Disease Proof : Health & Nutrition News & Commentary : Dr. Joel Fuhrman

Obesity: Even a Little Exercise Helps!

Posted on October 7, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A new study, presented at the2008 American Physiological Society Intersociety Meeting, claims, just ONE session of exercise speeds up metabolism in obese people; after ONLY 90-minutes of activity study participants burned 700 excess calories; Reuters reports.

Exercise is POWERFUL medicine! Running helps people live longer, active video games allow people to overcome obesity genes and other activities, like weight-lifting, improve heart health, cut diabetes-risk and reduce depression.

That’s why I exercise like a lunatic!

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Exercise, Research, Weight Loss

Pepsi Says High Fructose Corn Syrup is Safe

Posted on October 3, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is nutrient-less junk; previously linked to both obesity and diabetes. And yet, the CRAZY The Corn Refiners Association claims HFCS is the same as sugar and safe in moderation. Yeah, because fat America understands moderation!

And since when is sugar okay! Dr. Fuhrman associates ALL sweeteners—like refined sugar, honey, lactose, fruit juice concentrate, high fructose corn syrup and molasses—with disease. They have no significant nutrient-density!

To make matters worse, despite being a processed food, the FDA recently ruled that high fructose corn syrup is natural. And now, a study with industry ties to Pepsico, suggests NO link between HFCS and obesity, calling all contrary evidence speculation; CBS News reports.

I’m sorry, but research with BLATANT industry ties, promoting a dangerous, but low-cost ingredient has NO credence in my book!

Tags: Diabetes, Diet Myths, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research

Exercise Helps You Poop!

Posted on September 30, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Exercise does A LOT of things. Gives you a six-pack, broader chest, toned butt and even a good poop! New research claims regular exercise can RELIEVE symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome, specifically constipation.

The study appears in the International Journal of Sports Medicine. Reuters reports:

Dr. Amanda J. Daley of the University of Birmingham in the UK and colleagues recruited 56 adults (mostly women) with doctor-diagnosed IBS for a study lasting 12 weeks.

The participants were randomly assigned to usual care (i.e., a "control" group) or to an exercise program, consisting of two 40-minute one-on-one exercise consultations designed to provide exercise skills, knowledge, confidence and motivation -- the goal being 30 minutes of moderate intensity exercise 5 days a week.

The researchers chose this type of intervention, they say, because it has been found to boost exercise in other patient groups, and because it could be more easily integrated into current healthcare practice than supervised programs.

After 12 weeks, the exercise group chalked up significantly more weekly exercise than the control group and they reported significantly greater declines in symptoms of constipation.

What a relief! Now, I’ve said it before, but it’s HARD to make a case against exercise. For example, That’sFit passes along news that EXERCISE helps lower type-2 diabetes risk and it’s already been shown that exercise improves heart health.

Now, if you’re pressed for time and can’t make it to the gym, try exercising at the office. Exercise is too HEALTHY to skip!

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Exercise, Research

Man Stuff: Lifespan, Prostate Cancer, Diabetes...

Posted on September 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Despite popular opinion, being a man involves MORE than just watching football, mowing the lawn and scratching your butt. Actually, men—especially our health—can be downright complicated. Yes, I said it. Men, complicated.

Take type-2 diabetes for example. A new campaign by the American Diabetes Association is aimed at better educating men on diabetes. Megan Rauscher of Reuters reports:

Men with type 2 diabetes know the basics about the disease and its main complications - heart disease, blindness, kidney failure - but they seem to know very little about the issues that affect their quality of life, like depression and sexual dysfunction, according to results of a survey released today by the American Diabetes Association.

The survey also shows that men are "really uncomfortable talking about these issues with their physician" -- yet are hungry for more information, Dr. Richard M. Bergenstal, Vice President, Medicine & Science at the American Diabetes Association noted in a telephone interview with Reuters Health.

To bridge the information gap, the American Diabetes Association today announced the launch of a multifaceted nationwide campaign to spotlight the often overlooked physical, emotional and sexual health issues affecting the roughly 12 million American men with diabetes.

And lifespan, why do men die sooner than women? WebMD offers up 6 tips that might help keep the men in your life around longer—not sure if that’s a thing good or not. Here are two great suggestions:

Speak frankly with a doctor: Leave embarrassment in the waiting room. Women are taught at an early age to be candid and open with their doctors. Symptoms that can be uncomfortable to talk about - such as erectile dysfunction - can be tied to more serious ailments such as diabetes and heart disease. Men, despite cultural tradition, should also request breast checks…

Keep a close eye on young males: The reckless nature and lifestyle of adolescents make them prime targets for injury or death. Females develop a more evolved sense of judgment and decision making at an earlier age then males. Add to that the cocktail of testosterone and other hormones and, biologically, males possess a potentially lethal internal recipe. Monitoring their activities and setting careful limits is vital. "Boys have been compared to a Porsche without brakes," Marianne J. Legato, MD says. "They take risks, are idealistic, intense, and believe they're invulnerable..."

Now, as a short guy, this particular piece of news ACTUALLY relieved me. New research in Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention claims that taller men have a greater risk of developing prostate cancer. The Well blog is on it:

Researchers from four universities in England studied more than 9,000 men with and without prostate cancer and found that the tallest men had a 19 percent higher risk of developing prostate cancer than shorter men. Using the shortest men as a baseline, the study showed that risk increased 6 percent for every additional 4 inches in height. The report, published in the September issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers & Prevention, showed an even stronger association between height and aggressive cancers.

“Compared to other risk factors, the magnitude of the additional risk of being taller is small, and we do not believe that it should interfere with preventive or clinical decisions in managing prostate cancer,” said the study’s lead author, Luisa Zuccolo, of the department of social medicine at the University of Bristol. “But the insight arising from this research is of great scientific interest.”

Dudes, we got a lot going on! But here’s the good news. Avoiding diabetes, prostate cancer and dying prematurely is NOT that hard. Dr. Fuhrman will tell you. It all starts with diet. Eating a vegetable-based high-nutrient diet will make you a Superman.

Although, I’d prefer to be a Batman!

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Prostate Cancer, Research

Obese People Have Sick Fat Cells

Posted on August 29, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Alright, obesity is bad—that's common knowledge—but new research in Diabetes claims that fat people actually have “sick” fat cells that make insulin-resistant proteins. Krisha McCoy of HealthDay News reports:

The fat cells we found in our obese patients were deficient in several areas," study author Guenther Boden, the Laura H. Carnell Professor of Medicine and chief of endocrinology, said in Temple press release.

Boden said that the obese people's fat cells showed stress on the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), which helps cells synthesize proteins and monitor how they are folded. When the ER is stressed, Boden explained, it produces several proteins that ultimately lead to insulin resistance. Insulin resistance, in turn, plays a major role in the development of obesity-related conditions.

The differences in the fat cells between obese and lean people may help explain the link between obesity and a higher risk of diabetes, heart disease, and stroke, Boden theorized.

Certainly follows in line with what we already know about obesity and diabetes. As Dr. Fuhrman points out, extra body fat increases risk of type-2 diabetes, which screws up insulin and can eventually cause pancreatic poop out!

People need to eat more mushrooms—they can stop obesity! Speaking of obesity, rocker Ted Nugent recently called obese people vulgar and displeasing to look at. Eep!

Tags: Diabetes, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research, Weight Loss

Arsenic Linked to Diabetes

Posted on August 21, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research by Johns Hopkins University has determined that repeated exposure to small amounts of Arsenic found in drinking water is strongly associated with the development of type-2 diabetes. Andrew Stern of Reuters explains:

Dr. Ana Navas-Acien and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore found a "relatively strong" association between commonly found levels of arsenic in urine and type 2 diabetes in a study of American adults.

"It seems there is may be no safe level of arsenic," Navas-Acien said in a telephone interview.

"Worldwide it's a huge problem," she said. "As water becomes a scarce resource, we need additional sources."

Arsenic raises the risk for cancers of the bladder, lung, kidney, skin and, possibly, the prostate, Navas-Acien said.

The 20 percent of nearly 800 study participants who had the most arsenic in their bodies, a tolerable 16.5 micrograms per liter of urine, had 3.6 times the risk of developing late-onset diabetes than those in the bottom 20 percent, who had 3 micrograms per liter.

Levels of arsenic were 26 percent higher in people with late-onset, or type 2, diabetes than those without the disease, the study found.

The research appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Now, this isn’t the only study linking toxins to diabetes. Pesticides and PCBs have also been associated with diabetes-risk.

Tags: Diabetes, Research, Toxins

United States: Fat, Getting Fatter

Posted on August 20, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

In July the CDC reported that states like Mississippi, West Virginia, Alabama, and Louisiana continue to lead the nation in obesity. And now people are beginning to think that all the public initiatives to curb obesity are missing the mark. More from Dan Childs of ABC News:

The discouraging trends, reported in the fifth annual "F as in Fat: How Obesity Policies Are Failing in America, 2008" report from the Trust for America's Health (TFAH) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), reveal that obesity rates rose in 37 states in the past year, while no state registered a decrease in obesity.

Worse, in 24 states the uptick continued a trend seen from the previous year. Obesity rates rose for a third consecutive year in a total of 19 states.

"Our analysis found that on the state and community levels, overall we are not treating the obesity epidemic with the urgent response it deserves," said Jeff Levi, executive director of TFAH, during a Tuesday morning press conference…

… The new numbers suggest the continuation of a steady trend toward obesity that has been seen over the past several decades. In 1980, the report notes, the national average of obese adults was a mere 15 percent. Today, according to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and prevention, about a third of adults are obese.

With the increase in obesity has come a spike in the diseases associated with excess weight. According to the report, rates of type 2 diabetes -- a disease typically associated with obesity -- grew in 26 states last year.

Levi said the spike in such diseases carries a financial burden as well.

"Obesity is not just about health; it has a real impact on our country's economy as well," he said.

Maybe it’s falling on deaf ears, but obesity has been shown to increase cancer, diabetes, and death-risk. And the socio-economic impact is no joke either. Imagine being barred from a nightclub because you’re too fat—via Diet-Blog.

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Diabetes-Risk: Heart Disease, Obesity, PCBs...

Posted on August 18, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Last month the Environmental Health Sciences and the National Cancer Institute linked pesticides with diabetes-risk and now a study in Diabetes Care has determined high exposure to PCBs may be tied to diabetes too. Reuters explains:

Dr. Yueliang Leon Guo, from the National Taiwan University in Taipei, and colleagues examined the incidence of type 2 diabetes among 378 Taiwanese "oil disease" victims and 370 of their neighbors who had not been poisoned.

They found that women who had been exposed to the PCB-laced oil were twice as likely as other women to develop type 2 diabetes over 24 years. And women who had been most severely affected by the PCB exposure had a more than five-times higher diabetes risk.

There were no similar risks seen in men, however.

Other studies have found that people with diabetes tend to have relatively higher levels of organic pollutants, such as PCBs, in their blood. In comments to Reuters Health, Guo said that since "everyone" has detectable PCB levels in his or her body, it's possible that exposure to such pollutants has helped feed the widespread rise in diabetes in recent decades.

"The public health implication of these findings can be huge," Guo added, "considering the burden of diabetes and its multiple long-term complications."

And another study in Diabetes Care demonstrates that the incidence of heart disease increases right along with diabetes and obesity—via Reuters. Try avoiding it all together! Dr. Fuhrman’s prescription, try healthy dosages of fresh fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Research, Toxins

Broccoli May Undo Cell Damage...

Posted on August 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Researchers at the University of Warwick have determined that sulforaphane, a compound found in broccoli, helps produce enzymes that protect blood vessels. This is especially good news for diabetics. BBC News reports:

People with diabetes are up to five times more likely to develop cardiovascular diseases such as heart attacks and strokes; both are linked to damaged blood vessels.

The Warwick team, whose work is reported in the journal Diabetes, tested the effects of sulforaphane on blood vessel cells damaged by high glucose levels (hyperglycaemia), which are associated with diabetes.

They recorded a 73% reduction of molecules in the body called Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS).

Hyperglycaemia can cause levels of ROS to increase three-fold and such high levels can damage human cells.

The researchers also found that sulforaphane activated a protein in the body called nrf2, which protects cells and tissues from damage by activating protective antioxidant and detoxifying enzymes.

Like we need another reason to eat broccoli! In fact, I’ve had some steamed broccoli three days in a row. Now, if you’re interested. The study appears in Diabetes: Activation of NF-E2-related factor-2 reverses biochemical dysfunction…

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Research

Diet and Diabetes, Linked!

Posted on July 30, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New studies reveal that diet is the key to diabetes-risk. All three appear in the July 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine. Here they are:

Sugar-Sweetened Beverages and Incidence of Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus in African American Women

CONCLUSIONS: Regular consumption of sugar-sweetened soft drinks and fruit drinks is associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus in African American women. While there has been increasing public awareness of the adverse health effects of soft drinks, little attention has been given to fruit drinks, which are often marketed as a healthier alternative to soft drinks.

Plasma Vitamin C Level, Fruit and Vegetable Consumption, and the Risk of New-Onset Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus

CONCLUSIONS: Higher plasma vitamin C level and, to a lesser degree, fruit and vegetable intake were associated with a substantially decreased risk of diabetes. Our findings highlight a potentially important public health message on the benefits of a diet rich in fruit and vegetables for the prevention of diabetes.

Low-Fat Dietary Pattern and Risk of Treated Diabetes Mellitus in Postmenopausal Women

CONCLUSIONS: A low-fat dietary pattern among generally healthy postmenopausal women showed no evidence of reducing diabetes risk after 8.1 years. Trends toward reduced incidence were greater with greater decreases in total fat intake and weight loss. Weight loss, rather than macronutrient composition, may be the dominant predictor of reduced risk of diabetes.

For more, check out Steven Reinberg's report in HealthDay News: Diet Key to Diabetes Risk.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Pesticides Linked to Diabetes-Risk

Posted on July 29, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Research by National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) and the National Cancer Institute have determined that long-term exposure to pesticides heightens diabetes-risk. Bridget M. Kuehn of the Journal of the American Medical Association reports:

The study involved more than 33,000 licensed pesticide applicators enrolled in the Agricultural Health Study, who provided information about lifetime exposure and their medical history. An analysis of the data revealed that exposure to 7 pesticides—aldrin, chlordane, heptachlor, dichlorvos, trichlorfon, alachlor, and cyanazine—increased the workers' odds of developing diabetes and that the incidence of diabetes increased with cumulative days of exposure.

Dale Sandler, PhD, chief of the NIEHS’s epidemiology branch, points out that pesticide exposure is just another factor that contributes to diabetes, like obesity, lack of exercise and family history. Here’s the actual study, via Epidemiology: Incident Diabetes and Pesticide Exposure among Licensed Pesticide Applicators.

Tags: Diabetes, Research, Toxins

Health Points: Wednesday

Posted on July 23, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Hire somebody to grow you a garden? Kim Severson of The New York Times explains:

Eating locally raised food is a growing trend. But who has time to get to the farmer’s market, let alone plant a garden?

That is where Trevor Paque comes in. For a fee, Mr. Paque, who lives in San Francisco, will build an organic garden in your backyard, weed it weekly and even harvest the bounty, gently placing a box of vegetables on the back porch when he leaves.

Call them the lazy locavores — city dwellers who insist on eating food grown close to home but have no inclination to get their hands dirty. Mr. Paque is typical of a new breed of business owner serving their needs.

The migraine medication, Topamax, main increase the risk of birth defects. From WebMD:

In a study published in the latest issue of the journal Neurology, taking Topamax (topiramate) during pregnancy was associated with a birth defect risk within the range of risk seen in other anti-epileptic drugs, researchers reported.

But the incidence of birth defects seen when Topamax was taken with other anti-epileptic drugs was higher than expected.

The study was small, but it is among the first to link Topamax to birth defects in humans, confirming what has been seen in previous animal studies.

"More research needs to be done to confirm these results, especially since it was a small study," researcher John Craig, MRCP, of the Royal Group of Hospitals in Belfast, Northern Ireland said in a news release.

Here’s how to deal with treat giving grandparents. Via Tim Harford:

I am the mother of two young children, and extremely grateful to my own parents for looking after them for a few hours now and then. My problem is that they stuff the kids with chocolates, crisps and ice cream. This is not good for the children, their behavior and my own efforts to feed them something nutritious. Why do the grandparents have such a different philosophy, and can I do anything to change their thinking…

… Rather than reasoning with your parents, you must change their incentives. Unfortunately, this is not easy. You could try to bribe your parents, but threats will be useless because they are doing you a favor.

Perhaps your best bet is to try to arrange for longer bouts of childcare. Your parents will have a fresh perspective on the merits of carrots after trying to put a three-year-old to bed in the midst of a sugar high.

Researchers believe cultural sensitivity may improve diabetes outcomes. Joene Hendry of Reuters reports:

"There is some evidence suggesting culturally tailored health education can improve some clinical outcomes in the short-term," co-author Dr. Yolanda Robles of Cardiff University the UK told Reuters Health. However, "further research is needed to assess long-term effects," Robles said.

Language and cultural barriers may hinder the delivery of quality diabetes health education to ethnic minorities, yet education is a vital aspect of diabetes care, Robles and colleagues report in the Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews from The Cochrane Collaboration.

To assess the overall efficacy of culturally tailored diabetes education versus the "usual" care, the researchers combined findings from 11 published research articles that compared the two approaches among minority groups living in middle- or high-income countries. All of the 1,603 study participants were older than 16 years.

U.S. inspectors believe a single jalapeño pepper may have caused salmonella outbreak. More from Lauran Neergaard of the Associated Press:

They found the same bacteria strain on a single Mexican-grown jalapeno pepper handled in Texas -- and issued a stronger warning for consumers to avoid fresh jalapenos.

But Monday's discovery, the equivalent of a fingerprint, doesn't solve the mystery: Authorities still don't know where the pepper became tainted -- on the farm, or in the McAllen, Texas, plant, or at some stop in between, such as a packing house.

Nor are they saying the tainted pepper exonerates tomatoes sold earlier in the spring that consumers until last week had been told were the prime suspect.

Still, "this genetic match is a very important break in the case," said Dr. David Acheson, the Food and Drug Administration's food safety chief.

Scientists are trying to make a cancer vaccine from the tobacco plant. Sharon Begley of Newsweek is on it:

Fully aware of the irony here, biologist Ronald Levy of Stanford University and his team used tobacco plants to grow the vaccine, which would act against follicular B-cell lymphoma. This chronic, incurable form of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma strikes some 16,000 people in the United States each year. For all its horrors, however, follicular B-cell lymphoma just may be tailor-made for a cancer vaccine: all of the malignant cells are the descendants of a single bad actor and have an identical molecule on their surface. But the molecular signature of one patient’s cancer cells is slightly different from every other patient’s; hence the need for potentially expensive personalized vaccines.

The scientists therefore spliced the DNA for the molecular sequences of the antibodies from each of the 16 patients into tobacco cells. The DNA triggered production of antibodies in the tobacco plants’ leaves which were tailor-made for each patient’s lymphoma cells. The scientists ground up the leaves and isolated the antibodies, injecting them into each patient.

The patients’ immune systems got cracking: 70 percent of the patients developed an immune response to the plant-produced vaccine, and 47 percent produced a response specific to the antigen.

It seems women are more likely to suffer tattoo regret than men. Via Alan Mozes of HealthDay News:

"We saw that for women there is still some negative societal fallout to having tattoos", said study author Myrna L. Armstrong, a professor in the school of nursing at Texas Tech University's Health Sciences Center, in Lubbock, Texas. "This isn't a problem for men. Society supports men, because tattoos are related to a macho image, so we don't question it. But for women, having a tattoo seems to be a transgression of gender boundaries."

Armstrong and her colleagues outlined their observations in the July issue of the Archives of Dermatology.

The authors pointed out that about one-quarter of Americans between the ages of 18 and 30 have a tattoo, and women constitute between 45 percent and 65 percent of the tattoo market.

Prior studies show that more than 80 percent of the inked crowd are pleased with their decision to get a tattoo. Among the fifth that are not, about 6 percent ultimately remove their marking.

According to a new study obstetricians overlook alcohol consumption in pregnant women. From Blackwell Publishing:

Almost half of the obstetricians interviewed said they did not routinely ask about alcohol consumption in pregnancy.

An editorial by Professor Elizabeth Elliot from the University of Sydney titled "Alcohol and Pregnancy: the Pivotal Role of the Obstetrician", discusses the state of awareness about the adverse effects of alcohol consumption during pregnancy and the obstetricians’ participation in educating against maternal drinking.

Only 16% of the obstetricians routinely provided information about the consequences of alcohol in pregnancy, while only 5% gave advice which were consistent with the latest guidelines of The National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia (NHMRC) - which states that, for pregnant women, ‘no drinking is the safest option’.

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Healthy Parenting, Hurtful Food, Migraine Headaches, Research, Toxins

No Evidence that Diet Prevents Diabetes?

Posted on July 17, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A team of researchers from The Cochrane Collaboration, an independent international not-for-profit healthcare information organization, claim that dietary intervention alone cannot prevent type-2 diabetes. Jennifer Beal of EurekAlert reports:

When a team of Cochrane Researchers set out to see if dietary advice alone could help a person with type 2 diabetes, they were only able to identify two trials that together involved just 358 people.

"Considering the importance of this disorder, we were disappointed to find such a small amount of relevant data," says lead researcher Lucie Nield, who works in Centre for Food, Physical Activity & Obesity, University of Teesside, Middlesbrough.

The two studies did, however, indicate that dietary advice alone could play an important role. One study randomly assigned people to either a control group or a dietary advice group. After six years 67.7% of people in the control group had diabetes, compared with only 43.8% in the advice group. This was a 33% reduction. In another study 12 months of dietary advice led to significant reductions in many diabetes related factors, such as insulin resistance, fasting C-peptide, fasting proinsulin, fasting blood glucose, fasting triglycerides, and fasting cholesterol and PAI-1.

This blurs reality. It implies that lifestyle diseases, like diabetes, are unavoidable. So why don’t I have diabetes, or Dr. Fuhrman, or his patients? Eating a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet is your best defense against—and a treatment for—type-2 diabetes. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

Increasing your consumption of high-nutrient fruits and vegetables is the key to disease resistance, disease reversal, and a long, healthy life. The potential reduction in disease rates shows no threshold effect in the scientific studies. That means that as high-nutrient vegetables and high-nutrient fruits increase as a major portion of caloric intake, disease rates fall in a dose-dependent manner—the more the diet is comprised of these foods, the better your health will be1…

…If the person is obese, with more than fifty pounds of additional fat weight, his body will demand huge loads of insulin from the pancreas, even as much as ten times more than a person of normal weight needs. So what do you think happens after five to ten years of forcing the pancreas to work so hard? You guessed it—pancreatic poop-out…

…Diets high in fiber and vegetables have been consistently shown to be beneficial for diabetic patients and offer considerably better results when compared to the current recommendations of the American Diabetic Association Diet.2 The dietary advice typically offered to diabetics is not science-based, and it caters to Americans’ social and food preferences and food addictions.

Okay, maybe there aren’t enough studies illustrating this—probably because no drug company would fund it—but to say there is “no evidence” that diet staves off type-2 diabetes is naive and irresponsible reporting—don’t you think?
Continue Reading...

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research

Confusing News: Sugar Helps School Kids Concentrate

Posted on July 16, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research by David Benton, Ph.D., a psychologist and professor at Swansea University, Wales, U.K., suggests sugary drinks improve school children’s memories and concentration. Richard Gray of the UK Telegraph reports:

“Children between the ages of five and ten need twice as much glucose for their brains compared to an adult, but unlike other organs the brain does not store energy so it has to obtain it straight from the blood.

“The message we would like to encourage is that children need to be fed a little and often, but the risk is that they get fed a lot and often leading to problems with obesity.”

Professor Benton gave 16 nine and ten-year-olds fruit squash containing either artificial sweetener or glucose, a basic form of sugar. When the children consumed glucose, he found their memory test scores improved by over ten per cent. The children also spent between 11 and 20 minutes longer on a task when asked to work individually in class.

But Professor Benton did insist that schools should not start feeding pupils fizzy drinks between classes, proposing regular fruit of muesli bars instead.

The methodology of this study only serves to confuse. I’m not a nutritionist, but I think I can say this. Isolated sugars and sweeteners are NEVER healthy. In fact, consuming them interferes with your body’s ability to detoxify. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

When you eat a diet that is based on toxic and addictive foods—such as salt, fried foods, snack foods, and sugary drinks—you not only build up free radicals and AGEs in your cells, but you also set the stage for ill feelings when you are not digesting food. Unhealthy food allows your body to create waste byproducts that must be removed by the liver and other organs. Only when digestion ends can the body fully take advantage of the opportunity to circulate and attempt to remove toxins. If the body is constantly digesting, it can’t go through this detoxification process effectively.

If children need glucose, why even consider nutrition-less sugar? Highly nutritious fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of glucose (via Wikipedia), start there instead! Besides, it was recently determined that kids are already consuming WAY too much sugar.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research, School Food, Toxins

Women: More Green Veggies, Less Diabetes

Posted on July 11, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research has determined that eating more leafy greens and fruit, lowers women’s risk of developing type-2 diabetes. Laurie Barclay, MD of Medscape Today reports:

"Fruit and vegetable consumption has been associated with decreased incidence of and mortality from a variety of health outcomes including obesity, hypertension, and cardiovascular diseases in epidemiological studies," write Lydia A. Bazzano, MD, PhD, from the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine in New Orleans, Louisiana, and colleagues. "However, few prospective studies have examined the relationship between fruit and vegetable intake and risk of diabetes, and the results are not entirely consistent. Differences in the nutrient contents of fruits and vegetables by group could lead to differences in health effects…"

“…Consumption of green leafy vegetables and fruit was associated with a lower hazard of diabetes, whereas consumption of fruit juices may be associated with an increased hazard among women," the study authors write. "Our findings of a positive association of fruit juice intake with hazard of diabetes suggest that caution should be observed in replacing some beverages with fruit juices in an effort to provide healthier options. Moreover, the same caution applies to the recommendation that 100% fruit juice be considered a serving of fruit as it is in the present national dietary guidelines…"

"…In general, the observed associations between fruits and vegetables are weaker than those for cardiovascular disease," the study authors write. "However, if fruits and vegetables are used to replace refined grains and white potatoes, both of which have been shown to be associated with increased risk of diabetes, the benefits of regular consumption of fruits and vegetables should be substantial."

Quick, hide this report from the drug companies! The fear of not being able to sell insulin might cause them to stroke out.

FDA: More Safety Tests for Diabetes Drugs

Posted on July 4, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A government panel wants stronger safety standards for diabetes drugs. Of course the drug companies are mad. It’s going to cost them millions! Via the Associated Press:

The majority of the panel said drug companies could begin safety testing -- expected to take between five and seven years to complete -- before they submit drugs to the FDA and finish the studies after their release.

But at least one panelist doubted whether the proposed studies would actually uncover heart risks.

"If you wait this amount of time for testing you're going to be preventing certain drugs from getting out there that may be better than what we already have," said Dr. Eric Felner, a pediatric specialist at Emory University School of Medicine.

The FDA is not required to follow the panel's advise, though it often does.

If the recommendation is adopted, development of diabetes drugs would become longer and more expensive, since it can cost tens of millions of dollars to perform long-term studies that track heart problems in thousands of patients.

GlaxoSmithKline PLC, AstraZeneca and Novartis AG are among the companies developing diabetes treatments to compete in the domestic market, which grew to over $6 billion last year, according to pharmaceutical research firm IMS Heath.

I’m sorry, but spending money on safety is an act of social responsibility—deal with it!

Tags: Diabetes

Extra Body Fat Increases Risk of Type-2 Diabetes

Posted on July 3, 2008 by Joel Fuhrman

The heavier you are, the greater the risk you will develop type-2 diabetes. For some susceptible individuals, even moderate amounts of excess fat on the body can trigger diabetes. When we have more fat on the body, more insulin is required to deliver glucose to the cells as the coating of fat around our cells makes it difficult for the hormone insulin to easily transport the glucose into the cells.

The pancreas is then required to produce even higher amounts of insulin to accommodate the heightened insulin requirements. This stresses the pancreas’s beta cells to work harder and eventually poop out, but also the effects of NOT eating a diet high in veggies, beans, seeds and fruits places the pancreas at further risk from oxidative stress.

For example, twenty pounds of extra fat may force the pancreas to produce twice as much insulin to do the necessary job. Fifty pounds or more of excess fat on our frame and the pancreas may be forced to produce 6 to 10 times as much insulin as a normal person who is lean. What do you think occurs after ten or twenty years of overworking the pancreas? Again, it poops out and loses the ability to keep up with such huge insulin demands. The pancreas is still overworked, pumping out much more insulin than a thinner person might need, but still not enough to cover all that disease-causing body fat.

Adult diabetes is a disease of insulin resistance, not of insulin deficiency. The pancreas's ability to secrete insulin continues to diminish as the diabetes continues and the overweight condition continues year after year. Total destruction of insulin secreting ability almost never occurs in type-2 (adult onset) as it does in type-1 (childhood onset) diabetes. But the sooner the type-2 diabetic can lose the extra weight causing the diabetes, the more functional reserve of insulin secreting cells in the pancreas will remain.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Obesity, Weight Loss

Bigger Belly Means Greater Death Risk

Posted on June 27, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

When Dr. Fuhrman wrote Eat to Live he pointed out that obesity is a major detriment to long term. It sets you up for a whole mess of health problems. Here’s an excerpt:

Obesity is an important predictor of chronic ailments and quality of life than any other public scourge. In a recent survey of 9,500 Americans, 36 percent were overweight and 23 percent were obese, yet only 19 percent were daily smokers and 6 percent heavy drinkers.

With time, the ravages of obesity predispose the typical American adult to depression, diabetes, and hypertension and increase the risks of death in all ages and in almost every ethnic and gender group. The U.S. Surgeon General has reported that 300,000 deaths annually are caused by or related to obesity.

Clearly he’s onto something. A new study has determined that a large waist circumference is linked to an increased risk of death. Reuters reports:

"People should not only look at their weight, but also consider their waist," Dr. Annemarie Koster of the National Institute on Aging, the lead researcher on the study, told Reuters Health.

Being overweight or obese is clearly bad for one's health, but the best way to gauge whether a person's fatness is putting them at risk has been "controversial," Koster and her team write in the American Journal of Epidemiology.

Body mass index, or BMI, has been the standard measurement used, they add, but the way fat is distributed throughout the body -- especially at the waistline -- may be even more important than how many excess pounds a person is carrying.

To investigate the relationship among belly fat, BMI and mortality, the researchers followed 245,533 men and women participating in the National Institutes of Health-American Association of Retired Persons study. Study participants ranged in age from 51 to 72 at the study's outset, and were followed for nine years.

Among men, the researchers found, those in the top fifth based on their waist circumference were about 22 percent more likely to die during the study period than men with trimmer waistlines, independent of BMI. A similar risk was seen among women.

Why are some many Americans obese? In his new book, Eat for Health, Dr. Fuhrman believes that people are simply making the wrong food choices. Take a look:

Many people suffer from medical ailments because they were never taught about their bodies’ nutritional requirements. We eat entirely too many low-nutrient foods, which gives us excessive calories without enough nutrients. Our nutrient-deprived body then craves more food, and the availability of calorie-rich, low-nutrient foods enables us to eat ourselves to death. A diet based on milk, meats, cheese, pasta, bread, fried foods, and sugar-filled snacks and drinks lays the groundwork for obesity, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, digestive disorders, and autoimmune illnesses.

Here’s an experiment. Go to the supermarket and count the number of people in the produce isle and then the snack food isle. Let me know what happens.

Tags: Blood Pressure, Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Diabetes Flying High in the United States

Posted on June 26, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

“As the number of people with type-two (adult onset) diabetes continues to soar, it is openly recognized that the growing waistline of the modern world is the main cause of this epidemic; however, most physicians, dieticians, and even the American Diabetes Association have virtually given up on weight reduction as the primary treatment for diabetics,” explains Dr. Fuhrman. I think he’s onto something, because a new report announces that U.S. diabetes rates have skyrocketed. The Associated Press is on it:

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based on data from 2007, said the number represents an increase of about 3 million over two years. The CDC estimates another 57 million people have blood sugar abnormalities called pre-diabetes, which puts people at increased risk for the disease.

The percentage of people unaware that they have diabetes fell from 30 percent to 25 percent, according to the study.

Dr. Ann Albright, director of the CDC Division of Diabetes Translation, said the report has "both good news and bad news."

"It is concerning to know that we have more people developing diabetes, and these data are a reminder of the importance of increasing awareness of this condition, especially among people who are at high risk," Albright said in a statement.

"On the other hand, it is good to see that more people are aware that they have diabetes."

It’s disheartening, especially when you consider that there’s an easier way. More from Dr. Fuhrman:

It is well accepted that if it were possible for people to stick with weight reduction and high nutrient eating, that route would be the most successful. Patients with diabetes who successfully lose weight from undergoing gastric bypass surgery typically see their diabetes melt away.1 Dietary programs that have been successful at effecting weight loss have been dramatically effective for diabetics too, enabling patients to discontinue medications.2 Preventing and reversing diabetes is not all about weight loss.

What sounds harder? Convincing people to stick themselves with needles for the rest of their life, or, eat better and feel great.
Continue Reading...

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Male Diabetics: Stay Fit, Live Longer

Posted on June 17, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

According to a new study fitness is a very important component in determine male diabetics’ lifespan. Kevin McKeever of HealthDay News is on it:

"Death rates were the highest for those who were 'low fit' in all weight categories," researcher Dr. Roshney Jacob-Issac, an endocrinology fellow at George Washington University Hospital, said in a prepared statement.

Researchers used 2,690 male diabetic veterans in VA hospitals, most of whom were overweight or obese based on their body mass index (BMI), a measure of body fat using height and weight.

The vets were categorized as having low, moderate or high fitness level, depending on their performance on a standard treadmill exercise tolerance test.

The researchers found that the higher the man's level of fitness, the lower his risk of dying during the study period. For example, those in the high fitness level -- whether at normal body weight or overweight -- reduced their risk of death by 40 percent. The findings were even more dramatic for those classified as obese but in reasonable good shape: a cut in death risk of 52 percent, when compared to peers not physically fit, the study found during its seven-year follow-up period.

"Diabetics should improve their fitness level or exercise capacity to at least a moderate level, by being physically active. Weight loss is great, but being active is just as important," Jacob-Issac advised.

If you ask me, exercise is always a good idea!

Eat For Health: For Diabetics

Posted on June 11, 2008 by Joel Fuhrman

This is an excerpt from Dr. Fuhrman’s book Eat For Health.

As the number of people with type-two (adult onset) diabetes continues to soar, it is openly recognized that the growing waistline of the modern world is the main cause of this epidemic; however, most physicians, dieticians, and even the American Diabetes Association have virtually given up on weight reduction as the primary treatment for diabetics. Consider this statement from a medical advisory committee: “It is nearly impossible to take very obese people and get them to lose significant weight. So rather than specifying an amount of weight loss, we are targeting getting metabolic control.” This is doublespeak for—our recommended diets don’t work, so we just give medications and watch patients gradually deteriorate as the diabetes advances. Today, medications are the mainstay of treatment and, unfortunately, most of these medications cause weight gain, worsening the syndrome and making the individual more diabetic. Additionally, the narrow focus on blood-sugar reduction and reliance on medications gives patients a false sense of security because they mistakenly think their somewhat better controlled glucose levels are an indication of restored or improved health. They continue to gain weight following the same dietary habits that originally caused the problem.

It is well accepted that if it were possible for people to stick with weight reduction and high nutrient eating, that route would be the most successful. Patients with diabetes who successfully lose weight from undergoing gastric bypass surgery typically see their diabetes melt away.1 Dietary programs that have been successful at effecting weight loss have been dramatically effective for diabetics too, enabling patients to discontinue medications.2 Preventing and reversing diabetes is not all about weight loss. The nutritional features of Eat for Health have profound effects on improving pancreatic function and lowering insulin resistance over and above what could be accomplished with weight loss alone. The increased fiber, micronutrients, and stool bulk, plus the cholesterol-lowering and anti-inflammatory effects of this eating-style, have dramatic effects on type-II diabetes. Scores of my patients have been able to restore their glucose levels to the normal range without any further need for medications. They have become non-diabetic. Even my thin, type-I, insulin-dependent diabetic patients are typically able to reduce their insulin requirements by almost half and have better glucose control using this high-nutrient eating-style.

Diets high in fiber and vegetables have been consistently shown to be beneficial for diabetic patients and offer considerably better results when compared to the current recommendations of the American Diabetic Association Diet.3 The dietary advice typically offered to diabetics is not science-based, and it caters to Americans’ social and food preferences and food addictions. In contrast, the qualities of an eating-style that maximizes benefits for weight reduction, cardio protection, and diabetes reversal are described in Eat for Health.

A success story from Eat for Health:

Martin's Diabetes and Diabetic Retinopathy
“Before I read Dr. Fuhrman’s book I weighed 205 pounds and had diabetes for seven years. The information enabled me to lose 60 pounds and get rid of my diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol without medication. My LDL cholesterol went from 168 to 73 in five months, and I successfully dropped my weight to 143 pounds. The most amazing thing is that my ophthalmologist had told me that I required laser surgery to treat diabetic retinopathy, but after changing my diet he found that the damage was no longer there and I didn’t require surgery. I am extremely grateful because I know Dr. Fuhrman has added many quality years to my life.”
Continue Reading...

Tags: Diabetes, Success Stories

Heart Health: No Point in Monitoring Blood Sugar?

Posted on June 10, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research contends that individuals with type-2 diabetes do not lower their heart attack and stroke risk by controlling their blood sugar. More from Gina Kolata of The New York Times:

The results provide more details and bolster findings reported in February, when one of the studies, by the National Institutes of Health, ended prematurely. At that time, researchers surprised diabetes experts with the announcement that study participants who were rigorously controlling their blood sugar actually had a higher death rate than those whose blood sugar control was less stringent.

Now the federal researchers are publishing detailed data from that study for the first time. Researchers in the second study, from Australia and involving participants from 20 countries, are also publishing their results on blood sugar and cardiovascular disease. That study did not find an increase in deaths, but neither did it find any protection from cardiovascular disease with rigorous blood sugar control.

Thus both studies failed to confirm a dearly held hypothesis that people with Type 2 diabetes could be protected from cardiovascular disease if they strictly controlled their blood sugar.

It was a hypothesis that seemed almost obvious. Cardiovascular disease accounts for 65 percent of deaths among people with Type 2 diabetes. And since diabetes is characterized by high levels of blood sugar, the hope was that if people with diabetes could just get their blood sugar as close to normal as possible, their cardiovascular disease rate would be nearly normal as well.

Dr. Fuhrman was not impressed by this report. His thoughts:

That is because when you are an overweight diabetic the metabolic consequences are not the blood sugar alone and taking drugs is not the answer. Some of the drugs (especially insulin) cause weight gain and make the metabolic syndrome worse. Losing weight, exercising and eating high on the nutrient density line is the answer, not more medications.

Not more medications! But how will the drug companies make bigger profits?

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research, Stroke

Blood Sugar, Not Just for Diabetics

Posted on June 5, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Diabetics know all about blood sugar, but it matters to non-diabetics too. So, when you make food choices, keep blood sugar in mind. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

The combination of fat and refined carbohydrates has an extremely powerful effect on driving the signals that promote fat accumulation on the body. Refined foods cause a swift and excessive rise in blood sugar, which in turn triggers insulin surges to drive the sugar out of the blood and into our cells. Unfortunately, insulin also promotes the storage of fat on the body and encourages your fat cells to swell.

As more fat is packed away on the body, it interferes with insulin uptake into our muscle tissues. Our pancreas then senses that the glucose level in the bloodstream is still too high and pumps out even more insulin. A little extra fat around our midsection results in so much interference with insulin’s effectiveness that two to five times as much insulin may be secreted in an overweight person than in a thin person.

And a new study insists that blood sugar levels are indeed important to diabetes-free people too. Reuters reports:

Only a few prospective studies have looked at associations between blood sugar levels among subjects initially free of diabetes and subsequent risk of death, Dr. Naomi Brewer, of Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand, and colleagues point out in the journal Diabetes Care.

Hemoglobin A1C testing -- a standard way to measure blood sugar -- was offered to people without diabetes during a screening program for hepatitis B in a region of New Zealand from 1999 to 2001. Mortality risk was examined to the end of 2004 in these subjects.

Among a total of 47,904 individuals, whose average age was 38 years, 815 died during the median follow-up of 4.4 years.

Brewer's team found that the risk of premature death rose in tandem with blood sugar levels. The risk of death increased steadily from the A1C "reference category" (4.0% to less than 5.0%) to the highest A1C category (7.0% or higher).

Sadly, I think too many people only worry about blood sugar after they’re staring at a diabetes diagnosis.

Tags: Diabetes, Hurtful Food, Research

Mediterranean Diet vs. Type-2 Diabetes

Posted on June 2, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Mediterranean diet is supposed to be healthy, but many members of my Italian, pasta and olive oil eating extended family have endured obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Is there something wrong here? Maybe so, Dr. Fuhrman explains:

In the 1950s people living in the Mediterranean, especially on the island of Crete, were lean and virtually free of heart disease. Yet over 40 percent of their caloric intake come from fat, primarily olive oil. If we look at the diet they consumed back then, we note that Cretans ate mostly fruits, vegetables, beans and some fish. Saturated fat was less than 6 percent of their total fat intake. True, they ate lots of olive oil, but the rest of their diet was exceptionally healthy. They also worked hard in the fields, walking about nine miles a day, often pushing a plow or working other manual farm equipment.

Well, my family does eat a lot of olive and fish, but they’re certainly not plowing any fields. Actually, their diet and lifestyle is more like the diet of modern Crete. Back to Dr. Fuhrman:

Today the people of Crete are fat, just like us. They're still eating alot of olive oil, but their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and beans is down. Meat, cheese, and fish are their new staples, and their physical activity level has plummeted. Today, heart disease has skyrocketed and more than half the population of both adults and children in Crete is overweight.1

So I’m not sure you can bank on the results of this study. According to new research in the British Medical Journal adhering to a Mediterranean diet can protect you against developing type-2 diabetes. HealthDay News reports:

A Mediterranean diet is often recommended as a way to guard against cardiovascular disease, but whether it protects against diabetes hasn't been established. The diet emphasizes olive oil, vegetables, fruits, nuts, cereals, legumes and fish, and deemphasizes meat and dairy products.

"The Mediterranean diet is a healthful eating plan that seems to help in the prevention of heart disease," said Connie Diekman, director of university nutrition at Washington University in St. Louis, who was not involved with the study. "Consumption of the Mediterranean diet will support health and may aid in the prevention of several diseases," she added.

For the study, published online May 30 in the British Medical Journal, researchers tracked the diets of 13,380 Spanish university graduates with no history of diabetes. Participants filled out a 136-item food questionnaire, which measured their entire diet (including their intake of fats), their cooking methods and their use of dietary supplements.

During an average of 4.4 years of follow-up, the team found that people who adhered to a Mediterranean diet had a lower risk of developing type 2 diabetes. In fact, those who stuck very closely to the diet reduced their risk by 83 percent.

I think what attracts people to the Mediterranean diet is that it sound exotic and it is better than the Standard American Diet, but it’s not good enough! Time to start eating a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet!
Continue Reading...

Tags: Diabetes, Diet Myths, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

About Food and Diabetes

Posted on May 27, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Some health experts examine food issues surrounding type-2 diabetes. More from Peter Jaret of The New York Times:

Experts have yet to come up with anything close to a surefire approach to help people shed pounds. And dietary recommendations to prevent or slow diabetes have often been contradictory and confusing. Nearly 30 years after the American Diabetes Association recommended a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet to control diabetes, overturning the high-fat, low-carbohydrate approach of earlier decades, controversy still swirls around the amount and types of carbohydrates to eat.

Much of the debate focuses on the glycemic index, a measure of how carbohydrate-rich foods affect blood sugar, and whether these effects play a significant role in the progression of Type 2 diabetes. Foods high on the glycemic index, like sugared beverages, cake and white rice, are known to send blood sugar levels up sharply after a meal. Foods low on the index, like broccoli, lettuce, brown rice and whole grains, on the other hand, take longer to digest and hence keep blood sugar levels on a more even keel.

The American Diabetes Association has decided that patients should not be counseled to take the glycemic index into account when choosing foods. “Although it is clear that carbohydrates do have differing glycemic responses,” its policy statement declares, “the data reveal no clear trend in outcome benefits.”

That’s a mistake, says Dr. David Ludwig, an endocrinologist at Children’s Hospital in Boston and an associate professor at Harvard Medical School.

I think these “experts” should give Dr. Fuhrman a call or at least snoop around DiseaseProof’s diabetes category—don’t you think?

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food

Diabetes: Eat and Live Well...

Posted on May 23, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

According to a new study drinking less alcohol, eating more veggies, and exercising can hold off diabetes. Michael Kahn of Reuters reports:

Diet and exercise reduced the incidence of diabetes by about 43 percent over 20 years among 577 high-risk Chinese adults, the researchers reported in the journal Lancet.

At the end of the 20 years, 80 percent of those who changed what they ate and exercised more had diabetes, compared with 93 percent who made no changes, said Guangwei Li of the China-Japan Friendship Hospital in Beijing and Ping Zhang at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The findings came as part of a series of studies addressing new research about diabetes, which affects 246 million adults worldwide, and accounts for 6 percent of all global deaths.

"The challenge is to translate research findings into substantial clinical improvements for patients. Although prospects are hopeful, they are not assured," the Lancet wrote in a commentary.

Sometimes the answers are SO obvious, but still overlooked—sigh.

Tags: Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

America Hopped Up on Prescription Drugs

Posted on May 15, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A new report claims more than half of Americans are taking some sort of prescription medication; mostly for heart disease, obesity, and diabetes. More from the Associated Press:

Experts say the data reflect not just worsening public health but better medicines for chronic conditions and more aggressive treatment by doctors. For example, more people are now taking blood pressure and cholesterol-lowering medicines because they need them, said Dr. Daniel W. Jones, president of the American Heart Association.

In addition, there is the pharmaceutical industry's relentless advertising. With those factors unlikely to change, doctors say the proportion of Americans on chronic medications can only grow.

"Unless we do things to change the way we're managing health in this country ... things will get worse instead of getting better," predicted Jones, a heart specialist and dean of the University of Mississippi's medical school.

Americans buy much more medicine per person than any other country. But it was unclear how their prescriptions compare to those of insured people elsewhere. Comparable data were not available for Europe, for instance.

Americans love magic pills. Kind of agrees with yesterday’s post, Have a Healthy Heart!

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Cow's Milk and Diabetes

Posted on May 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A new Finnish study claims consuming dairy products early on correlates with diabetes risk. NewScientist is on it:

One explanation is that beta-lactoglobulin, a protein in cow's, but not human, milk prompts babies to make antibodies that also attack glycodelin, a protein vital for training the immune system. The mistuned immune system then mistakenly destroys insulin-producing pancreatic cells, leading to type 1 diabetes.

“The mistuned immune system mistakenly destroys insulin-producing cells”

Now Marcia Goldfarb of the company Anatek-EP in Portland, Maine, has found that five children with type 1 diabetes, who were fed cow's-milk formula, all have antibodies to beta-lactoglobulin.

Not that surprising. Cow’s milk is not exactly good for you, especially for kids. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

The leading cause of digestive intolerance leading to stomach complaints is dairy products. Many kids have subtle allergies to cow's milk that perpetuate their nasal congestion, leading to ear infections.

Milk, which is designed by nature for the rapidly growing cow, has about half its calories supplied from fat. The fatty component is concentrated more to make cheese and butter. Milk and cheese are the foods Americans encourage their children to eat, believing them to be healthy foods. Fifty years of heavy advertising by an economically powerful industry has shaped the public's perception, illustrating the power of one-sided advertising, but the reality and true health effects on our children is a different story. Besides the link between high-saturated-fat foods (dairy fat) and cancer, there is a body of scientific literature linking the consumption of cow's milk to many other diseases. If we expect our children to resist many common illnesses, they simply must consume less milk, cheese, and butter. Dairy foods should be consumed in limited quantity or not at all.

Cow's milk contains the calcium people need, but other foods are rich in calcium, too, including vegetables, beans, nuts, and seeds. Today we do not need to rely on cows for our calcium. We can eat greens directly for calcium, the place where cows get it to begin with, and orange juice and soy milks are fortified with calcium and vitamin D, too. It is easy to meet our nutrient needs for these substances without the risks of cow's milk.

Yucky, milk makes me nauseas.

Tags: Diabetes, Hurtful Food, Research

Health Points: Friday

Posted on May 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Officials from Monterey County, California have issued a warning on all meat products. From The Monterey County Herald:

York company voluntarily recalled more than 286,000 pounds of its products.

Officials said certain products labeled Gourmet Boutique, Jan's and Archer Farms may be contaminated with Listeria monocytogenes, although there were no reports of illness before the recall.

Listeria can cause a potentially fatal disease that it is rarely contracted by healthy people, the Monterey County Health Department reported. Symptoms include high fever, severe headaches, neck stiffness and nausea. Rare but serious symptoms can occur in those with compromised immune systems. Pregnant women make up about a third of listeriosis cases, health officials said.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention arthritis hits more than half of diabetics. HealthDay News reports:

Arthritis strikes more than half of the 20.6 million American adults who have diabetes, and the painful joint condition may be a barrier to exercise among these patients, a new government report shows.

Being physically active helps people manage both diseases better by controlling blood sugar levels and reducing joint pain, according to the report in the May 9 issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, a publication of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"The prevalence of arthritis is astoundingly high in people with diabetes," said Dr. John H. Klippel, president and CEO of the Arthritis Foundation. "Over half the people with diabetes have arthritis."

Stephen Smith of The Boston Globe examines ways seniors can prevent injury from a fall. Check it out:

Nudging reluctant seniors to take physical fitness classes represents just one strategy to reduce the risk of falling. It's also vital to evaluate their vision and the medications they're taking. Aged pupils, for example, don't dilate as well in darkness or constrict as well in brightness.

One study showed that falls decreased 34 percent among seniors who had the milky opaqueness of a cataract removed from their eyes. Some specialists also point to bifocals and trifocals, which can blur vision, as potentially contributing to falls.

It's also common for lighting to be so inadequate that navigation of hallways and rooms can be treacherous, said Dr. Gary Chu, vice president for community collaborations at the New England Eye Institute.

Lance Armstrong is one of the people pushing a ban on smoking in public places across the United States. From the AFP:

"I've asked all the presidential candidates whether America should be smoke-free," he told a Senate committee hearing on how to tackle cancer.

"The consensus is that it's better left to the cities and states," he said, agreeing that state- or community-level bans were "the way to go."

"Second-hand smoking is something I'm very passionate about," he told the committee.

It seems trees help kids breathe easier. More from The Chicago Tribune:

Young children who live in neighborhoods with lots of trees have lower rates of asthma than children who reside in areas with fewer trees, a new study finds. Researchers looked at asthma rates among children age 4 to 5 in New York City. Asthma rates decreased by almost one-quarter for every standard deviation increase in tree density, equivalent to 343 trees per square kilometer, the study found. The researchers said that trees may help reduce asthma rates by encouraging children to play outdoors more or by improving air quality.

New research suggests that men might also get postpartum depression. WebMD is on it:

Male postpartum depression may have more negative effects on some aspects of a child's development than its female counterpart, says James F. Paulson, PhD, of the Center for Pediatric Research at the Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, Va.

Paulson and colleagues reviewed data on more than 5,000 two-parent families with children aged 9 months.

They found that one in 10 new dads met standard criteria for moderate to severe postpartum depression.

That's a "striking increase" from the 3% to 5% of men in the general population that have depression, Paulson tells WebMD.

A new study has determined that firefighters show a higher risk of developing certain cancers. Reuters reports:

In the current study, researchers found that professional firefighters had higher-than-expected rates of colon cancer and brain cancer. There was also evidence, albeit weaker, that they had elevated risks of bladder and kidney cancers, as well as Hodgkin's lymphoma.

Dr. Letitia Davis with the Massachusetts Department of Public Health in Boston, and colleagues report the findings in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine.

Firefighters are exposed to many potentially cancer-causing chemicals released from burning materials. At the scene of the fire, toxic substances such as benzene, lead, uranium and asbestos can be inhaled or absorbed through the skin.

According to research, weight-loss medications may harm children’s developing brains. Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters explains:

A drug from a new class of weight-loss treatments disrupted wiring needed for brain development in young mice, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday, raising concerns about using such medications in children.

Mark Bear and colleagues at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology studied the effects of a chemical that suppresses appetite by blocking cannabinoid receptors in the brain, the same brain mechanisms that make people hungry when they smoke marijuana.

"I think that the cautionary note is that these mechanisms play an important role in ... brain development," said Bear, whose study appears in the journal Neuron.

Tara Parker-Pope of the Well blog wonders when breast biopsies aren’t necessary. Here’s a bit:

Even a benign lesion on a mammogram makes women and doctors nervous, and doctors sometimes recommend a biopsy anyway. But new data show that waiting six months for a follow-up mammogram is a safe option.

Researchers tracked more than 45,000 women who were given six-month follow-up mammograms after an initial scan found lesions that were “probably” benign. In most cases, they were. Only about one in 100 women were eventually diagnosed with cancer six to 12 months later, according to the study, which appears in the May issue of the American Journal of Roentgenology.

New research indicates high blood sugar can lead to adverse pregnancy outcomes. Reuters is on it:

It is well known that high blood sugar levels indicative of the diabetes that occurs during pregnancy present risks for expectant mothers and their infants. The current study is believed to be the first to show that higher blood sugar levels -- not high enough to be considered diabetes -- also convey these increased risks.

In a study of nearly 24,000 pregnant women who had their blood sugar levels tested between 24 and 32 weeks of pregnancy, researchers found that the higher the mother's blood sugar level, the greater the chances that she would require Caesarean delivery and deliver an abnormally large baby.

Tags: Asthma, Cancer, Depression, Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Food, Healthy Parenting, Healthy Pregnancy, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research, Toxins, Weight Loss

NYC: Supermarkets Packing Up Shop

Posted on May 6, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

More and more supermarkets are leaving New York City, making it hard for many people to find healthy fresh food in their neighborhoods. David Gonzalez of The New York Times reports:

The dearth of nearby supermarkets is most severe in minority and poor neighborhoods already beset by obesity, diabetes and heart disease.

According to the food workers union, only 550 decently sized supermarkets — each occupying at least 10,000 square feet — remain in the city…

… In some cases, the old storefronts have been converted to drug stores that stand to make money coming and going — first selling processed foods and sodas, then selling medicines for illnesses that could have been prevented by a better diet.

The supermarket closings — not confined to poor neighborhoods — result from rising rents and slim profit margins, among other causes. They have forced residents to take buses or cabs to the closest supermarkets in some areas. Those with cars can drive, but the price of gasoline is making some think twice about that option. In many places, residents said the lack of competition has led to rising prices in the remaining stores…

…The lack of easily available fresh food has prompted city and state officials to convene several task forces to address the public health implications.

The recent study conducted by the Department of City Planning estimated that as many as three million New Yorkers live in what are considered high-need neighborhoods — communities characterized by not enough supermarkets and too many health problems.

This is a major reason why certain neighborhoods in New York have staggering rates of obesity and diabetes. More from this New York Times miniseries:

As someone who eats primarily fruits and vegetables, and, wants to live in New York, I’m concerned. I need a steady stream of fresh produce.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research

Broncos QB Has Type 1 Diabetes

Posted on May 2, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler has been diagnosed with Type 1 Diabetes. Pat Graham of the Associated Press reports:

The 25-year-old Cutler found out about two weeks ago that he was diabetic and needed daily insulin injections, Garafalo told The Associated Press.

He said Cutler was managing his disease and “in no way is his football career jeopardized.”

Some 21 million Americans have diabetes, meaning their bodies cannot properly turn blood sugar into energy. Either they don’t produce enough insulin or don’t use it correctly. With the Type 1 form, the body’s immune system attacks insulin-producing pancreatic cells, so that patients require insulin injections to survive.

“It’s something that he’s dealing with and something a lot of other people have,” Garafalo said. “Even though it’s a serious condition, it’s a condition that can be managed. That’s the way he’s treating it right now.

“Everything’s fine,” Garafalo continued. “His condition is fine.”

Tough break for a rising star—as a Raiders fan that was hard for me to say—but there is plenty of hope for Type 1 diabetics. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

I find that when type 1 diabetics adopt a nutritarian lifestyle, they can lower their insulin requirements by about half. They no longer have swings of highs and lows, and their glucose levels and lipids stay under excellent control. In other words, it is not Type 1 diabetes itself that causes such negative health consequences. Rather, it is the combination of the diabetes and the typical nutritional “advice” given to these patients—advice that requires them to take large amounts of unnecessary insulin.

The extra insulin and the high glucose levels raise lipids, accelerate atherosclerosis, and damage the body. With this in mind, it should be clear that while the Standard American Diet (SAD), which has spread to all industrialized nations, is dangerous for everyone, it is particularly deadly for diabetics.

With a truly health-supporting lifestyle, including exercise and real food designed by nature, the type 1 diabetic can have the same potential for a long, disease-free life as everyone else. Even though the type 1 diabetic still will require exogenous (external) insulin, they will no longer need excessive amounts of it.

Odds are Jay’s diet could use an overhaul because as we’ve seen many professional athletes don’t exactly make wise food choices.

Tags: Diabetes

More Expecting Moms Diabetic...

Posted on April 29, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A new study has discovered that the number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes has more than doubled in seven years. Alicia Chang of the Associated Press reports:

The researchers focused on health records from more than 175,000 ethnically diverse women who gave birth in a dozen Kaiser hospitals in Southern California from 1999 to 2005. Experts believe the findings likely reflect the overall U.S. population.

The actual number of pregnant women with pre-existing diabetes was small. In 1999, there were 245 such women; by 2005, there were 537. That translates to a rate that rose from 8 per 1,000 pregnancies to 18 per 1,000.

The rate increased the greatest among 13- to 19-year-olds giving birth. It ballooned from about 1 per 1,000 pregnancies to 5.5 per 1,000 during the seven-year period.

Blacks, Asians and Hispanics were more likely to have diabetes before pregnancy than whites.

The rise of diabetes among women of childbearing age mirrors the prevalence of the disease in the general population. The most common form of diabetes is Type 2, which is linked to obesity.

About 15 million people in the United States are diagnosed with diabetes, and 1.5 million new cases were diagnosed in people age 20 and older in 2005, according to the American Diabetes Association.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Parenting, Healthy Pregnancy, Research

Inhaled Insulin, Lung Cancer Risk

Posted on April 10, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Pfizer has announced that clinical trials of Exubera resulted in increased cases of lung cancer. Lewis Krauskopf of Reuters is on it:

Pfizer Inc and Nektar Therapeutics said on Wednesday clinical trials of the inhaled insulin Exubera found increased cases of lung cancer, leading Nektar to stop seeking a marketing partner for the troubled product and abandon it.

Nektar shares tumbled 25 percent, while shares of MannKind Corp, which has been developing its own inhaled insulin, plummeted 58 percent. Pfizer was down slightly at $20.90.

The lung-cancer revelation dealt a final setback to Exubera, which held the promise of letting diabetics avoid needle sticks and was once projected by Pfizer to be a $2 billion-a-year blockbuster. Instead, Exubera has been a commercial flop that has sullied the inhaled insulin field.

Scary, but not that surprising, because—good or bad—Dr. Fuhrman insists all drugs futz with the normal functioning of the body:

In the first pharmacology lecture that I head in medical school, the physician impressed on us that all drugs are toxic and we should never forget this. We were taught that medications work because of their pharmacologic properties—properties that enable the substance to interfere with, block, or stimulate an activity of the body. Drugs typically modify the way the body expresses the signs and symptoms of disease, but in chronic disease states, they do no undo the damage or remove the disease.

My suspicion is this concept often more often than not, takes a backseat to the pursuit of profits and convenience.

Tags: Diabetes, Lung Cancer, Research, Toxins

NYC: Fatter, More Diabetes

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Unfortunately the Big Apple is getting bigger and less apple-er. Obesity and diabetes rates are rising in NYC. The Associated Press reports:

New York City's obesity and diabetes rates are rising faster than in the rest of the country, a city health department study said.

New York's obesity and diabetes rates each jumped by 17 percent between 2002 and 2004, according to the city Department of Health and Hygiene study. The national obesity rate rose by 6 percent during the same time period, while the diabetes rate held steady nationally at 7 percent, according to the study, published in this month's issue of the journal Preventing Chronic Disease.

Some 173,500 adult New Yorkers became obese and more than 73,000 were newly diagnosed with diabetes over the two-year period, the city said. In 2002, 19.5 percent of the city's adults were obese; in 2004, 22.8 percent were, the study said.

Don’t follow the crowd. Next time you’re in NYC try popping into one of these healthy restaurants:

Actually, I got to get my butt to Central Park—stat!

Tags: Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Tai Chi and Diabetes

Posted on April 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research claims practicing Tai Chi may help lower or control type-2 diabetes risk. Amy Norton of Reuters reports:

In one study, Taiwanese researchers found that tai chi helped lower long-term blood sugar levels in 30 middle-aged adults with type 2 diabetes. In the second, an Australian team found that a combination of tai chi and qigong benefited 11 adults at risk of type 2 diabetes.

Both tai chi and qigong (pronounced "chee-kung") are ancient Chinese practices designed to promote good health. Qigong combines gentle movements, meditation and breathing techniques; tai chi involves slow, fluid movements combined with mental imagery and deep breathing.

Both are moderate, low-impact activities, and recent studies suggest that older adults could reap a number of health benefits from tai chi, such as lower blood pressure, a reduced fall risk and improved arthritis symptoms.

The new studies, both published online by the British Journal of Sports Medicine, suggest that tai chi might aid in managing type 2 diabetes or metabolic syndrome -- a collection of risk factors for diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

I’ve never tried Tai Chi—have you?

Tags: Diabetes, Exercise

Don't Want Diabetes, Get Moving

Posted on April 4, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

“An essential component of my prescription for diabetes is daily exercise,” explains Dr. Fuhrman.
And so it seems exercise and bodyweight really do impact diabetes risk. Reuters reports:

Lower cardiorespiratory fitness and higher body weight are independently associated with the development of type 2 diabetes in women, new research suggests.

"These findings underscore the critical importance of promoting regular physical activity and maintaining normal weight for diabetes prevention," Dr. Xuemei Sui, of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, said in an interview with Reuters Health.

Sui and associates followed 6,249 women between the ages of 20 and 79 years for 17 years. The women were free of heart disease, cancer, and diabetes at the outset.

A total of 143 women developed type 2 diabetes during follow up. After adjusting for a number of factors including body weight, women in the middle and upper thirds of cardiorespiratory fitness, as determined by a treadmill exercise test, had significantly lower risks of diabetes compared to the least fit third.

Granted, not exactly NEW information, but, an important reminder nonetheless.

Heart Health: Bad News, Good News, Stupid News...

Posted on April 2, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Quick, panic! A new study claims that people with diabetes have the same heart attack risk as individuals who have already had a heart attack. Reuters reports:

The finding, which appears in the American Heart Association's journal Circulation, comes from a study of 3.3 million residents of Denmark who were at least 30 years of age. Overall, 2.2 percent of subjects had diabetes and 2.4 percent had a prior heart attack.

Dr. Tina Ken Schramm and colleagues found that, compared with men without diabetes or a prior heart attack, those with diabetes were 2.32-times more likely to experience a stroke, heart attack or death from cardiovascular causes, and those with a prior heart attack were 2.48-times more likely.

For women, the corresponding risks were raised 2.48- and 2.71-times.

You’ve got to do something! How about exercise? New research suggests that modest exercise can fight heart disease. More from the AFP:

French doctors on Tuesday said that an overview of the latest research into sport and good health proved that moderate, frequent exercise combated the risk of heart disease, diabetes, colon cancer, respiratory disease and depression.

The report by the National Institute for Health and Medical Research (Inserm) sets a benchmark, for adults, of at least 30 minutes of modest exercise, such as fast walking, at least five times a week, or 20 minutes of harder exercise, such as jogging, three times a week.

Young people are advised to do twice this regime to maintain fitness.

Good, but if you like bike riding. You might want to stay away from The Stupidest Bike Lane in America. Well passes it along:

Now, just in case you haven’t had enough stupid yet. Check out these Weight Loss Sunglasses. No, I’m not joking. Diet Blog is all over it:

This snazzy creation is designed to give food a blue tinge - theoretically rendering food dull and unpalatable. Kind of the opposite phenomenon of "beer goggles"?

While your first instinct may be to snicker (as it should be), there is actual physiological and psychological rationale to this theory: Certain colours tend to stimulate appetite, while others tend to deter it. Apparently, blue is considered to be the least appetizing color of the spectrum, with red and yellow being at the opposite end as a hunger stimulant.

Well George Carlin said it best, in life, there’re a few winners, and a whole-lot of losers. Short bike lanes and magic sunglasses—LOSERS!

Tags: Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Colon Cancer, Diabetes, Obesity, Research, Weight Loss

Health Points: Tuesday

Posted on March 25, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Colorado’s city water might be causing all the salmonella outbreaks. The Associated Press reports:

Of 216 reported cases so far, 68 have been confirmed by lab results, public information officer Jim Shires said. Nine people have been hospitalized, but only one was believed to still be in the hospital, Shires said.

Shires is part of a nine-person incident management team from Jefferson County that arrived to help Alamosa officials respond to the outbreak, which health officials said may be caused by the municipal water system.

Getting plenty of vitamin D as a kid cuts your diabetes risk later in life. More from HealthDay News:

Children who take vitamin D supplements may be less likely to develop type 1 diabetes later in life, according to researchers who analyzed the findings of five previously published studies.

The researchers found that children who were given additional vitamin D were about 30 percent less likely to develop type 1 diabetes than children who didn't receive vitamin D supplements. The evidence also indicated that the higher and more regular the dose of vitamin D, the lower the risk of developing diabetes.

Got cellulite? Exercise and diet are still the best ways to get rid of it. Jay Blahnik of The Los Angeles Times reports:

It is tempting to look for a quick fix to cellulite, especially when so many advertisements claim to provide a solution. Unfortunately, there is no overnight cure. Nothing can get below the surface of the skin and rearrange the connective tissue or fat cells underneath. Because fat is compressible, some procedures, such as body wraps, may appear to provide a solution to smoothing the skin. But any visible effects will be temporary -- unlikely to last more than 24 hours…

…You can diminish the appearance of cellulite or reduce the chances you will get it with regular exercise, especially strength training. A good strength-training program will increase your chances of maintaining lean muscle as you get older, and this in turn reduces your chances of increasing the size of your fat cells.

Sara Snow of TreeHugger recently explored a natural products expo. Check it out:

But as I think about it more, I realize that when organic really pays is when this money—the very money we raised the other night—goes to fund new research that then gets into the hands of the people who really need it, such as a mom who learns that feeding their children organic foods can reduce their dietary pesticide exposure by 97 percent, and then makes the immediate switch to organic baby food. Or, people who learn that of the 11 most important nutrients, organic foods contain, on average, 25 percent higher concentrations of these nutrients, and then switch to organics in order to feed their bodies more nutrient-dense foods. How about the farmer who learns that even very low levels of organophosphate insecticides can disrupt developing brains and nervous systems, and then immediately stops spraying his crops for the sake of the health of his grandbabies growing up in a house across the field. Or a diabetes sufferer who learns that eating vegetables rich in fiber, antioxidants, and magnesium could lead to a 28 percent lower risk of Type-2 diabetes, and then starts serving his children more vegetables, so they don’t have to suffer the way mom and dad did.

Dieticians are VERY nervous about all-you-can-eat baseball seats. The Associated Press reports:

"Just what the world doesn't need is another way to get as much food as they want whenever they want it," said Jeanne Goldberg, a professor of nutrition science at Tufts' Friedman School of Nutrition.

The unlimited quantity has turned some sporting events into games of can-you-top-this in the stands, with fans competing to see who can shovel the most hot dogs down their gullets. But for the most part, the scene is the same as in any other section.

"People knocking that stuff back isn't exactly the prettiest thing to watch," Drew Nurenberg, 30, of Malvern, Pennsylvania, who bought all-you-can-eat seats with his wife for a Philadelphia Flyers game last month, said. He added: "People looked like they were taking advantage of it, but not overly taking advantage."

Some people believe “comprehensive action” is needed to fight obesity—whatever that means. More from Reuters:

The problem of obesity cannot be reduced simply to genetics, the researchers said, and it also cannot be blamed solely on our environments or learned behaviors. Media coverage, they advised, should highlight that the obesity epidemic is the result of a variety of factors, and that change requires a comprehensive approach that tackles the problem from all sides.

"Obesity's not rocket science," said Dr. Diane Finegood, director of CIHR's Institute for Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes. "It's a lot more complex."

Arthritis, is diet our only hope? Julie’s Health club explores the issue, with quotes from T. Colin Campbell. Take a look:

Is this news? Not to T. Colin Campbell, author of the book "The China Study," which details the connection between nutrition and heart disease, diabetes and cancer.

"I get frustrated when I see articles like this--time and time again--being published by researchers who know not that much of their findings have already been shown before," Campbell said, when I asked him if he'd seen the study.

"These earlier results are simply ignored, thus awaiting rediscovery by some future researcher or medical practitioner. This is the main question for so many similar reports...why haven't we heard this before?"

More and more young teens are hanging out at the gym. Megan Twohey of The Chicago Tribune reports:

It used to be that the only teens seen at a gym were students on athletic teams, intent on additional training.

But in recent years, some Chicago-area gyms have become preferred hangouts for a growing number of high school students who want to be fit and healthy. Many also have discovered that gyms provide something equally important: a place to gossip, flirt and socialize with peers.

Tags: Arthritis, Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Food, Obesity, Research, Toxins

Health Points: Monday

Posted on March 17, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Exercise, good for your body, good for your brain. Shari Roan of The Los Angeles Times reports:

When he became a psychiatrist in the 1970s, John Ratey didn't expect to evolve into an exercise buff. But today, the Harvard University professor and expert in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder calls exercise the single most important tool people have to optimize brain function…

…Exercise, particularly aerobic exercise, can improve cognitive performance, soften the effects of stress, help fend off addiction-related cravings and tone down the negative consequences of women's hormonal changes, Ratey says. When it comes to psychiatric disorders, he calls exercise "one of the best treatments we have."

Here’s a shocker. It seems antibiotics are over-prescribed for common viruses. Reuters reports:

Bacteria can cause rhinosinusitis -- an inflammation of the sinuses -- but a virus such as the common cold is often a more likely culprit so antibiotics seldom work, the researchers reported in the journal Lancet.

Yet doctors still dole out the drugs more than they should. In the United States, for instance, 80 percent of sinus patients are prescribed an antibiotic while the proportion ranges from 72 percent to 92 percent in Europe.

"What tends to happen in practice is when patients have had symptoms for a while and go see their family doctor, the doctor assumes they have a bacterial infection and gives them antibiotics," said James Young, a statistician at the University Hospital Basel, who led the study.

You might think rich people are healthier, but the fat works against them. From Marilyn Elias of USA Today:

In the new study of about 5,000 adults, the college-educated with household incomes of more than $75,000 a year had much less of a blood protein linked to heart disease than did the poorer or less educated - as long as they weren't overweight.

But as weight crept up, so did C-reactive protein in the blood, a sign of inflamed tissue that can lead to blocked coronary arteries, says Cathy Bykowski, a psychologist at the University of South Florida in Tampa.

That's not surprising, because excess body fat is known to increase the protein, she says.

Not getting enough sleep might mean having more than enough fat. Serena Gordon of HealthDay News explains:

New research suggests that people who don't get enough sleep tend to weigh more -- and that sleep can affect levels of the appetite-regulating hormones leptin and ghrelin.

"There is a dynamic balance between proper sleep and proper health. Sleep deprivation affects weight and a lot of other things. If you cheat sleep, there are a number of consequences, including affecting your hormones, appetite and mood," said Dr. Patrick Strollo, medical director of the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center's Sleep Medicine Center.

Lego blocks are being used to help children with autism. Marie McCullough of The Philadelphia Inquirer reports:

At first glance, the $45 session just looked like a bunch of boys having fun, not surprising since Lego Club members have good language skills and average or above-average intelligence. In contrast, children at the severe end of the autism spectrum may be mute and have catatonic behaviors.

But signs of problems were soon evident. A boy wearing a long-sleeve T-shirt stood amid the hubbub, staring at the floor, obsessively pulling the hem of his shirt - until leader Greg Shugar gently drew him into an activity. At a table, Lily Brown, another leader, helped two boys revise their "script" - a sheet of lined paper covered with angry scratch-outs and scribbles.

Jonathan Shanahan, 13, of Riverton, rocked from foot to foot and acknowledged that earlier that day, in school, he threw a pencil at a classmate.

"He's my archrival," Jonathan declared, holding a winged Lego beast he had created.

Findings have determined that breastfeeding helps reduce the risk of type-2 diabetes. More from Reuters:

Breast-fed babies appear to be less likely to develop type 2 diabetes when they reach adolescence, according to findings published in the medical journal Diabetes Care.

"Dramatic increases in childhood obesity and the emergence of type 2 diabetes in youth motivate research to identify lifestyle approaches to primary prevention of both conditions," write Dr. Elizabeth J. Mayer-Davis of the University of South Carolina, Columbia, and colleagues.

Fitness Magazine spotlights some very important nutrients. Here some noteworthy ones. Take a look:

Folate
Use: To improve heart health

Why it works: Folate and other B vitamins help break down excess homocysteine -- an amino acid that can damage the inner lining of arteries -- possibly reducing the risk of heart disease.

Daily intake: 400 mcg

Best food sources: 1/2 cup cooked asparagus (134 mcg), 1 cup raw spinach (58 mcg), 1/2 cup cooked lentils (179 mcg)

I’m not much of a cyclist, but this is a very practical invention—it’d be cool in the disco too—via TreeHugger:

A team of scientists believe that vitamin D may cut diabetes risk. More from EMaxHealth:

Type 1 diabetes occurs because of pancreatic beta cell damage. These cells are responsible for insulin hormone production. The disease is becoming more common and it is expected to increase by 40% in 2010, compared to 2000.

The study showed that those suffering from type 1 diabetes have lower levels of vitamin D and are common in countries with less sunlight. It is well known that sunlight exposure stimulates vitamin D production and that supplement intake without sunlight exposure doesn't mean anything.

Lack of vitamin D is previously linked to autoimmune disorders, and this new study shows another key role of vitamins in health.

According to a new study overweight women get worse breast cancer. Reuters is on it:

Breast cancer patients who are overweight have more aggressive disease and are likely to die sooner, U.S. researchers reported on Friday.

A dangerous type of breast cancer, known as inflammatory breast cancer, was seen in 45 percent of obese patients, compared with 30 percent of overweight patients and 15 percent of patients of healthy weight.

"The more obese a patient is, the more aggressive the disease," said Dr. Massimo Cristofanilli of the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, who led the study.

Tags: Breast Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Depression, Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Food, Healthy Parenting, Healthy Pregnancy, Obesity, Research, Toxins

Food Scoring Guide: Key to Superior Health and Your Ideal Weight

Posted on March 14, 2008 by Joel Fuhrman

When you eat to maximize micronutrients in relation to calories, your body functions will normalize; chronic illnesses such as high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol melt away; and you maintain your youthful vigor into old age. Heart disease and cancer would fade away and become exceedingly rare if people adopted a lifestyle of nutritional excellence. But in the here and now, what is exciting to so many people is that when your diet is high enough in micronutrients, excess weight drops off at a relatively fast rate. It’s like you had your stomach stapled. You simply don’t crave to overeat anymore. In fact, it becomes too difficult to overeat when you eat your fill of high-micronutrient food.

The mistake of focusing on the “importance” of protein in the diet is one of the major reasons Americans have been led down the path to dietary suicide. For too long, we have equated protein with good nutrition and have thought that animal—products in spite of the fact that they are deficient or devoid of most micronutrients—are highly favorable foods simply because they are rich in complete proteins. This miscalculation has cost us dearly. By favoring a dairy- and meat-heavy diet, instead of one rich in fruits, vegetables, and beans, we have brought forth an epidemic of heart attacks and cancers.

Tags: Blood Pressure, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food

Diabetes, Exercise, Insulin, and Fat

Posted on March 11, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Exercise seems to boost insulin-making cells. Reuters reports:

After the exercise period, study participants' sensitivity to insulin had increased by 53 percent, on average, while a measure of beta cell function called the disposition index had risen by 28 percent. However there were no changes in their fat mass, levels of fat in the blood, or other factors that might explain the effect of exercise on beta cells.

"Longer-term exercise training studies are required and are currently in progress to evaluate further exercise training effects on beta cell function in age-related glucose intolerance," the researchers note.

Yup, exercise is good for diabetics. Dr. Fuhrman’s on it:

The most effective prescription for diabetes is exercise. An essential component of my prescription for diabetes is daily exercise; it is more important than daily medication. Two hundred calories a day of formal exercise on an incline treadmill and an elliptical machine are a great goal to shoot for. It is not an official recommendation of anyone except me.

But research has determined fat is bad for diabetes. More from Reuters:

Fat mass in adulthood was the only measurement that showed a significant association with insulin sensitivity, the researchers found. After they used statistical techniques to control for age, sex and body size in adulthood, the group of men and women who were born small but caught up as adults had significantly lower insulin sensitivity than the control group.

Based on the results, Dr. R.W.J. Leunissen of Erasmus Medical Centre-Sophia, Children's Hospital and colleagues propose a "fat accumulation hypothesis," which states that "an increased accumulation of fat during childhood, independent of birth size, will result in reduced insulin sensitivity."

Yeah, you don’t want to be overweight and diabetic. Here’s Dr. Fuhrman again:

If the person is obese, with more than fifty pounds of additional fat weight, his body will demand huge loads of insulin from the pancreas, even as much as ten times more than a person of normal weight needs. So what do you think happens after five to ten years of forcing the pancreas to work so hard? You guessed it — pancreatic poop-out.

Exercise and stay thin—sounds win-win to me!

Diabetes Risk: Fruits vs. Veggies

Posted on February 28, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Dr. Fuhrman emailed me this the other day. It shows the differences between fruits and vegetables when it comes to diabetes-prevention. From NutraIngredients-USA:

A higher intake of vegetables, rich sources of fibre, antioxidants, and magnesium, may reduce the risk of developing type-2 diabetes by almost 30 per cent, suggests a new study.

On the flip side of the coin, however, an increased consumption of fruit was not associated with any benefits, according to the study with 64,191 middle-aged Chinese women published in the new issue of the Journal of Nutrition.

"Our study adds to the limited and conflicting data of the associations between fruit and vegetable intake and the risk of type-2 diabetes," wrote lead author Raquel Villegas from Vanderbilt Epidemiology Center.

"A higher intake of vegetables, rich in fibre, antioxidants, and magnesium and with a low glycemic index, was associated with a decreased risk of type-2 diabetes."

The authors, including researchers from the Shanghai Cancer Institute and the Diabetes Research and Training Center in Nashville, recruited the women (aged between 40 and 70) and, using a food-frequency questionnaire, report they had average fruit and vegetable intakes of 239.4 and 236.0 grams per day, respectively.

I know from talking with Dr. Fuhrman. That he advises diabetics to eat more veggies than fruit, but, he does encourage blueberries—lots of blueberries!

Poverty's Diet Strain

Posted on February 22, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Poverty is more than a fiscal problem. It can also affect health. Canadian researchers have determined that poor households end up eating nutritionally risky diets. Alan Mozes HealthDay News reports:

The new study is the first to show that food insecurity directly translates into poor nutrition. It also suggests that in such homes, adults and teens, rather than very young children, are the most likely to be subsisting on diets low in vitamins, minerals, fruits, vegetables, grains and meat.

"Over the long term, [food insecurity] could be expected to precipitate and complicate diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes and heart disease," cautioned study co-author, Sharon Kirkpatrick, a doctoral candidate in the department of nutritional sciences at the University of Toronto…

…The study highlights similar estimates for 2006, suggesting that 12.6 million U.S. households experience food insecurity, while 4.6 million have one or more family members going without food. Recent Canadian research indicates that just over 9 percent of households are food-insecure.

Against such numbers, Kirkpatrick and Tarasuk set out to analyze eating habits, detailed in interviews conducted by Statistics Canada between 2004 and 2005. The survey included 35,000 Canadians between the ages of 1 and 70 drawn from all socioeconomic groups.

The poor—I hate using that term—do take quite the health hit. It comes up in the news all the time. Let’s look at some previous reports. First, from the Associated Press, Why are U.S. Kids Obese. Here’s a bit:

"The environment that they live in matters," said Lisa Powell of the University of Illinois at Chicago, who studied restaurant and food store options in the neighborhoods and food-related television advertising aimed at teens.

She said when people cannot get to supermarkets but instead must rely on the convenience stores that proliferate in many poor neighborhoods, families end up eating less healthy food.

Next up, Paige Parker of The Oregonian tells us why poor kids are at a high-risk of packing on extra summer vacation pounds. Take a look:

A new study highlighted the summer weight-gain phenomenon among young children. Researchers in the Midwest looked at the body mass index, which relates height to weight, of 5,380 students. They followed them for two years, from kindergarten through first grade, and found the average index grew more than twice as quickly over the summer than during the school year.

Children of the working poor may be especially at risk because they are left indoors while their parents are at jobs. While at home, kids eat and drink what they want, says Dr. Jennifer Bass, a pediatrician who chairs a national pediatricians special-interest group on obesity. Bass estimates as many as 30 percent of her patients are overweight.

Now Randy Dotinga of HealthDay News explains that low-income children face a heighten chance of being obese, even before they are out of diapers. Check it out:

"The message is that we're seeing overweight and obesity at younger ages than we thought possible," said study author Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, a health and society scholar at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. "It's a particular problem in lower-income communities, and it's something we need to keep an eye on and prevent as much as possible."

According to Kimbro, there's been little research into weight problems among very young children. But, studies have shown high rates of obesity among older children and teenagers.

In the new study, the researchers examined surveys of parents who had children from 1998 to 2000 in 20 large U.S. cities. The parents lived in urban areas and were poor.

Finally, this report looks out way the poor and immigrants living in New York City are waist-deep in the diabetes epidemic. More from N.R. Kleinfield of The New York Times:

New York, perhaps more than any other big city, harbors all the ingredients for a continued epidemic. It has large numbers of the poor and obese, who are at higher risk. It has a growing population of Latinos, who get the disease in disproportionate numbers, and of Asians, who can develop it at much lower weights than people of other races.

It is a city of immigrants, where newcomers eating American diets for the first time are especially vulnerable. It is also yielding to the same forces that have driven diabetes nationally: an aging population, a food supply spiked with sugars and fats, and a culture that promotes overeating and discourages exercise.

Frightening news, no doubt it compounds when you consider that most low-income families either have limited or no insurance. Makes you wonder how much better the state of American healthcare would be if everyone starting eating a nutrient-dense diet!

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research, Weight Loss

Diabetic Confusion: Low-Carb Unhealthy, Veggies Healthy

Posted on February 8, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

And that’s the truth! If you’re looking to get healthy, lose weight, and prevent and reverse disease, DON’T even consider “low-carb” or high-protein diets. Here’s why in a nutshell. Dr. Fuhrman explains:

Americans already eat approximately 40 percent of their calories from animal products; we have seen a tragic skyrocketing in cancer and heart-disease rates in the past fifty years as a result of such nutritional extravagance.1 You can lose some weight on the low-carb diet, but you run the risk of losing your health at the same time.

Now, most health experts agree—even Dr. Fuhrman—that eating a lot of carbs is a bad idea, but Dr. Fuhrman’s criticisms focus on the refined and process carbohydrates. Here’s why he thinks this stuff is bad news:

Diets containing refined grains and refined sweets are consistently linked to stomach and colon cancer, and at least twelve breast cancer studies connect low-fiber diets with increased risks.2 Eating a diet that contains a significant quantity of sugar and refined flour does not just cause weight gain, it also leads to an earlier death.

Once you kick the refined junk to the curb, you’re left with the good stuff—the healthy carbs! In fact, these carbohydrates are important brain and muscle fuel. Let’s check back with Dr. Fuhrman:

Our bodies need carbohydrates more than any other substance. Our muscle cells and brains are designed to run on carbohydrates. Carbohydrate-rich foods, when consumed in their natural state, are low in calories and high in fiber compared with fatty foods, processed foods, or animal products.

You can find these healthy carbs in fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes, and, as Dr. Fuhrman points out. Plant foods likes these are the benchmark of healthy living. Here Dr. Fuhrman talks about the power of plants:

Increasing your consumption of high-nutrient fruits and vegetables is the key to disease resistance, disease reversal, and a long, healthy life. The potential reduction in disease rates shows no threshold effect in the scientific studies. That means that as high-nutrient vegetables and high-nutrient fruits increase as a major portion of caloric intake, disease rates fall in a dose-dependent manner—the more the diet is comprised of these foods, the better your health will be.3

So, what’s wrong with “low-carb” diets—A LOT—Atkins-like diets dupe people into believing that increased consumption of animal products and decreased consumption of plant foods is healthy—WRONG! Dr. Fuhrman elaborates:

It is an interesting phenomenon to me low-carb dieters search to find small pearls of dissent in the scientific literature to support their views as they ignore thousands of well-performed studies, I wonder why they are so attached to their diets or views that they can’t accept the preponderance of evidence and modify their stance.

And when you exam the facts, you’ll quickly realize the profound link between eating too much animal products and saturated fat and diseases; like diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Again, Dr. Fuhrman explains:

Today, the average American consumes 100-120 grams of protein per day, mostly in the form of animal products. This high level of animal product consumption has been linked to not just heart disease and strokes, but to higher rates of cancer, as well4…

…High-protein, carbohydrate-restricted diets also are heart unfriendly. One comprehensive study on the Atkins’ approach showed that after one year on the diet, blood flow to the heart diminished by an average of 40 percent and inflammatory markers that predict heart attacks increased.5 The low levels of plant fiber, phytochemicals, and antioxidant nutrients on these unbalanced, low produce diets expose the diabetic patient to additional risks.

Okay, by now we’ve worked up a good information-base—low-carb bad, veggies good—so let’s check out this study appearing in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. It suggest that low-carb is better than low-fat for preventing diabetes. Amanda Gardner of HealthDay News is on it:

"One study is never enough to change a recommendation, but this study is interesting in that it shows that a low-fat diet is no better than a low-carbohydrate diet in preventing type 2 diabetes," said Thomas Halton, lead author of a study in the current issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. "The one diet that did seem to show a protective effect was a vegetable-based, low-carb diet which consisted of higher amounts of vegetable fat and vegetable protein, and lower amounts of carbohydrate."

The findings, Halton added, were a bit surprising in that most doctors and nutritionists recommend a low-fat diet to prevent type 2 diabetes. "This study showed that a low-fat diet didn't really prevent type 2 diabetes in our cohort when compared to a low-carb diet. I was also surprised that total carbohydrate consumption was associated with type 2 diabetes, and that the relative risk for the glycemic load was so high."

Now, despite the dirty term “low-carb” the study is looking surprisingly good, but just to be safe, let’s look at the actual study, pay very close attention to the conclusion. From The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

Background: Low-carbohydrate weight-loss diets remain popular; however, the long-term effects of these diets are not known.

Objective: The objective was to examine the association between low-carbohydrate-diet score and risk of type 2 diabetes

Design: We prospectively examined the association between low-carbohydrate-diet score (based on percentage of energy as carbohydrate, fat, and protein) and risk of diabetes among 85 059 women in the Nurses' Health Study.

Conclusion: These data suggest that diets lower in carbohydrate and higher in fat and protein do not increase the risk of type 2 diabetes in women. In fact, diets rich in vegetable sources of fat and protein may modestly reduce the risk of diabetes.

Vegetable fat and vegetable protein—not the high animal fat fallacy perpetuated by Atkins and his ilk. In fact, when you strictly limit all the meat, dairy, and oil in the typical Atkins menu and upgrade the fruit, vegetables, nuts, seeds, and legumes, you’re left with a diet naturally free of refined carbohydrates and packed with nature’s best foods! One more quote from Dr. Fuhrman:

Knowing that the right micronutrients in the right proportions are easily available to us in whole, natural foods is wonderful. But we no longer get our foods in natural form from the wild. Most of the food we eat is concocted in factories. These processed foods do not contain the level and diversity of the vitamins and minerals we get in natural foods. For example, the fruits and vegetables that primates eat in the wild are loaded with micronutrients, giving these primates a diet far richer in many essential vitamins and minerals than the diets consumed by any humans in the modern world.

Clearly these primates are eating the right kind of low-fat diet and NOT monkeying with dangerous high-protein diets. For more on this topic, be sure to check out Standard American Low-Fat—JUNK—Diet.
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Tags: Diabetes, Diet Myths, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Diabetes Study Derailed Due to Deaths

Posted on February 7, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Dr. Fuhrman’s got a question for you, “How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies?” Oh, that’s simple you—wait, lets explore this—what about gastric surgery? It was recently reported to be a good idea. From The New York Times:

Weight-loss surgery works much better than standard medical therapy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in obese people, the first study to compare the two approaches has found.

The study, of 60 patients, showed that 73 percent of those who had surgery had complete remissions of diabetes, meaning all signs of the disease went away. By contrast, the remission rate was only 13 percent in those given conventional treatment, which included intensive counseling on diet and exercise for weight loss, and, when needed, diabetes medicines like insulin, metformin and other drugs.

In the study, the surgery worked better because patients who had it lost much more weight than the medically treated group did — 20.7 percent versus 1.7 percent of their body weight, on average. Type 2 diabetes is usually brought on by obesity, and patients can often lessen the severity of the disease, or even get rid of it entirely, by losing about 10 percent of their body weight. Though many people can lose that much weight, few can keep it off without surgery.

Yeah, I don’t know about this. I mean, maybe it’s a good idea, if you consider serious complications a key component of success. Hopefully this chart will help you think twice before you run out and get your tummy sliced open. Take a look:

Okay, in our age of modern medicine, drugs, drugs, and more drugs must be the answer! Yeah, if you don’t mind THE DYING! Recently, a diabetes study had to be halted because aggressively driving blood sugar levels towards normal was found to increase the risk of death in some diabetics. The Washington Post reports:

The startling discovery, announced yesterday, prompted federal health officials to immediately halt one part of the large trial so thousands of the Type 2 diabetes patients in the study could switch to less-intensive treatment.

"As always, our primary concern is to protect the safety of our study volunteers," said Elizabeth G. Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, which is sponsoring the study.

Although the reason for the increased risk remains a mystery, Nabel and other experts stressed that the benefits of blood sugar control have been well established for diabetics and said patients should not make any changes in their care without consulting their doctors.

But the findings cast doubt on a major hope about diabetes treatment -- that pushing levels below current targets would be beneficial -- and would force experts to rethink how to treat one of the nation's leading health problems.

"It's profoundly disappointing," said Richard Kahn, chief scientific and medical officer for the American Diabetes Association. "This presents a real dilemma to patients and their physicians. How intensive should treatment be? We just don't know."

The findings are the second major blow to widespread assumptions about how to protect against heart disease -- the nation's leading killer. Another recent major study found that driving blood cholesterol levels as low as possible did not necessarily slow the progression of heart disease.

As you can imagine, Dr. Fuhrman was less than surprised by these results. Here’s what he had to say about it. Have a look:

It basically illustrates that giving diabetics more medication to better control their glucose numbers leads to more heart attacks; more medicine equals more heart attacks. Diabetes is a disease arising out of nutritional ignorance, obesity and lack of exercise and activity. The prescription must be nutritional excellence for an excellent outcome. Most diabetics who follow a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet not only reduce their medication use, but they actually get rid of their diabetes and become non-diabetic.

So, back to Dr. Fuhrman’s original question, “How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies?” Well—as we just found out—nutritional excellence is a huge part of it. More form Dr. Fuhrman:

I have achieved marked success with diabetic patients and the success at becoming "non diabetic" or almost "non-diabetic" regularly occurs on the nutritarian program whether the patient follows a strict vegan diet or not. I describe the diet-style as a "vegetable-based" diet because the base of the pyramid is vegetables, not grains. Even though most animal products are excluded, it is not necessary to adopt a completely vegan diet to achieve the goals.

I offer patients the choice of adding two servings a week of low-fat fish, such as tilapia, flounder, sole, and scrod, as well as an egg-white omelet, once or twice each week. A few servings of very low-saturated-fat animal products each week can be interspersed with the vegan meals without diminishing the results achievable from the vegetable-based diet.

And lets not forget an obvious—but often overlooked—component of preventing and fighting diabetes is exercise. Let’s check back in with Dr. Fuhrman:

The most effective prescription for diabetes is exercise. An essential component of my prescription for diabetes is daily exercise; it is more important than daily medication. Two hundred calories a day of formal exercise on an incline treadmill and an elliptical machine are a great goal to shoot for. It is not an official recommendation of anyone except me.

Seriously, it’s a win-win situation for diabetics. You get to eat delicious food, stay active, lose weight, feel good, and, kick your diabetes in the butt. Can’t get much better than that!
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Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Research, Stroke

Expensively Sick

Posted on February 1, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Julie’s Health Club relays a list of America’s top ten medical costs. Scary stuff, my wallet hurts just looking at it. Check it out:

Heart conditions ($76 billion)
Trauma disorders ($72 billion)
Cancer ($70 billion)
Mental disorders, including depression ($56.0 billion)
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ($54 billion)
High blood pressure ($42 billion)
Type 2 diabetes ($34 billion)
Osteoarthritis and other joint diseases ($34 billion)
Back problems ($32 billion)
Normal childbirth* ($32 billion)

*Normal childbirth means without medical complications or surgical procedures. C-sections are not included in the normal childbirth category.

This list gets even more frightening when you consider the over-arching cost of obesity. Dr. Fuhrman offers up some facts and figures:

The number one health problem in the United States is obesity, and if the current trend continues, by the year 2230 all adults in the United States will be obese. The National Institutes of Health estimate that obesity is associated with a twofold increase in mortality, costing society more than $100 billion per year.1

Wows, it certainly pays to be healthy.
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Tags: Arthritis, Asthma, Blood Pressure, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Healthy Parenting, Healthy Pregnancy, Obesity, Research

Wednesday: Health Points

Posted on January 30, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

If you exercise, you might want to call yourself a “young blood” because new research links exercise to youthful DNA. The Seattle Times reports:

A study published Monday hints that fitness buffs appear to have "younger" DNA than the chronically sedentary. The finding could help scientists understand the effects of exercise and aging at a molecular level.

Previous research has shown that being physically active reduces the risk of heart disease, cancer and other diseases, potentially extending longevity.

Previous research has shown that older people have shorter ends than younger folks. Indeed, biologists say they shrink every time a cell divides.

According to the United Nations, developing worlds face a growing cancer-risk. From the AFP:

Some 84 million people risk dying from cancer over the next decade, the World Health Organisation (WHO) and the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) said.

The IAEA, the UN atomic watchdog, is involved in the fight agaist the disease through its Programme of Action for Cancer Therapy (PACT) division, which shares the organisation's knowledge of radiotherapy techniques with other partners in the field.

PACT head Massud Samiei told journalists that "the cancer epidemic will gather pace in developing countries."

We all know cold medicines aren’t great for young kids, but did you know cold meds send 7,000 children to the hospital. The Associated Press is on it:

About two-thirds of the cases were children who took the medicines unsupervised. However, about one-quarter involved cases in which parents gave the proper dosage and an allergic reaction or some other problem developed, the study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported.

The study included both over-the-counter and prescription medicines. It comes less than two weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration warned parents that over-the-counter cough and cold medicines are too dangerous for children younger than 2.

Arguing with your spouse is healthy? What the—? I’m too befuddled to comment on this one. You check it out. More from CBS News:

The key is for both spouses to be comfortable expressing anger, rather than one or both suppressing anger, University of Michigan researchers report.

"The key matter is, when the conflict happens, how do you resolve it?" asks Ernest Harburg, PhD, professor emeritus with the University of Michigan's School of Public Health and psychology department. "If you bury your anger, and you brood on it ... and you don't try to resolve the problem, then you're in trouble."

Harburg's team found a higher death rate among married couples in which both spouses suppress anger, compared with other married couples. Their findings appear in the Journal of Family Communication.

Listen up college kids! New research contends that whacky-weed is a bigger cancer-risk than cigarettes. Reuters reports:

Studies in the past have demonstrated that cannabis can cause cancer, but few have established a strong link between cannabis use and the actual incidence of lung cancer.

In an article published in the European Respiratory Journal, the scientists said cannabis could be expected to harm the airways more than tobacco as its smoke contained twice the level of carcinogens, such as polyaromatic hydrocarbons, compared with tobacco cigarettes.

The method of smoking also increases the risk, since joints are typically smoked without a proper filter and almost to the very tip, which increases the amount of smoke inhaled. The cannabis smoker inhales more deeply and for longer, facilitating the deposition of carcinogens in the airways.

The CBS Early Show takes a look at the history of breakfast in America. Yeah, it’s pretty scary. See for yourself:

BREAKFAST CEREALS
Seventh-Day Adventists are credited with creating breakfast cereals. They founded the Battle Creek Sanitarium, where they manufactured and promoted wholesome cereals. Will Keith Kellogg was an Adventist who discovered corn flakes in 1894 when a pot of cooked wheat was overcooked and then dried. Each grain became a separate flake. He introduced Rice Krispies in 1929. The Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company was founded in 1906.

THE DOUGHNUT
Originally introduced by the Dutch as sweet dough fried in pork fat (known as "oily cakes"), the doughnut has been around a very long time, although its popularity surged with the doughnuts served to solders in World War I. The term "doughnut" either comes from the small balls of dough that looked like nuts, or a recipe from a mid-19th century cook who added nuts to the center of her fried dough and therefore referred to them as dough "nuts." The legend goes on to say that her son, a sea captain, didn't like the nuts so he had them cut out, creating the famous doughnut shape that we know today. Doughnuts remained as snacks, not breakfast -- often served in theaters -- until the doughnut machine was invented in the 1930s. By the 1940s and 1950s, Krispy Kreme and Dunkin' Doughnuts had been introduced, and the pairing of coffee and doughnuts secured their place in the breakfast repertoire. By the 1950s, "drop" doughnuts became very popular and Orange Drop Doughnuts showed up in the Betty Crocker Cookbook. Since no rolling or cutting was required -- just drop spoonfuls of batter into hot oil -- this category of doughnuts caught on quickly.

Well, you certainly like seeing this. HealthDay News reports, diabetes rates continue to soar in the United States. Amanda Gardner is on it:

The number of Americans being diagnosed with and also living with type 2 diabetes is soaring, presenting a major health and economic crisis for the United States, a new study reports.

"What's alarming is we have 47 million uninsured people, but these people [in the study, enrolled under Medicare] are all insured. So in this kind of insured program, we have so many people who are not adhering to the recommended care," said Frank Sloan, lead author of the study published in the Jan. 28 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

Sloan is professor of health policy and management at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C.

I think experts like this are neat. Frances Largeman-Roth of Poked & Prodded is going to eat Ayurvedic in India. She explains all about it:

The ayurvedic menu at Ananda Spa has been designed to balance the three doshas: Vata, Pitta, and Kapha. The doshas are roughly similar to our ectomorph, mesomorph, and endomorph body types, but they’re even more detailed, taking into consideration the shape of the face, skin type, hair, eyes, and temperament. Everyone is a mix of the three, but one dosha is predominant. If the doshas are balanced, you’ll enjoy good health, if not, you’re basically screwed…

…Once you know which dosha you align with, your ayurvedic practitioner will help you get in harmony through your food choices. To balance a Vata dosha, for example, you’re apparently supposed to eat mostly warm foods, such as soups, stews, warm milk, warm cereals, and baked bread (cream and butter are on the list too). And Vatas are advised to avoid cold foods, such as salads, iced drinks, and raw vegetables and greens. Hmm … doesn’t sound ideal for someone who is lactose-intolerant and loves her veggies.

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Parenting, Hurtful Food, Research, Toxins

Friday: Health Points

Posted on January 25, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Here’s a good question, does diabetes cost the USA more than wars and disasters? Take a look. Liz Szabo of USA Today reports:

Uncontrolled diabetes wreaks havoc on the body, often leading to kidney failure, blindness and death. A new study shows that the nation's unchecked diabetes epidemic exacts a heavy financial toll as well: $174 billion a year.

That's about as much as the conflicts in Iraq, Afghanistan and the global war on terrorism combined. It's more than the $150 billion in damage caused by Hurricane Katrina.

The incidence of diabetes has ballooned — there are 1 million new cases a year — as more Americans become overweight or obese, according to the study, released Wednesday by the American Diabetes Association. The cost of diabetes — both in direct medical care and lost productivity — has swelled 32% since 2002, the report shows.

Diabetes killed more than 284,000 Americans last year, according to the diabetes association.

Much to my personal delight, Yoga is growing in popularity. Katie Zezima of The New York Times investigates a boot camp for Yoga teachers. Check it out:

In May 2006, Sue Jones started YogaHope, an organization that teaches yoga at eight Boston-area women’s homeless shelters, substance-abuse treatment programs and domestic-violence safe houses, as well as two programs in Seattle. The focus is on teaching restorative yoga, and though many teachers have completed at least 200 hours of training, it is not a requirement.

Driven by a sometimes missionary zeal and a sense that yoga has become an exclusive pursuit, a small but growing number of yoga practitioners are forming organizations that teach yoga in prisons and juvenile detention centers in Oakland, Calif.; Los Angeles, Seattle and Indianapolis. They are working with the addicted and the homeless in Portland, Ore., and with public-school students in New York City.

Though concern about the cost of yoga is an issue (studio classes can cost $20 for a drop-in session, though some offer free or low-cost classes taught by less experienced teachers), most of the practitioners are motived by a desire to introduce yoga to those who might need it most, but wouldn’t think to do it on their own.

Okay gym nuts. Health and Men passes on some “stop and go super sets” for you to try next time you’re working out. Have a look:

Stop-and-go pushup
Assume a pushup position. Brace your core and lower your chest to the floor. When you’re halfway down, pause 2 seconds before continuing. Then, when your chest is 2 inches from the floor, pause again for 2 seconds before pushing halfway back up. Hold for 2 more seconds, then straighten your arms. Do eight reps.

Stop-and-go split squat
Stand with one foot 3 feet forward and hold a barbell across your shoulders. Rise on the ball of your back foot, then bend at the knees. When halfway down, pause for 2 seconds. Pause again when your back knee is just off the floor. Push halfway up, pause again, and return to the starting position. Do six reps with each leg.

Its seems the United Kingdom is all set to pony up millions for anti-obesity campaign. Tim Castle of Reuters is on it:

The campaign, to be launched in the summer, will form part of a wider strategy including aspects like food labelling, urban design and the promotion of exercise.

Department of Health officials said it will use simple messages -- such as the "five pieces of fruit and veg a day" slogan -- and be based on research into what actually works to make people change from unhealthy lifestyles.

"Tackling obesity is the most significant public and personal health challenge facing our society," said Health Secretary Alan Johnson as he launched the 372 million pound cross-government strategy.

Okay, this is a little weird—to say the least—evidently some people believe you can treat sleep apnea with a didgeridoo. From the CBS Early Show:

"A didgeri-what?" you ask. While aborigines in Australia have been playing this long wooden trumpet for centuries, it's just recently been redefined as a modern-day medical device. Researchers reporting in the British Medical Journal evaluated 25 people with sleep apnea--a breath-stealing condition caused by flabby throat muscles--and found that those who took 4 months of didgeridoo (DIH-jeh-ree-doo) lessons had about 31/2 times less daytime sleepiness than the folks who didn't blow their own horns. The newly minted musicians also snored significantly less. Credit this uncommon cure to vibrations that exercise tissue in the mouth and throat, says researcher Milo Puhan, Ph.D. "When these muscles are strengthened, the tongue has less tendency to obstruct the airway."

If huffing on a wooden tube to treat your sleep apnea sounds a tad too weird, then you probably aren't familiar with the alternatives. The most commonly prescribed option is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP), which involves spending every night hooked up to a machine that pumps air down your throat to keep it from collapsing. The other approach is surgery, and that's only 30 to 60 percent effective. Now are you ready to toot the didgeridoo? You can pick up a beginner-friendly model for about $80 at L.A. Outback (laoutback.com). And don't worry; it's intuitive to learn, says co-owner Barry Martin. You purse your lips and blow into it with the beat.

Diet Blog hardly has a glowing endorsement for “Slim Coffee.” Jim Foster thinks it’s nothing but a big scam:

It must be so tempting for unscrupulous entrepreneurs:

Find an obscure weight loss product from somewhere overseas. Re-brand it. Hype it up. Create an infomercial. Make millions.

This time it's Slim Coffee. The claims are impressive: "Reduce appetite. Clinically tested. Lose 5 pounds per week". All from drinking coffee with a few supplements added (or so they say).

The makers of Slim Coffee have been pursued by the FTC - resulting in a $923,000 settlement.

A new study explains just how traffic pollution damages the heart. Here’s more from Andy Coghlan of the NewScientist, look:

Previous studies had suggested that people living in polluted areas are more at risk of heart disease. For example, a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine last year showed that women in 36 American cities were more likely to develop heart disease if the air they breathed was rich in particles measuring 2.5 micrometres or less in diameter - known as PM2.5s - which are present in car exhaust fumes.

It now seems that a greater hazard may be posed by so-called "ultrafine" particles, about a dozen times smaller at 0.18 micrometres wide. The latest study in mice has shown that they clog up arteries with fatty atherosclerotic deposits, and chemically alter "good" cholesterol, or high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, reducing its beneficial effects.

Yippee! More Yoga news! The Los Angeles Times looks at one man’s effort to make Yoga a professional's sport. Janet Cromley reports:

How does yoga help a professional athlete's game?
Yoga improves balance in the body and works the smaller muscles that normally wouldn't get worked. It also improves range of motion, whether that means swinging a golf club, throwing a baseball or shooting a basketball. It builds stamina through breath control and teaches techniques for relaxing in tense moments. Most important, yoga gives you confidence that your body will do what you want it to do when you need it to.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Diet Myths, Exercise, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research, Toxins, Weight Loss

Diabetes: Stomach Surgery a Good Idea?

Posted on January 24, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

If you’re looking to regain your health and lose weight healthfully, popular stomach surgeries are not the answer. From Eat to Live, here’s what Dr. Fuhrman and the National Institutes of Health have to say about them. Take a look:

Wound problems and complications from blood clots are common aftereffects of gastric bypass and gastroplasty surgery. The National Institutes of Health has also reported that those undergoing surgical treatment for obesity have had substantial nutritional and metabolic complications, gastritis, esophagitis, outlet stenosis, and abdominal hernias. More than 10 percent required another operation to fix problems resulting from the first surgery.1

Seriously, stomach surgeries might be all the rage right now. It seems like every time you turn on the TV another celebrity is singing the praises of stomach-stapling, but come on! You’ve got to consider the risks. Check out this chart:

So, when I say this—I hit the ceiling! Apparently a new study favors stomach surgery to treat obese diabetics. No, it’s not April Fools Day. Denise Grady of The New York Times reports:

Weight-loss surgery works much better than standard medical therapy as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes in obese people, the first study to compare the two approaches has found.

The study, of 60 patients, showed that 73 percent of those who had surgery had complete remissions of diabetes, meaning all signs of the disease went away. By contrast, the remission rate was only 13 percent in those given conventional treatment, which included intensive counseling on diet and exercise for weight loss, and, when needed, diabetes medicines like insulin, metformin and other drugs.

In the study, the surgery worked better because patients who had it lost much more weight than the medically treated group did — 20.7 percent versus 1.7 percent of their body weight, on average. Type 2 diabetes is usually brought on by obesity, and patients can often lessen the severity of the disease, or even get rid of it entirely, by losing about 10 percent of their body weight. Though many people can lose that much weight, few can keep it off without surgery. (Type 1 diabetes, a much less common form of the disease, involves the immune system and is not linked to obesity.)

But the new results probably do not apply to all patients with Type 2 diabetes, because the people in the study had fairly mild cases with a recent onset; all had received the diagnosis within the previous two years. In people who have more severe and longstanding diabetes, the disease may no longer be reversible, no matter how much weight is lost.

I’d be curious to see just what kind of “intensive counseling on diet and exercise for weight loss” these patients were given. Because according to Dr. Fuhrman switching to a vegetable-based nutritarian diet is your best bet against type-2 diabetes. He explains:

How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies? How can they lower their lipids and blood pressure, lose weight, and avoid taking dangerous drugs, such as insulin and sulfonylureas? They need to adopt a diet based on nutritional excellence.

When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods---green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

Now, let’s not forget exercise. Dr. Fuhrman also points out that exercise is an important part of preventing and combating diabetes. Take a look:

The most effective prescription for diabetes is exercise. An essential component of my prescription for diabetes is daily exercise; it is more important than daily medication. Two hundred calories a day of formal exercise on an incline treadmill and an elliptical machine are a great goal to shoot for. It is not an official recommendation of anyone except me.

I’m no health expert and I’m not trying to be overly negative, but, how can researchers and doctors willing endorse elective surgery on someone, especially when there are more effective, proven means of treatment. What do you think?
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Tags: Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Diabetes vs. Beans--BRING IT!

Posted on January 9, 2008 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Type-2 diabetes is no joke, but luckily for us, a vegetable-based high-nutrient is a great way to prevent and fight it! Dr. Fuhrman points this out:

When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods—green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

Pretty cool—right? Wait, it gets better. New research has determined that legumes (beans) are linked to a lower diabetes risk. Stephen Daniells of Food Navigator reports:

The dietary habits of over 64,000 women were assessed and correlated with the development of type-2 diabetes over about five years, and a high intake of all legumes was associated with a 38 per cent reduction in risk of developing the disease, report researchers in this month's American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

An estimated 19 million people are affected by diabetes in the EU 25, equal to four per cent of the total population. This figure is projected to increase to 26 million by 2030.

In the US, there are over 20 million people with diabetes, equal to seven per cent of the population. The total costs are thought to be as much as $132 bn, with $92 bn being direct costs from medication, according to 2002 American Diabetes Association figures.

According to background information in the study, it has been suggested previously that a high intake of these foods can have benefits against the development of type-2 diabetes, although data is limited for this link.

Sweet! This is reason to celebrate. Let’s party over beans until we explode—pun intended—get a load of this great bean information from Dr. Fuhrman. Here:

Your goal should be to eat an entire cup (or more) of beans daily. Beans are a powerhouse of superior nutrition. They reduce cholesterol and blood sugar. They have a high nutrient-per-calorie profile and help prevent food cravings. They are digested slowly, which has a stabilizing effect on your blood sugar and a resultant high satiety index. Eggplant and beans, mushrooms and beans, greens and beans are all high-nutrient, high-fiber, low-calorie main dishes. Throw a cup of beans on your salad for lunch. Eat bean soup. Scientific studies show a linear relationship between soup consumption and successful weight-loss.1 As weight-loss strategy, eating soup helps by slowing your rate of intake and reducing your appetite by filling your stomach.

For info on the benefits of beans, get a load of these previous posts:

Tags: Diabetes, Research

Cooking Veggies...No Big Deal

Posted on December 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

I admit. For a long time I thought cooking vegetables killed them. Not so according to Dr. Fuhrman. He explains:

The raw-food movement continues to make converts, thanks to a devoted group of individuals and celebrities who embrace the belief that an all-raw food diet is the best diet. The idea that stirs the most enthusiasm for this diet is the contention that cooking both destroys about fifty percent of the nutrients in food, and destroys all or most of the life promoting enzymes.

Now, what about these enzymes? More from Dr. Fuhrman:

Contrary to what many raw-food web sites claim, the enzymes contained in the plants we eat do not catalyze chemical reactions that occur in humans. The plant enzymes merely are broken down into simpler molecules by our own powerful digestive juices. Even when the food is consumed raw, plant enzymes do not aid in their own digestion inside the human body. It is not true that eating raw food demands less enzyme production by your body, and dietary enzymes inactivated by cooking have an insignificant effect on your health and your body’s enzymes.

And here’s an interesting factoid, cooking can actually be beneficial. Dr. Fuhrman again:

In many cases, cooking destroys some of the harmful anti-nutrients that bind minerals in the gut and interfere with the utilization of nutrients. Destruction of these anti-nutrients increases absorption. Steaming vegetables and making vegetable soups breaks down cellulose and alters the plants’ cell structures so that fewer of your own enzymes are needed to digest the food, not more. The point is that this “cooked food is dead food” enzyme argument does not hold water. On the other hand, the roasting of nuts and the baking of cereals does reduce availability and absorbability of protein.

Get a load of this. Some new research has also determined that cooking vegetables might not damage their nutrient-load. More from CBS News:

The University of Parma's Nicoletta Pellegrini, PhD, and colleagues bought freshly harvested carrots, zucchini, and broccoli at a local market.

In their lab, the scientists measured levels of various antioxidants in the raw vegetables. Then they boiled, steamed, or fried the vegetables. Lastly, they measured antioxidant levels in the cooked vegetables.

Raw vegetables were loaded with antioxidants. After cooking, their antioxidant levels were a mixed bag.

In some cases, the veggies lost antioxidants to cooking. But not all antioxidants decreased when cooked -- and in some cases, certain antioxidant
levels rose when cooked.

Okay, this post isn’t intended to bash raw food—heck, Dr. Fuhrman eats plenty of raw veggies—in fact, he’ll tell you first hand, raw food is wonderful! Here’s one last quote:

Certainly, there are benefits to consuming plenty of raw fruits and vegetables. These foods supply us with high nutrient levels and the smallest number of calories. But the question we are looking at is this—Are there advantages to eating a diet of all raw foods and excluding all cooked foods?

Clearly, the answer is a resounding “No.” In fact, eating an exclusively raw-food diet is a disadvantage. To exclude all steamed vegetables and vegetable soups from your diet narrows the nutrient diversity of your diet and has a tendency to reduce the percentage of calories from vegetables, in favor of nuts and fruit, which are lower in nutrients per calorie.

I should point out, I’m eating a raw fruit and veggie chocolate pudding right now—YUM!

Bad News for Toxins

Posted on December 13, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Will Dunham of Reuters reports, smoking increases your risk of developing diabetes. Here’s more:

Here's another reason to throw away the cigarettes: Smoking, already known to cause lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, also raises one's risk for the most common form of diabetes, researchers said on Tuesday.

Smokers faced a 44 percent increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared to nonsmokers, the Swiss researchers found.

Dr. Carole Willi of the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and colleagues analyzed 25 studies exploring the connection between smoking and diabetes published between 1992 and 2006, with a total of 1.2 million participants tracked for up to 30 years.

High ozone levels seem to explain why some residents of Sydney Australia had sudden cardiac events. Reuters reports:

A sudden spate of urgent cardiovascular syndromes resulting in severe chest pain that required emergency department visits among residents of Sydney, Australia, in 2005 has been traced to high solar radiance and ozone levels.

Surveillance data indicated an increase in urgent visits to city hospitals by individuals with chest pain assessed as "imminently or immediately life-threatening on arrival" in April and May 2005, Dr. Robin M. Turner of New South Wales Department of Health in North Sydney and colleagues report in the journal Environmental Health.

Emergency department visits increased from 4.0 per day in 2004 to 5.7 per day for the 8 weeks of April and May 2005.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Research, Toxins

High-Carb Diet Icky-Sticky for Diabetes

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

I don’t subscribe to "carbophobia", but, refined grains, rice, and cereals are bad news. Here’s a brief lowdown from Dr. Fuhrman. Take a look:

White pasta, white rice and white bread are just like sugar; because their fiber has been removed, these nutrient deficient foods are absorbed too rapidly. This, in turn, will raise glucose, triglyceride, and insulin levels in your blood. Refined grains are undesirable and will sabotage your weight-loss and cholesterol-lowering efforts…

…White or "enriched" rice is just as bad as white bread and pasta. It is nutritionally bankrupt. You might as well just eat the Uncle Ben's cardboard box it comes in. Refining removes important factors: fiber, minerals, phytochemicals, and vitamin E. So, when you eat grains, eat whole grains…

…As we change food through processing and refining, we rob the food of certain health-supporting substances and often create unhealthy compounds, thus making it a more unfit food for human consumption. As a general rule of thumb: the closer we eat foods to their natural state, the healthier the food.

So, it shouldn’t surprise you that a new study has determined that a high-carb diet raises women's diabetes risk. More from Robert Preidt of HealthDay News:

Black American women and Chinese women who ate foods high on the glycemic index -- which measures the effect of carbohydrates on blood glucose levels -- were at increased risk for developing type 2 diabetes, two new studies found.

One of the studies also found that eating more cereal fiber may be associated with a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes in black American women…

…Women who ate high-glycemic index foods or ate a diet with a high glycemic load were more likely to develop diabetes. Women who ate more cereal fiber were less likely to develop diabetes.

"Our results indicate that black women can reduce their risk of diabetes by eating a diet that is relatively high in cereal fiber," the study authors wrote. "Incorporating fiber sources into the diet is relatively easy: A simple change from white bread (two slices provides 1.2 grams of fiber) to whole wheat bread (two slices provides 3.8 grams of fiber) ... will move a person from a low fiber intake category to a moderate intake category, with a corresponding 10 percent reduction in risk."

The answer? Stick to wholesome natural nutrient-dense foods. Dr. Fuhrman explains that plant foods are the real diabetes-fighter. Check out Starch-Based Diets No Answer for Diabetics for more.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Franken-Lettuce

Posted on November 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

A lettuce that produces insulin! What will they think of next? Have a look:

Tags: Diabetes

In the Genes: Type-1 Diabetes

Posted on November 19, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Researchers may have discovered the root of Type-1 Diabetes. More from the NewScientist:

Type 1 diabetes may be caused by faulty versions of two genes that usually help the body to fight infection.

Joanna Howson at the Cambridge Institute for Medical Research, UK, and colleagues think that faulty variants of HLA-A and HLA-B lead the immune system to destroy insulin-producing islet cells in the pancreas. Usually, the two genes make components of MHC1 - a protein on the surface of immune cells that helps them tell friend from foe.

Tags: Diabetes

Diabetes: A Racial Divide?

Posted on November 19, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

HealthDay News reports that black children are amongst the hardest hit by diabetes. Steven Reinberg reports:

While this racial disparity has been evident for more than two decades, the trend has been accelerating among children ages 1 to 19, according to the study in the Nov. 16 issue of the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, published by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

"Although the numbers are small, in absolute terms, these deaths are still preventable, which is why it is important to examine those disparities and work toward eliminating them," said CDC epidemiologist Dr. Laura L. Polakowski, who co-authored the report.

Looking at death certificates from 1979 to 2004, the researchers found that between 2003 and 2004, there were 89 deaths among U.S. children and teens from diabetes. During that time, the annual diabetes death rate for black children and teens was more than double that for white children.

Tags: Diabetes, Research

Piggy Diabetes

Posted on October 23, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Newsflash! Embryonic pig cells help diabetic monkeys, may help human diabetics too. The Associated Press is on it:

Dr. Marc Hammerman says the approach has reduced the animals' need for insulin injections and does not call for immunosuppression, which is a major problem in treating diabetes with transplantation.

Before DNA technology enabled pharmaceutical companies to manufacture human insulin in the 1980's, pig and cow insulin were routinely given to diabetic patients.

Yeah, a bacon injection sounds a little frightening. Instead, why not give this a try. Here’s Dr. Fuhrman on Type-2 Diabetes:

Conventional diabetologists are in a bind. They know that high glucose levels accelerate aging of the eyes and kidneys, leading to devastating complications such as kidney failure and blindness. They want to prescribe aggressive insulin therapy to get patients' blood sugars down. The problem is they also are aware that the extra insulin accelerates atherosclerosis (which leads to heart attacks) and weight gain (which eventually makes patients more diabetic)…

…The American Diabetes Association and most dieticians and physicians offer dangerous advice to the diabetic. They give lip service to weight reduction and cholesterol lowering, but since the diets they recommend are ineffective at achieving substantial weight loss and sustained ideal weight, even these recommendations are generally worthless. Typical diabetes care focuses on general glucose control, by monitoring blood glucose to determine when it is necessary to change insulin dosages and when glucose-lowering medication is warranted…

…The best diet for good health and longevity is also the best diet for diabetics. It is a diet with a high nutrient per calorie ratio, as carefully described in my book, Eat To Live. When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods—green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

Eating lots of fruits and veggies seems a lot less creepy than being injected with pig—I don’t know, call me a cynic.

Threats to America

Posted on October 18, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Check this out from Adbusters magazine. It’s make you think…

(via We Like It Raw)

Tags: Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes

Health's Hard Times

Posted on October 10, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Nicholas Bakalar of The New York Times shows us that economic hard times can actually be healthy times—or at least was the case for Cuba. Take a look:

Using national vital statistics and other sources, the researchers gathered data on energy intake, body weight and physical activity in Cuba from 1980 to 2005. In Cienfuegos, a large city on the southern coast, obesity rates decreased to less than 7 percent in 1995 from more than 14 percent in 1991. As more food became available, obesity increased to about 12 percent again by 2002.

Nationwide, coronary heart disease mortality declined 35 percent from 1997 to 2002. Diabetes mortality was down to less than 10 per 100,000 in 2003 from 19 per 100,000 in 1988. The death rate from all causes declined to 4.7 per thousand in 2002 from 5.9 per thousand in 1982.

I can see it now…The Poverty Diet!

Tags: Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Research, Weight Loss

Omega-3s and Type-1 Diabetes

Posted on September 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research claims a diet rich in omega-3 fatty acids can cut children’s risk of Type-1 diabetes. Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters reports:

"It is a relatively large effect," said Jill Norris, whose study appears in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

"It is exciting because it suggests we might be able to develop nutritional interventions to prevent diabetes."

Type 1 diabetes, formerly called juvenile diabetes, is the most common form of diabetes in children. It occurs when the immune system goes haywire and starts attacking insulin-producing cells in the pancreas.

No one knows exactly what triggers this process, but heredity and environmental factors such as diet are thought to play a role.

Hey! Dr. Fuhrman will tell you, omegas are important. Just check out Wednesday’s post Essential Fatty Acids. Here’s a snippet:

Optimal health depends on the proper balance of fatty acids in the diet. The modern diet that most of us eat supplies an excessive amount of omega-6 fat, but often too little omega-3 fat. This relative deficiency of omega-3 fats has potentially serious implications. Also, the consumption of too much omega-6 fat leads to high levels of arachidonic acid (AA). Higher levels of arachidonic acid can promote inflammation.

Thursday: Health Points

Posted on September 20, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

This’ll scare the pants off you. The New York Times takes a look at the poisonous cocktail you could be creating when you take multiple medications. More from Jane E. Brody:

Dr. Stern, a specialist in geriatric emergency medicine at New York Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center, noted that the elderly took about 40 percent of prescribed drugs, roughly twice what younger adults take, and that they suffered twice as many adverse drug reactions as younger people.

“The average community-dwelling older adult takes 4.5 prescription drugs and 2.1 over-the-counter medications,” Dr. Stern reported. Polypharmacy is responsible for up to 28 percent of hospital admissions and, he added, if it were classified as such, it would be the fifth leading cause of death in the United States.

Curious about back exercises? This article in The Detroit Free Press should give you plenty of ideas. The roman chair—eek—sounds like a torture device! Have a look:

Training your lower back can improve your posture, develop your abdominal muscles and help prevent lower back pain and injury. A great twist on an old favorite is the low-cable back extension. This is a little more challenging than the traditional exercise, but it's a welcome change of pace.

First, position a roman chair or back extension machine inside the cable station. The machine should be squarely facing the weight stack with enough distance between the machine and the weight stack that there is still tension on the cable when you are at the bottom of the exercise.

More good news for exercise! A new study has determined that any kind of exercise is good for diabetics. Maggie Fox of Reuters is on it:

Weight training works just as well as running on a treadmill or biking to help the most important symptom of type-2 diabetes -- long-term control of blood sugar -- Canadian researchers said on Monday.

Doing both aerobic and resistance training lowered blood sugar levels better than either alone, researchers said -- and both appeared to be safe.

At least 194 million people worldwide have diabetes, and the World Health Organization expects the number to rise to more than 300 million by 2025.

Well, it’s a lofty goal, but according to the Associated Press the FDA wants kids to start reading food labels. Check it out:

Reading the food labels was "a little bit confusing, but after a while I got used to it," said the fifth-grader from suburban Doral.

"Since I find parents are not doing a bang-up job (teaching nutrition), I think it's important to empower the children with their own information," said Miami registered dietitian Ronni Litz Julien.

The FDA partnered with the Cartoon Network earlier this year to launch a public education campaign encouraging children ages 9 to 13 - or tweens - to read the nutrition facts on food labels.

In general some websites can be pretty confusing to weed through, but, a new study has determined that hospital info on the web can be misleading. From HealthDay News:

"Patients are using the Internet to find health-related quality information, and the information is out there," noted lead researcher Dr. Michael J. Leonardi, from the department of surgery at David Geffen School of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles. "But the information is inconsistent and varies from Web site to Web site," he said.

A lot of Web sites try to rank hospitals, Leonardi said. But because there is no standard way of calculating quality differences, Internet sites come up with different results for the same hospitals, he noted.

E. coli, in the news again! Apparently Dole has recalled bagged salad mix due an E. coli scare. The reports:

The tainted bag of Dole’s Hearts Delight salad mix was sold at a store in Canada, officials said. Neither Canadian health officials nor Dole Food Co. have received reports of anyone getting sick from the product.

The voluntary recall, issued Monday, affects all packages of Hearts Delight sold in the United States and Canada with a “best if used by” date of September 19, 2007, and a production code of “A24924A” or “A24924B,” the company said.

Running is fun! The wind rushing by you, heart pounding—what a rush! But if you’re not a runner, MSN Health & Fitness has a nice little article to help get you interested. Take a look:

Worried that you'll take up running and then quit? No chance. Just follow our simple but surefire training program. It just might be the most exciting time in your entire running career. But you won't necessarily realize it.

First steps...starting out...the beginning of a great adventure. In fact, in lots of ways, it's sort of a declaration of personal independence. A statement that says, "In a world that confronts me with mechanical convenience and idle luxury at virtually every turn, I have decided, nonetheless, to improve my physical fitness."

Aetiology is blogging about a British hospital’s edict banning doctors from wearing neckties because they spread disease. Here’s more:

Of course, at issue is the fact that for doctors coming into close contact with many ill patients, all that extra fabric and buttons and ties and watches are just additional places for bacteria to colonize and hop on over to the next person.

Will it help? Not sure, but I suppose it falls under the "can't hurt" category. The article also notes that a study of doctors' ties a few years' back showed that almost half were contaminated with a minimum of one species of pathogen--so eliminate the dirty tie, maybe they'll pass around fewer germs? Time will tell, I suppose.

Wait. Drugs have side-effects? Duh! According to Reuters the FDA has issued a warning that the schizophrenia drug Haldol can cause heart problems. Read on:

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration said new labeling on the drug will note that ailments, including QT prolongation, a disorder of the heart's electrical system that can lead to a life-threatening condition, have been observed in post-marketing studies.

The drug is also sold generically under the name haloperidol.

Several other drugs for schizophrenia, including a much newer J&J drug including Invega, have warnings about the risk of the serious cardiac effect.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Exercise, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research, Toxins

American Food Not Good for Immigrants

Posted on September 18, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Just in case you doubted exactly how unhealthy the standard American diet is. Read this article from CNN. Immigrant children have a disastrous time adjusting to and resisting the urge of American junk food. More from John Bonifield:

Adrian McHargh grew up active and skinny in Kingston, Jamaica. An enthusiastic swimmer, he had the pristine waters of the Caribbean for a playground until two years ago, when he and his family moved to America.

"I would always cook a healthy dinner," the 13-year-old's mother, Visha Siew-Narine, says about mealtime on the island. "When he came here, I think the fascination of having all this food that we couldn't afford in Jamaica, or that wasn't really available, that was kind of new to him."

In suburban Atlanta, things changed fast. The new foods were cheap, unhealthy and hard to resist: toaster waffles, corn dogs and the chocolate syrup Adrian liked so much he guzzled it straight from the bottle.

"I would eat a lot because I was bored," he says. "I was sitting on the couch just watching TV, not playing a lot."

Within months, Adrian was in trouble. He'd packed on 30 pounds. Doctors said he had hypertension, high cholesterol and was at high risk for type 2 diabetes.

I hate to say it, but, we’ve seen this before. Asian immigrants also have a heard time adjusting to all the garbage food polluting our food supply; White Kids Have Highest Diabetes Rate.

Tags: Diabetes, Research

Thursday: Health Points

Posted on September 13, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Great news! Burger King plans to sell apple slices that look like French fries. The Associated Press is all over this stroke of marketing genius. Take a look:

Burger King Holdings Inc., the world's second largest hamburger chain, said it has set nutritional guidelines to follow when targeting children under 12 in advertising, including limiting ads to Kids Meals that contain no more than 560 calories, less than 30 percent of calories from fat and no more than 10 percent of calories from added sugars.

In that vein, Burger King is building a Kids Meal that will contain the flame-broiled Tenders, organic unsweetened applesauce and low-fat milk, for a total of 305 calories and 8.5 grams of fat. It will be available in restaurants sometime in 2008, the company said.

The fast-food chain is also developing what it calls BK Fresh Apple Fries. The red apples are cut to resemble french fries and are served in the same containers as fries, but they are not fried and are served skinless and cold.

Maybe gas is so expensive, that people can’t afford food. Reuters reports that higher gas prices seem to be having a slimming effect on Americans. Here:

The report, written by Charles Courtemanche for his doctoral dissertation in health economics, found that the 13 percent rise in obesity between 1979 and 2004 can be attributed to falling pump prices.

Gasoline hit a low of less than $1.50 per gallon in 2000 before moving back to a record high of $3.22 in May 2007.

Higher gasoline prices can reduce obesity by leading people to walk or cycle instead of drive and eat leaner at home instead of rich food at restaurants.

The suits over at GlaxoSmithKline must be in a panic because a new study casts more doubt on the diabetes drug Avandia. Gardiner Harris of The New York Times reports:

One study found that Avandia, made by GlaxoSmithKline, doubled the risks of heart failure and raised the risks of heart attack by 42 percent. A second study found that Actos, a similar drug made by Takeda, actually lowered the risks of heart attacks, strokes and death but, like Avandia, also raised risks of heart failure.

Taken together, some of the authors said, the two studies in The Journal of the American Medical Association confirm what doctors and patients using Avandia have already done in great numbers, that is, switch to another drug. Sales of Avandia have plunged.

GlaxoSmithKline said in a written statement that the studies were flawed and “offered no new information on the safety of Avandia.” The company “continues to support Avandia as safe and effective when used appropriately,” the statement said.

Money talks and fat walks. Australian doctors believe overweight people should be paid to attend weight-loss programs. More from the AFP:

Obesity has more than doubled in Australia in the last 20 years and is placing an uncomfortable strain not only on waistlines but on health services, the Australian General Practice Network said.

To combat the spiralling problem, it wants the government to give the overweight a 170 dollar (141 dollar US) subsidy to do something about their expanding physique.

The network, which represents general practitioners, said effective weight-loss programmes were often too expensive, particularly for those with modest incomes.

According to The Los Angeles Times, L.A. officials are considering an outright ban on fast food restaurants. Tami Abdollah has more:

Amid worries of an obesity epidemic and its related illnesses, including high blood pressure, diabetes and heart disease, Los Angeles officials, among others around the country, are proposing to limit new fast-food restaurants -- a tactic that could be called health zoning.

The City Council will be asked this fall to consider an up to two-year moratorium on new fast-food restaurants in South L.A., a part of the city where fast food is at least as much a practicality as a preference.

"The people don't want them, but when they don't have any other options, they may gravitate to what's there," said Councilwoman Jan Perry, who proposed the ordinance in June, and whose district includes portions of South L.A. that would be affected by the plan.

Kids with high blood pressure? Yeah, it’s actually a growing problem. Rob Stein of The Washington Post examines:

"This is a major public-health problem," said Rebecca Din-Dzietham of the Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta, who led the study, which will be published in the Sept. 25 issue of the American Heart Association journal Circulation. "Unless this upward trend in high blood pressure is reversed, we could be facing an explosion of new cardiovascular-disease cases in young adults and adults."

With an adult form of diabetes already being diagnosed more frequently in children and more young people developing high cholesterol, the new finding is another indication that the obesity epidemic is spawning a generation at heightened risk for illnesses that struck their parents and grandparents only later in life, experts said.

"This is very worrisome," said Elizabeth Nabel, director of the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute. "This is another piece of evidence suggesting that the obesity epidemic will likely turn into a heart-disease epidemic."

The Diabetes Blog asks another very good question, should you diabetics seek a doctor or a dietician? Here’s a snippet:

A gaping hole exists between conventional medicine and diet. Conventional medicine claims that the cause of Type 2 diabetes is unknown. Medical doctors, as practitioners of conventional medicine, are not trained to explain how it happened. They treat symptoms with medicine. The business of medicine is medicine. The business of diabetes would be devasted if the cure was as simple as diet. The explanation Thomas Smith provides in his empirical studies is fascinating and I encourage anybody with competing or supporting evidence to open the debate.

Apparently all those ladies in the gym are doing it more for health, than looks—go figure! Jack Kelly of The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports:

"Women who have this disorder usually are interested in exercise to improve their appearance, but an instructor who emphasizes physique during a workout may deter such students from coming back," said Brian Focht, assistant professor of health behavior and health promotion at Ohio State, and a co-author of the study.

The study, which was published in the journal Psychology of Sport and Exercise, indicated women in the study reported that they enjoyed a step aerobics class more when the instructor focused on how the workout was making them more fit.

Even though most of the women studied took the class primarily because they were concerned about their body image, they enjoyed the class less and were less likely to take another if the instructor emphasized how a particular exercise would tone their legs, slim their waists, or otherwise improve their appearance, the researchers found.

This is a big oops. Apparently many physicians in training can’t properly interpret the statistics in medical literature. The Cancer Blog is all over it:

A new study from Yale shows that 75 percent of physicians in training surveyed do not understand the statistics used in medical literature. The study surveyed internal medicine residents at 11 programs across the country.

The residents scored an average of 41% correct on the test and the senior residents scored worse than the junior residents, possibly reflecting a loss of knowledge over time.

Tags: Blood Pressure, Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research, Weight Loss

Health Insurance: Points of Interest

Posted on September 12, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog wants to know, why don’t insurance companies insure diabetic children? A fair question, let’s explore why:

After speaking with underwriters in the top 40 or so companies, Ed Hinerman, a life insurance specialist with the Hinerman Group, found a discernible lack of interest due to lack of data. Companies would say that they couldn't consider someone with type 1 diabetes until they were either age 15 or age 20. A peer in the industry told Ed the knee jerk reaction was because insurance companies haven't done mortality studies on children. They simply don't have any data upon which to base the pricing for products. Uh oh!! That coupled with the fact that there really isn't any financial incentive for them to study and create products for a relatively small market that would produce relatively low premium, kind of sets the tone. Well, now the war has been defined and the battles are becoming clearer…

…Bottom line. Life insurance companies make big money and for them to cut and run from children just because it might not make them more big bucks, or because they really haven't done their homework and aren't interested in doing it, isn't acceptable. Game on! I hope we can make a good showing, at the very least - hit one out of the park for the fans. Thanks for inviting me to play, Ed!

Now here’s a report that’ll make your blood boil. According to Reuters health insurance premiums rise faster than wages. Kim Dixon has more:

Premiums for employer-based health insurance have risen 6.1 percent in 2007, down from a 7.7 percent increase a year earlier, according to an annual survey of about 2,000 employers by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit research group.

But despite the slowdown in premium increases, the cost for family coverage has risen 78 percent since 2001, while wages rose 19 percent and prices for goods and services have risen 17 percent in that period, according to the report.

"Even though the rate of increase is moderating a little bit, nobody is celebrating, because it's year after year of increases," the foundation's president, Drew Altman, said.

The findings come days after the government unexpectedly said U.S. employers cut 4,000 jobs in August, the first drop in four years. The moderation in premium rises comes amid robust economic growth, but that is seen threatened if growth stalls.

Tags: Diabetes, Research

Insulin for Type II Diabetes Makes Things Worse

Posted on September 12, 2007 by Joel Fuhrman

Insulin works less effectively when people eat fatty foods or gain weight. Diets containing less fat improve insulin sensitivity, as does weight loss.1 An individual who is overweight requires more insulin, whether he or she is diabetic or not. In fact, giving overweight diabetic people even more insulin makes them sicker by promoting weight gain. They become even more diabetic. How does this process work? Our pancreas secretes the amount of insulin demanded by the body. A person of normal weight with about a third of an inch of periumbilical fat will secrete X amount of insulin. Let’s say this person gains about twenty pounds of fat. His body will now require more insulin, almost twice as much, because fat on the body blocks the uptake of insulin into the cells.

If the person is obese, with more than fifty pounds of additional fat weight, his body will demand huge loads of insulin from the pancreas, even as much as ten times more than a person of normal weight needs. So what do you think happens after five to ten years of forcing the pancreas to work so hard? You guessed it — pancreatic poop-out.

The pancreas begins to secrete less insulin, in spite of the huge demands of the body. Eventually, with less insulin available to move glucose from the bloodstream into the cells, the glucose level in the blood starts to rise and the person gets diagnosed with diabetes. In most cases, these individuals are still secreting an excessive amount of insulin (compared with a person of normal weight), just not enough for them. When they eat a less taxing diet and lose weight, they don’t need the extra insulin to control the sugars.

What this means is that typical Type II diabetes is caused by overweight in individuals who have a smaller reserve of insulin-secreting cells in the pancreas. In the susceptible individual, even ten to twenty pounds of excess weight could make the difference. Losing the extra weight enables these individuals to live within the capabilities of their body. Most Type II diabetics still produce enough insulin to maintain normalcy as long as they maintain a thinner, normal weight.

Following a vegetable-based nutrient-dense diet is the most important thing a diabetic individual can do to extend his or her life span. It has been known for years that intentional weight loss improves diabetics’ blood sugars, lipids, and blood pressure. A recent study documented a significant increase in life expectancy, with an average of 25 percent reduced premature mortality when diabetic individuals dropped their body weight.2 Imagine the results when a program of nutritional excellence achieves the weight loss.

Insulin is a dangerous drug for Type II diabetics. These are people who are overweight to begin with. Insulin therapy will result in further weight gain, accelerating their diabetes. A vicious cycle begins that usually causes patients to require more and more insulin as they put on the pounds. When they come to see me for the first time, they report their sugars are impossible to control in spite of massive doses of insulin, which they are now combining with oral medication. It is like walking around with a live hand grenade in your pocket ready to explode at any minute.
Continue Reading...

Tags: Diabetes

Wednesday: Health Points

Posted on September 5, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

China’s been having a tough time with toxins lately, but now they’ve vowed to clean up their act. Reuters reports:

China will clamp down on foods tainted with illegal and excessive chemicals as it seeks to quell domestic and foreign alarm about toxins in meat, seafood and vegetables, the country's top agriculture official said…

…Minister of Agriculture Sun Zhengcai said consumers had no reason to fear eating most of the nation's farm produce, while the nation's quality inspection agency announced comprehensive food export tagging in a bid to reassure customers.

Here’s a solid idea. Want kids to eat their veggies? Help them grow their own. More from That’s Fit:

A study of nearly 1,700 children in rural Missouri found that those who usually ate homegrown fruits and veggies had one full serving more a day than those who didn't and were more likely to prefer the types of produce that they grew at home.

You don't need to live in the country to garden with kids. If you'd like to test out your green thumb with your youngsters, you can try container gardening (here's a tip: hollowed out oranges or grapefruit make excellent bio-degradable containers), planting in a window box, or even digging a small plot like we did. The joy is in the digging, the planting, the getting dirty, and the time spent together, as well as fresh veggies all summer long.

Clearly, too much Dutch chocolate is a bad idea. According to new research, by 2015 one in five Dutch children will be obese. The AFP reports:

One child in five will be obese in the Netherlands by 2015, according to a study carried out by the Nicis research institute in the country's major cities, the Dutch news agency ANP reported Tuesday.

Fewer than 10 percent of children in primary school manage to average half an hour exercise a day. Among teenagers, it is fewer than 30 percent.

As a result, by 2015 one Dutch child in five will be too heavy, Nicis found.

The Diabetes Blog takes a look at a great study claiming vegetable fiber is a great defense against diabetes. Check it out:

The study tracked the eating habits of more than two thousand people over a ten year period. Wow. The researchers also reported that those whose diets contained fiber from mainly cereal or fruit sources did not fare so well - they had a higher risk for type 2 diabetes than those getting lots of fiber from veggie sources. The reason could be that foods high in vegetable fiber produce smaller fluctuations in blood glucose and insulin levels than would cereal or fruits. Lead researcher, Alan Barclay, says legumes are the best fiber source of all.

Warm milk a sleep aid? Anahad O’Connor of The New York Times investigates milk’s reputation of being a cure for insomnia. Read on:

One study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology demonstrated this in 2003. The study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, showed that eating protein-rich foods — like milk — decreased the ability of tryptophan to enter the brain.

The trick, the study showed, is to eat foods high in carbohydrates, which stimulate the release of insulin. Insulin, in turn, makes it easier for tryptophan to enter the brain.

But surveys have found that many people swear by milk as a sleep aid, and that may have something to do with psychology.

The Cancer Blog takes a look at research claiming that fat can turn vitamin C into a cancer-promoting agent. Here’s more:

The interaction of vitamins and minerals in the body (synergy) can have a strong impact on the effectiveness of many of them, but this seems like an odd one to me. Nevertheless, lipid and ascorbic acid interaction was studied in terms of possible cancer contributions to the upper stomach area (which is sensitive to cancerous issues and tumor development).

Nanci Hellmich of USA Today asks the question, why are parents in denial about kids' weight? Let’s find out:

A Consumer Reports magazine poll released July 25 of 3,048 parents who have children ages 5 to 17 found that 91% say childhood obesity is a problem in the USA. But of the parents of children whose body mass index (BMI) categorizes them as overweight, half say their kids weigh what they should.

Only 36% of the parents with heavy children say their physician has suggested their child lose weight; the other 64% say the doctor didn't mention it.

Many parents simply don't realize their children are overweight, says Dawn Jackson Blatner, a registered dietitian in private practice in Chicago and spokeswoman for the American Dietetic Association. "The doctor never told them. Other kids in the class look like their child, and their kid seems pretty healthy," she says.

Salt is bad news. Maybe that’s why health organizations want Americans to cut our salt intake in half. The Cardio Blog is on it:

What can you do to lower your salt intake? You can eat fewer processed foods and become a savvy label reader. You can make more of your foods at home and use spices instead of salts to flavor food. When eating out, ask for unsalted foods and empty your salt shaker at home. You can even consider making your own bread, since bread and cereal products account for a large portion of our daily intake. Shoot for 1,500 to 2,400 mg of salt a day, which seems like a lot but is much lower than the 4,000 to 6,000 mg the average American eats today.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Healthy Parenting, Hurtful Food, Obesity, Research

High Fructose and Diabetes

Posted on August 30, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Surprise-surprise, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) may increase diabetes risk. The Diabetes Blog is on it:

Not surprisingly, the food industry has always defended HFCS against claims that it is harmful. But here's the latest contradiction of that claim: a recent study found that HFCS is "astonishingly" high in reactive carbonyls, which are thought to contribute to the development of diabetes. The study was led by Dr. Chi-tang Ho, head of Rutgers University's Department of Food Science, and colleagues. They concluded that one can of HFCS-sweetened soda contains five times the reactive carbonyls that are normally found in the blood of a person with diabetes.

A news release by the American Chemical Society, announcing Dr. Ho's findings, notes that previous studies have already linked HFCS to cell and tissue damage. They suggest that HFCS consumption may raise the risk of diabetes, not to mention obesity. Say's Dr. Ho: "People consume too much high-fructose corn syrup in this country. It's in way too many food and drink products and there's growing evidence that it's bad for you."

You’re not going to find any love for HFCS here. Dr. Fuhrman considers it unnatural and should be avoided. From Disease-Proof Your Child:

HFCS is not only fattening, but this inexpensive and ultra-concentrated sugar has no resemblance to real food made by nature. It is another experiment thrust upon our unsuspecting children with unknown dangerous consequences. Besides sugar, corn syrup, and chemicals, these drinks often contain caffeine, an addictive stimulant. Children crave more and more as they get older. By adolescence most children have become soft-drink addicts. It is no surprise that six out of the seven most popular soft drinks contain caffeine. Contrast this high level of sugary “liquid candy” with the meager intake of fresh produce by children and teenagers, and it is no surprise that we have an obesity epidemic beyond all expectations.

Diabetes, Diabesity

Posted on August 23, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog has an interesting little ditty about diabetes. Maybe we should eat less and exercise more? Check it out:

These days we live in houses, and consume more than we need to sustain homeostasis and beyond. We walk very little and we all put on weight as we get older, especially around our waists. As we continue on this path of least resistance, and most convenience -- diabesity is becoming a mainstay in our lives. If eating healthy and walking more became an easy and convenient option for everybody -- could this be an automatic resolution to an unforgiving problem?

The plain truth is you don’t have to settle for diabetes.

Tags: Diabetes

NY Times: Fat to Diabetes to Heart Disease

Posted on August 21, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Maybe I’m wrong on this—chances are I am—but I think most people compartmentalize disease. I don’t think they realize having one disease can lead to another and so on and so on. Take this guy for example. Mr. Smith didn’t realize his diabetes was setting him up for a heart attack. Gina Kolata of The New York Times reports:

Mr. Smith, a 43-year-old pastor in Fairmont, Minn., tried hard. When dieting did not work, he began counting carbohydrates, taking pills to lower his blood sugar and pricking his finger several times a day to measure his sugar levels. They remained high, so he agreed to add insulin to his already complicated regimen. Blood sugar was always on his mind.

But in focusing entirely on blood sugar, Mr. Smith ended up neglecting the most important treatment for saving lives — lowering the cholesterol level. That protects against heart disease, which eventually kills nearly everyone with diabetes.

He also was missing a second treatment that protects diabetes patients from heart attacks — controlling blood pressure. Mr. Smith assumed everything would be taken care of if he could just lower his blood sugar level…

…Mr. Smith, like 90 percent of diabetes patients, has Type 2 diabetes, the form that usually arises in adulthood when the insulin-secreting cells of the pancreas cannot keep up with the body’s demand for the hormone. The other form of diabetes, Type 1, is far less common and usually arises in childhood or adolescence when insulin-secreting pancreas cells die.

And, like many diabetes patients, Mr. Smith ended up paying the price for his misconceptions about diabetes. Last year, he had a life-threatening heart attack.

Apparently it never dawned on him that his fatness might be setting him up for diabetes either. To get the full effect of this article, check out the video report. There are a couple dopey quotes from the doctors they interviewed. Take a look:

You’ve got to love it when medical professionals downplay just how much diet factors into the development of diseases. It makes you wonder where they're getting their doctorates from—Hamburger U! Now, back to reality, we all know that diet is a major determinant of disease, especially when you’re fat like Mr. Smith. Dr. Fuhrman talks about it in Eat to Live:

Overweight individuals are more likely to die from all causes, including heart disease and cancer. Two-thirds of those with weight problems also have hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, or another obesity-related condition.1 It is a major cause of early mortality in the United States.2 Since dieting almost never works and the health risks of obesity are so life-threatening, more and more people are desperately turning to drugs and surgical procedures to lose weight…

…As a good rule of thumb: for optimal health and longevity, a man should not have more than one-half inch of skin that he can pinch near his umbilicus (belly button) and a woman should not have more than one inch. Almost any fat on the body over this minimum is a health risk. If you have gained even as little as ten pounds since the age of eighteen or twenty, then you could be at significant increased risk for health problems such as heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes. The truth is that most people who think they are at the right weight still have too much fat on their body.

So, with that being said, maybe Mr. Smith should spend less time in church and more time in the gym. Not to mention snagging a copy of Eat to Live so that he can get rid of all those pills and syringes.
Continue Reading...

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Research

Can't Beat Those Z's

Posted on August 9, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog is all over research linking lack of sleep to obesity and type-2 diabetes. Check it out:

The study found that sleep loss reduced glycogen release from the liver. Since the patient was still awake, requiring energy (and none was being supplied) - the islets withheld production of insulin to sustain existing blood sugar. The aftermath of this suspended glucose metabolism resulted in increased hunger. Yikes.

I’m definitely the pot calling the kettle black here. I know I should be getting more sleep—anyone else an ultra-busy taskmaster? And I’m not exactly doing myself any favors by skipping out on bed time. According to Dr. Fuhrman sufficient sleep is an important part of long-term health:

Adequate sleep is a necessary component of good health. Our modern society stays up late into the night and wakes in the morning to an alarm clock—long before sleep requirements have been fulfilled. To make matters worse, most Americans partake in stimulating substances—such as caffeine and sugar—to remain artificially alert during the day.

During sleep, your body removes the buildup of waste in the brain. Sufficient sleep is necessary for the normal function of your nervous and endocrine systems. Most civilizations in human history recognized the value of mid-afternoon naps. The desire for a rest, short sleep, or “siesta” after lunch should not be seen as an abnormal need, but rather a normal one. People who “cover up” their lack of sleep by using drugs (such as caffeine) as food and/or food (such as highly processed, sugary foods) as drugs sometimes claim (even boast) that they can get by with very little sleep. As you begin to live more healthfully, you may quickly recognize that you need more sleep than you previously thought.

We need to avoid stimulants in order to be in touch with our body’s need for sleep, and only by meeting these needs can we maximize the body’s tremendous capacity for ongoing repair and regeneration of cells.

Remind me to kill my alarm clock.

Tags: Diabetes, Obesity

Exercise, Uber Medicine

Posted on July 30, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

As someone who exercises an average of ten hours a week, I love reading reports like this. New research suggests young type-1 diabetics benefit from exercise. When is exercise ever a bad thing? Anyway, Madeline Vann of HealthDay News is on it:

The researchers analyzed the physical activity levels outside of school and cardiovascular health of more than 23,000 subjects between the ages of 3 and 18. They found that heart health increased as the amount of physical activity increased.

The more active the children were, the lower the percentage of patients with high cholesterol and triglycerides. Nearly 40 percent of those with no regular physical activity had high cholesterol and triglycerides. Of the children who were active once or twice a week, 36 percent had high cholesterol and triglycerides, and for those who were active three or more times a week, only 34.4 percent had high cholesterol and triglycerides.

Writing in the August issue of Diabetes Care the researchers reported that children who were active at least once or twice per week were also less likely to have high blood pressure than those who had no exercise.

Since we’re talking about type-1 diabetes, it’s important to remember there is Hope for Type 1 Childhood Onset Diabetics.

Your Waist, Your Heart

Posted on July 19, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

We all know excess bodyweight increases your risk of disease, and clearly, a really big waist probably means you’re sporting extra pounds. Now, new research claims reducing waist size decreases one’s risk of heart disease and diabetes—makes sense, seems like the opposite. Reuters reports:

French researchers found that men and women whose waistlines expanded by 3 inches or more over nine years were at increased risk of developing metabolic syndrome -- a collection of risk factors, including high blood pressure and unhealthy cholesterol levels, that raise a person's odds of diabetes and heart disease.

In contrast, women who shed just an inch or more from their midsections had a lower risk of developing metabolic syndrome than women whose waistlines stayed the same.

What's more, a slimmed-down middle benefited women who already had metabolic syndrome at the study's outset, the researchers report in the journal Diabetes Care. Compared with women who had metabolic syndrome and an unchanged waistline, those who lost an inch or more were nearly four times more likely to no longer have the syndrome at the study's close.

(via The Cardio-Blog)

Not exactly eye-opening research, but important nonetheless. Dr. Fuhrman often stresses that the one of the keys to long-term health and disease-prevention is maintaining healthy bodyweight. Take heart disease for example; from Reverse Heart Disease Aggressively:

When you normalize your blood pressure and LDL cholesterol with nutritional intervention rather than drugs, you accomplish even greater risk reduction. As your weight drops, your blood sugar, triglycerides, blood pressure, and cholesterol also drop dramatically. Your body is flooded with nutrients that protect your blood vessels from disease and rupture. This approach provides maximal protection and offers benefits beyond merely lowering cholesterol.

The dietary program I recommend for heart-disease reversal utilizes natural cholesterol-lowering therapies instead of drugs, which eliminates the risks of drug side effects. And because my dietary program is richer in fiber and nutrients than the typical vegetarian diet, my patients achieve spectacular reductions in cholesterol, body weight, and blood pressure. Fortunately, this approach also can help those who already have heart disease. They can avoid future heart attacks and reverse and remove atherosclerosis.

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Keep on Trucking...Healthier

Posted on July 18, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog passes on some new research outlining the health risks for most truck drivers. Look:

According to a new survey of truckers, that lifestyle of long hours sitting on your tushie is catching up with the nation's big rig drivers. Obesity is rampant and so are obesity-related health problems like heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. Oh, then there's sleep apnea, smoking, and the fact that many drivers admit they don't bother with seatbelts.

Too bad all truck drives can’t look like this:

Tags: Cardiovascular Disease, Diabetes, Obesity, Research

Diabetes Drug: Triple the Side Effects

Posted on July 16, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Not good news for the makers of the diabetes medication Avandia, its got some real-real serious side effects. Marilynn Marchione of the Associated Press reports:

In the month after a surprising analysis revealed possible heart risks from the blockbuster diabetes drug Avandia, reports of side effects to federal regulators tripled.

The sudden spike is a sign that doctors probably were unaware of the drug's possible role in their patients' heart problems and therefore may not have reported many such cases in the past, several experts said.

It also shows the flaws of the safety tracking system and suggests that a better one might have detected a potential problem before the drug had been on the market for eight years.

Avandia is used to control blood sugar, helping more than 6 million people worldwide manage Type 2 diabetes, the kind that is linked to obesity. These people already are at higher risk for heart attacks, so news that the drug might raise this risk by 43 percent was especially disturbing.

Now, for a real way to treat—and even prevent diabetes—check out Don't Settle For Diabetes.

Tags: Diabetes, Research

UPDATE: Diabetes: Easy as Pumpkin Pie?

Posted on July 10, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research suggests pumpkin extract may be better for Type-1 diabetics than insulin. Madeline Vann of HealthDay News is on it:

Type 1 diabetic rats fed the extract had only 5 percent fewer plasma insulin and 8 percent fewer insulin positive (beta) cells than rats without diabetes. According to the researchers, the extract helped damaged pancreatic cells responsible for insulin production to regenerate and make more insulin.

The study was published in the July issue of the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.

Lead researcher Tao Xia, of East China Normal University in Shanghai, noted that although insulin shots will probably always be necessary for type 1 diabetics, pumpkin extract could drastically reduce the amount of insulin needed.

Although, studies using Jack-o-lantern extract have proved less than encouraging.

UPDATE: I'm not the only one with a snarky comment. Here's what Dr. Fuhrman had to say about this research:

Hard to believe that it could work so well in humans, I don't even believe this study, doesn't even intuitively make sense, that damaged and non-functioning beta cells could come back to life after exposure to a pumpkin. Maybe Cinderella's fairy godmother is behind this?

Diabetes: Vitamin C, Good!

Posted on July 3, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog takes a look a new research linking intake of Vitamin C with fewer diabetes complications. Take a look:

Vitamin C packs a punch, they said, because it helps to clean up ("scavenge," in the words of lead researcher Antonio Ceriello) free radicals - molecules that cause tissue damage. This is of particular concern for diabetics because diabetics' bodies produce more free radicals than those of non-diabetics. This is why diabetics are especially likely to suffer from heart disease. It is also why diabetics are prone to tissue and nerve damage in the feet and legs - damage that all-too-often necessitates amputation.

Oh course, you could always just knock diabetes out for good: Don't Settle For Diabetes.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food

Diabetes: Caveman or Mediterranean?

Posted on July 2, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

More lumps for the Mediterranean diet. New research has revealed that the Mediterranean diet doesn’t stack up against something called the “Stone Age” diet. The Diabetes Blog is on it:

Scientists took a small group of fourteen glucose intolerant heart patients and put them on the diet of a lifetime: lean meat, fish, fruits, vegetables and nuts. This, it is assumed, is the sort of diet consumed by our Stone Age ancestors - hunter gatherers who lived around 70,000 years ago, long before the emergence of agriculture. Meanwhile, another group of patients with similar health issues were put on a supposedly healthy "Mediterranean diet" rich in whole grains, dairy, fruits and veggies, and unsaturated fats. Well, you guessed it. After twelve weeks, the researchers found those on the Stone Age diet had much more stable blood sugar levels and were better able to process carbohydrates without such major blood sugar fluctuations. In fact, all the Stone Age patients had normal blood glucose levels by the end of the study and also dropped a few pounds too. Those on the Mediterranean diet, however, experienced hardly any changes at all.

Now, talk about setting the bar low. Dr. Fuhrman doesn’t speak too highly of the Mediterranean diet. Just consider the people Crete. More from Eat to Live:

In the 1950s people living in the Mediterranean, especially on the island of Crete, were lean and virtually free of heart disease. Yet over 40 percent of their caloric intake come from fat, primarily olive oil. If we look at the diet they consumed back then, we note that Cretans ate mostly fruits, vegetables, beans and some fish. Saturated fat was less than 6 percent of their total fat intake. True, they ate lots of olive oil, but the rest of their diet was exceptionally healthy. They also worked hard in the fields, walking about nine miles a day, often pushing a plow or working other manual farm equipment.

Today the people of Crete are fat, just like us. They're still eating a lot of olive oil, but their consumption of fruits, vegetables, and beans is down. Meat, cheese, and fish are their new staples, and their physical activity level has plummeted. Today, heart disease has skyrocketed and more than half the population of both adults and children in Crete is overweight.1

As someone who reads a lot of health blogs, I already see the trouble with this research. Lots of people hear the words “cave man” or “Stone Age” diet and right away they start thinking primitive people and eating lots of meat is the secret to long-term health—a dangerous assumption according to Dr. Fuhrman. He talks about it in Do Primitive Peoples Really Live Longer:

No. For example, Inuit Greenlanders, who historically have had limited access to fruits and vegetables, have the worst longevity statistics in North America. Research from the past and present shows that they die on the average about 10 years younger and have a higher rate of cancer than the overall Canadian population.2

Similar statistics are available for the high meat-consuming Maasai in Kenya. They eat a diet high in wild hunted meats and have the worst life expectancy in the modern world. Life expectancy is 45 years for women and 42 years for men. African researchers report that, historically, Maasai rarely lived beyond age 60. Adult mortality figures on the Kenyan Maasai show that they have a 50% chance of dying before the age of 59.3

We now know that greatly increasing the consumption of vegetables, legumes, fruits, and raw nuts and seeds (and greatly decreasing the consumption of animal products) offers profound increased longevity potential, due in large part to broad symphony of life-extending phytochemical nutrients that a vegetable-based diet contains. By taking advantage of the year-round availability of high-quality plant foods, we have a unique opportunity to live both healthier and longer than ever before in human history.

In regard to diabetes, Dr. Fuhrman will tell you, the best way to prevent and reverse Type-2 diabetes is a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet. More on that from Understanding the Development of Type 2 Diabetes:

How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies? How can they lower their lipids and blood pressure, lose weight, and avoid taking dangerous drugs, such as insulin and sulfonylureas? They need to adopt a diet based on nutritional excellence.

Fortunately, the best diet for good health and longevity is also the best diet for diabetics. It is a diet with a high nutrient per calorie ratio, as carefully described in my book, Eat to Live. When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods—green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

And fat? It’s especially bad for the diabetic. Dr. Fuhrman talks about fat and diabetes in his book Fasting and Eating for Health:

Experiments described in the medical literature have tested the effects of high-fat diets on insulin intolerance. In one study, healthy young medical students were fed a very high fat diet containing egg yolks, heavy cream, and butter, and within two days all of the students had blood sugar levels high enough to be labeled diabetic.4 Complex carbohydrates have been shown to have the opposite effect.5

Tags: Diabetes, Diet Myths, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

White Kids Have Highest Diabetes Rate

Posted on June 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Last year The New York Times took a look at the diabetes epidemic ravaging New York City. The series revealed that genetics (and a poor diet) give Asians and Hispanics an increased risk of developing type-2 diabetes. From Living at an Epicenter of Diabetes, Defiance and Despair:

The fact that East Harlem is roughly 90 percent Hispanic and black, groups believed to have a genetic predisposition to the disease, explains part of the problem. There are also other factors: bad food habits, little exercise, rampant poverty and, according to health officials, poor access to medical care.

Asians, especially those from Far Eastern nations like China, Korea and Japan, are acutely susceptible to Type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease and the subject of this series. They develop it at far lower weights than people of other races, studies show; at any weight, they are 60 percent more likely to get the disease than whites.

And here’s a reminder that diabetes can effect everyone, regardless of race, religion, creed, or whatever. New research has determined that white children have the highest rate of type-1 diabetes in the United States. Julie Steenhuysen of Reuters reports:

"We found more type 1 diabetes than we expected in whites, blacks and Hispanics," said Dr. Dana Dabelea of the University of Colorado in Denver, who led the study.

"Although the rates of type 2 diabetes are relatively low, we did find type 2 in all racial and ethnic groups, including non-Hispanic whites," she said in a telephone interview.

Type 1 diabetes occurs when the immune system goes haywire and starts attacking itself, destroying insulin-producing cells in the pancreas needed to control blood sugar. People with type 1 diabetes must take daily insulin injections.

Now, you don’t have to suffer needlessly from type-1 or type-2 diabetes. Dr. Fuhrman believes that a nutrient-dense vegetable-based diet is essential for improving a diabetic’s quality of life and, in the case of type-2 diabetes, curing the disease. Check out these posts:

Don't Settle For Diabetes
I have achieved marked success with diabetic patients and the success at becoming "non diabetic" or almost "non-diabetic" regularly occurs on the Eat to Live program whether the patient follows a strict vegan diet or not. I describe the diet-style as a "vegetable-based" diet because the base of the pyramid is vegetables, not grains. Even though most animal products are excluded, it is not necessary to adopt a completely vegan diet to achieve the goals. I offer patients the choice of adding two servings a week of low fat fish, such as tilapia, flounder, sole, and scrod, as well as an egg white omelet, once or twice each week. A few servings of very low saturated-fat animal products each week can be interspersed with the vegan meals without diminishing the results achievable from the vegetable-based diet.

Hope for Type 1 Childhood Onset Diabetics
With a truly health-supporting lifestyle, including exercise and real food designed by nature, the type 1 diabetic can have the same potential for a long, disease-free life as everyone else. Even though the type 1 diabetic still will require exogenous (external) insulin, they will no longer need excessive amounts of it.

Tags: Diabetes

Fat is the Chief Enemy of the Diabetic

Posted on June 28, 2007 by Joel Fuhrman

From Dr. Fuhrman’s book Fasting and Eating for Health:

Fat in the diet of the diabetic not only accelerates the disease process but also interferes with the uptake of glucose by the cells, thus further raising the blood glucose level.

Experiments described in the medical literature have tested the effects of high-fat diets on insulin intolerance. In one study, healthy young medical students were fed a very high fat diet containing egg yolks, heavy cream, and butter, and within two days all of the students had blood sugar levels high enough to be labeled diabetic.1 Complex carbohydrates have been shown to have the opposite effect.2

Fat in the food we eat prevents the proper utilization of insulin and more insulin is needed to process the glucose when fats are included in the meal. Additionally, the fat on one’s body makes the cells resistant to insulin, and the pancreas must produce more insulin to compensate. This is due not only to the additional insulin demanded by the extra body mass of fat cells, but also to the fact that the fat in and around normal tissue, like muscle and internal organs, interferes with insulin uptake into these tissues. The major contributors to fat in the American diet are animal source foods such as meat, fowl, fish, and dairy products, as well as cooking or salad oils.
Continue Reading...

Portion Control, Weight-Loss, and Diabetics

Posted on June 27, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

New research claims that diabetics can lose weight with portion control. Robert Preidt of HealthDay News reports:

Over six months, about half of 122 patients (average age 56) used the portion-control plates and bowls, while the rest of the patients received usual care consisting of dietary assessments and teaching by dietitians.

The patients who used the portion-control plates and bowls lost an average of 1.8 percent of their body weight, compared to an average of 0.1 percent among those who received usual care.

The University of Calgary researchers also found that 16.9 percent of the patients who used the portion-control plates and bowls, which were donated by a U.K. company called The Diet Plate, lost at least 5 percent of their body weight, compared with 4.6 percent of patients who received usual care.

This is all well and good, but, Dr. Fuhrman doesn’t think portion control is a great idea. Actually, he finds it kind of futile. Here’s an example why, from Bad News for Portion Control:

It is meaningless to compare foods by weight or portion size. Let me provide an example to explain why this is the case. Take one teaspoon of melted butter, which gets 100 percent of its calories from fat. If I take that teaspoon of butter and mix it in a glass of hot water, I can now say that it is 98 percent fat-free, by weight. One hundred percent of its calories are still from fat. It didn’t matter how much water or weight was added, did it?

Tags: Diabetes, Research, Weight Loss

TV and Diabetes

Posted on June 22, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Okay, a couple weeks ago we learned that watching entertaining TV can make you fat, and now, it seems TV can lead to poor diabetes control in children. Reuters reports:

The researchers evaluated 538 children and adolescents, average age 13 years, from the eastern part of Norway who had had type 1 diabetes for an average of about 5 years. The time spent watching television and time using a computer was obtained in interviews with the subjects or the parents of very young children.

The average A1C was 8.6%. This measurement is the amount of glycosylated hemoglobin in the blood in relation to the amount of normal hemoglobin, and reflects the degree to which blood glucose levels are controlled over the long term.

The investigators found that as the average number of hours spent in watching television increased, so did the participants' A1C level, their body mass index or BMI, and the total amount of insulin they needed on a daily basis.

Tags: Diabetes, Research

Dropping the Smack Down on Beer

Posted on June 5, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog is all fired up about beer and the shady marketing behind it. Take a look:

For people with diabetes, being aware of carbohydrate content in food and drinks is highly important. With regard to beer, it's important to be cognizant not only of its direct effect on blood glucose levels, but also for the added fat it may be adding to your midsection. The classic Beer Belly, if you will. But, what is it about beer that makes it so bad for your belly?

For one, when you drink beer, twenty percent of the alcohol is absorbed from your stomach into your bloodstream; the rest is absorbed by your intestines. From there, the alcohol makes its way through your liver, where it is broken down -- leading to the creation of two waste products: acetate and acetaldehyde. These waste products then signal your body to stop burning fat, while at the same time your body actually starts MAKING fat from another alcohol waste product, known as acetyle CoA. As a result of all this, the more you drink, the less you become able to burn fat -- and, the more fat your body creates from the build-up of acetytle CoA.

Cure Diabetes: Tips from a Familiar Source

Posted on June 4, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Tired of taking insulin and being a slave to your diabetes? TheDiabetesBlog taps a familiar source for advice. Are you a doctor mystery guest? Do you recommend a vegetable-based diet? Check it out:

The Eat To Live dietary style is a vegetable-based diet designed to maximize nutrient per calorie density. It is the most effective treatment for those with diabetes, more effective than drugs. For a type 2 diabetic, this approach has resulted in complete reversal of the diabetic condition in the vast majority of patients and for a type 1 diabetic it solves the problems with excessive highs and lows and prevents the typical dangerous complications that too frequently befall those with diabetes. Joel Fuhrman, M.D is a board certified family physician specializing in nutritional medicine for overweight and diabetic patents.

Tags: Diabetes

Breastfeeding and Type-1 Diabetes Risk

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog passes on new research claiming that breastfeeding can reduce the risk of type-1 diabetes. Take a look:

The study showed that children who were breastfed exclusively for longer periods of time may have natural protection against developing diabetes. It was particularly true in children who were breastfed exclusively for longer than five months.

The Harvard study also found that breastfeeding helped protect children from diabetes regardless of whether their mothers were overweight or had health problems. This certainly will be another reason to breastfeed babies for longer periods of time, as the Harvard study also indicated that babies that were breastfed for at least a year had the best protection.

One possible explanation considered by both studies is that breastfed babies have a steadier and slower growth, while formula fed babies have growth spurts. Breastfed babies are also more likely to be fed on demand rather than on a schedule.

Tags: Diabetes

NYC: Healthy Food Not Always Available

Posted on May 21, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

This topic gets rehashed in the news every few months. The problem, many neighborhoods in big cities don’t have access to healthy foods like fresh fruits and veggies. So what happens? A growing number of residents develop tragic health problems—diabetes, obesity, heart disease, etc.—due to the abundance of junk-food that somehow manages to find its way into the neighborhood.

Last year The New York Times focused on the diabetes epidemic in New York City. These articles make it pretty clear that limited access to nutritious disease-preventing food and wide-spread availability of inexpensive convenience food contributes greatly to the risk of type-II diabetes. Take a look:

Today the Associated Press examines Harlem and how its food retailers and restaurants are less likely to sell healthy food than other areas of Manhattan. Colleen Long has more:

In Harlem, fast-food restaurants are more prevalent than shops selling fresh vegetables, according to a city health report.

Food stores in the area in upper Manhattan are mostly bodegas, and the small groceries are half as likely to carry low-fat dairy products as their counterparts in swankier neighborhoods and seven times less likely to sell fresh vegetables, the report said. Only 3 percent of corner stores in Harlem sell leafy green vegetables, compared to 20 percent on the nearby Upper East Side, it said.

"Large health disparities exist between Harlem and other New York City neighborhoods, but we can close those gaps," said Dr. Andrew Goodman, associate commissioner of the East and Central Harlem District public health office, a division of the health department.

In addition, one in six restaurants in Harlem is a fast-food joint. All this adds up to serious health problems for neighborhood residents, who are three to four times more likely to be obese or have diabetes than people who live on the Upper East Side, Goodman said.

Most of the news on this topic seems to be just about blowing a lot of hot air and not really doing anything to fix the problem.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food

Diabetes Risk: Cereal Good, Veggies Not?

Posted on May 16, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

Okay, I have to admit. This article made me say, “Henh?” According to new research cereal fiber and magnesium can reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, but, fruits and vegetables don’t. Yeah, I don’t get it either. Reuters reports:

The findings stem from an analysis performed by Dr. Matthias B. Schulze and colleagues from the German Institute of Human Nutrition Potsdam-Rehbruecke, Nuthetal. The study involved over 25,000 adults, between 35 and 65 years of age, who were followed from 1994 to 2005 for diabetes. A food-frequency questionnaire was used to assess the participants for the amounts of dietary fiber and magnesium.

During follow-up, 844 subjects developed type 2 diabetes, the report indicates. Compared with the subjects with the lowest cereal fiber intake, those with the highest intake had a 28-percent reduction in diabetes risk.

Fruit and vegetable fiber intake, by contrast, did not affect the risk. Magnesium intake also showed no effect in this study.

Obviously this flies in the face of a lot of the things we discuss here on DiseaseProof. So for rebuttal, I decided to call in heavy reinforcements. Here’s what Dr. Fuhrman had to say about this study:

The reason for the findings is a huge variance in the amount of whole grain fibers consumed from none to a significant amount. This does make a big difference, especially since people who do not consume whole grains generally live on sugar and white flour. But since the level of vegetable consumption in the highest quintile was still relatively low by our standards there was not really a representative group with a high consumption of green vegetables.

So all this means is that whole grains are better than refined grains and that that change in a person's diet has a major implication for diabetic causation and treatment. It does not mean that green vegetables, beans, nuts and seeds are not likewise protective because the population tested still did not eat much of these foods.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Type 1 Diabetes: What to Do?

Posted on May 7, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

We talk a lot about Type 2 Diabetes here on DiseaseProof, but what about Type 1? What about all those young children diagnosed with the chronic disease everyday? Stephanie Dunnewind of The Seattle Times tells the tale of one such child. Meet 4 ½-year old Kyle Hughes:

There's no easy time to be diagnosed with diabetes — kids deal with school issues; teens can be rebellious risk-takers — but toddlers rank up there as the most challenging. It's nearly impossible to reason with them, and they can barely talk.

Kyle ended up at Children's Hospital & Regional Medical Center when his pediatrician diagnosed diabetes at his 18-month checkup. Christy slept over every night during his weeklong stay. They got a crash course in needles, drugs, meters and all the terrible things that can go wrong.

With no family history of the autoimmune disease, "It's not something I ever expected to know about," Christy Hughes [Kyle’s mom] said.

In the hospital, it took two people to give Kyle his shots. "You sweat, your hands shake — you don't want to do it," Christy said. "Unfortunately, to keep your child alive, you have to do it."

Even when they got home and Kyle stoically accepted the "pokes" — rotated around the fatty areas of his legs, bottom and upper arm to avoid scar tissue — "Every time I'd give him a shot, I'd walk away to cry," Christy said.

"Diabetes makes you feel helpless as a parent," Kurt said. "All day long, you're taking guesses."

Seems unfair, doesn’t it? But good thing for Kyle, his parents are definitely proactive—and that’s what it takes. Now, even though Dr. Fuhrman admits a person with Type 1 Diabetes will never stop taking insulin completely, he insists there is still a lot you can do. From Hope for Type 1 Childhood Onset Diabetics:

I find that when type 1 diabetics adopt the ETL program, they can lower their insulin requirements by about half. They no longer have swings of highs and lows, and their glucose levels and lipids stay under excellent control. In other words, it is not Type 1 diabetes itself that causes such negative health consequences. Rather, it is the combination of the diabetes and the typical nutritional “advice” given to these patients—advice that requires them to take large amounts of unnecessary insulin.

The extra insulin and the high glucose levels raise lipids, accelerate atherosclerosis, and damage the body. With this in mind, it should be clear that while the Standard American Diet (SAD), which has spread to all industrialized nations, is dangerous for everyone, it is particularly deadly for diabetics.

With a truly health-supporting lifestyle, including exercise and real food designed by nature, the type 1 diabetic can have the same potential for a long, disease-free life as everyone else. Even though the type 1 diabetic still will require exogenous (external) insulin, they will no longer need excessive amounts of it.

Tags: Diabetes, Healthy Food

Meat: Grill, Fry, or Broil it?

Posted on April 25, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

It seems neither. A new study claims that grilled, fried, or broiled meat contain toxins called "advanced glycation end products" (AGEs). And, Robert Preidt of HealthDay News reports that AGEs can lead to a myriad of serious health problems, like diabetes and vascular disease. Here’s more:

Grilled, fried or broiled animal products such as meats and cheeses contain a class of toxins called "advanced glycation end products" (AGEs), which have been linked to inflammation, insulin resistance, diabetes, vascular and kidney disease, and Alzheimer's disease, say a team from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City…

…"AGEs are quite deceptive, since they also give our food desirable tastes and smells," senior author Dr. Helen Vlassara, professor of medicine and geriatrics, and director of the Division of Experimental Diabetes and Aging at Mount Sinai, said in a prepared statement.

"So, consuming high amounts of grilled, broiled or fried food means consuming significant amounts of AGEs, and AGEs in excess are toxic. People should be given information about AGE intake and be advised to consider their intake in the same way they would think about their trans fats and salt intake. They should be warned about their AGE levels the way they are about their cholesterol levels or cigarette smoking," Vlassara said.

Dr. Fuhrman makes it pretty clear. Too much meat and other animal products can contribute to serious health problems, namely cancer and cardiovascular disease. Here are couple posts that highlight this connection:

Okay, back to cooking foods. Does it really matter how we prepare our food? Be it animal or vegetable-based. Well for starters, Dr. Fuhrman doesn’t thinking frying is a good idea. He explains why in Disease-Proof Your Child:

Water-based cooking is the preferred way to cook because you can avoid cancer-causing acrylamides that are created when foods are browned by baking or frying.

Never eat browned or overly cooked food. Burnt food forms harmful compounds. If by accident something is overcooked and browned, discard. Avoid fried food and food sautéed in oil. Experiment with low heat cooking to prevent nutritional damage to the food and the formation of dangerous heat-generated compounds.

Now, recently I asked Dr. Fuhrman if acrylamides show up in other foods, like cooked meats, specifically barbecued meat. No surprise here, his answer was yes. Actually, he pointed out that acrylamides form in all foods. Check out this study from the Scandinavian Journal of Nutrition, it sheds some light on the development of acrylamides:

The exact chemical mechanism(s) for acrylamide formation in heated foods is unknown. Several plausible mechanistic routes may be suggested, involving reactions of carbohydrates, proteins/amino acids, lipids and probably also other food components as precursors. With the data and knowledge available today it is not possible to point out any specific routes, or to exclude any possibilities. It is likely that a multitude of reaction mechanisms is involved. Acrolein is one strong precursor candidate, the origin of which could be lipids, carbohydrates or proteins/amino acids. Acrylamide is a reactive molecule and it can readily react with various other components in the food. The actual acrylamide level in a specific food product, therefore, probably reflects the balance between ease of formation and potential for further reactions in that food matrix. There are indications in support of that the Maillard reaction being an important reaction route for acrylamide formation, but lipid degradation pathways to the formation of acrolein should also be considered.

At this point it kind of seems like a basic math equation. If too many animal products are bad and eating overly cooked food is also bad, then putting the two of them together has got to be really bad, right? Well, it sure seems that way. In Disease-Proof Your Child Dr. Fuhrman considers barbequed meat (and cheese) one of the worst foods you can eat for health and longevity. From the book:

Worst Seven Foods for Health and Longevity

Butter

Cheese

Potato Chips and French Fries

Doughnuts

Salt

Sausage, hot dogs

Pickled, smoked or barbequed meat

Foods high in saturated fat and trans fat are consistently associated with high cancer rates. Cheese and butter typically contain over ten times as much saturated fat as fish and white meat chicken and turkey.

Add the carcinogenic potential from heated and overcooked oils (usually trans containing) delivered in doughnuts and fries with the powerful cancer inducing properties of carbohydrates cooked at high heat (acrylamide formation) and you have a great cancer potion.

So, will people heed these warnings and cut back on the amount of animal products they eat and be careful not to dangerously cook their food? My guess, probably not, especially with this kind of rhetoric kicking around the blogosphere. Like LivinLaVidaLowCarb’s ringing endorsement of frying meat in butter—sadly, I’m not kidding. Proceed with caution:

I agree with the advice to shun the fried foods specifically because of the breading. But if you want to fry up your meat in a pan full of butter, then knock yourself out. It’s a healthy way to enjoy that succulent protein-loaded food.

While it’s nice to bake, broil, and especially grill meats, don’t fall for the illusion that cooking these ways is any healthier than cooking meat in fat. Avoid the trans fats, of course, but you shouldn’t worry about saturated fats as long as you are livin’ la vida low-carb.

Take a moment to note that butter is also on Dr. Fuhrman’s list of the seven worst foods. Okay, it gets worse. Check out this quote from Carbohydrate Addict, apparently this Atkins dieter thinks grilled-cheese is fabulous—sigh. Here it is:

I think one of the reasons Atkins was so perfect for me was because I was on low fat/low cholesterol for sooooo many years. All of the forbidden foods suddenly became okay to eat without guilt and my cholesterol is finally FABULOUS. I'm still on a high when I eat them! Egg salad, bacon, chicken wings, mac and cheese, grilled cheese.... YUM!

Yum? For bacon and egg salad? Whoa! What a world we live in. Reading rants like this makes me think about the opposite. What does eating a lot of fruits and vegetables do for us? Well, when you’re talking health and disease-prevention, Dr. Fuhrman explains they’re the best! From Fruits and Veggies vs. Diabetes and Colon Cancer:

While fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of nutrients, the consumption of vegetables is more helpful in reducing cancer because they contain much higher amounts of cancer-protective compounds-- especially green vegetables. Among these green vegetables, the cruciferous family has demonstrated the most dramatic protection against cancer. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, bok choy, collards, arugala, watercress, and cabbage) contain a symphony of phytonutrients with potent anti-cancer effects. Isothiocyanates (ITCs), which are perhaps the best studied, have been shown to provide protection against environmental carcinogen exposure by inducing detoxification pathways, thereby neutralizing potential carcinogens.

These vegetables also contain indole-3- carbinol (I3C). Indole-3-carbinol has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer by decreasing estrogen activity. Important recent studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables and the compounds they contain can do the following:

Halt the growth of breast cancer cells1

Dramatically reduce the risk of colon cancer2

Prevent the replication of prostate cancer cells and induce death of cancerous cells3

Inhibit the progression of lung cancer4

And here’s more, from Is Heart Disease Totally Preventable? Take a look:

The Eat to Live vegetable, fruit, nut, and bean-based diet has been shown to be the most effective cholesterol-lowering dietary approach in medical history. This newsworthy data with the potential to save millions of lives has been ignored by the mass media. With this dietary approach, most patients drop their total cholesterol below 150 and LDL below 100, without the need for medications.

During the two years that the Eat to Live vegetable, fruit, nut, and bean-based diet has been under research study by the University of Southern California, patients have shown an average weight loss of forty-nine pounds, the most sustained weight loss ever recorded in a medical study in history.

In areas of the world where people eat a diet of unrefined plant foods, people have total cholesterol levels below 150, and there is zero incidence of heart disease in the population.5

Tags: Cancer, Cardiovascular Disease, Cholesterol, Diabetes, Diet Myths, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

High Blood Sugar and Cancer

Posted on March 28, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

The Diabetes Blog relays new research linking high blood sugar to cancer risk:

Researchers identified 2,478 incident cases of cancer from records of 33,293 women and 31,304 men who participated in the study. Participants were recruited in the mid-1980s at age 40, 50 and 60 and the study covered a 13-year period. The records included levels of glucose in the blood when fasting and after receiving an infusion of glucose. Researchers calculated the cancer risk relative to blood glucose while adjusting for: age, year of enrollment, fasting time and smoking status. Women with blood sugar levels higher than normal have a total higher risk for cancer while for men the risk was unchanged at higher blood sugar levels. The overall risk of developing cancer for women in the top 25% of fasting blood glucose levels was 26% higher than those in the bottom 25%. Women with high fasting glucose levels had a higher risk of pancreatic, breast and endometrial cancers, while the increase in risk for malignant melanoma was two times higher.

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Fruits and Veggies vs. Diabetes and Colon Cancer

Posted on March 22, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

In this age of modern medicine patients and doctors alike are quick to throw themselves at the altar of prescription drugs and invasive procedures, often ignoring rudimentary causes and cures for many of the common afflictions that plague this country.

Take diabetes and cancer for example, big pharma has indoctrinated us into believing that lifelong dependency on medication and chemotherapy are our only hopes. Now, if you read this blog you know, this is foolhardy to say the least. And Dr. Fuhrman makes it very clear. You have other options.

Does a diagnosis of Type-II Diabetes mean a life sentence of insulin shots? Dr. Fuhrman doesn’t think so. From Understanding the Development of Type 2 Diabetes:

How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies? How can they lower their lipids and blood pressure, lose weight, and avoid taking dangerous drugs, such as insulin and sulfonylureas? They need to adopt a diet based on nutritional excellence.

Fortunately, the best diet for good health and longevity is also the best diet for diabetics. It is a diet with a high nutrient per calorie ratio, as carefully described in my book, Eat To Live. When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods—green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

And what about cancer? In Diet, Chemotherapy, and the Truth: How to Win the War on Cancer Dr. Fuhrman talks about how vegetable-based nutrition hits cancer where it hurts:

While fruits and vegetables are excellent sources of nutrients, the consumption of vegetables is more helpful in reducing cancer because they contain much higher amounts of cancer-protective compounds-- especially green vegetables. Among these green vegetables, the cruciferous family has demonstrated the most dramatic protection against cancer. Cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, kale, bok choy, collards, arugala, watercress, and cabbage) contain a symphony of phytonutrients with potent anti-cancer effects. Isothiocyanates (ITCs), which are perhaps the best studied, have been shown to provide protection against environmental carcinogen exposure by inducing detoxification pathways, thereby neutralizing potential carcinogens.

These vegetables also contain indole-3- carbinol (I3C). Indole-3-carbinol has been shown to reduce the risk of breast cancer by decreasing estrogen activity. Important recent studies have shown that cruciferous vegetables and the compounds they contain can do the following:

Halt the growth of breast cancer cells1

Dramatically reduce the risk of colon cancer2

Prevent the replication of prostate cancer cells and induce death of cancerous cells3

Inhibit the progression of lung cancer4

Now, Dr. Fuhrman has been talking about this for years, but it’s still cool to read about it in the news. Like this report from Reuters. Apparently a new study has determined avoiding meats and fatty foods and eating plenty of salads and cooked vegetables reduces the risk of developing Type-II Diabetes. Michelle Rizzo explains:

There was an inverse association observed between the Salad and Vegetable pattern and diabetes. The Meat pattern was positively associated with diabetes. No association was observed between the Fruit pattern and diabetes risk.

"Our results suggest that avoiding an eating pattern including meat and fatty foods, and favoring a pattern high in salad and cooked vegetables could reduce the risk of developing type 2 diabetes," Dr. Allison Hodge, of the University of Melbourne, Australia, said in an interview with Reuters Health.

Okay, call it coincidence, but here’s another Reuters report worth checking out. It seems new research has determined that people who eat a diet high in fruit and low in meat reduce their risk of developing colon cancer. Have a look:

Gregory Austin and colleagues analyzed the answers and found there were three groups -- people who ate a lot of fruit but little meat, people who ate a lot of vegetables and a moderate amount of meat, and people who simply ate a lot of meat.

The people who recalled eating large or moderate amounts of meat were 70 percent more likely to have had a polyp than those who said they ate a lot of fruit but little meat.

So then, all this begs the question. Why don’t more doctors and patients seek out this kind of information? Oh, that’s right, there are no pushy sales reps and million dollar advertising campaigns behind your local farmers market.
Continue Reading...

Tags: Cancer, Diabetes, Healthy Food, Hurtful Food, Research

Boomer has Diabetes

Posted on March 20, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

With baseball season right around the corner, Padres pitcher David Wells caught some bad news. Boomer has Type-II Diabetes. As a Yankee fan I’ve got plenty of love for David Wells, but, if you know anything about him, it shouldn’t be all that surprising. Yahoo Sports reports:

Wells was diagnosed two weeks ago, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported in Monday's editions…

…The 43-year-old old signed a one-year contract in January to return to his hometown Padres as the No. 5 starter. The 6-foot-3, 248-pound Wells has often battled his weight, and was scratched from a start late last season due to gout in his right foot.

Now to say the least, Boomer is one of those guys who “enjoys” life. His weight is a good indication of that. And clearly that’s part of the problem because according to Dr. Fuhrman weight-gain is a huge contributing factor to the development of Type-II Diabetes. From Understanding the Development of Type 2 Diabetes:

As little as five pounds of excess fat on your frame can inhibit the ability of insulin to carry glucose into your cells. When you have twenty pounds of extra fat, your pancreas may be forced to produce twice as much insulin. With fifty or more pounds of excess fat on your frame, your pancreas may be forced to produce six to ten times more insulin than a person who is lean.

What do you think occurs after ten or twenty years of overworking the pancreas? That's right, it becomes exhausted and loses the ability to keep up with the huge insulin demands. As time goes on, even though your overworked pancreas may still pump out much more insulin than a thinner person might need, it won't be enough to overcome the effects of your disease-causing body fat.

The pancreas's ability to secrete insulin continues to diminish as the diabetes and the overweight condition continue year after year. Unlike with type 1 (childhood onset) diabetes, total destruction of insulin-secreting ability almost never occurs in type 2 (adult onset) diabetes.

And here’s a recent article claiming obesity poses a larger diabetes risk than inactivity. Reuters was on it:

Researchers monitored 68,907 women taking part in the Nurses' Health Study, a large ongoing study that is evaluating women's health over time. The women in the current trial had no history of diabetes, cardiovascular disease or cancer at study entry. During 16 years of follow-up, there were 4,030 incident cases of type 2 diabetes.

After allowing for age, smoking, and other diabetes-associated factors, the risk of type 2 diabetes increased progressively with increasing body mass index (BMI - the ratio of height to weight often used to determine if someone is overweight or too thin). The risk also increased with waist circumference, and decreased with physical activity levels.

Hopefully Boomer will start taking positive steps towards striking out his diabetes, and, if he’s got anything left, I’d love to see him hurling for the Bronx Bombers again!

So, how can you defeat Type-II Diabetes? Check out these previous posts:

Tags: Diabetes

Fight Diabetes with Phytochemicals

Posted on February 22, 2007 by Gerald "Gerry" Pugliese

I can’t imagine how it must feel to be diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes. Sitting their while some lab coat explains your new regiment of blood-testing and insulin injections. One of my biggest fears is chronic illness—I have a fear of commitment—how can a person just accept being sick?

Unfortunately I think we’re a culture that considers disease as a natural part of aging. Heck, certain members of my own family treat their prescribed medications as a badge of honor. And that’s exactly the kind of attitude that gets under Dr. Fuhrman’s skin. He insists you don’t have to go out like that. From Eat to Live:

The diseases that afflict, and eventually kill, almost all Americans can be avoided. You can live a high-quality, disease-free life and remain physically active and healthy. You can die peacefully and uneventfully at an old age, as nature intended.

So then, what about Type 2 Diabetes, you’ve got it, now what? Fight! And fight like the devil. Don’t fall into modern healthcare’s symbiotic relationship between you, the disease, and medication. Dr. Fuhrman will tell you, you don’t have to settle for diabetes. According to him you’ve got options. Consider this from Understanding the Development of Type 2 Diabetes:

How can diabetics safely lower the high glucose levels that are slowly destroying their bodies? How can they lower their lipids and blood pressure, lose weight, and avoid taking dangerous drugs, such as insulin and sulfonylureas? They need to adopt a diet based on nutritional excellence.

Fortunately, the best diet for good health and longevity is also the best diet for diabetics. It is a diet with a high nutrient per calorie ratio, as carefully described in my book, Eat to Live. When you eat a diet consisting predominantly of nature's perfect foods—green vegetables, beans, eggplant, tomatoes, mushrooms, onions, garlic, raw nuts and seeds, and limited amounts of fresh fruit, it becomes relatively easy to eat as much as you want and still lose your excess weight. In my experience, those who follow my nutritional recommendations find that their diabetes disappears astonishingly fast, even before most of their excess weight melts away.

I don’t know about you, but given the choice between fresh veggies and an insulin injection, salad wins everyday of the week. And the idea seems to be catching on. The Diabetes Blog is all over research linking increased consumption of vegetables with protective health benefits:

Colorado State University researchers found that, despite eating one less serving daily, people who consumed a wider array of vegetables experienced more health benefits than those who chose from a smaller assortment. The source behind these benefits come from phytochemicals, compounds that guard cells against free radical damage. By eating a wider assortment of vegetables, people had a better chance of consuming a greater amount of protective phytochemicals.

For more on Dr. Fuhrman’s approach towards treating diabetes with vegetable-based nutritional excellence, here are some previous posts: