Paleo Diabetic

Diabetes types 1 and 2 along with gestational diabetes are addressed in this diaTribe interview. For example:

“According to Dr. Jovanovič, it is important to make sure family members understand the importance of reducing carb intake for blood sugar management during pregnancy. She said that grandmas in particular “often think a pregnant lady needs to eat all the time and not only eat all the time, but eat tortillas and rice and pasta. The grandma often cooks and thickens food with starch, puts a lot of noodles in it, etc. Then of course the young woman doesn’t want to disappoint her grandma, and it can be a difficult situation.” Clear communication can help a supportive family provide medically sound support, in line with the mutually desired outcome – a healthy mom and baby!”

Source: Diabetes and Pregnancy: Expert Advice from Pregnancy Guru Dr. Lois Jovanovič | diaTribe

From the Whole Health Source blog:

“You’ve heard the story before: when you eat carbohydrate-rich foods that digest quickly, it sends your blood sugar and insulin levels soaring, then your blood sugar level comes crashing back down and you feel hungry and cranky.  You reach for more carbohydrate, perpetuating the cycle of crashes, overeating, and fat gain.

It sounds pretty reasonable– in fact, so reasonable that it’s commonly stated as fact in popular media and in casual conversation.  This idea is so deeply ingrained in the popular psyche that people often say “I have low blood sugar” instead of “I’m hungry” or “I’m tired”.  But this hypothesis has a big problem: despite extensive research, it hasn’t been clearly supported.  I’ve written about this issue before.

A new study offers a straightforward test of the hypothesis, and once again finds it lacking.”

Source: Whole Health Source: Do Blood Glucose Levels Affect Hunger and Satiety?

The study at hand involved 15 healthy young men. Results may not apply to overweight post-menopausal women with T2 diabetes, but I bet they do.

Steve Parker, M.D.

Good thing she had a spear with her

“Do not adjust your set. And no, it isn’t April 1st.  The New Zealand Heart Foundation dietitians and nutritionists are giving Paleo a go.

It what sees me channeling the ghost of That Paleo Guy, I feel compelled to write a bit of a critique about their experiment, and their assumptions and starting points.  But to be clear before anything else, I do applaud the openness of the Heart Foundation to be giving this a go.

My first post to this blog outlined my reasons for largely divorcing myself from the term “Paleo” as a heuristic for how to navigate the very messy and confusing food environments we are faced with in our modern societies.  Subsequent posts have touched on why the paradigm made sense in the first place, and on some of the things we have taken issue with as the concept has grown in the public consciousness.”

Read the whole thing.

Thomas Twining started selling tea in London in 1706. His eponymous company has been doing it for 300 years, then. You’d think they know tea if anyone does. Here’s Twinings Green Tea:

Green? Brown?  Golden brown? Tea-colored? Flax? Tannin? Purple? Polka-dotted?

Does that look green to you? I guess they specialize in black tea (which I bet isn’t black after brewing).

My quest for green “green tea” continues. I already found one: Kirkland Ito En Matcha Blend Japanese Green Tea from Amazon.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: If you don’t like green, you’ll find none of it inside my books.

PPS: The remains of Ulysses S. Grant and his wife are in a mausoleum referred to as Grant’s tomb. They are above ground, so technically they aren’t buried.

You’ll want to keep reading if you have diabetes and are sedentary and overweight or obese, because odds are good that you have insulin resistance. Insulin resistance makes it harder to control your blood sugars.

I thought I knew a lot about diabetes, but I’m still learning from P.D. Mangan:

“It looks like we can add cold exposure to the list of interventions that increase insulin sensitivity.

Type 2 diabetes is positively associated with ambient temperature. The warmer the weather, the more diabetes. Up to about 30% of the variation in diabetes can be explained by  temperature.

Curiously, no effect of temperature was seen on obesity, although other studies have found that there is one.

The authors believe that activation of brown adipose tissue (BAT) may contribute to this effect. BAT is a type of fat tissue that increases its metabolism for the sole purpose of generating body heat.

Cold thermogenesis has many health benefits, although helping you to lose weight probably isn’t one of them, for the same reason that aerobic exercise is not very effective for weight loss.

The connection between cold exposure and insulin sensitivity isn’t just an association either: acclimation to the cold causes a substantial increase in insulin sensitivity.

Eight people with type 2 diabetes were exposed to cold temperatures, 14 to 15 C (57 to 59 F) for 6 hours a day for 10 days. Insulin sensitivity increased 43%.”

Source: Cold Exposure Increases Insulin Sensitivity – Rogue Health and Fitness