Diabetes Eating on the Wild Side
We are getting better at producing sweet tasting food. Farmers have been breeding ever more palatable fruit and vegetables for 10,000 years. Scientists have been speeding up this process for the past century.
Our food today is more pleasurable than what our ancestors had to eat. It’s generally more tender and less bitter. It is increasingly higher in sugar and starch.
But as we bred taste into our food we unwittingly bred out... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - June 11, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
The First Step to Take for Managing Blood Sugar
The usual ways we have to bring our blood sugar levels down to normal work well. But they may not be the best means for about half of us who have diabetes and pre-diabetes.
The usual ways are diet, exercise, and reducing stress. These are the cornerstones of diabetes management, but anyone who has sleep apnea has to do more.
A great many of us who have diabetes also have sleep apnea, and a new study indicates that when we start to... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - June 5, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Using Marijuana to Manage Diabetes
When I stopped smoking marijuana, I got diabetes instead. Maybe the timing was just a coincidence, but a new study indicates marijuana and diabetes may be connected.
Between 1972 and 1984 I was a heavy marijuana user. But I wasn’t heavy. In fact, in 1972 under the influence of marijuana I was able for the first time to manage my weight while becoming much more active. Then, I became an editor of a business magazine where I sat on my... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - May 29, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Why People with Diabetes Need to Avoid Statins
Those of us who have diabetes have enough to be concerned about for me to be writing here about all those things that don’t help us. You won’t find me writing about any of those many supplements and miracle cures that won’t do anything for you except separate yourself from your money. You don’t need me to tell you that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Have you noticed that whenever you encounter a... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - May 22, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Solving the Problem of Treating Diabetic Neuropathy
Being able to walk is something that all of us who have diabetes take for granted, at least until something makes it hard to do or even impossible. That something is often neuropathy, probably the most common complication of diabetes. But new treatments can prevent serious problems.
About 12 percent of us have neuropathy when we learn that we have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention at The Prevention and... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - May 15, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Intermittent Fasting for Diabetes Control
Intermittent fasting is older than civilization. Our paleolithic ancestors certainly practised it in times of scarcity whether they wanted to or not. And for centuries many people have fasted for cosmetic or religious reasons. But only now is intermittent fasting getting the respect that its health benefits for people with diabetes warrant.
Case in point: The current issue of The British Journal of Diabetes and Vascular Disease, a bimonthly... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - May 6, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Diet and Exercise for Diabetes Management
One of the wisest researchers who I know writes that exercise won’t help us to lose weight. But in my experience it does, and weight loss is crucial for almost all of us who have diabetes, because our weight is a big factor in high blood sugar levels.
“Appetite and thus calories consumed will increase to compensate for physical activity,” writes Gary Taubes in Good Calories, Bad Calories. When I read the first edition of... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - May 2, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Eating Attentively to Manage Diabetes
Carefully counting calories can help those of us who have diabetes lose weight. But the discipline and effort involved in monitoring our calorie intake over a period of months or years is a lot of work, and few of us can keep it up for long. For this reason the average amount of weight that people lose typically slows down after a few months.
A huge proportion of people with diabetes need to lose weight. The percentage is far higher than that... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - April 23, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Reducing the Mental Stress of Diabetes
Having diabetes can be stressful both physically and mentally. We focus most of our attention on reducing our physical stress through medication, diet, and exercise.
We often ignore the tools at our disposal for reducing the mental stress that physical stress usually carries in its wake. The good news is that working with the tools at hand for dealing with mental stress are even easier to apply than those we have for dealing with physical... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - April 15, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Walking Equals Running for Heart and Diabetes Health
Even the experts were surprised by the comparison between walking and running just reported in the American Heart Association journal Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis and Vascular Biology. Since I am a reformed jogger and am now a dedicated walker, the results delighted me and I think that they will make a lot of other people who have diabetes happy and healthy.
The difference with the new study is that it compared the number of miles we cover,... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - April 9, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Kimchi Makes People with Diabetes Smile
In America when we want to get people to smile for our photos, we say “cheese.” But in Korea they say “kimchi.”
When I visited South Korea about three years ago, my hosts taught me about that, and it worked for my photos. Kimchi makes people in Korea smile. It can make you smile too.
Kimchi tastes great and is healthful, the two essentials of truly happy foods. Most people who enjoy spicy foods will love the taste... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - April 2, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Mono-tasking for Diabetes Control
Multitasking comes easy to busy people. But it comes at too big a price. The trouble with multitasking is that we can’t give our full attention to any of the tasks that we do simultaneously.
The big trouble comes when we think of eating and drinking as a task to get finished as soon as we can. When we think that way, we eat and drink when we work at the computer, read the newspaper, or chat with our family. We think about our... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - March 26, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Omega-3 for Vegetarians with Diabetes
Many of us want to manage our diabetes by following a vegetarian diet. Most vegetarians object to eating meat because of ethical motivations stemming from respect for sentient life or for environmental concerns. These are worthy motivations.
Others are vegetarians because they believe that avoiding meat is healthier. Until now, however, a vegetarian diet is clearly less healthy in at least one crucial respect.
Getting enough heart-healthy... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - March 22, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Find the Best Diabetes Meters
Finding the best blood glucose meter has just become a little easier for some people who have diabetes.If you live in the United States, you now have an extensive website that will make the quest easier. The site is part of FindTheBest where you can “Compare Blood Glucose Meters.”
FindTheBest provides “unbiased, data-driven comparisons” of everything from smart phones to dog breeds with blood glucose meters somewhere in... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - March 20, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
Confused About Diabetes
Most of us are confused about diabetes, even our doctors. The confusion is mostly about how to manage this chronic disease, rather than what we want to achieve.Most of us want to live as normal a life as we can. We know our goal, but not the roadmap to get there.
Normal for those of us who have diabetes means having a normal blood sugar level as measured by an A1C test. That level is certainly below 6.0 as I wrote in “The Normal A1C... (Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts)
Source: David Mendosa's SharePosts - March 13, 2013 Category: Diabetes Authors: David Mendosa Source Type: blogs
