How Sensitive Is Your Leptin Response?

When looking at the different causes of diabetes, we often have to look at many factors both internally and externally. Several mechanisms and hormones play into the overall picture of whether or not someone develops the condition. One external cue is when someone is carrying an excess of body fat – we know this is a risk factor for the development of diabetes and is fundamentally due to consuming an excess of calories beyond what the body needs to maintain a healthy weight. The excess calories cannot be used as energy if the body has a surplus or expenditure is too low, so they are stored as reserves for later in the fat cells. As this imbalance continues over time, we see the weight increase, body fat percentage rise and the risk of diabetes increases as insulin resistance begins to mount.

The common thought would be that as one sees their weight increasing, they could start cutting back on calories or increasing exercise to shift the body out of the excessive calorie balance. This normally would result in weight and fat loss. But sometimes there are internal factors that may make it more difficult for certain individuals to do that, especially from the eating perspective. This is where leptin comes into play as it relates to hunger. Leptin is a hormone that is released by fat cells and binds to leptin receptors in the brain. The brain responds to the hormone, which normally signals that the body has consumed enough food and we should stop eating. Too much leptin, however, can lead to a condition called leptin resistance, in which the brain stops responding to leptin and therefore doesn't receive the signal to stop eating. Overeating ensues and the weight starts to increase. The problems then multiply as more fat cells are now producing more leptin and this leads to even further insulin resistance, similar to what happens in insulin resistance that leads to diabetes. And as you can see, the two processes actually progress hand in hand.

The best defense to stopping both of these conditions from progressing, or developing in the first place, is to start with the diet. Yes, exercise is just as important, but the calories you burn can’t make up for a diet that is poor in quality and driving things such as insulin resistance. In order for us to feel a sense of fullness or satiety, it all starts with the TYPES of foods we eat. Diets high in processed foods with too much sugar that spikes insulin, refined grains that are lacking in fiber, and food additives that actually stimulate hunger will undermine the best weight management strategies. Therefore, the basic strategy is to focus on whole foods for the majority of your diet. Fruits and vegetables will supply most of your fiber, healthy carbohydrates and many vitamins, and should be the bulk of your diet. Lean meats, beans and nuts and seeds will offer protein, healthy fats, fiber and minerals. Essential fats should come from healthy oils like coconut, olive and grapeseed and foods like avocados, olives and fatty fish. And we should always be consuming at least half of our body weight in ounces of water for proper hydration. Taking these steps will not only give us a natural sense of satiety since the foods will not cause a blood sugar roller coaster, but they will also begin the process of reversing insulin and leptin resistance, making you more likely to stay on track with a better diet that will lead to lower weight and a healthier body.

Does How You Cook Affect Your Diabetes Risk?

Food choices are always important when looking to reduce our risk of major diseases such as cancer, stroke, heart attack and diabetes. Eating more foods daily like vegetables, fruits, beans and fatty fish that have important nutrients to fuel our bodies and protect them properly should always be a priority. But even if you are eating a wide variety of healthy foods, you may be undermining your best efforts by the way you are cooking those foods. A new study is suggesting that changing the way you cook could help reduce your risk of getting one of those major diseases - type 2 diabetes.

When you fry, grill or bake foods, which are all “dry-heat “cooking methods, foods produce substances called advanced glycation end products (AGEs). Higher levels of AGEs have been linked to insulin resistance, stress on the body's cells and inflammation, according to the study authors. These are all contributing factors in terms of diabetes risk, especially the insulin resistance. When the cells begin to become resistant to the effects of insulin, less sugar from the foods we eat is able to get into the cells to be used for energy. Too much sugar then remains in the blood, which promotes inflammation and stress on the body, which can manifest in the kidneys, eyes, heart or any other tissue. Therefore, other cooking methods such as boiling, steaming and poaching look like the safest way to go, the researchers say.

"When you look at people with chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes or dementia put on a high-AGE diet or a low one, those on the low-AGE diet show signs of decreasing inflammation," said the study's lead author, Dr. Jaime Uribarri. The researchers wanted to see if a low-AGE diet could offer protection to people already at risk of developing type 2 diabetes. For the study, the researchers randomly assigned study participants to either a high- or low-AGE diet. All were at least 50 years old and they had at least two of the following five health concerns (or were on medications for these problems): a large waist circumference (40 inches for men, 35 for women); high blood pressure; low HDL (good) cholesterol; high triglycerides; or elevated fasting blood sugar levels. Those in the low-AGE group were told to avoid frying, baking or grilling foods. Instead, they were encouraged to boil, steam, stew, cook with water, or poach their meals. Some examples of the changes made included substituting boiled eggs for fried eggs, poached chicken instead of grilled chicken, or beef stew instead of grilled steak, according to the study.

In the low-AGE group, "all the parameters in stress and inflammation we tested for improved. And we showed that insulin resistance came down," Uribarri said. Body weight also dropped slightly in the low-AGE group. So while we need to be paying attention to the types of foods we eat, it may also be beneficial to change the way we cook those foods.

Using Exercise As A Tool To Eliminate Pre-Diabetes

Regular monitoring of your blood sugars is an important way to measure whether your lifestyle is either on track or leading you into an unhealthy place where you’d rather not be (meaning, the dreaded land of and diabetes). The first stage of that process is pre-diabetes, where the blood sugars are higher than normal, but not enough to be classified as full-blown diabetes. If this is your diagnosis, red flags should be waving and alarms going off! In other words, you need to embark ASAP on a plan that will get you moving in the opposite direction so that diabetes never comes into your health picture. The "gold standard" approach to diabetes prevention involves weight loss, diet and exercise, but for some people total lifestyle overhaul may be difficult all at once.

One particular study at Duke University looked at what the effects of exercise alone would be compared to the process described above. It included 150 people with prediabetes who were divided into four groups. One group followed a gold-standard program that included a low-fat, low-calorie diet and moderate-intensity exercise equivalent to 7.5 miles of brisk walking a week. The other participants were assigned to one of three exercise groups: low amount at moderate intensity equivalent to walking briskly for 7.5 miles a week; high amount at moderate intensity equal to walking briskly for 11.5 miles weekly; and high amount at vigorous intensity equivalent to jogging for 11.5 miles a week.

After six months, patients using the gold standard approach had an average 9 percent improvement in oral glucose tolerance -- a measure of how readily the body processes sugar and an indicator used to predict progression to diabetes. Among those who did exercise only, there was a 7 percent improvement in the moderate-intensity 11.5-mile group; a 5 percent improvement in the moderate-intensity, 7.5-mile group; and a 2 percent improvement in the vigorous-intensity 11.5-mile group.

Their results appeared to demonstrate that a high amount of moderate-intensity exercise alone provided nearly the same benefit on glucose tolerance that we see in the gold standard of fat and calorie restriction along with exercise. High-intensity exercise tends to burn glucose more than fat, while moderate-intensity exercise tends to burn fat more than glucose. Encouraging news, because even the addition of regular brisk walking for extended periods would add some benefit.

However, education here is key because exercise alone can make a difference, but it can’t make up for a poor quality diet (which usually is the main reason diabetes develops in the first place). Learning proper food choices so that the body can keep the sugars in a normal range AND help support healing and recovery from the exercise is the smartest approach. Not only will it help by keeping diabetes out of the picture, but it will also maximize your overall health on so many levels, you’ll be glad you made the extra effort!

Lean For Life!

Maintaining a healthy body weight throughout your life could help you live longer while the other end of the spectrum, carrying excess body fat, might do the opposite. Now, this hardly seems monumentally news-breaking given the amount of research we have that links obesity to numerous health-related conditions that decrease mortality. But maybe it is a good thing that researchers continue to probe these relationships as it seems that quite a large portion of our population still hasn’t made it a priority to keep their weight under control. Not only does it affect the individual from a personal health perspective, but it also affects everyone from the standpoints of increased medical costs and dollars being spent on diseases that are largely preventable with proper lifestyle modification.

In one study from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, U.S. scientists found that slim people had the lowest risk of dying over a 15-year period -- 12 percent for women and 20 percent for men. Meanwhile, obese men and women had the highest risk -- 20 percent for women and 24 percent for men. The underlying effect here is that preventing obesity may also prevent its consequences, which include diabetes and heart disease. The data collected from 116,000 participants in 2 prior health studies showed that people who maintain the leanest body shape have the lowest risk of dying prematurely. Participants were asked to recall their body shape at ages 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40. They also provided their weight at 50. They were followed from age 60 over an average of 15 to 16 years. In addition, participants completed questionnaires on lifestyle and health every two years and on diet every four years.

Another group of researchers analyzed 230 previously published studies that included more than 30 million people and nearly 4 million deaths. What they found was that among people who never smoked, the leanest lived the longest, and that gaining weight over time was linked with higher risks of premature death. While this also underscored the mortality risk that one incurs from smoking, it did reinforce the importance of weight management throughout life.

Ideally, the process should start early since adult obesity could be prevented by managing weight in childhood and adolescence. Once good habits are set at an early age, it is more likely that they will continue on in adulthood, when losing weight becomes less easy than it was during the younger years. Therefore, parents need to help instill good eating practices in their children while also setting a good example by the diets they eat themselves. And if those practices are repeated generation by generation, we just may see a decline in obesity related deaths and health issues. Lean and healthy is the way to go!

Mixing Alcohol With High Blood Pressure Is Not A Drink Of Choice

Prevention is always an important part of managing your health. Ideally, you want to do everything you can so as not to develop health-related conditions in the first place. But if they do develop, the goal should be to do as much as possible to try and reverse the condition, while also doing as little as possible to make the condition worse. One-third of U.S. adults have high blood pressure (hypertension) and it can have multiple causes ranging from poor dietary habits to inadequate amounts of sleep to being overloaded with high levels of stress. In order to help relax and reduce stress, many people may “unwind” at the end of the day with a cocktail or glass of wine. But that may actually be doing more harm than good. Even an ounce of alcohol a day might alter heart function if you have high blood pressure, researchers report.

In a recent study at the University of Udine School of Medicine in Italy, researchers examined the effect of alcohol on 335 patients with high blood pressure who had no other heart problems. Their heart function was measured with an electrocardiogram and heart scans and they were asked about their drinking patterns. For someone with high blood pressure, even small amounts of drinking can impair functioning of the lower left chamber of the heart, which pumps blood to the rest of the body. Those who drank the most had thicker left ventricular walls, stiffening the chamber and making it function less efficiently, the researchers said. They also found signs of heart damage in nearly half the participants, which was associated with how much they drank. The more they drank, the more trouble the heart had properly filling with blood between each heartbeat, which could lead to more serious conditions such as a heart attack.

Patients with more damage tended to be older, heavier, have diabetes and higher blood pressure, blood sugar and cholesterol, the study authors noted. But after taking these factors into account, the researchers found that alcohol consumption still seemed to be a factor in damaging heart function. This should be concerning because hypertension contributes to more than 350,000 deaths each year in the United States, which equates to about 1,000 per day! If high blood pressure is a major risk factor for developing heart failure, and alcohol is showing that it can contribute to the progression of it, then eliminating or limiting alcohol consumption seems to be an easy preventative measure.

From a health perspective, alcohol offers no benefit to the body. It provides no real nutritional value and can also add stress to the body by promoting dehydration and fat deposition and inflammation in the liver. And then there is the effect on weight! So while it is enjoyable to many to partake in alcohol consumption occasionally, those at risk for serious heart conditions may want to take a pass and choose another drink of choice to maximize their longevity and quality of life.

Lean For Life!

Maintaining a healthy body weight throughout your life could help you live longer while the other end of the spectrum, carrying excess body fat, might do the opposite. Now, this hardly seems monumentally news-breaking given the amount of research we have that links obesity to numerous health-related conditions that decrease mortality. But maybe it is a good thing that researchers continue to probe these relationships as it seems that quite a large portion of our population still hasn’t made it a priority to keep their weight under control. Not only does it affect the individual from a personal health perspective, but it also affects everyone from the standpoints of increased medical costs and dollars being spent on diseases that are largely preventable with proper lifestyle modification.

In one study from Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston, U.S. scientists found that slim people had the lowest risk of dying over a 15-year period -- 12 percent for women and 20 percent for men. Meanwhile, obese men and women had the highest risk -- 20 percent for women and 24 percent for men. The underlying effect here is that preventing obesity may also prevent its consequences, which include diabetes and heart disease. The data collected from 116,000 participants in 2 prior health studies showed that people who maintain the leanest body shape have the lowest risk of dying prematurely. Participants were asked to recall their body shape at ages 5, 10, 20, 30 and 40. They also provided their weight at 50. They were followed from age 60 over an average of 15 to 16 years. In addition, participants completed questionnaires on lifestyle and health every two years and on diet every four years.

Another group of researchers analyzed 230 previously published studies that included more than 30 million people and nearly 4 million deaths. What they found was that among people who never smoked, the leanest lived the longest, and that gaining weight over time was linked with higher risks of premature death. While this also underscored the mortality risk that one incurs from smoking, it did reinforce the importance of weight management throughout life.

Ideally, the process should start early since adult obesity could be prevented by managing weight in childhood and adolescence. Once good habits are set at an early age, it is more likely that they will continue on in adulthood, when losing weight becomes less easy than it was during the younger years. Therefore, parents need to help instill good eating practices in their children while also setting a good example by the diets they eat themselves. And if those practices are repeated generation by generation, we just may see a decline in obesity related deaths and health issues. Lean and healthy is the way to go!

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowksi

Is Your TV Killing You Prematurely?

We all know and have heard that being a “couch potato” is not conducive to leading an optimally healthy life. But there could be research that actually supports that now and tips into the notion that it could affect our mortality as well. Spending too much time in front of the television may contribute to a shorter, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Australia found that people who averaged six hours a day watching television (six hours! – who does that?) lived, on average, nearly five years less than people who watched no TV. For every hour of TV watched after the age of 25, lifespan fell by 22 minutes according to the research led by Dr. J. Lennert of the University of Queensland. Time to throw that remote in the trash and lock the tv in the closet?

Before you go to such drastic extremes, take a look at what the data tells you versus looking at it just cut and dry. The results did not prove that tv watching itself was the direct link to a shortened lifespan! It was that people who SPENT more time watching tv had the shorter lifespans based on the study data. This makes more sense after you think about all the ramifications of extended tv viewing.

For one, most people tend to be sedentary during this time (unless you’re on exercise equipment at the same time, which will likely negate some of the negative effects). If we’re not up and active, we’re not burning much calories and our metabolism slows down. Prolonged inactivity has been proven to be a risk factor for many cardiovascular, metabolic and structural health problems.

Second, how easy is it to sit down with a bag/box/bowl of “munchies” during your favorite shows only to realize later that you’ve eaten way too much while on auto pilot. Not only does this lead to excess calorie consumption (combined with the decreased expenditure just mentioned), but many snack choices tend to be of the less healthy variety. Poor quality foods, and too much of them, lead to obesity, heart issues, poor energy and diabetes.

Lastly, from a structural standpoint, our bodies weren’t meant to be in a sitting position for extended periods (or some of the other awkward positions I’ve seen people recline or sit in!) How many times have you felt more stiffness or soreness after getting up from a long sitting period? Or had that kink in the neck after lying on the couch too long (or worse, after falling asleep there watching tv)? Decreased blood flow and oxygenation to our tissues is one problem from this scenario, with shortened, tight muscles that contribute to stiffness as another. And if you want your muscles to be weak and unsupportive when you’re going through your day-to-day activities, running the risk of muscle strains and sprains and all the pain they entail, then by all means shoot for that six hours of vegetation.

As you can see, there is more to the picture than what was first implied, but you can garner a positive from the results. In moderation, tv viewing in and of itself is likely not that detrimental. Sitting or lying with proper posture will definitely help alleviate some physical stress to the body, as will getting up to stretch or move around every 15 – 30 minutes. Making healthier food choices while viewing can also decrease some of the metabolic risk factors (as well as drinking plenty of water so you have to get up for trips to the restroom!). Other than that, make sure you’re taking time to get up, get out and enjoy life firsthand! You could be missing out on life experiences that are even better than what you’re watching other people experience on tv.

In Health, 

Dr. Niewierowski

Are We Finally Listening About Sodas??

Finally, some good news regarding sodas! (From a health perspective, there usually isn’t anything “good” to talk about concerning them…) In recent months, there have been numerous reports confirming that overall consumption of carbonated soft drinks (soda) has been steadily declining. As a doctor, I couldn’t be happier because they are frequently a contributing factor to many health conditions that we see in the office such as weight issues, diabetes and gastrointestinal problems. The fact that Americans are slowing down their consumption gives me hope that more people are realizing that regular soda is nothing more than liquid candy (and diet sodas aren’t any better for you with all their chemicals).

Over the last 20 years, sales of full-calorie soda have dropped by more than 25%. Soda consumption, which grew mainly from the 1960’s to the 1990’s, is now experiencing a sustained decline. Researchers found that 30.1 percent of adults reported drinking sugar-sweetened beverages at least once a day in 2013, according to the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). In 2010, 50.6 percent of adults reported drinking at least one sugar-sweetened beverage a day, according to the report, which gathered data from survey respondents in 23 states.

Drinking at least one sugar-sweetened beverage daily was most common among 18- to 24-year-olds, with 43.3 percent of all people in this age group reporting that they consume a sugary drink at least once daily. Adults in this age group were 2.3 times more likely to have a sugary drink once a day than adults ages 55 and over, according to the report. Other groups in which consumption was high included African-Americans (39.9 percent); men (34.1 percent); people who reported being unemployed (34.4 percent); and people with less than a high school education (42.4 percent).

Part of this declining trend is due to people making smarter beverage choices. More people are opting for bottled water to quench their thirst instead of sugar-laden drinks, which is a great shift as most people do not consume enough water daily and are living in a state of partial dehydration. Ironically, this can be exacerbated by the caffeine in sodas as it has a natural diuretic effect on the body and will cause you to lose more water. Moving away from sodas also offers other benefits as well. The carbonation in sodas produces a very strong acidic environment (just search for the videos online that show people using it to take the rust off of metal!) that the body will attempt to buffer. One way it does this is with calcium from the body’s own supply. If it takes it from our bones, it can contribute to osteoporosis and osteopenia. If it takes it from our muscles (and remember the heart is a muscle!), we can get muscle cramps or contraction problems. Lastly, the option for diet soda in the attempt to avoid excessive calories does not offer any real health benefit. In addition to causing hormonal and neurological issues, the artificial sweeteners still drive the insulin response in the body in response to the perceived sweetness. However, since there are no calories (sugar) for the body to act upon, it leaves the body looking for more and this has been shown to lead to overeating.

Overall, there really are no benefits to drinking sodas and the negative effects they produce on the body far outweigh any perceived short-term enjoyment value one would get from consuming them. Stick to pure water or other natural alternatives like cold-pressed fruit and vegetable juices or coconut water and give your body a healthier hydration option.

And for a little (truthful) humor:

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowski 

Are You Having Trouble Sleeping?

Not being able to sleep can easily be a sign of an underlying health condition. Lack of sleep or insomnia will also lead to disruptions in our circadian rhythm hormones. Many of the hormones that affect your circadian rhythm, also affect your metabolism, blood sugar and all of this is a major risk factor for diabetes and subsequently heart disease. 

A number of sleep issues were associated with type 2 diabetes, including:

• Trouble falling or staying asleep
• Getting less than 6 hours f sleep at night
• Frequent snoring
• Sleep apnea
• Rotating Shift work

In general, people who report having difficulty sleeping are more at risk of developing metabolic conditions. A single night without sleep can have some serious implications.

Just one night without improper sleep starts to impair your physical movements and mental focus. This can be equivalent to have a blood alcohol level of .10 percent which is higher than the legal limit in Texas.

Overall, you become more susceptible to “suggested” memories, and start having trouble discerning the true source of your memories.

Tips to improve your sleep:

1. Optimize light exposure during the day, and decrease it significantly at night. 
2. Address mental states that prevent peaceful slumber.
3. Keep the temperature in your bedroom below 70 degrees Fahrenheit.
4. Take a hot bath 90 to 120 minutes before bedtime.
5. Avoid watching TV or using electronics in the evening, at least an hour before going to bed.
6. Develop a relaxing pre-sleep routine.
7. Avoid caffeine, and other drugs including nicotine.

Sleep is very important and is a very important part of our life, immune system and endocrine system. If you have any questions about how to improve sleep or need help with getting better sleep then feel free to call our office at (210) 468-1891.

In Health, 

Dr. Jacob Torres, DC

Just a Single Meal of This Can Hinder Weight Reduction

Jeff Volek, Ph.D., and registered dietitian and professor in the Human Science Department at Ohio State University, has done enormous work in the field of high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets, investigating how it affects human health and athletic performance.

Volek has published many scientific articles as well as several books, including "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living," and "The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance."

Both of these books were co-authored with Dr. Stephen Phinney, a physician and true pioneer in this field, who has studied low-carb diets even longer than Volek.

Starting out as a dietician, Volek was taught that low-fat diets were healthy and that saturated fats and cholesterol should be avoided. But in working with diabetics, he kept feeling that something was "off." Why should diabetics eat so many carbs?

"In essence, it drove me to want to understand metabolism and nutrition at a much deeper level," he says. "I was also into self-experimentation ... I was at the time into very low-fat diets, thinking that was how I would optimize my own health. But I decided to experiment with a very low-carb diet."

Low-Carb Diets Can Benefit Athletes and Non-Athletes Alike

His experimentation began in the early '90s and, to his great surprise, his low-carb experiment proved to be anything but harmful. This fueled his passion for understanding how humans respond to diets that are very low in carbohydrates, and led him to continue his education. He has now spent the last 15 years conducting research in this area, and the outcomes from most experiments have been very encouraging.

"The science continues to point in the direction that there are a lot of applications for these diets for a large number of people. We're still sorting out a lot of the details, but clearly we need to change the way we feed Americans and the way we think about nutrition in order to reverse ... obesity and diabetes."

He's also done research on low- and non-fiber carb diets and athletic performance, and here too results have proved quite positive — despite running counter to everything he was taught about diet and performance in school, and in most of the scientific literature as well.

"It's been an interesting journey to say the least ...The things I was reading, the things I was taught were not really based on a lot of science, and were a lot of half-truths and misinformation, which still persist today,"he notes.

Is Your Diet Driving Your Metabolism in the Right Direction?

Most of the food (fuel) people eat these days is moving their metabolism in the wrong direction. The Westernized diet constantly biases you toward using more nonfiber carbs for fuel.

Most Americans are primarily burning glucose as their primary fuel, which actually inhibits their body's ability to access and burn body fat. Healthy fat, meanwhile, is a far preferable sort of fuel, as it burns far more efficiently than carbs. As noted by Volek, humans evolved to primarily burn fat as fuel — not carbs — and yet that's not how we're feeding our bodies.

"As a result, we're running into a lot of metabolic problems, because we're constantly inhibiting our body's ability to burn fuel that we evolved to burn,"he says.

We all have to eat; we need fuel to live. Without generating ATP you cannot survive at all. The question is how to do that efficiently, without generating harmful reactive oxygen species (ROS), which can destroy your mitochondria and contribute to disease?

It's all about keeping your mitochondria healthy, and low-carb, high-fat diets tend to do that far more effectively than high-carb, low-fat diets.

Healthy Fat Is a 'Cleaner' Burning Fuel

An indirect measurement included in one of Volek's books shows that when people burn fat as their primary fuel, their respiratory quotient can go down as low as 0.7 as opposed to 1, which suggests they're generating less carbon dioxide.

Regardless of the fuel your body burns, you're going to generate carbon dioxide and water. But when you burn fat, you generate 30 percent less carbon dioxide, suggesting it's a lot "cleaner" fuel.

"To use the term 'clean,' that's kind of a provocative term, but I think it is an appropriate one because ... there's a lot of 'exhaust' associated with burning carbs for fuel ... free radicals, reactive oxygen species ... That contributes to the metabolic problems we're seeing in this country."

Also, the most efficient way to train your body to use fat for fuel is to remove some of the sugars and starches from your diet. According to Volek, that's true for everyone, whether you're an elite athlete or a sedentary diabetic.

In essence, the reason why low-carb diets work so well is because it helps you escape this non-fiber, carb-based metabolism that depends on insulin levels to drive blood sugar into cells and use carbs for fuel.

Volek also introduces another term: "carb intolerance" — a metabolic impairment that you suffer from if you're insulin resistant or prediabetic. As noted by Volek:

"It really makes no sense if you're carb intolerant to be consuming half your energy from nonfiber carbs, and to be trying to force your body to burn more carbs."

In Health, 

Dr. Niewierowski 

Source: Why Low-Carb Diets May Be Ideal for Most People, Including Athletes

January 31, 2016    Mercola.com

Right Now, Your Risk Of Prediabetes Is 50%!

According to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than one out of three Americans aged 20 and older has prediabetes, a condition in which your glucose, or blood sugar, levels are higher than normal, but not yet high enough to be diagnosed as full-blown diabetes.

For those with prediabetes (86 million Americans in all), 15 percent to 30 percent will go on to develop type 2 diabetes within five years, if no lifestyle changes are made, again according to CDC data.

These numbers are already dismal, but new data from a large study out of The Netherlands predicts the problem is only going to get worse.

Nearly Half of Adults May Develop Prediabetes

After tracking and analyzing data from about 10,000 adults for a period of 15 years, researchers found that nearly half of 45-year-olds will develop prediabetes, also known as impaired glucose metabolism, at some point during their lifetime.

Further, three-quarters of those with elevated blood sugar levels at age 45 will go on to develop full-blown diabetes, according to the study.

While previous studies have looked into population risks of prediabetes, this study is among the first to consider a person’s lifetime risk of developing this condition – which is remarkably high. If you’re wondering what blood sugar levels are considered healthy:

·         6 millimoles/per liter (108 milligrams per deciliter) or less are considered normal or healthy

·         6mmol/L and below 7mmol/L (108 to 128 mg/dl) are considered elevated or prediabetic

·         7mmol/L or greater are diagnosed as diabetes

The silver lining to this finding is that prediabetes can typically be cured by altering your lifestyle; a diagnosis does not mean you’re destined to develop type 2 diabetes. So if you’ve been diagnosed with prediabetes, consider yourself lucky.

You have received a warning that many people don’t get (and instead progress straight to type 2 diabetes). Now you can take steps to reverse the condition and reclaim your health. In an accompanying editorial, researchers noted:

“The prevalence of type 2 diabetes is increasing worldwide, and the prevalence of the at-risk state for the disease (often termed prediabetes) is even higher.

There is good evidence that intensive lifestyle prevention programs can prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes in those at high risk.”

Processed Food, Sugar May Be Driving Prediabetes and Diabetes Rates Sky-High

Last year, data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showed that more than 29 million Americans were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, a statistic researchers predicted in 2001 wouldn’t be reached until 2050.

Why are rates of type 2 diabetes skyrocketing? It’s largely diet-related, and a meta-review published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings confirmed that calories from fructose (think high-fructose corn syrup) and other added sugars are the primary drivers of prediabetes and diabetes.

According to the researchers, the American Diabetes Association does not recommend restricting fructose-containing added sugars to any specific level, despite the fact that:

“Data from animal experiments and human studies implicate added sugars (eg, sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup) in the development of diabetes mellitus and related metabolic derangements that raise cardiovascular (CV) risk.”

Prediabetes is one of the most common conditions we see in our office, but also one of the easiest to correct and reverse with the proper program. If you are in this early warning stage and want to avoid becoming a full-blown diabetic, give our office a call!

In Health, 

Dr. Brad Niewierowski 

Half of All Adults Will Develop Pre-Diabetic High Blood Sugar

December 09, 2015  Mercola.com