Stem Cells and 10 Illnesses #2

The next disease that I think stem cells have potential in is Diabetes. Now it is only going to work in Type 1 diabetics where the function of the islet cells has ceased in the production of insulin. Not the same as in type 2 diabetes.

Scientists have been able to coax human stem cells into producing insulin in diabetic mice. I think it is just a matter of time before they can do this in humans.

The matter of type 2 diabetes is not that the islet cells are not producing insulin, but rather they are shooting out lots of insulin. There is a problem at the cell receptor site with the insulin attaching there - we call it insulin resistance.

Control Your Health

If you've been diagnosed with a disease such as diabetes, gastroesophageal reflux, or hypertension (high blood pressure), take control and don't let the disease control you. You can change your outcome by taking control of your life instead of letting the disease take control of you.

Let's talk about diabetes first. I'm specifically going to talk about type 2 diabetes. The first and the most impact on taking control of this disease is to lose weight. The first step in losing weight is to look at what you're eating. You want to lose about 10% at least of your body weight. The heavier you are, the more you will want to lose. Don't turn to some diet plan, learn to eat sensibly and avoid that foods that will make the diabetes worse. Sugar is not always the enemy. Simple carbs like bread, pasta, and rice are by far worse enemies than sugar. You want to get your carbs from fruits and vegetables. Foods to focus on are beans, nuts, vegetables and fruit. Be sure that you get some protein with every meal. Your first bite should be of protein so that the pancreas begins to create insulin in the right amount to help you utilize the calories you will be consuming.

If you must have dessert, make it a piece of fruit - that is the best dessert ever!

Lifestyle Changes For Diabetics

If you have diabetes or you need to decrease your blood sugar, lifestyle changes are better than the medications. You may still need to take medication, but altering your lifestyle can make a huge difference.

The first and most important change you can make is to begin to exercise. You don't need to go out and buy a gym membership, although if that will motivate you to go, then by all means do it. You can do simple exercises at home, or just walk every day for 60 minutes nonstop. You'll be amazed at how much this helps.

Secondly is to watch what you eat. I'm not saying to go on any rigid diet. I'm saying, watch portion size, always have protein with every meal and eat 3 meals a day at least. Not such rigid and hard guidelines to follow.

Diabetes Epidemic - Are You Part Of It?

I get asked lots of questions about diabetes. Rightfully so, diabetes is at near epidemic proportions in the US. Let me first say that it is not a sugar problem. It is a vascular problem with insulin. You can feel perfectly normal or maybe a little tired with elevated blood sugar levels. The problem here is that by the time you find out your blood sugar levels are high, irreversible damage has been done on the inside.

Risk factors for diabetes are obesity, sedentary life style, family history, and poor eating habits, you should get checked to see if you have diabetes. This does not even require a trip to the doctor. Go to the pharmacy and get a blood glucose monitor. The pharmacist can show you how to use it.

Fast for 8 hours and check you blood glucose (best is to do this over night) in the morning before you eat or drink anything. If your result is less than 100, that is great! It's normal. If you are 100-125, you really need to start looking at what you're doing in your life and start addressing those risk factors. If you're higher than 125, you need to see your doctor. Medication may not be required but lifestyle changes are a must.

Exercise and Diabetes

I recently read an article about exercise and diabetes. It was a study conducted on NFL players and their risk factors for heart disease and diabetes. The finding that was being stressed, was the fact that the blood sugars of the NFL players tended to be lower on average than men in the control group who were not particularly physically active.

I found this somewhat amusing because for one thing, the diet of NFL players tends to be very high in protein. This is to help them build muscle. Their diets tend to be less in the realm of fruits and vegetables and hence how many times have we heard that an NFL player has the flu - there are at least a couple every week. They're not building their immune systems. But that is another issue. Back to the sugar. We also know that if you are physically active and the more physically active you are, the more efficient your cells become in terms of utilizing glucose. Also muscle cells tend to use more than fat cells. So it is reasonable to believe that these fairly large NFL players who are very physically active would have lower blood sugars.

My case in point here. When I was practicing in endocrinology, I had a patient who was a world class bicyclist. He was also a Type I Diabetic. When he quit riding his bike 6-8 hours a day, and started to work in an office where he sat at a desk most of the day, his insulin requirements started to go up and his fat to lean body mass changed.

The lesson here is to get out and move!

Prescription Medications - Questions To Ask #2

Next make sure you understand exactly what time of day you should take you medication. This is extremely important with medications used to treat diabetes. To have the maximum benefit, you should take some of these 30 minutes before you eat, not with the meal or after the meal.

Also ask how you should take the medicine and for how long you should take the medicine. Taking an antibiotic until you feel better is not the way to take it. On the other side of that coin is be sure that you actually need the antibiotic. Remember that almost all bacterial infections are cured by your immune system and all viral infections are cured by the immune system. If your immune system is compromised, then you may need medicines to help your immune system fight the infections. Most colds do NOT need to be treated with an antibiotic. You're not doing yourself any favors by requesting and getting an antibiotic for a cold. In fact many times an antibiotic will make the cold symptoms last longer.

Manage Your Insulin for Antiaging

One of the most important things you can do to help manage the aging process is to manage your insulin levels. You may think because you are not a diabetic that you don't need to worry about insulin levels. But in fact, you do need to worry about insulin levels.

When insulin levels are balanced, you will see a reduction of blood pressure, a decrease in cholesterol levels, and a reduction in the risk for development of Type II Diabetes. Now you may ask how do I manage my insulin levels.

First, you should be eating protein at every meal. The minute that you smell or see food, the pancreas begins to set up proinsulin which is the precursor of insulin. In other words, the pancreas is getting ready for you to eat. That first bite that you take signals the pancreas to begin production of insulin. Proteins help burn the carbs that you eat, so your first bite should be a bite of protein. Then you can eat whatever you want, well maybe not whatever you want, but you can vary the next bite to something other than protein.

The other way to help manage your insulin levels is to eat complex carbs, ie those found in fruits and vegetables. Limit the number of simple carbs, those found in grains. Be sure that you stick to good fats also.

Exercise and Insulin

Whether you are a diabetic or not, one of the things that you may not be aware of is the effect of exercise on insulin. Exercise increases the bodies sensitivity to insulin. In Type I diabetics (these folks are insulin dependent because their pancreas has stopped working to produce insulin), the more you exercise the less insulin you will need to inject. Part of this is in fact due to the amount of muscle in comparison to fat. The more muscle the more efficient the body is with it's use of insulin and the less you will need. In Type II diabetics (these are folks who may become insulin dependent, but usually start out on oral medications), the same is true, but the difference is that Type II diabetics are over weight and need to lose some weight. As they begin to exercise and change the amount of muscle in comparison to fat, they become less dependent on medications. Type II diabetics can often get off of oral medicines and regulate their disease with diet, once they lose weight.

Even if you are not a diabetic, exercise does increase the sensitivity to insulin. This is a good thing not a bad thing. It will just help you metabolize glucose more efficiently.

Economic Crunch and Your Health

Many are cutting back on things that may endanger your health because of the economy. While I understand this, don't endanger your health because of the economy. I know that if you are on a medication for high blood pressure or diabetes, the cost may prohibitive at this point in time, especially if you have lost or don't have insurance. Talk with your doctor about getting a medication that is less expensive than the one that you are on. There are likely generics or older medications that do work that will be less expensive.

Better yet do some healthful things to help lower your blood pressure or your blood sugar. There was a study in the UK where they fed people basically fruits and vegetables for 10 days. What they found was a highly significant drop in their blood pressures (all had high blood pressure) and also highly significant drops in blood cholesterol levels and more stable blood sugar levels. The participants ate 11 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables a day. That is a lot of fruits and vegetables, but can you imagine how healthy you would be. I'm not advocating becoming a vegetarian. But what I am saying is increase the number of fruits and vegetables you eat each day and decrease the simple carbs like bread and pasta. Get your carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables so that you're really getting nutrition instead of just calories.

Inulin

Yesterday I mentioned stevia plus which is stevia and inulin fiber. Inulin fiber is composed of several simple sugars linked together. These are naturally occurring polysaccharides produced from many plants. Inulin fiber is classified as a fructans fiber.

Inulin fiber has many beneficial properties from a health standpoint. First, inulin does not cause increases in insulin production or in blood sugar. Therefore it is something that diabetics can use. Some of the other benefits are that it increases magnesium and calcium absorption in the body. Inulin also promotes the growth of normal intestinal bacteria.

One word of caution, inulin fiber can cause gas if taken in large amounts, so go easy with it.

Sucralose

I was talking about sucralose yesterday and I want to give you more information about this artificial sweetener. I mentioned the problem with chlorine yesterday, but there are other problems with this product. One of the most significant findings in the research is the shrinking of the thymus gland as well as shrinking of the lymph follicles in the spleen and thymus. This is all part of your immune system. So what is happening here is that sucralose affects your immune system decreasing it's abilit to function properly.

Is this important? Yes, by all means! Without a strong immune system your body is not only unable to fight off disease, but it also cannot win the fight against cancer cells which are in our bodies every day of our lives. The reason that most of us don't get cancer is because of our immune system.

Sucralose also affects the liver and kidneys, which in turn affect our ability to produce red cells to carry oxygen around our bodies. It can also affect pregnancy and your unborn child.

Lastly, sucralose can result in diarrhea. Not a lethal problem, but certainly an unpleasant one.

One last thought here for the diabetics out there. Sucralose is not the answer for you. Studies have shown that the hemaglobin A1C actually rises. This blood test is an indicator of glycemic control and we know that as it rises so does the number complications for diabetics.

Foot Care

Respect your feet, you will expect them to carry you for many, many years. Too often in the early part of our life we tend to ignore taking care of our feet. When I was young my mother would take me to the shoe store every fall before school started and buy me a new pair of saddle shoes. I hated them. They weren't the fashion statement that I thought I should be making. I thank my mother now, because I know how smart she was to get me good support for my feet during those growing years. She also taught me as I got older to continue to buy good supportive shoes. Spend a little extra money but get good support in your shoes.

While I do have a few hammertoes from wearing high heels, they aren't too bad. I don't have any calluses or corns and those are definitely things you want to avoid. I can't tell you how many times I looked at the bottom a diabetic's foot and found a hole through a callus up into the foot. Sometimes with infection not only in the foot but in the bone. This often necessitates the amputation of the foot. Now if you are not diabetic, it doesn't mean you don't have to worry. Many individuals as they age develop peripheral neuropathy. The nerves in the feet begin to grow numb and the individual has difficulty really feeling how they're walking. With this disease, you won't feel any pain necessarily and you can have a major problem on the bottom of your foot without really knowing it.

More on Triglycerides

There are other contributing factors that can raise triglyceride levels. Some of these are things like obesity, excessive alcohol intake, diabetes, diet high in saturated fats, chronic liver disease, low thyroid hormone, and chronic kidney disease. In addition to these factors, certain medications can also raise triglyceride levels. Some of these include prednisone, estrogen, certain diuretics (thiazides specifically), tamoxifen (used in breast cancer patients), accutane, and some of the beta blockers.

To avoid the medication regime that you may get put on, you can do somethings to keep triglyceride levels down. First and foremost is to eat a well balanced healthy diet with emphasis on fruits and vegetables, along with more unsaturated fats. Decrease your alcohol intake and get at least 30 minutes of exercise 4-5 days per week.

Best Diet Tips #3

You don't have to be skinny to be healthy. If weight is an issue for you, continue to cut calories. Even a small weight loss like 10 pounds can positively affect your health.

Just losing 10 pounds can help lower your blood pressure as well as lower your blood sugar levels. If you are watching cholesterol levels, a 10 pound weight loss will positively affect the good and bad cholesterol levels in the direction that you are shooting for.

Don't put so much emphasis on losing 25 or 50 or 100 pounds. Put your emphasis on decreasing the amount that you eat.

Fasting Helps Prevent Disease

While I'm on the subject of fasting, there is research that tells us that fasting can help with several common diseases. I mention a couple of those yesterday in terms of cognitive function.

But other diseases which fasting may help protect you from are heart disease, diabetes, and asthma to name a few where research is being conducted. With intermittent fasting, researchers found a 40% reduction in the risk for heart disease. This can be very significant if you are one of the 65% of Americans who are overweight.

The incidence of diabetes has been shown to decrease which is not a huge surprise is you are eating less. In Asthmatics, the number of attacks was decreased and the overall symptoms from Asthma were less.

The greatest thing about fasting is how good you feel and how much more energy you will have. This combined with the decrease in disease means you'll live a longer, happier life.

Benefit #3 of Cleansing

Restoring all of the systems within the body so that they can function in harmony together as they were meant to is a huge benefit of cleansing. When certain organs or organ systems within our body become toxic, it is hard for them to function in coordination with the other organs and systems within the body.

An example of what happens when our bodies become toxic is the more processed foods that we eat, the more chemicals and other toxins - like hydrogenated oils - that we consume, the harder it is for our liver to detoxify and rid the body of toxins. What happens, it begins to deposit the toxins in fat stores, we gain weight, - as we gain weight, our endocrine system especially the pancreas begins to become over taxed with the demand for insulin and the toxins develop an resistance to insulin attaching on the receptor site so that glucose can move into the cell out of the blood stream. We end up with diabetes, and potentially all of the complications of diabetes. Our bodies become sick.

Cleansing can help you remove the toxins from organs such as the liver so that you can live a healthier life. While cleansing helps, I have to say, the other thing you should be doing is watching what it is that you put into your body.

Snacking Yourself Thin

This particular book on snacking constantly to lose weight may not be the most practical of suggestions. This book tells you to eat every hour, a small portion of whatever you want. Eating multiple times a day is a good idea. The practicality of eating every hour is not so great. If you have a job it will be difficult for your to eat something every hour while you are working.

Having 2-3 snacks a day is a great idea. Some of the snacks I recommend are things like 4-6 almonds. This gives you the sense of eating something and it has many benefits. See my posts starting on January 31, 2009. Diabetics in particular should be snacking with healthy foods like a few almonds and a small apple. This will help to keep the blood sugar regulated.

More on the Glycemic Index

I want to clarify the difference between Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load. The Glycemic Index is a system which measures how much the blood sugar will rise from a specific carbohydrate. Some very fatty foods may have a low glycemic index, but that does not mean they are good for you. Glycemic Index only relates to the rise in blood sugar from a carbohydrate.

Glycemic Load takes into account the portion size of the carbohydrate while Glycemic Index only looks at how quickly the carbohydrate turns to sugar in your body.

Some of the high Glycemic Index foods that you want to limit in your diet are processed white flour products, potatoes, and sugary cereals. I've talked about bananas before, but here is the reason I personally don't eat them any more and recommend that my dieting clients not eat them as well as my diabetics. The difference between an apple and a banana (you obviously can tell the difference by looking!) , but in the Glycemic Index world, the apple is 34 and the banana is 54. The problem here is that there is more of a rise in blood sugar with the banana and that rise stays there for a longer period of time.

Low Glycemic Index Foods

Since I was talking about sugar yesterday, it came to me today that there is a buzz out there about low glycemic index foods - what are they and why should we eat them?

First let's talk about what what the glycemic index is. The glycemic index tells us how specific carbohydrates affect our blood sugar levels. Now you may think, I'm not a diabetic so why should I worry. Trust me, there is a reason. If you have any excess weight, it may be do to the fact that you are eating high glycemic index foods. Eating low glycemic index foods can really boost your ability to lose weight, think more clearly, have more energy, and reducing hunger.

What low glycemic index foods do is trickle glucose into the system instead of giving the system a blast of sugar which taxes the pancreas, kidneys, heart, and brain. Not to mention what it does on the individual cellular level. This trickling effect also translates into you feeling full and satisfied for a longer period of time.

Tomorrow I'll get into the different foods.

Sugar

The other white mentioned yesterday is sugar. So how does it set off the inflammatory process?

When you eat something that contains a lot of sugar, the pancreas puts out a large amount of insulin in response to the sugar. This increase in insulin turns on the inflammatory genes to begin producing inflammation in the body.

Not only does this set off the inflammatory genes, but the as we gain weight from eating the refined sugars, we have a yo-yo effect of our blood sugar going up and down and stress on the pancreas. This ultimately can result in Type II Diabetes. Another reason to get rid of the excess sugar in our diets.