and corn oils in your food.

(To recap, exercise and eat zero and low glycemic foods. You’ll be less fat; your blood sugar will be lower; & we now know, you’ll think better too!)