Rebound Headaches

By: Tom Thorne

http://www.FeelingOutstanding.com

One of the most devastating cycles that a person can fall into is the rebound headache cycle. Doctors all over the country realize that many of the popular over-the-counter headache medications, when used too often, can cause rebound headaches, or the pain the return, often at a more severe level, 12, 24 or 48 hours later. It is definitely a twisted and cruel marketing technique that is blasted all over the television, magazines, newspapers and other media praising these medications as a gift from above. When in fact, if a person over-uses these drugs, they can find themselves in a cycle where they have near daily or even daily headaches and cannot determine what is causing the pain. In my opinion theses drugs should have in huge, bold print on their label, about three times as large as the brand name stating “Overuse of this medication can cause serious rebound headaches” so no one would miss it!

How much is overuse? Using the medication daily, twice a day? Quoting the Headache-Advisor.com webpage, “Additionally there is over use of over the counter medications like Tylenol Sinus or Excedrin Migraine. These medications used more than three times a week are a definite cause of recurring headache.” One additional medication that can lead to rebound headaches in particular that is pointed out by this article is Claritin D. Sinus Headache. From my experience plus the substantiation from two different family doctors Goodies powder and B.C. powder do the same.

When a person finds oneself trapped in the rebound headache cycle it becomes nearly impossible to diagnose other headache triggers. Picture the following scenario. A person, not aware that a certain food is a headache trigger, eats this food occasionally. Approximately 24 hours after he/she consumes this delectable item, a headache begins to come on. Not wanting the headache to get too bad a Goodies powder is taken (for the third time this week). The pain subsides for the time being. As another day passes the headache pain begins to rear its ugly head again. So, once again, in order to relieve the pain immediately, another Goodies powder is taken. Although, this time maybe two powders are necessary to provide relief. Maybe the pain is gone for 36-48 hours this time but sure enough, after a day or two it comes back again.

By this point in time, the subject is beginning to question what is causing these headaches, still not aware that the original headache was caused by a food he ate days ago that acted as the headache trigger.

Once a person gets caught in this “rebound headache cycle” it can just keep compounding. While the individual will still be eating various headache triggers from time to time he/she will have a very slim chance of being able to point them out because of the near daily or daily headache of one degree or another that this person has.

Consider if our person in this example then goes to a doctor who tells him two things (and I have gotten this advice from the medical profession before): First, at the beginning stages of a headache is when the headache medication should be taken. Second, keep a journal to try to figure out what is causing the headaches.

When this advice is observed, our subject finds himself/herself taking headache drugs at the first sign of a headache all right but also at the first sign of anything that appears to be a headache.  Sometimes, when there is some stress and no headache. These drugs start to get taken far too often. They, themselves bring on the recurring pain and outside sources that may cause headaches also are almost impossible to detect.

This is a very dangerous cycle to become involved in. Your work level and quality will decrease. Your social life (if there is any left) will deteriorate. Your family time and care for your family will drop. People who get in this cycle bad enough will feel that they have lost control of their lives. I have even known people who have felt that life was not worth living; and you know what that can bring on. To be blunt, many of the headache medications available today are one of the largest causes of daily headaches that there is.

I have had personal experience with three very close friends that experienced continual rebound headaches. For many years neither was aware of many of the headache triggers that they were partaking of regularly. And although both seemed to be somewhat aware of rebound headaches they continually reached for the bottle for headache relief; sometimes 2, 3, 4 or even 5 times per day. Both of these individuals were in such a bad rebound headache cycle that they both had headaches nearly every day for years. The fear of a migraine headache gripped both people so dearly that they would do almost anything to avoid it. The unfortunate part is that even with taking so many of these drugs, they both still got migraines fairly often.

One of these individuals died from cancer but never did get over this addiction to headache medication. She suffered with near daily headaches for the last ten years of her life. The second person, through grit, being careful what he eats or drinks and the use of herbal remedies was able to break the cycle and has obtained a great deal of natural headache relief. My hope is that he can with continue his fortitude and never give in to the common over-the-counter headache medications again.

To break the rebound headache cycle two things are critical. First, one needs to face up to the fact that he needs to fight the causes of daily headaches, not just the symptoms. A person who is taking more than three of the OTC medications listed above (and there are probably others that are just as dangerous too) per week needs to realize that he is very likely caught in the rebound headache syndrome. One has to lay off these drugs. It may mean “toughing out” a headache but the rewards will be well worth it.

The second thing that needs to be done is to start a journal of what is eaten and the headaches one receives. This can do a tremendous amount toward determining headache triggers that need to be eliminated. The biggest headache triggers from my experience are coffee, caffeine, chocolate, sugar, alcohol (red wine especially) and monosodium glutamate.

When a person stops over-using headache medication then it is possible to determine other headache triggers. It is very hard to do so while over-use of these drugs is occurring. It can be done, I have seen it!

Tom Thorne

http://www.FeelingOutstanding.com

The author suffered with frequent migraine headaches for over 40 years. He has made incredible strides to eliminate this life-controlling plague. His web-site explains steps he has taken as well as supplements that have proven effective in fighting headaches.

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You open a can of soda and pour that sugary drink into your mouth. The sugar travels down your throat and into your stomach and then has a very short trip from your stomach into your blood stream. As that sugar starts to move its way through your body, it eventually makes its way to your brain. You brain is happy with this shot of sugar you just gave it, because, while it only makes up only two percent of the body weight, your brain uses one-half of all the sugar energy in the body.¹

But, is there such a thing as too much sugar for your brain? And that soda you just drank will cause your blood sugar to skyrocket and eventually drop; what happens to your brain then? And what about other sugar-brain questions: doesn’t sugar make you or your kids hyperactive, and doesn’t sugar change your mood?

The short answer to these all these questions is: we don’t know. Scientific studies on the effects of sugar on the brain are sparse at best and most medical professionals and organizations will say that sugar has nothing to do with mood or hyperactivity. If you are surprised by that stance, you are not alone.

Most parents have witnessed firsthand the effect of sugar on little kid’s brains. Most adults will tell you that they have experienced a sort of mental fog from eating too much sugar, not to mention the sugar high and the sugar crash. But none of these experiences mean anything to researchers who report that there are no such thing as a sugar high or that hyperactivity could be caused by too much sugar.

But just because there isn’t much research on how sugar and foods that act like sugar and how they affect mental function doesn’t mean there isn’t any. This article will piece together the bits of information out there on sugar and brain function to get a better understanding of what sugar is doing to our brains. As usual, I will be including not only sugar, but foods that act like sugar in the discussion.

Brain-Derived Neurotrophic Factor

Let’s start with a brain chemical called brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). BDNF is the key to understanding what happens when sugar hits our brain.

Brain-derived neurotrophic factor is responsible for the development of new brain tissue. If you didn’t have this chemical in your brain, your brain wouldn’t develop properly and you would die very soon after birth. The key to BDNF is to understand what it does: it helps to create new neurons (nerve tissue), and, therefore new memories.

You want as much BDNF around as possible if you want to learn, grow, and have normal brain functioning.

Research has shown that high sugar diets (along with high fat diets and lack of essential fatty acids) decrease a BDNF.² In fact, the relationship between BDNF and sugar gets even more interesting: low amounts of BDNF actually leads to insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome and even diabetes.³ This means that high sugar in the blood leads to low BDNF, and then low BDNF leads to a worsening of blood sugar control, which leads to high blood sugar, which leads to worse blood sugar control… and the cycle continues.

In an interesting study on rats, it was discovered that the animals that had the best ability to learn spatial and memory tasks also had the highest amount of BDNF. It took only two months on a high sugar and high fat diet to significantly reduce BDNF in the brains of the experimental animals and for the reduction to have an effect on the animal’s ability to perform spatial and memory tasks.⁴

Low BDNF is no small thing as it has also been associated with depression, obsessive-compulsive disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias, Huntington’s disease, Rett syndrome, and schizophrenia.

But there is much more to the sugar-brain story than BDNF, let’s take a look.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is one of the best places to start when discussing how sugar affects our brains. There are quite a few clinical studies that link the consumption of grains (foods that act like sugar) with schizophrenia.⁵ It has long been thought that people who are schizophrenic may have a problem with the protein found in many grains (gluten) and there is a strong association between schizophrenia and Celiac disease.⁶

Interestingly, there is also a close association with poor blood sugar control (metabolic syndrome) and the severity of schizophrenia:

It appears that the same dietary factors which are associated with the metabolic syndrome, including high saturated fat, high glycemic load, and low omega-3 (PUFA), may also be detrimental to the symptoms of schizophrenia.⁷

These researcher show that once again, a diet low in essential fatty acids (omega-3) and high in fat and sugar will decrease BDNF and it makes me wonder if sugar and foods that act like sugar may be the “smoking gun” in schizophrenia.

Depression and Anxiety

As a hint that how we live and what we eat have some effect on our moods, it has long been known that coronary heart disease and diabetes all are common in people with depression.⁸ This means that the same dietary conditions that create heart disease and diabetes also can lead to depression. Interesting…

Sugar consumption in population studies have been shown to have a close link with major depression.⁹Researchers suggest that the sugar and brain association may be due to the oxidative stress that sugar can cause or the change in beta-endorphins (brain chemicals that make us feel good) that comes about because of sugar use.

Anxiety, too, has been closely linked with sugar use in a number of studies.¹⁰

Children

Perhaps the biggest questions arise when discussing children, mood, behavior and sugar. While any parent would tell you that sugar can dramatically change the behavior of a child, the medical community is silent. There have been a few studies that show an association between high blood sugars and problem behaviors, but these studies have mostly been performed in children who already have blood sugar problems (such as diabetes).¹¹¹² More studies need to be done and need to be done in children with normal blood sugar.

Autism is an interesting exception to the lack of research. A review by the prestigious Cochrane review admitted that many of the studies linking foods that act like sugar (grains) and gluten to autism have been of poor quality, but they do point to one study that does show a relationship between a gluten-free diet and improvement in the symptoms of autism.¹³ While far from conclusive, these studies open the possibility of a solution for the growing epidemic of autism.

Brain Plan

Okay, let’s say you actually want to take care of your brain. What is the best way to go?

• Avoid grains and sugars: Read my book Sugarettes or take the 30 Sugar Free Days Challenge, and get yourself off sugar and foods that act like sugar.
• Exercise: It has been shown that exercise is great for your brain, and it increases BDNF.¹⁴
• Supplement: Your brain thrives on vitamins, especially the B vitamins and make sure you are taking some form of omega 3 oils (fish oils).

We can take care of our brains much better than we do and knowing that the foods that we put into our mouths can dramatically how we think, how we feel and act, and which diseases we get means that your brain and how well it functions is in your hands. You have a choice and what you eat and drink can make dramatic differences in how you think, feel and behave.

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

Citations:

1. Fehm HL, Kern W, Peters A. The selfish brain: competition for energy resources. Prog Brain Res. 2006;153:129-40.
2. Molteni R, Barnard RJ, Ying Z, et al. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning. Neuroscience. 2002;112(4):803-14.
3. Krabbe KS, Nielsen AR, Krogh-Madsen R, et al. Brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) and type 2 diabetes. Diabetologia. 2007 Feb;50(2):431-8. Epub 2006 Dec 7.
4. Molteni R, Barnard RJ, Ying Z, Roberts CK, Gómez-Pinilla F. A high-fat, refined sugar diet reduces hippocampal brain-derived neurotrophic factor, neuronal plasticity, and learning. Neuroscience. 2002;112(4):803-14.
5. Peet M. International variations in the outcome of schizophrenia and the prevalence of depression in relation to national dietary practices: an ecological analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2004 May;184:404-8.
6. Kalaydjian AE, Eaton W, Cascella N, Fasano A. The gluten connection: the association between schizophrenia and celiac disease. Acta Psychiatr Scand. 2006 Feb;113(2):82-90.
7. Peet M. Nutrition and schizophrenia: beyond omega-3 fatty acids. Prostaglandins Leukot Essent Fatty Acids. 2004 Apr;70(4):417-22.
8. Peet M. International variations in the outcome of schizophrenia and the prevalence of depression in relation to national dietary practices: an ecological analysis. Br J Psychiatry. 2004 May;184:404-8.
9. Westover AN, Marangell LB. A cross-national relationship between sugar consumption and major depression? Depress Anxiety. 2002;16(3):118-20
10. Yannakoulia M, Panagiotakos DB, Pitsavos C, et al. Eating habits in relations to anxiety symptoms among apparently healthy adults. A pattern analysis from the ATTICA Study. Appetite. 2008 Nov;51(3):519-25.
11. Valdovinos MG, Weyand D. Blood glucose levels and problem behavior. Res Dev Disabil. 2006 Mar-Apr;27(2):227-31.
12. McDonnell CM, Northam EA, Donath SM, et al. Hyperglycemia and externalizing behavior in children with type 1 diabetes. Diabetes Care. 2007 Sep;30(9):2211-5.
13. Millward C, Ferriter M, Calver S, Connell-Jones G. Gluten- and casein-free diets for autistic spectrum disorder. Cochrane Database Syst Rev. 2004;(2):CD003498.
14. Exercise: Ang ET, Gomez-Pinilla F. Potential therapeutic effects of exercise to the brain. Curr Med Chem. 2007;14(24):2564-71.

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We do a lot of strange things, and unfortunately for our health, they often lead to illness. As a whole, our memories are short, we think that the things we do every day are the things that humans have always done, but this is just not true.

To determine what we should do, we often look to other people for help; scientists call this “social proof”. Social proof is fine when everyone around you is acting in accordance with their health and their happiness, but as you might guess from all the unhealthy people you see every day, this just isn’t the case. We have slowly moved from healthy living habits to destructive habits and the movement has been so slow we have barely noticed it. I’ve gathered together some of the weird things humans do that can seem perfectly normal because everyone else is doing them, but are not.

If you are looking to improve your health, you might want to steer clear of what everyone else is doing

1. Not Sleeping when we are Tired

Look around you: dogs, cats – even the mice in your walls – all lie down and sleep when they are tired. We don’t do that. What do you do if you are tired? If you are like a lot of us, you reach for coffee. Animals don’t do that, they lie down and sleep when they are tired. There are actually two issues here: the first is that amount of sleep you need and the second is sleeping during the day. It can be a bit hard to determine what is normal for the amount of sleep we need, but looking at animals, they are sleeping much more than we are and they tend to break up their sleep into smaller chunks. You might need eight hours of sleep, but maybe your number is six or ten hours. You should also consider adding a nap into your routine. Next time you think you need a pick-me-up from your coffee cup, try a short nap. I’m a big fan of the nap and try to catch one every day; it is the best way I know to “reboot” my brain for an afternoon in front of the computer. Here is a great page for information on napping and a no nonsense guide to napping.

2. Not Relaxing

You relax don’t you? You go home, sit in front of the television and relax. Right? That is not what I’m talking about. You, your body, your mind, and your soul need a time out. I’m not talking about sitting in front of the television, but true relaxing, just hanging out and doing nothing. To understand what I mean by relaxing, try picturing a day at the beach. The beach seems to be one place in our society where it is okay to just sit and do nothing (if you didn’t pack in toys, radios…). Try to set aside a small portion of your day for pretending you are on the beach. Just sit and stare at the clouds or your ceiling or whatever. Do nothing, just let your mind wander. If you are into prayer or mediation, this is a great time to practice that.

3. Eating Grains

I know what you are thinking when you read this: of course it is normal to eat grains; the government recommends that grains make up most of our diet, it has to be normal. But, once again, eating grains seems normal because everyone is doing it, but grains are not optimal food for humans. Humans have only been munching on grains – in any large amounts – for the last 7,000 years. Sure, that sounds like a lot of time, but it actually is not. Our bodies have not adapted to the large amount of carbohydrates we put into them. High blood sugar which results from eating grains is responsible for more ill health than smoking cigarettes (see my book Sugarettes). Try replacing grains with fruits and vegetables at every meal. You will be astonished at how much better you feel.

4.Wearing Shoes

Putting shoes on your feet seems pretty normal, right? Actually, your foot is incredible complex and wearing shoes all the time can be harmful to your feet. I suggest you spend at least part of the day waking around without shoes. A great trick is to get a plastic bucket and fill it with small stones (like pea gravel) spend ten or 15 minutes just standing in the gravel. It gives your feet a massage and rebuilds many of the muscles that have atrophied due to shoe wearing. There are also shoes from Terra Plana called Vivo Barefoot shoes that have a Kevlar bottom so that your feet can have the barefoot experience while still looking like a normal shoe.

5. Being Inside

We live most of our lives inside and this is just not healthy. Not only is the air pollution inside a home or office often much worse than outside, we are also not getting enough sunlight. We have grown afraid of the big bad sun and have forgotten that it has a lot to do with our health. Yes, you should not be out in the sun long enough to get a bad burn, but skin cancer has a lot less to do with our exposure to sunlight than previously thought. It appears that skin cancer may have much more to do with the lack of essential nutrients than sun exposure; some research suggests that it is the lack of sunlight that causes cancer. We get vitamin D from sun exposure and that vitamin is so essential to our health that you should consider supplementing if you are not getting enough (I like cod liver oil for vitamin D supplementation).

6. Drinking Calories

If you think, like I do, that eating foods as close to the way that they are presented to us in nature (non-processed) is the best way to eat, then you have to question consuming calories in liquid form. Think about it, if you go back 10,000 years, how many drinkable foods were available on the planet? Only water (okay, and, breast milk). Drinking calories only becomes a problem when those calories are mostly sugars. Sugars in liquid form are absorbed rapidly into our bodies and create all sorts of havoc including: weight gain, diabetes, heart disease and maybe even cancer. Our bodies are woefully unprepared for calories to come in a liquid form. If you are going to do only one thing for your health, I strongly urge you to stop drinking soda and fruit juice.

7. Stretching Before Exercise

Okay, I don’t count this as a major health hazard, but there is a great recent article that shows stretching is not such a good idea for athletes.

8. Not Moving Your Buns Around

We sit a lot! We sit in cars, we sit at work, we sit on the couch… humans are professional sitters. Our ancestors had far more muscle mass than most of us do today. Muscle mass is one of the keys to not only how long we live, but also to general health and weight loss. You need to get up and move your buns around every day and build up your muscle mass. Walking is perhaps the best exercise you can participate in, but swimming, cycling, running, hiking and anything that gets your heart rate up, are all great. Exercise is so important that you should prioritize it over everything else that you do: exercise is a vitamin, exercise is a drug, exercise is the fountain of youth. There are hundreds of research studies that show that exercise helps with weight loss, depression, anxiety, heart health and works as an anti-cancer activity. Get off your buns and move them around a bit every day.

9. Not Going to the Bathroom when we Need to Go

Once again, look to the animal world and find one animal that will stop its urges to go to the bathroom. Ignoring the urge to urinate has been associated with a higher rate of urinary tract infections, but it is especially harmful when you hold on to a bowel movement. Constipation is a major source of illness and increases the risk for hemorrhoids and even certain cancers. Constipation often leads to more constipation. I know it is hard, because of how we live our lives, but try and not ignore your body’s urges.

10. Cooking Foods

As I mentioned earlier, it is best to eat foods as close to the way that they are presented to us as possible. When we cook foods, they lose vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients. The most grievous of losses are the loss of essential fatty acids, or EFAs. Most of us don’t get enough essential fatty acids and EFAs are one of the few supplements that I think everyone should take (one again, I would recommend cod liver oil to get your EFAs).

Well, there they are: the Weird Things Humans Do. I’m sure I missed a few; feel free to add them into the comment section. When you look at all the strange things we do you start to realize just how un-normal normal can be. Health is a matter of breaking free of the things most people do and charting a way through the world that prioritizes your health.

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

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I write a lot about sugar and foods that act like sugar in this blog. Lately, I’ve been getting a few questions about what I mean by “foods that act like sugar,” so here is the explanation and it all start with an understanding of the glycemic index.

The Glycemic Index

By now, most people have heard of the glycemic index, but I’ll take a moment to explain it.

The way the glycemic index works is that a scientist will measure the blood sugar of a volunteer and then feed that volunteer a single food. After two or three hours, the volunteer’s blood sugar is measured again. What scientists have discovered through this kind of testing is that certain foods increase blood sugar a little, others increase blood sugar moderately, and still other foods increase blood sugar dramatically.

While there are complicated glycemic index charts that show hundreds of foods, here is a typical one:

What you want to notice about this list is that sugars (left-hand column) are mostly in the high top part of the chart. Sucrose (table sugar) and glucose are always found near the top, but, here is the kicker: so are white rice, pancakes, bread, corn flakes, crackers, parsnips, potatoes and many other foods. These are the Foods That Act Like Sugar in your body.

Here is a partial list of foods that act like sugar

GRAINS

• Brown rice
• Glutinous rice
• Instant rice
• Jasmine rice
• Long grain rice
• Parboiled rice
• Sweet corn
• White rice
• Wild rice

GRAIN PRODUCTS

• Breads (all breads)
• Bagel
• Baguette, white
• Blueberry muffin
• Bran muffin
• Corn tortilla
• English Muffin
• Kaiser bread rolls
• Rice Pasta
• White bread
• Whole Grain bread
• Wonder Bread™

Breakfast Cereals (almost all)

• Cheerios™
• Coco Pops™
• Corn Chex™
• Corn Pops™
• Cornflakes™
• Crispix™
• Grapenuts Flakes™
• Grapenuts™
• Instant Cream of Wheat
• Life ™
• Quick Oatmeal
• Raisin Bran™
• Rice Chex™
• Rice Krispies™
• Shredded Wheat™
• Special K™
• Special K™
• Total™

Crackers and Chips (almost all)

• Corn chips
• Popcorn
• Potato chips
• Pretzels
• Puffed rice cakes
• Rice cracker
• Soda Crackers
• Water crackers

Other Breakfast Foods

• Croissant
• Cupcake
• Doughnut
• Muffins
• Oatmeal muffin
• Pancakes
• Pop Tarts™
• Waffles

Cakes

• Almost all cakes
• Angel food cake

VEGETABLES

• Carrots, boiled
• French fries
• Parsnips
• Potato: Baked, Instant, Mashed
• Pumpkin
• Sweet potato
• Tapioca

FRUITS

• Banana
• Dates, dried
• Raisins
• Watermelon

Fruit Products

• Fruit Roll-Ups®
• Fruit Juices
• Jams and Jellies 
• Processed fruit bars, fruit wraps…

SUGAR AND SUGAR SNACKS

• Most sugary snacks
• Candy Bars
• Glucose 
• Honey
• Jelly beans
• Sucrose 
• Syrup

DRINKS

• All fruit juices
• All sodas
• Most sport drinks

DAIRY

• Yoghurt, low fat
• Ice cream

BEANS

• Broad beans
• Kidney beans

OTHER

• Macaroni and Cheese
• Pizza, cheese
• Popcorn
• Soup, green pea
• Soup, split pea

A Sugar is a Sugar

The take home message from the studies done on glycemic index is that a sugar is a sugar, no matter what the source. To your body, it doesn’t matter if you pick up a table spoon of sugar and put it in your mouth, or if you pick up a baguette and start munching on it: the results are the same. Up up up goes your blood sugar every time you eat these foods.

If you want to maintain good blood sugar control, I always recommend eating low or below the glycemic index.

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

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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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Is insomnia robbing you of more than just a good night’s sleep?

Many people complain of not being able to sleep through the night. There are two primary types of sleeplessness: the first is having difficulty going to sleep and the other is having difficulty staying asleep.

It is estimated that thirty to forty percent of Americans suffer from some form of insomnia. The most common way to combat this problem is to take prescription or over-the-counter medications, but most of these drugs have adverse affects on the normal sleep cycle, which means you become addicted to using them. Sleep drugs are like a dog chasing its tail: You don’t sleep, so you take them, they themselves eventually make sleep worse, so you stop taking them, but then you are still not sleeping, so you decide to take them again…

Not only that, but also many of these medications make people drowsy in the morning and the answer to that problem is to drink coffee, which can further disrupt the sleep cycle depending on when in the day you are drinking your coffee.

Normal sleep is much better than drug-induced sleep.

Sleep is…

We spend a third of our lives asleep; it is vital to our health and well being. Sleep not only gives us a rest, but many important functions are carried on while we sleep. Repair of the body is undertaken while we sleep. Growth hormone is released during sleep (my wife and I told our kids that they won’t grow if they don’t take a nap—not that that ever helped). Growth hormone is responsible for much more than growth; it is also the “night repair man” and helps your body to repair and rejuvenate. Detoxification also takes place mainly at night.

Not getting a good night sleep also makes concentrating difficult during the daytime. As we age, we sleep less. Poor sleep is associated with all sorts of illnesses, including increased risk for accidents, poor concentration and memory, but you are also more likely to feel stressed and overeat when you haven’t slept well. There is also pretty good evidence to support a link between poor sleep and heart disease, especially in women.

Try This:

To stay away from the prescription and over-the-counter pills, try the following:

• Go to sleep and wake up at about the same time every day. This teaches your body to expect sleep at a certain time. People who travel a lot have notoriously bad sleeping habits because they are so often changing time zones. Following this suggestion means trying to stay on your schedule even on the weekends.
• Use your bed for sleeping only. Avoid watching TV in your bed. When you go to your bedroom it should be sleep only.
• Start a ritual. Always do the same things before you lie down to sleep. A good ritual is to read a book for 10 or 15 minutes before you go to sleep. Don’t read anything exciting or work-related. A novel that you are board with is perfect.
• Can’t sleep? Get out of bed. You want to learn to associate your bed with sleep. So if you try and go to bed and cannot after 20-30 minutes, get out of bed. Similarly, it you wake and can’t get back to sleep in 15 minutes, don’t toss and turn; get out of bed. Benjamin Franklin had 5 beds that he would travel to until he found the one that would allow him to sleep.
• Get a journal. If you wake at night, having a journal near your bed is a good way to get thoughts out of your head. So often when we wake and “The List” starts: “OK, tomorrow, I need to pick up the dry cleaning, stop by the store, start that project, ask Bill about…” Having a journal where you can put down your thoughts is easy and work amazingly well. You no longer have to think about those things because in the morning it is there for you to read.
• Sleep in the dark. Sounds silly, but even a little bit of light (including from a bright clock) can change hormone levels that make sleep impossible. Even if you get up at night to use the bathroom, leave the lights off. Make sure that lights from outside don’t light up your room too much.
• White noise. Some people have to resort to using white noise such as a fan, or better yet, an air filter in your room is a great way to block other noises from disturbing your sleep and get clean air.

There are many supplements that work for better sleep including Calcium, Magnesium, Amino Acids, and Hormones. Many Herbs are also helpful, including Hops, Valerian, Kava. Melatonin a hormone that contributes to a good night’s sleep is lower in adults than in children. Melatonin has been used effectively to help combat stubborn sleeplessness, but is something that I use as a last resort owing to the fact that using one hormone can often disrupt others and should therefore be used cautiously.

Sleep is so important that you should consider it essential. Whatever you need to do to ensure you sleep health is worth the investment. Try the above and you will find your way on the path to a better night’s sleep and say goodbye to insomnia forever.

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How do you know if you are addicted to sugar?

Addictions can be tricky to define; there are both physical and psychological addictions. Proving something is an addiction is a bit difficult, but the test below is a test that would work for any addiction. Give it a try:

• Have you ever used sugar as a reward for something? Was sugar the treat you gave yourself after you completed a task or a job well done?
• Have you ever used sugar to change your mood, like when you felt sad, tired, or when you needed a lift?
• Have you ever eaten sugar even when you weren’t hungry? You just finished a meal and are very full, but still you order dessert or go to the fridge and pull out the ice cream.
  
• Have you ever tried to stop eating sugar and couldn’t? You tried a diet like Atkins or South beach, but felt endlessly drawn by sugar and foods that act like sugar and couldn’t stick to the diet.
• Have you ever taken a small bite of something sweet and felt compelled to finish the whole thing? You thought you were just going to have a bit of something, but then you at the whole thing. Sugar foods count here too: have you ever started to eat a bag full of potato or corn chips and finished the whole bag?
• Have you ever quit eating sugar and when you started eating it again, couldn’t stop binging? When you took sugar out of your diet and then returned to it, did you binge on sugar and sugar foods?

If you answered yes to one or two of these questions, then you probably have a sugar problem. If you answered yes to two or more of these questions, then you can be guaranteed that you are addicted to sugar.

The signs of addiction are typically:

• Using the addiction for a reward
• Using a substance to change a mood
• Feeling compelled to consume the addiction even though you don’t need it
• Binging, especially when the addicted substance is removed for a while

Sugar has all characteristics of an addiction and the scientific community is just beginning to wake up to that fact. But before you dismiss the addiction as just as a funny thing we all do, you need to realize that sugar addiction ultimately means harm to your body. Sugar consumption is associated with increased weight and obesity, diabetes, heart disease and potentially many other diseases.

Getting off your sugar addiction can be hard, but you can do it with the proper support and help.

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You may have heard of high and low glycemic index foods and that you should eat as many low glycemic foods as you can if you want to keep your blood sugar low or if you are diabetic, but you may not have heard of the concept of Eating Below the Glycemic Index.

A typical glycemic index chart looks something like this:

What you should notice about this chart, or any glycemic index chart, is that there are a number of foods that are missing. The reason why these missing foods are not on the chart is that they don’t have any effect on your blood sugar at all. But just because these foods are not on the glycemic index doesn’t mean they are not important, in fact the opposite is true.

Below the Glycemic Index Foods:

Here are the foods that are below the glycemic index. You can safely eat as much as you want of them and they will have no impact on your blood sugar:

• Onions and garlic
  
• Cruciferous vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, chard, kale, and cabbage
• Lettuce of all kinds: red leaf, green leaf, iceberg…
• Mixed greens: spinach, arugula, endive, dandelion greens, escarole, radicchio, red mustard and various lettuces: red leaf, green leaf, romaine
• Avocados
  
• Meats: fish, chicken, beef, pork, wild game
• Eggs
  
• Mushrooms: Shitake, Maitake, Reishi and others
  

What is amazing about all these foods is that they are not only low on the glycemic index, but many of them are what I call Disease Busing Power Foods because they pack that additional nutritional punch that makes them not only good for you, but can actually prevent (and maybe even treat) many common diseases (such as cancer, heart disease, diabetes and others).

By choosing foods from below the glycemic index, you are picking the very best nutrition you can find. You are not only keeping your blood sugar low, but you are also giving your body that extra boost it needs to navigate our stressed-out over-processed and sometimes toxic world.

Cannot Live on “Below” Alone?

You may look at the Below the Glycemic Index foods and think that you cannot live on those foods alone. Fair enough. The next best place to choose your foods from is the low glycemic index foods, the best of these include:

• Nuts: peanuts, cashews, almonds, walnuts…
• Fruits: apples, kiwi, cherries, berries (strawberries, blueberries, blackberries…)
• Beans: pinto, chickpea, butter beans, lima bean, black beans, lentils…
• Grains: while I’m not a big fan of grains, if you want to include them in your diet try to prepare them as most people make rice: boil and eat them. The whole grain with the lowest glycemic index is barley. You should also choose the whole-grain versions and not the “white” versions. If you simply must have your grains ground and processed, choose pasta as it generally is very low on the glycemic index.

Below or Low

As you can see, the best way to eat is to choose foods low or below the glycemic index. While it can be difficult at times, these foods are what your body need to thrive.

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

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There are two ways to look at cold and flu season. The first is to think that there are bugs out there and if you are too close to someone who has those bugs, you are going to get sick. The second is to realize that there are bugs out there, but there are always bugs out there, and that you only get sick when the conditions are right for the bugs to thrive.

Growing Flowers in a Desert

The best way to understand the second way of thinking is to picture a desert and think about what can grow in a desert environment. Only certain plants and animals can thrive in the desert. If you take a plant from a tropical climate and put it in a desert, it will die almost immediately. The reason why the tropical plant will not thrive and grow in the dry desert is because deserts don’t provide the right conditions for the tropical plant to grow.

The same is true of bacteria and viruses.

If you provide the right conditions for the bugs to grow, then, yes, you are going to get a cold. If you body is more like a desert, then the bugs will never get a hold and you will avoid the cold altogether. There are ways you can prepare for cold and flu season so that you can avoid getting sick.

Tips for Growing Your Own Personal Desert

• Slow down: take time off and spend time with the ones that you love. Remember that winter is the time to slow down; everything in the natural world is getting slower. Take a hint from nature and take a break from your busy schedule. In talking with dying patients who may not have much time left, they often lament the time that wasn’t spent with family and friends. Fall offers us this opportunity to slow down, enjoy our meals, and focus on loved ones.
  
• Eat for Health: You want to focus on vegetables that have been growing all summer and are now ready to eat. The more hearty vegetables should start showing up on your plate. Beets, turnips, parsnips, rutabaga, and winter squashes such as Acorn, Butternut, Pumpkins are a welcome addition to any meal. Add more protein to your diet as you need the extra amino acids to boost your immune system. As always kick sugar out of your diet, it ruins your immune system (and remember to remove the foods that act like sugar too: see my book Sugarettes).
  
• Soup: Both Chinese and Indian culture’s placed high emphasis on what are called “tonifing” soups. These, like your grandmother’s chicken soup recipe for a cold, act to increase the body’s ability to fight disease. Choose fresh vegetables, with emphasis on garlic and onion, chicken or fish may be added to boost protein content. Add plenty of spices: turmeric, thyme, basil, all have antimicrobial properties and also help to support the body’s own healing mechanism.
  
• Sweat: As the weather turns cold, take advantage of any opportunity to enjoy a steam-room or sauna. Not only have this been shown to aid in detoxification, but it also allows you a chance to relax and take some time off. Massage is another good way to aid in detoxification and promote a relaxed atmosphere. I still think you should exercise in winter, but just take it a bit slower.
  
• Sleep: With more nighttime and less daytime it would make sense that we sleep longer. Sleep impacts health in so many ways, getting the right amount of sleep for you is essential to your health and your body’s ability to fight disease.
  
• Herbs and Vitamins: There are many herbs such as Echinacea and others that promote healing and make colds shorter and less painful. These are best when they are chosen for the individual and their particular illness. Consult a professional who can personalize an herbal and nutritional program just for you.
  

What if you do get a Cold?

Okay, even if you do get a cold, you might want to look at it another way.

From a more natural perspective, fall and spring are times for the body to clean junk out of your system and a cold or flu may be a companion to help you clear out that junk. From this perspective, when you get a cold, you are not going to battle it, but accept it as a friend. Take a cold for what it truly should be: a hint that you need to slow down, get more sleep, eat better and take care of yourself.

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All foods are not created equal. Some foods are simply not good for you and I talk enough about them: principally sugar, foods that act like sugar and processed foods (see my book Sugarettes), but let’s talk about those foods that are not just good for you, but are the foods have the ability to change the course of your life and pack outstanding health benefits. You want to include as many of these disease busting power foods into your diet as possible.

What to Look For

Finding these power foods is not that hard, you probably have many of these in your kitchen right now. They all seem to have some similar characteristics that scream to you: eat me, I’m good for you!

First, they are often very colorful: the phytochemicals that add color to foods are the same chemicals that enhance your health. These foods usually have a long history of being sought out and prized; there are stories of pirates boarding ships and leaving gold, but taking spices because the spices were much more valuable. Likewise, garlic and mushrooms have long been used as medicines.

Disease Busting Power Foods

Here is a list of the most powerful foods that act like medicine that you should add to your diet:

• Cruciferous Vegetables: Broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage can all pack a huge amount of not only essential vitamins and minerals by also phytonutrients that are powerful moderators of disease. Broccoli alone has been the subject of a multitude of research studies and scientists have found it contains components including antioxidants, Indole-3-Carbinol (which has been shown to be anti-cancer), Isothiocyanates, sulforaphane, diindolylmethane (DIM) and many other disease preventing nutrients.
• Mushrooms: I am not talking about those white medium mushrooms that you get on your salad, but more medicinal mushrooms like Shitake, Maitake, Reishi and others. These mushrooms have been extensively studied for their immune-boosting polysaccharides. Include these in many of your meals, they can be added to salads, soups, ground up and put in meat to give it some added flavor.
• Green tea: Not quite a food, but green tea belongs on our list because it too has been the subject of many research studies that show it is anticancer and other health benefits. Green tea contains epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG), isoflavones, catechins and other great nutrients.
• Garlic: Garlic has long been considered a super-food, prized for its healing, food preserving and, yes, vampire-avoiding properties. Modern science has uncovered a wealth of nutrients inside garlic that not only boost the immune system, lowers cholesterol, is liver and brain protective, but can also be cancer preventative. Allicin, S-allylcysteine, S-allyl mercaptocysteine, saponins, Nalpha-fructosyl arginine and a long list of other active constituents makes garlic something to include in every meal.
• Tomatoes: Packed full of nutrients, tomatoes get more nutritious when you cook them, so munch down on pasta sauce, chili, tomato soup, and even ketchup. Lycopene is probably the best known acitive ingredient in tomatoes, and especially helpful for preventing prostate cancer, but all cancers in general can benefit from tomatoes goodness.
• Berries: Probably the best tasting super food in the list, eat berries whenever you can. Packed full of bright colors, berries of all kind are great for your health. Eat as many raspberries, blueberries, strawberries and blackberries as you can stuff in your face, but don’t forget other berries such as Gogi berries.
• Greens: There has been a revolution in the salad business the last few years. Gone is Iceberg lettuce as your only choice at the dinner table. New mixed salad greens containing: spinach, arugula, endive, dandelion greens, escarole, radicchio, red mustard and various lettuces: red leaf, green leaf, romaine… and more are not only a delight to eat, but great for your health.
• Spices: People have used spices for centuries to help preserve foods and add flavor. Luckily for us, they also have incredible health benefits:
  • Cinnamon: Cinnamon not only tastes good, but also has been shown to help with high cholesterol and blood sugar control.
  • Turmeric: The amount of research on the active constituent in turmeric (curcumin) is astounding and keeps on coming. Tumeric can help prevent cancers and lower the risk of heart disease.
  • Ginger: Ginger is a great additive to many foods and has also been shown to contain antioxidants and other powerful healthy nutrients, but is also great for nausea and upset stomach.
  • Rosemary: This herb contains a huge amount of antioxidants, and has been shown to be helpful for cataracts and memory problems.
  • Oregano: The humble oregano plant packs a power punch of nutrients that have been shown to be helpful in cancers, especially ovarian and breast.
• Fish Oils: I put fish oil and not fish as the last power food on my list because it is the essential oils that are almost completely lacking in our diets. Fish oils have been shown to reduce blood pressure, help with cholesterol levels, are great for the heart, mind and even nervous system.

As you can see, you don’t have to travel too far outside you kitchen to get healthy. Yes, you probably do need to supplement from time to time, but these foods contain many of the essential nutrients you need to not only make it through your day, but to thrive throughout your life.

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