Insulin resistance is a modern day problem that is the result of eating modern day foods. What insulin resistance means is that the cells in your body are resistant to insulin. While this may not sound like a big deal, it is. The more insulin resistant your cells become, the high your blood sugar rises (and your body hates high blood sugar). Let’s take a look at just how insulin resistance happens in your body.

How Insulin Resistance Forms

If your blood sugar shoots up high occasionally, there is really no problem. The problem comes when your blood sugar is high over a long period of time or high blood sugar happens every day. To understand this, you have to understand what is happening in the cells of your body.

The cells in your body only want so much sugar; they just want enough sugar to do their jobs. When there is constantly too much insulin and too much sugar in the blood stream (like when you eat sugar at every meal) the only response that the cells have is to remove the doorways (receptors) from the outside of the cell. This process is called down-regulation of receptors. When insulin receptors disappear throughout the body, it creates a whole-body effect called “insulin resistance,” meaning the cells of the body become “resistant” to insulin.

Let’s take a look at what happens to the cell when the body removes receptors, in the following diagram the yellow represents the cell and the blue thingies are the receptors.

A cell goes from having this many receptors (normal):

To having, say, this many:

Now, this is a bit tricky to understand, but imagine if all the cells in your body began to respond to too much sugar by removing their insulin receptors. If every cell in the body removed its receptors, the doorways to sugar, what would happen? The end result would be that you’d have more sugar in your blood.

Why?

Remember that insulin used to be able to push sugar out of the blood stream and put it into the cells. The cells, though, are now getting rid of receptors because there is too much sugar around most of the time. The cells are becoming resistant to insulin. So, even though there is sugar in the blood stream and a lot of insulin, the sugar has no where to go because the cells won’t allow it in. So, now, where does the sugar go? It stays in the blood stream.

But you also have to remember, more sugar in the blood stream creates what? The answer is more sugar in the blood stream leads to more insulin. When your body becomes insulin resistant, the next time you eat a meal, you have a higher amount of sugar in your blood because the cells are refusing to take on that sugar. So, more sugar in the blood stream means that the body will now release more insulin. Do you see the vicious cycle that is starting to develop? More insulin circulating in the body will eventually lead to fewer receptors on cells, which will lead to more sugar in the blood, and more insulin, and fewer receptors and…you get the idea.

Cells will eventually look like this as they get rid of even more receptors:

Now you understand how insulin resistance can develop from eating a high amount of sugar every day. The association between eating sugars and the creation of insulin resistance is, however, far from being a proven phenomenon in human beings. Animal studies demonstrate a relationship between eating sugars and foods that act like sugar and the development of insulin resistance,[i]^,[ii] but the medical community is far from convinced. Like much of the scientific study on sugar and health, much more research is needed.

Over Time

Okay. Let’s see if we can pull this all together. Watch what happens over time, not to the individual cell, but in the whole body. The following chart shows how blood sugar and insulin react to each other and how insulin resistance builds over time when you are consuming sugar foods. (click on the image below to see full size).

What happens over time with insulin resistance is that the body can no longer produce enough insulin and, eventually, insulin production fails. When the body can no longer produce enough insulin or the cells have become resistant to insulin, your body is no longer able to keep blood sugar within a narrow range. This is called diabetes, a situation where the blood sugar is very high.

What Can You Do?

There is a lot that you can do to avoid insulin resistance, the chief among these is to stop eating sugar and foods that act like sugar. I have program called the 30 Sugar Free Days Program where you can join with other people who are giving sugar the boot.

Besides stopping the sugar feast, you can exercise, lower the amount of saturated fat in your diet and eat as many vegetables as you can. Insulin resistance is not a death sentence, but a wake-up call. There is a lot you can do to stop and reverse insulin resistance, but you have to get moving today.

[ii] Daly M: Sugars, insulin sensitivity, and the postprandial state. Am J Clin Nutr. 2003 Oct;78(4):865S-872S.

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Low glycemic foods are the best foods to eat if you are trying to control your blood sugar, but it also works well to eat low glycemic foods if your goal is weight loss.

But just what are low glycemic foods?

The Glycemic Index

The glycemic index is a listing of foods and how each of those foods increases our blood sugar. As you might imagine, eating straight sugar increases your blood sugar but here is the strange thing: other foods increase your blood sugar too (some even more than eating straight sugar).

The glycemic index came about when a scientist decided to check someone’s blood sugar and then give them a single food and then test to see what that food did to their blood sugar. It is a simple enough experiment, but it yielded some surprising results. Foods that we thought would increase blood sugar did, but some of those foods act more sugary that sugar itself. Part of this has to do with what we are measuring and part of it has to do with how readily available the sugars in foods are when we eat them.

Here is a breakdown of a typical glycemic index chart:

What you will notice about the chart is that most of high and medium glycemic index foods are grains, sugars and simple starches. These are the foods you want to avoid

Low Glycemic Foods

Here is the list of the some of the low glycemic foods (for a database, go to www.glycemicindex.com )

GRAINS

• Pearl barley

Grain Products

• Fettuccine, egg
• Lasagna
• Linguine
• Macaroni
• Ravioli
• Spaghetti

FRUITS (RAW)

• Apple
• Blackberries
• Blueberries
• Cherries
• Dried apricots
• Grapes
• Kiwi fruit
• Mango
• Orange
• Peach
• Pear
• Pineapple
• Plums
• Raspberries
• Strawberries

VEGETABLES

• Avocados
• Broccoli
• Brussels sprouts
• Cabbage
• Carrots, raw
• Cauliflower
• Celery
• Chard
• Eggplant
• Garlic
• Kale
• Onions
• Radish
• Sprouts
• Squash (most)
• Tomato Juice
• Tomato soup
• Tomatoes
• Yam (Canada)

Lettuce of all kinds

• Green leaf
• Iceberg
• Red leaf
• Romaine

Mixed greens

• Arugula
• Beet greens
• Collard Greens
• Dandelion greens
• Endive
• Escarole
• Radicchio
• Red mustard
• Spinach

BEANS

• Baked Beans
• Black eyed beans
• Chickpeas (Garbanzo beans)
• Hummus (chickpea salad dip)
• Lentils, red
• Pinto beans
• Red Kidney Beans
• Romano beans
• Soya beans

DAIRY

• Full-fat cows’ milk
• Cheese (most)

NUTS AND SEEDS

• Almonds
• Cashews
• Macadamia
• Mixed nuts
• Peanut butter (no sugar)
• Peanuts
• Pecans
• Pistachio
• Sunflower seeds
• Walnuts

PROTEIN

• Beef
• Chicken
• Eggs
• Fish
• Pork
• Poultry (all)
• Sausages
• Wild game

MUSHROOMS

• Maitake
• Reishi
• Shitake

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If you ask most medical doctors or even established associations such as the American Diabetes Association (see Diabetes Myths) you will find that they think that eating sugar has nothing to do with diabetes. To most people it seems mind bogglingly simple to connect a sugar control problem (diabetes) with eating too much sugar but the medical community just can’t seem to make that leap.

For the rest of us that live on planet reality it is obvious that eating sugar can cause diabetes. How do we know that? Because humans that don’t have access to purified white sugar or foods that act like sugar simply don’t have diabetes. If you look around the globe, you see that people who are unlucky enough to be able to go to the store and pick up a bag of sugar (or get a soda, or buy a bag of chips) are the same people who have diabetes.

A sugar free diet for your diabetes will not only help you, but can dramatically reduce or eliminate your need for medications.

White Sugar

The image you have to get into your head about white sugar is that it is the 100-proof vodka of foods. When you pick up a bag of sugar and the label says that it is almost 99 percent sucrose (and nothing else), that means that your sugar has been so refined that there is nothing else in that bag but pure sucrose. No food this pure exists on the earth until human hands purify it. White sugar is like a drug – only more pure than any you would find on the streets.

But here is the problem.

You can remove all the sugar you want from your diet but if you don’t also remove the foods that act just like sugar in your body then you are not doing yourself any good. What are the foods that act like sugar? They are foods such as bread, crackers, chips and certain fruits and vegetables and they all act just like eating sugar. Want to learn more? Check out my article on the foods that act like sugar.

How to Go Sugar Free

If you are going to do a sugar free diet for diabetics then you are going to need some help.

First let me caution you that changing the way that you eat (especially if you remove sugars and foods that act like sugar) can dramatically change your blood sugar. This is no problem if you are not on medications for your diabetes, but if you are taking medications for blood sugar control then you can put yourself in a dangerous position by simply eating better. Let me suggest that you work with your doctor or health care provider if you are taking diabetic medications and you are going to change your diet.

I find that the easiest way to change your diet is to follow a plan and I have a 30 Sugar Free Days Program that you are welcome to join (there is free version) and try going 30 days without sugar and foods that act like sugar.

Take the plunge and try the 30 sugar free days challenge:

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Her latest book, The Calcium Lie: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know Could Kill You covers the many problems that calcium creates.

Startling new statistics on diabetes released by the National Institutes of Health this week show that the rates of diabetes and impaired blood sugar in American are increasing at alarming levels.

Nearly 13% of American aged 20 and over have diabetes, but 40% of them don’t know it. This puts them at high risk for the tragic side effects of diabetes, including heart disease, stroke, kidney disease, blindness, impaired circulation that can lead to amputations and more.

If that’s not gloomy enough for you, consider this: From 1995 to 1997, there were 4.8 new cases of Type 2 diabetes per 1,000 Americans. Ten years later, that rate had increased by 89% to 9.1 new cases per 1,000 Americans.

Worse yet, 36% of men and 23% of women and 16% of teenagers have “pre-diabetes,” says the NIH.

The term “pre-diabetes” is a con. It means that you have impaired blood glucose function and without drastic measures, you will soon have diabetes and all of its ugly companion diseases. It lulls too many patients into complacency.

It’s even more frightening when you consider the number of teenagers who are being diagnosed with diabetes or more benign-sounding “pre-diabetes.” The disease now known as Type 2 diabetes was once known as adult onset diabetes.

Diabetes was once the province of senior citizens. The dread companion diseases are more-or less accepted turf there. But there is something inherently wrong when we think of obese teenagers with arterial blockages, having heart attacks at 30 and bypasses at 35, if they survive that long. Just think about where these poor kids will be when they’re 40.

These statistics aren’t just numbers, folks. They are our mothers, father, sisters, brothers, husbands, wives and, sadly, our children. They are real people and this illness takes a toll on everyone around someone with diabetes.

This a tragedy of national proportions. Diabetes is a terrible disease. There are no two ways about it. Once you’re diagnosed, the changes of reversing diabetes are diminished. The chances of controlling it are better. But the best bet is prevention.

How can you prevent diabetes?

1. Stay away from sugar and foods with hidden sugar: This is a good start, but it’s not the entire answer.
2. Control your weight: Most of us know that obesity is a factor in almost all cases of Type 2 diabetes. Studies also show that just losing 10% of your body weight can dramatically lower blood sugars.
3. Exercise is another key factor in diabetes management and prevention., not only for the obvious reasons. Muscle activity actually helps your body to better use the insulin that your pancreas is producing.
4. Know your mineral status and correct mineral imbalances to help prevent a downward spiral of metabolic problems that lead to diabetes and a host of other health problems, according to Robert Thompson, M.D., with whom I wrote The Calcium Lie: What Your Doctor Doesn’t Know Could Kill You (InTruth Press, 2008). Learn your mineral status by getting a hair tissue mineral analysis and following the recommendations tailored to your specific needs.

Finally, do what ever it takes to fend off the diabetes monster. It is one of the most terrible diseases we face and one of the most preventable. It’s up to you.

–Kathleen Barnes

http://www.kathleenbarnes.com

Twitter: @KathleenSBarnes

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Health News:

HORMONE REPLACEMENT THERAPY (HRT): HRT and the risks of breast cancer were reviewed in a recent symposium. It appears that even using HRT for a short time increased the risk of breast cancer. Which begs the question: why use HRT? The risks are not a small increase, but for some women constitute a doubling of their risk for breast cancer.

Dr. Scott’s Comments: Hormones are powerful and can create huge problems in our bodies. Estrogen, in particular, is a problem for women because of the risk of breast, endometrial, and ovarian cancers. Part of the problem lies in the fact that most HRT are synthetic hormones that are not natural to humans. Other problems have to do with the fact that many chemicals in our environment act like estrogens (including plastics, pesticides, and a host of other chemicals). The final question has to be should we be putting hormones in an aging person at all?

HRT is a travesty because there are many natural substitutes that work just as well, without the side effects.

original article

CANCER MUCH WORSE FOR DIABETICS: Cancer is currently the number two killer worldwide and is rapidly approaching number one. People with diabetes are more than 40 percent likely to die in the years right after a cancer diagnosis than people who are not diabetic.

Dr Scott’s Comments: There are no well-established links between sugar consumption and cancer — at least not yet. This new study sheds light on another horrible aspect of diabetes: it makes surviving a cancer diagnosis harder. For me, this adds to the destruction wrought by sugar. Not only is sugar toxic to our blood vessels (witness the kidney, eye and heart damage in diabetics), but it also leads to obesity, heart disease and diabetes. Clearly we have to start avoiding the sugar and foods that act like sugar in our diets.

original article

LOW GLYCEMIC DIET FOR DIABETICS: The prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association has published an article showing that diabetics eating foods that are low on the glycemic index had better sugar control than those that didn’t.

Dr Scott’s Comments: I’m going to borrow a word from my 10 year-old-daughter to describe the finding of this study: DUH! Medical science has come a long way, but they have yet to make any connection between what we eat and the diseases that we get. Maybe this study will change their minds. Yes, diabetes has something to do with the sugar and foods that act like sugar that we eat every day. I think that people eating Eating Below the Glycemic Index would fare even better… maybe even reverse their diabetes.

original article

STRESS INCREASES HEART DAMAGE: People who reported a high amount of stress in their lives increased the risk of a cardiovascular event by as much as 50 percent when compared to people who have a low amount of stress. The increase in disease was evident by the number of heart attacks, bypass surgeries, and strokes that high-stress people suffered from.

Dr. Scott’s Comments: This study shows the strong connection between our minds and our bodies. Stress is a big killer, but is often hard to define or understand. I personally feel the best treatment for stress is exercise. Whenever the world starts weighing too much on my shoulders, I know I have to get out for a run, or hop on my bike, or even just take a walk outside. It also helps to listen to other people’s worries: When you hear someone describe what they are worried about, you realize that many of their fears are ungrounded, maybe yours are too?

original article

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According to recent research, the number of people with diabetes has doubled in the last 10 years.¹ The report, by the Centers for Disease Control or CDC, shows that the nation (and really the whole developed world) is becoming heavier and heavier (see YouTube video) and with that excess weight comes an increasingly large number of people who have diabetes.

Having diabetes is far from a mild disease; it has major implications on the quality of life. People with diabetes are much more likely to have:

• Heart disease
• Kidney disease
• Eye disease (cataracts, macular degeneration, blindness)
• Vascular disease (stroke and poor circulation to hands and feet)
• Loss of nerve sensation (neuropathy)

Life Expectancy

Diabetes is harmful and it will cut your life short. Diabetics lose an average of 12 years for men and 14 years for women from their lives. ⁵ Yes, women are harmed by diabetes more than men.

There is associated problem with diabetes that doesn’t get much attention that has to do with the quality of life lived by a diabetic. The quality of life deteriorates rapidly in people with diabetes: blindness, losing limbs, heart disease, kidney failure and more. When scientists make an estimation of the loss of not only years lived, but also the quality of those years, they come up with something they call “quality-adjusted years”. Men lose an average of 19 quality-adjusted years and women lose around 22 years.⁵

I don’t know about you, but 20 years kicked off of a life seems rather significant.

It is Bad and Getting Worse

Population estimates are hard to come by, but the current number of people with diabetes is estimated somewhere between 4.3 to 16.6 percent of the population,² with certain ethnic groups such as Native American and Hispanics at the high end of those calculations.

But even those percentages don’t tell the whole story. What you really want to know is this: what are your chances of getting diabetes? It is easy to think that your chances of getting diabetes are between 4.3 to 16.6 percent (like the population estimates), but that is not true. To find out your own risk, you have to look at lifetime risk (the chances you will get diabetes some time in your life). What are your lifetime risks for diabetes? The esteemed Journal of the American Medical Association or JAMA made these estimates in 2003:

For people born in 2000, their lifetime risk for getting diabetes is 32.8 percent for males and 38.5 percent for females.⁵

That is incredible: an almost 40% risk of getting diabetes some time in your lifetime.

It Doesn’t Have to be This Way!

Here is the thing you need to know: diabetes is completely preventable. It is the one disease that I can say for sure that you never have to suffer through as long as you follow my dietary advice. No pills, no drugs… just follow dietary advice. I detail just what diet to follow in my book Sugarettes, but let me give you an outline of what you need to do:

• Avoid sugar in all its forms: soda, cookies, candies…
• Eat a diet at or below the glycemic index
• Find ways to deal with your sugar addiction
• Exercise

That is it. Sounds simple, but following it is hard.

Diabetes has doubled in the last 10 years, don’t let you or a member of your family become one of the statistics.

1. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). State-specific incidence of diabetes among adults–participating states, 1995-1997 and 2005-2007. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2008 Oct 31;57(43):1169-73.
   
2. Ramsey F, Ussery-Hall A, Garcia D, et al. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Prevalence of selected risk behaviors and chronic diseases–Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), 39 steps communities, United States, 2005. MMWR Surveill Summ. 2008 Oct 31;57(11):1-20.
   
3. Magliano DJ, Shaw JE, Shortreed SM, et al. Lifetime risk and projected population prevalence of diabetes. Diabetologia. 2008 Sep 23
   
4. Mainous AG 3rd, Baker R, Koopman RJ, et al. Impact of the population at risk of diabetes on projections of diabetes burden in the United States: an epidemic on the way. Diabetologia. 2007 May;50(5):934-40. Epub 2006 Nov 21.
   
5. K. M. Venkat Narayan, James P. Boyle, Theodore J. Thompson. Lifetime Risk for Diabetes Mellitus in the United States. JAMA. 2003;290:1884-1890.
   

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