Are Beets Good for Diabetes?

Posted on July 2, 2016 | 5 comments

From Medical News Today:

A number of studies suggest that beets may be beneficial for people with diabetes. This article takes a closer look at their nutritional properties.

Source: Are Beets Good for Diabetes?

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Almost Half of California Adults Have Prediabetes

Posted on July 1, 2016 | Comments Off on Almost Half of California Adults Have Prediabetes

The actual figure is 46%, according to researchers at UCLA. The LA Times has the story.

“Our genes and our environment are kind of on a collision course,” said Dr. Francine Kaufman, the former head of the American Diabetes Assn., who was not involved with the research. “It’s not stopping.”

The problem with prediabetes is that it often evolves into full-blown diabetes. It’s also associated with increased risk for cardiovascular disease such as heart attack and stroke. The Times article says “up to 70% of those with prediabetes develop diabetes in their lifetime.” I’d never heard that vague number before; I say vague because “up to 70%” could be anything between zero and 70. It’s more accurate to note that one in four people with prediabetes develops type 2 diabetes over the course of three to five years.

She has the genes of a cave woman

She has the genes of a cave woman

Prediabetes is defined as:

  1. fasting blood sugar between 100 and 125 mg/dl (5.56–6.94 mmol/l), or
  2. blood sugar level 140–199 mg/dl (7.78–11.06 mmol/l) two hours after drinking 75 grams of glucose

How To Prevent Progression of Prediabetes Into Diabetes

  • If you’re overweight or obese, lose excess fat weight. How much should you lose? Aim for at least 5% of body weight and see if that cures your prediabetes. For instance, if you weigh 200 lb (91 kg), lose 10 lb (4.5 kg).
  • If you’re sedentary, start exercising regularly.
  • Cut back on your consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages, other sugar sources, and other refined carbohydrates like wheat flour.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Dr. Eades Attempts to Explain the U.S. Obesity Epidemic

Posted on June 22, 2016 | 2 comments

Dr. Michael Eades of Protein Power fame thinks he knows why we’ve gotten fat starting 35 years ago:

Along with carbohydrates, vegetable oils have increased dramatically in the typical American diet. Over the same time period, we’ve all started eating away from home more and more, so that we’ve lost control of exactly what kinds of fats we’ve been eating.

Click the link for the details of his hypothesis, which involves the effects of various dietary fats and carbohydrates on intracellular energy metabolism and insulin resistance.

Steve Parker, M.D.

PS: Even if you think proteins are powerless, my books are made without vegetable oils.

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Seafood May Lower Your Risk of Dementia

Posted on June 11, 2016 | Comments Off on Seafood May Lower Your Risk of Dementia

…according to an article at the Journal of the American Medical Association. The study involved Chicago-area residents who had provided information about their eating habits. After death, their brains were biopsied, looking for typical pathological findings of Alzheimers Disease.

fresh salmon and lobsters

Rich sources of omega-3 fatty acids include salmon, sardines, herring, trout, and mackerel

Participants who ate seafood at least once a week had fewer Alzheimers lesions in their brains, but only if they were carriers of a particular gene the predisposes to Alzheimers. The gene is called apolipoprotein E or APOE ε4.

You’ve heard that seafood may be contaminated with mercury, right? The seafood eaters in this study indeed had higher brain levels of mercury, but it didn’t cause any visible brain damage.

The Mediterranean diet, relatively rich in seafood, has long been linked to a lower risk of dementia.

A weakness of the study is that the researchers didn’t report results of clinical testing for dementia in these participants before they died. You can have microscopic evidence of Alzheimers disease on a biopsy, yet no clinical diagnosis of dementia.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Turkish Get-Ups: What, Why, How

Posted on June 1, 2016 | Comments Off on Turkish Get-Ups: What, Why, How

I’m going to start doing Turkish get-ups again. I fell out of the habit a couple years ago. Turkish get-ups promote flexibility, balance, joint range of motion, and strength. If you’re just doing the Big Five exercises, TGUs will strengthen some of the smaller muscles (and portions of major muscles) you may be neglecting.

Below are a couple YouTube examples. They are not complete tutorials. You can use a dumbbell or kettlebell. Start with either no weight in your hand, or just a small one. Then work up to higher weights as you get stronger.

These videos may only show how to work one side of the body; you work both sides, of course, and call it a pair. I used to do only five pairs with a 25-lb dumbbell. In weightlifting lingo, you’d call that 1 set of five reps (repetitions). It was exhausting.

Do enough reps and it will be both strength and aerobic training.

Steve Parker, M.D.


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QOTD: Too Busy to Exercise?

Posted on May 26, 2016 | Comments Off on QOTD: Too Busy to Exercise?

What fits your busy schedule better, exercising 30 minutes a day or being dead 24 hours a day?

—Randy Glasbergen in a 2008 cartoon

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What About the Newcastle Diet?

Posted on May 19, 2016 | 3 comments
Some of these are Newcastle-compliant

Some of these are Newcastle-compliant

In 2011, Prof. Roy Taylor and colleagues found they could “reverse” type 2 diabetes with a very low-calorie diet. How low? 600–800 per day for eight weeks. His program—often called the Newcastle diet—has achieved some prominence in the United Kingdom but I don’t hear about it much over here across the pond. The clinical study in support of the program was very small—only 11 participants: 9 men and 2 women (with an average BMI of 33.6). I’m sure hundreds, if not thousands, have tried it since then.

I’m not endorsing or recommending the Newcastle diet at this time. I haven’t studied it in detail. It probably requires careful medical and dietitian supervision. Prof. Taylor says:

Our research subjects found the diet challenging to stick to. Motivated people were selected, and support from the team was given frequently. Support from the families of the research volunteers was very important in helping them comply with the diet. Hunger was not a particular problem after the first few days, but the complete change in social activities (not going to the pub, not joining in the family meals etc.) was a challenge over the eight weeks.

The purpose of this post is simply to collect a few informational links for my own records and for my readers who want to know more.

Links:

The original program utilizes Optifast liquid meals (600 calories/day) plus vegetables for another 200 calories. Prof. Taylor notes that products equivalent to Optifast may be more readily available and just as effective, but I don’t know what those are. Ensure? Carnation Instant Breakfast? Boost? Jevity?

Very low calorie diets like this are often referred to as starvation diets or crash diets. Starvation diets can cause weakness and easy fatigue, headaches, dizziness, hair loss, gallstones, electrolyte (blood mineral) disturbances, palpitations, nutritional deficiencies, skin problems, gout, kidney failure, or worse.

Even if successful, transitioning away from the eight-week Newcastle diet better be done carefully or the diabetes will return. Prevention of weight regain is harder than losing weight.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Is Insulin Making You Hungry All the Time?

Posted on May 8, 2016 | 7 comments
So easy to over-eat!

So easy to over-eat! Is it the insulin release?

No, insulin probably isn’t the cause of constant hunger, according to Dr. Stephan Guyenet. Dr. G gives 11 points of evidence in support of his conclusion. Read them for yourself. Here are a few:

  • multiple brain-based mechanisms (including non-insulin hormones and neurotransmitters) probably have more influence on hunger than do the pure effect of insulin
  • weight loss reduces insulin levels, yet it gets harder to lose excess weight the more you lose
  • at least one clinical study (in 1996) in young healthy people found that foods with higher insulin responses were linked to greater satiety, not greater hunger
  • billions of people around the world eat high-carb diets yet remain thin

An oft-cited explanation for the success of low-carbohydrate diets involves insulin, specifically the lower insulin levels and reduced insulin resistance seen in low-carb dieters. They often report less trouble with hunger than other dieters.

Here’s the theory. When we eat carbohydrates, the pancreas releases insulin into the bloodstream to keep blood sugar levels from rising too high as we digest the carbohydrates. Insulin drives the bloodstream sugar (glucose) into cells to be used as energy or stored as fat or glycogen. High doses of refined sugars and starches over-stimulate the production of insulin, so blood sugar falls too much, over-shootinging the mark, leading to hypoglycemia, an undeniably strong appetite stimulant. So you go back for more carbohydrate to relieve the hunger induced by low blood sugar. That leads to overeating and weight gain.

Read Dr. Guyenet’s post for reasons why he thinks this explanation of constant or recurring bothersome hunger is wrong or too simplistic. I agree with him.

The insulin-hypoglycemia-hunger theory may indeed be at play in a few folks. Twenty years ago, it was popular to call this “reactive hypoglycemia.” For unclear reasons, I don’t see it that often now. It was always hard to document that hypoglycemia unless it appeared on a glucose tolerance test.

Regardless of the underlying explanation, low-carb diets undoubtedly are very effective in many folks. And low-carbing is what I always recommend to my patients with carbohydrate intolerance: diabetics and prediabetics.

Steve Parker, M.D.

front cover

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Accidents Replace Stroke as 4th Leading Cause of Death in U.S.

Posted on May 2, 2016 | 2 comments
Nothing to do with accidents

Nothing to do with accidents

For most of my medical career, stroke was the third leading cause of death in the U.S., behind heart disease and cancer. Just a few years ago, chronic lower respiratory tract disease surpassed stroke.

Stroke continues to fall in rank and fell recently to fifth place, overtaken by accidents (unintentional injuries).

Even non-fatal strokes can be devastating.

Reduce your risk of stroke by maintaining normal blood pressure, not smoking, exercise regularly, living at a healthy weight, limiting your alcohol consumption, don’t get diabetes, and limit your age to 55. It’s also important to seek medical attention if you have a TIA (transient ischemic attack).

I wouldn’t be surprised if the paleo diet helps prevent stroke, but we don’t have much evidence yet.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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Are Cities Driving Us Crazy?

Posted on April 22, 2016 | 1 comment

Evolutionistx thinks so. She started pondering this in view of the fact that 25% of women in the U.S. are on medications for depression or anxiety. Why so many drug users? A quote:

People seem to do best, emotionally, when they have the support of their kin, some degree of ethnic or national pride, economic and physical security, attend religious services, and avoid crowded cities. (Here I am, an atheist, recommending church for people.) The knowledge you are at peace with your tribe and your tribe has your back seems almost entirely absent from most people’s modern lives; instead, people are increasingly pushed into environments where they have no tribe and most people they encounter in daily life have no connection to them. Indeed, tribalism and city living don’t seem to get along very well.

RTWT.

Over the course of the last 200,000 years, tribes were probably no more than 150 people.

Steve Parker, M.D.

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