Balance: When raising one number, consider lowering another number…

We like fast food and faster tech. But when technology is added, we often sacrifice activity and add some pounds as well.

Love for tech could work in your favor. Maybe you can make a deal with yourself: “No more tech toys until I hit my goal weight.” That way, you just might be motivated to drop those pounds at a faster clip and have your (tech) cake and eat it too.

Will a “Fat Tax” Make Us Skinny? NY Times Says “YES”

The New York Times reports that a recent study shows that for every 10 percent

 increase in the price of a two-liter bottle, people consumed 7 percent fewer soda calories and less calories in total by the end of the day. For larger price increases, the drop in Calories and weight was significant.

“When people faced an even larger increase — $1 for a two-liter bottle of soda, comparable to a proposed tax in Philadelphia — they consumed 124 fewer calories a day, the study found. The lower soda intake was associated with a drop in weight of more than two pounds — and a lower risk for pre-diabetes.”

So…what does this all mean for us? It looks like the people who want to tax us into good health just got some new ammunition. I think that armed with this ammo, it won’t belong before the “Fat Tax” becomes a reality.

I hate taxes and being ruled by a “Nanny State” government. But if this study is correct, I maybe become skinner and healthier protester.

Is the Danger of Diabetes a Good Excuse to get an Apple IPad? Three Reasons Why You Should Get One.

Jan Blackstock wrote an interesting article entitled "Can the IPad Save Your Life?" for the Nov 3 edition of Diabetes Health. She says that a government stimulus fund is being distributed among the medical community in such a way as to create a legion of doctors toting around IPads. The reason? The fund is to enable doctors to  access and transmit digital medical records instead of  using the familiar clipboard and folder method. Quicker transfer of data could mean the potential saving of lives and maybe even a few tax dollars.


OK. This is all fine and good. But what I want to know is, "Can I Convince Santa to Bring Me an IPad this Christmas?" 


Here are three reasons why you should get an IPad of your very own for Christmas:


1. An IPad Serves as a Great Portable Library and Access Point to All the Data in Our Lives. There are tons of good books that educate, motivate and have have reams of data useful or even life saving for the diabetic. There is so much data out there. Just in the diet world alone we deal with Calorie charts, the Glycemic Index, Good carb vs Bad Carb charts, Recipie and food lists, to name a few. Having a library of important information at your fingertips can mean making the right choices and having good outcomes.


2. The IPad serves as a way to Chart Your Personal Data and Navigate Yourself Out of Danger.

Prediabetes and Diabetes management generate a lot of numbers: Blood glucose levels, A1c numbers, Calories consumed, exercises completed, miles walked, pill schedules, expiration dates on meds and where to get the best deal on test strips. If the IPad has wifi, or beter yet, 3g, you can log in your data on web sites such as SugarStats. There you can keep track of your progress or be alerted to downward trends before they take a toll on you poor body.


3. The IPad is a Good Way to Boost Morale!   
There is a lot of gloom and doom in this world we find ourselves in. Frankly, you get weary of all the bad news. Authorities tell us we need to relax, destressify our lives and get a good night's sleep.  What we need is a way to cheer up and have a little fun. A couple of minutes of playing "Angry Birds" might just be what the doctor ordered.


Mary Poppins had it right, "A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down." Well, we can't have that spoonful of sugar, so...how about a sweet IPad....PLEEEEZE?

Note to self: Don't binge on Thanksgiving..don't binge...don't...

Don't binge at Thanksgiving...don't binge..O MAN! OK.Start over.. Don't binge at Christmas...

Walk your way out of Diabetes with 10,000 steps a day & a Pedometer.

When my doctor showed me my lab results, he seriously suggested that I walk an hour a day, six days a week. I guess, like me, most everyone has heard of the benefits of walking but don't do it enough. A big excuse we have is the time it takes.

There is a method that originated in Japan that is catching on here. It is the 10,000 step plan. The ideas is to wear a pedometer during your regular activity and see how many steps you take. When you have that number, subtract it from 10,000. The number you have left is your goal. As you build toward walking those 10,000 total steps a day, you begin to experience more and greater health benefits .

It's worth a try. You might even walk your way right out of the type 2 diabetes danger zone.

Umm..I'm not sure if I'd laugh or cry if this was my Christmas present!

This is the Omron HBF-306C Fat Loss Monitor from Amazon.com. It supposedly works by sending a very low current electric charge through the body and calculates the amount of fat verses muscle by the different electrical properties of each of these elements in your body.

You can buy a gift like this for yourself or a very, very good friend, but you might want to think twice about giving it to just anybody. I think it would make a great gag gift to give some friend you want to give a hard time.

A couple of ifs:

If the numbers it displays are scary enough, it might be a good motivator to exercise.

 If you keep it up, you might have some impressive numbers to show your friends

If you give this for Christmas, it will get a very big reaction.

Cinnamon healthy? Yes, says British medical study

Does this mean we can eat with abandon at the Cinnabon? No. But there is a new study out from Britain that tested the effects of cinnamon in diabetics. What makes it different from older studies is included a group using a placebo. In this study, 58 adults with type 2 diabetes were treated with 2 grams of cinnamon a day, or a placebo, for 12 weeks.
Compared to the group taking placebo, those assigned to take cinnamon saw a significant reduction in their levels of HbA1c (also known as glycosylated haemoglobin – which gives an indication of braod blood sugar control over the preceding 2-3 months or so). In other words, treatment with cinnamon led to improved blood sugar control in type 2 diabetics.
But that’s not all, because those treated with cinnamon also enjoyed improvements in a range of other parameters including blood pressure (both the higher ‘systolic’ and lower ‘diastolic’ values) and waist circumference. Taken together, these findings would be expected to translate in to a reduced risk of chronic disease including cardiovascular disease (e.g. heart disease and stroke) and diabetic complications.
The authors of this study concluded that, “Cinnamon supplementation could be considered as an additional dietary supplement option to regulate blood glucose and blood pressure levels along with conventional medications to treat type 2 diabetes mellitus.”
Personally, I won’t be buying a big bottle of supplements. But I think it would be a great idea to put a cinnamon shaker on the table between the salt and pepper.

The Twinkie Diet!?

The Twinkie Diet – oh yes! Editorial by Shannon Nelson

When I heard about the Orange County dietitian who lost almost 30 pounds on a so called “Twinkie diet,” I couldn’t help but think about the movie Zombieland and Woody Harrelson’s character who was completely obsessed with the spongy, yellow, delicious cream filled cakes. And while the junk food junkies may be rejoicing at the idea that you can lose weight by stock piling Twinkies, and I’m sure Hostess is enjoying the public relations blitz, we all know that such a diet is too good to be true.

While Mark Haub consumed Twinkies for two months to lose the weight, he also demonstrated two key components to losing weight regardless of the method: portion control and consuming small meals several times per day. Haub also stayed under 1800 calories and while it’s not noted how many calories he was consuming prior to the Twinkie Diet, I’m sure his caloric intake was much higher, therefore a cut in calories would contribute to his weight loss as well.

Losing weight AND maintaining it, is about lifestyle. Healthy eating habits and good exercise are the only way to go.

Will the Twinkie Diet catch on? If it does, I’m sure dentists around the country will certainly see an uptick in business.

Big Tummy? Big Trouble!

The most sure sign you're heading for trouble is a large number on your waist measurement. Time to diet!

The Glycemic Index? Wasn't it already Hard Enough to Eat Healthy?

 

OK. Besides Calories and carbohydrates, cholesterol numbers and blood glucose levels, we now have a new set of numbers. Just what is this about anyway? 

The glycemic index (GI) is a measure of the potency of a certain food's carbohydrates -- how quickly and how forcefully they impact blood sugar levels. It compares carbohydrate foods, gram for gram, against glucose, which is given a GI of 100. What this means is, the higher the food on the index, the faster it sends your blood sugar levels into outerspace. The lower numbers show foods that give you energy slowly, for a longer, slower burn time. 

Glancing at the index yields some surprises. Some of the worst foods are foods we eat a lot of, including most breads, breakfast cereals, and even baked potatoes. In fact baked potatoes scored WORSE than pure white table sugar.

Low glycemic foods turned out to be beans, barley, pasta, oats, and some types of rice. Acidic fruits have low glycemic indexes. Likewise, vinegar and lemon juice — as in salad dressing — help reduce the glycemic load. 

So, I guess it's not so bad after all. I like it simple. The simplest takeaway my small brain can carry is this: eat lean meat and vegetables (potatoes don't count.). If you must eat carbs, keep it whole grain and limit the portion size to a quarter or less of your small dinner plate real estate.

New Drug for Type 2 diabetes AND weight loss?

There is a New Drug for Type 2 diabetes AND weight loss, but ....

 

If you pass over the line into full blown diabetes, you will meet a wide array of medicines, vitamins, insulins and equipment. While they are designed to help you manage your diabetes, many of these items actually tend to INCREASE your weight, which in turn makes it harder to escape from your type 2 troubles.

If somebody could make a medicine that would help decrease your weight and manage your diabetes at the same time, that would be big news indeed.

Well, it looks like we just good that big news today.  Arena Pharmaceuticals, the makers of Lorcaserin a have submitted their new weight-loss drug to a battery of tests involving 300 persons for over a year. The success rate was significant: 37.5% of patients treated with lorcaserin achieved at least 5% weight loss, more than double the 16.1% of patients taking placebo. Also, at Week 52 of the test, 16.3% of lorcaserin patients achieved at least 10% weight loss, compared to 4.4% of patients taking placebo.

SO do we have a winner on the way? Well, maybe yes and maybe no. For now, the FDA is casting a dim eye on the product and have indicated a refusal of the drug in its current form.  The vote was 9-5 against it, mainly because the committee had concerns about the safety of the drug, particularly the findings of tumors in rats.

Arena Pharmaceuticals has a lot invested in this medication and it seems to work, so I conclude that sooner or later they will find a way to get those few votes and get their product into the chubby hands of type 2 diabetics everywhere. Here’s hoping this will be a win for them and a win for those of us seeking  for a better way out of our problem. 

What diabetes will cost you a year: $6,000+

What diabetes will cost you a year: $6,000+

A recent article in Consumer Reports reveals just how much money a diabetic is in danger of losing every year. The conservative estimate is: $6,000.

“Diabetes patients spend an average of $6,000 annually on costs for treating their disease, according to a recent survey conducted by Consumer Reports Health. That figure includes monitoring supplies, medicines, doctor visits, annual eye exams and other routine costs. But the total doesn’t include the costs of medical complications that often result from Type 2 diabetes, such as heart disease, strokes, liver and kidney damage, eye damage and a susceptibility to infections and poor healing that can lead to amputations. The C.D.C. estimates that diabetic patients on average pay twice as much as those without the illness for health care.”

The New York Times “Patient Money” column follows up on that data with a good article on how to cut expenses for the type 2 diabetic and minimize the outflow of your hard earned cash.

 Most of us would go to great lengths to protect a big wad of money. Saving money is just the kind of additional motivation some of us need to maintain that diet and to push just a little bit harder during that  workout. After all, for $6,000, you can buy yourself a really neat present when you get to your goal weight and become type 2 free.