Dietary Consequences of Farm Subsidies

Soybeans are heavily subsidized by the U.S. government, as is corn. If you read labels, you will notice that corn and soybean products are in everything. Why? Since they are subsidized, they are very inexpensive and hence are used more often than other, more expensive raw materials. For example, compare the price of olive oil, which is not subsidized, with the price of corn or soybean oil, which are subsidized. If we are what we eat, then, according to Michael Pollan, we are corn and soybeans.

Read the ingredients label on any processed food in your pantry; chances are, they will contain soy or corn. Some estimates suggest that 40% of the calories in the standard American diet come directly from either soy (a cheap source of protein and fat) or corn (a cheap source of carbohydrates). And even more is consumed indirectly, since much of the diet of cattle and chicken is also comprised of soy and corn.

So what's the problem? Isn't saving families money a good thing? Saving money is a good thing, but what if, in the attempt to save money, you are eating foods that are a direct cause of the national obesity and diabetes crises?

Is consuming so many products made from corn and soy even healthy? Some people have suggested that eating soy products is dangerous and entire books have been written about the negative aspects of soy consumption. Others suggest that the fear of soy is overblown but suggest caution and limited quantities anyway. High fructose corn syrup has taken a beating in the popular press lately, so much so that the Corn Refiner's Association has petitioned the FDA to rebrand high fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar." And carbohydrates in general, such as those provided by corn products, are increasingly being fingered as a cause of dietary harm, even in the mainstream media, in such publications as the New York Times and the Los AngelesTimes.

Vegetable and seed oils, such as corn and soybean oils, have replaced fats from animal sources in the standard American diet, with a lot of unexpected, negative consequences.

Here's the problem: real food (fresh fruits, vegetables, non-grain fed meats, eggs, dairy products from pastured cows, animal sources of fats, etc.), food that is healthy and that will nourish you, is not subsidized and is much more expensive. In other words, the type of food we low carbers eat. Cheap, subsidized, and processed foods, dense in carbohydrates, are very fattening. Is this an appropriate use of our tax dollars?

Dear Doctor, Part II: Is a Low HbA1c Number Dangerous?

This is part II in a series of letters to my Doctor.


Dear Doctor:

At our meeting today, you expressed concern that my HbA1c number was too low, that in fact, you thought it was dangerously low and that it might lead to a heart attack. My "low" HbA1c number (which, according to you, means less than 6.5)  is still not in the "normal" range.  I am still at risk for organ damage because the number is too high, and yet you are concerned.

I believe you are mistaken. I have learned more about managing diabetes from a romance novelist (whose books have "bodice ripper" covers) named Jenny Ruhl (nom de plume: Jenny Brown) than from anyone with an M.D., Ph.D., R.N., R.D., or C.D.E. behind their names. She has thoroughly examined and ripped a part the ACCORD study, from whence came the idea that an HbA1c reading lower than 6.5 is dangerous, in several different places. The basic problem: the study participants took Avandia, a drug known to cause heart attacks (it was withdrawn from the market). So is it lowering the HbA1c that is dangerous, or the drug they were taking? She lists other problems with the study and even has a list of seven questions to ask physicians when they suggest that your HbA1c is too low. You may want to ask yourself all of these questions, as they might cause you to reconsider your recommendation. So I won't repeat all of that information here for you, as I know you have an Internet connection as well.

But it might be useful for you to read the statement published in the June 2011 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Here is an excerpt from that statement (again, that previously mentioned romance novelist alerted me to this editorial):

44.7% of subjects in the intensive-therapy group, as compared with 25.2% in the standard-therapy group, received rosiglitazone [Avandia] just before the study transition date. According to the 2008 article summarizing the results of the ACCORD trial up to the point of protocol transition, 91.2% of the subjects in the intensive-therapy group, as compared with 57.5% of the patients in the standard-therapy group, had received rosiglitazone...


Although other differences in drug exposure warrant further analysis, we think that the authors [of the ACCORD publications] should consider (and address in a secondary analysis) the role of rosiglitazone in the excess deaths from cardiovascular causes, especially in the absence of biologic plausibility of a glucose-mediated effect. Given unbalanced exposure, we thing that the ACCORD trial is inconclusive and that the recommendation to abandon lower glucose targets is not supported and has unknown consequences for the long-term management of diabetes [emphasis added].


The letter was signed by several prominent researchers and this casts considerable doubt on the idea that a score below 6.5 is dangerous.

In addition, I am a type II diabetic, not type I, and I have never suffered from hypoglycemia. My problem is hyperglycemia, and there is a huge difference. Plus, unlike some of the study participants, I haven't ignored type II diabetes for thirty years (and all of the complications that come with ignoring the disease for that long). I am grabbing hold of my health and making the changes for a more healthy way of living.

So might I suggest that lowering my HbA1c to a level between 5.0 and 5.9 is an appropriate goal for me? I have no wish to suffer any complications of diabetes because you think my HbA1c score is too low.

Sincerely,

The Trade Off

A lot of feathers were ruffled by Hope Warshaw's condemnation of the low carb diet. I wrote about it and so did a lot of other people. The article cut off comments and the editor of the online magazine in which it appeared, Nadia Al-Samarrie, wrote a follow-up article in an attempt to calm the storm. I won't comment further on the essence of that debate, but something in the follow-up article drew my attention:

"Personally, I have not been successful on a low-carb diet, and that's true of many other people with whom I am familiar. A low-carb diet is difficult to stick to."

Is a low carb diet difficult to stick to? Myself, I have no trouble sticking to the low-carb lifestyle, and even though my journey is only five months old, I feel a sense of commitment to low carbing that I never felt with other diets I have tried. I have freely admitted on this blog, for example, that I am a Weight Watchers failure.  But I do know people who cannot stick to the low-carb way of living, despite the many advantages of this way of eating. So I ask myself, why is the low-carb experience different for me? Do others fail at low carbing because they are so completely addicted to carbs? Is it because they cannot give up bread and sugar? Are their carb withdrawals too intense? Or is something else going on? I do not know the answer for other people, but I think I understand why I am committed to the low carb way of life.

I have type II diabetes. The trade off for me is being ravaged by complications associated with diabetes or following the low carb way of life. I can die ten to fifteen years earlier than I might otherwise; I can go blind, suffer amputations, go on dialysis, have wounds that won't heal, get Alzheimer's disease, experience heart disease, and spend a lot of money on drugs as the disease gets progressively worse... or I can follow a low carb way of life. In my mind, this is a no-brainer.

But there are other reasons, too. I have had an intellectual conversion to the low-carb way of life, thanks to the many books and articles I have read about it. My introduction came by reading Why we Get Fat and What to Do About It by Gary Taubes, but I have since read many other books and articles on the topic.

I have rediscovered tasty eating. My low-fat diet days are now a distant, bad memory. I experience a sense of fullness when I eat low carb meals that I never felt on Weight Watchers. Fat is my friend and I think that products like steak, bacon, butter, and cream really add spice and flavor to life.  I am able to fast now, which has greatly improved my spiritual life. I am sleeping much better and I am not snoring as much as I used to. And I just feel better in general, both physically and psychologically.

So, yes, for me the decision to go low carb was an easy one and I do not find it difficult to live.

Professional Ignorance about Type II Diabetes

There is an astonishingly bad article about how to treat type II diabetes in a publication called Diabetes Health titled Type II Diabetes: From Old Dogmas to New Realities. The author, a head-in-the-sand woman named Hope Warshaw, says that low carb diets don't help people with diabetes and that we should all follow the advice of the American Diabetes Association.

Or, as Tom Naughton of the Fathead Movie fame says, this article essentially says "Just give up and take your drugs, dangit!" Read Naughton's whole critique of this astoundingly stupid article. The ignorance of the professional medical community on type II diabetes just astounds me.

But the best part of this article are the 40+ comments, and almost all of them supports the low carb approach and offers many testimonials of the success rate of following low carb diets. Many express dismay at how utterly clueless the author is, given that she is an RD, a certified diabetes educator, and has a master's degree. Clearly, she is an example of what Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit.com calls "credentialed, not educated."

So why does the ADA promote a high carb diet, when high carb diets are the root problem for type II diabetics? I am not sure. But check out their corporate sponsor page: the ADA is sponsored by Coca Cola, Hershey's, Mars, Kellogs, General Mills, and Pepsi. Truly, a "Who's Who" of American high carb junk food.  Page referenced on July 6, 2011; corporate sponsors may change over time.

My type II diabetes has been reigned in since beginning the low carb journey. My HbA1c level is quite good, I am off insulin, I have lost a lot of weight, and my blood pressure is normal. All without following the advice of the ADA.

HbA1c Results

My doctor (who is somewhat concerned about my low carb diet) wanted to check my HbA1c results. This is supposedly a long term measure of blood glucose, and the lower the reading, the better. She was happy with any result of 7.0 or below, but evidence suggests that your cardiac risk increases in a straight-line fashion for readings above 5.4. The higher the reading, the greater the risk.  Some experts suggest that an HbA1c should be between 5 and 5.9, while "normal" people often have a reading between 4.6 and 5.4. Long term damage to your body from high blood glucose levels will occur when the HbA1c levels exceed 6.0.

So what was my HbA1c reading? It was a disappointing 6.1. I was hoping to be in the 5.0 to 5.9 range. Now put that "disappointing" result in context: six months ago, using insulin and drugs, it was 7.2, and in May 2010, it was as high as 9.5. I am off insulin and am only taking Metformin now, so most of the drop in the number came from dietary changes due to my low carb lifestyle. So this is great progress, in just four months. But I can still do better. I expect the HbA1c reading will change over time as I lose more weight. I still have another 50 pounds to go to reach my goal weight and as I achieve that goal, I expect my blood glucose levels to drop.

Weekly Update

This week, I dropped another 2.6 pounds, bringing my total weight loss to 41 pounds. You can follow my weekly progress by viewing this chart. Another milestone is that I have been in Europe for one month now and during that time, I have dropped at least 9.2 pounds (there may be a small measurement error that could increase my weight loss by another two pounds).

More importantly, there are several non-scale victories (NSVs) worth mentioning. First, I have gone down from a 50-inch waist on my pants when I started in February to a 44-inch waist, which I just started wearing when my daughter brought me over a pair of jeans when she arrived last week. And those pants are now too large! I can pull them off without unbuttoning or unzipping them. Thank goodness for a belt.

Second, I have been walking a lot more lately and can do so without hunger. I am fully keto-adapted and so exercising does not make me hungry, as it does for people on a high carb regime. We walked for miles and miles (approximately 25,000 steps per day, according to my pedometer) while in Paris for the last few days. I got thirsty, but not hungry.

Third, we have been eating out a lot, some times all three meals per day, and by staying low carb, I am continuing to lose weight, in spite of all the eating out. This is important since, beginning tomorrow, we will be on a nine-day bus tour of Europe and will be eating out for every meal.

Fourth, my blood glucose levels are still falling. One hour after eating, they are consistently in the 100-105 range, and frequently they are in the 90-100 range. They should be below 140 one hour after eating and below 120 two hours after eating. So my one hour readings are quite good. My low carb lifestyle is effectively controlling my type II diabetes.

Finally, I am not really craving carbs anymore. When I do eat carbs, such as the blueberries I ate yesterday, they taste really, really good. And sweet. My palate is no longer in sugar shock, so I can fully taste and appreciate the natural level of sweetness in the berries I have been eating.

Life is good.

Low Carb Diet and the Treatment of Chronic Diseases

A new article in Nutrition in Clinical Practice reviews the safety and efficacy of the low carb diet as a way to treat chronic diseases such as type II diabetes and heart disease.  (Here is a link to the full text if you work somewhere, such as a university, that grants access).

The linked abstract concludes with this advice: "It is time to embrace LC [low carb] diets as a viable option in reversing diabetes mellitus, risk factors for heart disease, and the epidemic of obesity." This is a particularly important article, as it is targeted to medical practitioners. They are the ones actually treating patients with these chronic problems and some of them give bad advice, especially to those who are type II diabetics.

Hat tip: Dr. Eades.

Living for 85 Years with Type I Diabetes

Here is a rather remarkable story about a man who turned 90 years old. He was diagnosed as a type I diabetic at the age of 5, so he has spent the past 85 years as a type I diabetic. How did he manage his health for so long?

Like Richard Bernstein (who is 77 and was diagnosed as a type I when he was 12), he manages his type I diabetes by following a low carb diet. So not only do low carb diets help with type II diabetes, they can also help type I diabetics live a longer and healthier life.

Low Fat Diet Harms Women with Diabetes by Raising Blood Sugars

There is no media frenzy about this study, but a new study on real women (not rats or monkeys) showed that post-menopausal women with diabetes who ate a low fat diet suffered significant harm. Read the scientific abstract, as well as a discussion of the results by Jenny Ruhl of the Diabetes Update blog. Basically, the low fat, high carbohydrate diet caused very large swings in the blood sugar readings of diabetic women.

When you cut the fat out of your diet, you have to replace it with either carbohydrates or protein. And since carbohydrates drive up blood sugar readings, this is what happens when you replace the fat in your diet with carbs. Fat has very little effect on blood sugar readings, so when you replace the carbs in your diet with fat, not only is your hunger sated, your blood sugars improve.

We already know from a study of nearly 50,000 post-menopausal women that a low fat diet offers very little protection against coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease. Now we learn that a low fat diet actually harms this same group of women if they are already diabetic.

Living in Diabetes Denial

I was diagnosed with type II diabetes in December, 2002, eight and a half years ago. I immediately lost some weight, but when I saw there was no immediate health problems, I slipped back into my old ways.  This probably happened some time during the summer of 2003.

Beginning in 2005, for whatever reason, I lost a lot of weight on Weight Watchers and my blood sugars went down dramatically. In fact, I stopped taking medicine. (Note, however, my lipid profiles only improved somewhat; my overall score was low, but my LDL was high, my HDL was low, and my triglycerides were quite high). Then, since Weight Watchers is what Gary Taubes called a "semi-starvation" diet, when I quit starving myself, my weight came back on and my diabetes came back with a vengeance. I followed WW religiously from November, 2005 until May 2007. Then I regressed and gained back much of the weight I lost. I just pretended I didn't have type II diabetes and ate what I wanted to eat, without concern about the effects it was having on my body. I guess you could say, I was in deep denial. By May 2008, my blood sugars were terrible again.

During June, 2010, I had an episode of reactive arthritis, which was treated with Prednisone and my blood sugar readings rocketed from the already high range (180-190) to the stratospheric (350 to 450). At this point, I had to start injecting insulin to try to counter the effects of Prednisone. I visited my physician during the fall of 2010 and she put me on a regimen of slow acting and fast acting injectable insulin. This was the beginning of my exit from denial, but I was still partially in denial.

Of course, I was hanging around the 300 to 310 weight range and felt fat, tired, and awful. I was having trouble sleeping and had no energy most of the time. Doing normal tasks, like walking, was getting harder and I started to come to the realization that I would die. I started reading about the complications of type II diabetes and it is not pretty.

In desperation, I started Weight Watchers again in January, 2011. But after four weeks of strict adherence to the program, I had only lost 0.8 pounds, not my normal WW experience. At first, I thought it was the new WW program, so I tried reverting to the old WW program.  That didn't work, either. Then I read a blog entry on Instapundit.com that changed my life. The author, Glenn Reynolds, linked to the book, Why We Get Fat by Gary Taubes. I downloaded it on a Saturday, February 12, and finished listening to it by the next day. I realized I was not losing weight on WW because of the insulin I was injecting. I now understood, thanks to Taubes' book, that if I wanted to have any hope of losing weight again, I had to get off insulin, and the low carb lifestyle Taubes described seemed like it would do the trick. So I started low carbing on February 14, 2011.

It did. That's why I have started this blog, to share with others who are struggling with weight or diabetes the method that has proven extraordinarily successful for me. I am no longer in diabetes denial; I am off injectable insulin and back on Metformin. I will be weaning myself from that as soon as I lose another 30 pounds or so. My blood pressure fell substantially, within a few days, and my blood sugars are now near normal. My new low carb lifestyle has very literally saved my life.

Now when I know about friends or acquaintances who are diagnosed with type II diabetes, but who are in deep denial, I want to reach out to them and tell them there is hope, that they can control the disease and lead a mostly normal life. A low carb diet is the key. Yes, it requires sacrifice, but it is worth it. But I also realize they must get past denial. The earlier it is treated, the better, before the pancreas is too compromised.

My plea: get out of denial and start dealing with your type II diabetes.

Research Update

Want to increase your odds of getting Alzheimer's disease?  Then eat a high carb diet. Of course, as I have mentioned before, Alzheimer's disease is sometimes called type III diabetes, and the best way to deal with diabetes is a low carb diet, combined with exercise, drugs, and insulin, where necessary. Thus, it makes sense that a low carb diet will help to prevent Alzheimer's disease.

This article follows 13 to 15 year old girls who exercise, and concludes that exercise increases causes these girls to work up an appetite and to eat more. As we have mentioned before, there are many good reasons to exercise, but exercising in an effort to lose weight is not one of them because people work up an appetite and eat more.  In fact, just thinking about exercise causes people to eat more.

Hat tip: Michael R. Eades' twitter page.

CWOPO

Conventional Wisdom or Prevailing Opinion (CWOPO) has really let me down in recent months.  I have learned that salt restriction may actually be dangerous, contrary to what we have always been told.  The idea that cholesterol causes heart disease has been debunked for years now, but the USDA still issues food guidelines that assume it is true.

Soy is supposed to be the new health super food (and it's in everything we eat that is processed--just read the labels).  Yet I am discovering that soy is a very dangerous food, and that giving soy formula to infants is like giving them birth control pills.

We are told to do cardiovascular exercise, and then learn that it may actually cause heart disease.

My daughter has educated me about natural child birth and the benefits of using a nurse midwife (see the movie, The Business of Being Born on Netflix or Amazon Prime).  Naturally, this movie upset the AMA.

We are told to have regular physical exams, then we are told that annual physicals don't do much for us.

The American Diabetes Association approved diet is heavy on carbs, yet these same carbs are causing blood sugar spikes.  Don't these so-called professionals know this?  Dr. Bernstein takes the ADA to task for its 2008 guidelines that are problematic for diabetics.

Last year, I had a scare with rheumatoid arthritis (fortunately for me, it was merely reactive arthritis), and all the conventional treatments are pretty scary, not to mention expensive.  Yet there is a simple, safe, inexpensive, medically proven alternative to the other expensive and dangerous rheumatoid arthritis treatments.  And this treatment is shunned by rheumatologists and the medical establishment.

I am now starting to question a lot of what I have been told to do by medical authorities.  CWOPO is often seriously flawed and out of date, in my opinion.  I have discovered that evidence based medicine is not usually practiced, though it should be.  CWOPO is what is practiced, and it is very hard to change, despite empirical evidence to the contrary.

I am learning that if it is my health problem, I must take ownership of the problem and do the research about what to do.  This is what I have done with the type II diabetes, what I did when I thought I had rheumatoid arthritis, and what I have done with my weight loss strategy.  I will not merely passively accept what an M.D. tells me in the future.

Another Great Diabetes Blog

I found another blog by Jenny Ruhl, the woman who does the Blood Sugar 101 site and the book, Blood Sugar 101, which I recently reviewed.  It is the Diabetes Update blog.  She surveys and reads the latest in diabetes research from the pertinent medical journals and reports on her findings.  I found some interesting things on her site.  For example, those who drink diet sodas have an increased risk of stroke.  Some speculate it is the phosphoric acids in brown colored soft drinks that is the culprit (alas, my two vices are diet A&W and caffeine free Diet Coke).  I am drinking a lot less diet soda nowadays, but I am still drinking it.  I guess I'd better switch to Sprite Zero until I can kick the habit completely.

On Binging, Diabetes Reversal, and Energy

Have you ever noticed that when you have binged in the past, it was never on meat?  Who binges on meat?  It doesn't happen.  It was all on products made of refined carbs--flour, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, etc.  What I have noticed is that by eliminating most carbs from my diet, not only am I losing weight and feeling better, I have stopped binging, probably because I am more filled up by fat and protein.

Also, the reversal of my type II diabetes continues to astound me.  My blood sugars are really and truly normalizing.  Despite eliminating injectable insulin, my readings are rapidly declining and approaching the normal range for non-diabetics.  I have started some resistance training and that is helping as well.  I am very encouraged.

Oh, and did I mention that I feel great?  Lots of energy now.  I literally have energy to burn, thanks to burning the fat I eat and the excess fat I have been storing.

Low Carb Diet May Reverse Kidney Failure in People with Diabetes

Every day there seems to be another significant study about the low carb diet.  Today we learn that a low carbohydrate diet may reverse kidney failure in people with diabetes.  Read the news release on the topic or read the actual study, if you are able to trudge through academicese.  Hat tip:  Michael R. Eades, M.D.

Anecdotally, Richard Bernstein made the same point in his book, Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution in 1997.

Research Update

In addition to the usual results showing low carb dieters losing more weight, achieving better blood glucose levels, and losing more inches than low fat, high carb dieters, this new study also demonstrated that low carb dieters had better memory performance.  Ketone levels were significantly and positively correlated with memory performance, but low fat, high carb dieters don't achieve ketosis, so they are out of luck.  This is important, because low carb diets are very good for type II diabetics.  Type II diabetics are at a greater risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, which is sometimes called "type III diabetes."  "Type III" diabetes would certainly affect your memory performance.

Another study showed that in adults afflicted with non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (about 1/3 of the adult population in the U.S.) lost significantly more liver fat after two weeks on a low carb diet than on a low fat, high carb diet.  Weight loss after two weeks was about the same on both regimes, but loss of liver fat was the key goal of the study, and the low carb diet proved better.

More interesting food articles from the marketing journal, The Journal of Consumer Research.  I find it fascinating that the academic marketing discipline is so focused on eating.

• Consumers are more likely to order more calories at a restaurant they perceive as "healthy," such as Subway, than at a restaurant they perceive as "unhealthy," such as McDonald's (this link opens a press release in an MS Word document).  There is a "health halo" associated with "healthy" restaurants, such as Subway.  Since consumers tell themselves they are eating healthy, they splurge on unhealthy sides, drinks, and desserts.  When they eat at a restaurant perceived as "unhealthy," they are more aware of what they are eating and actually consume fewer calories than at "healthy" restaurants.  Stupid dieters.
• When consumers face their own mortality, such as immediately after the 9/11 attacks, they eat more, drink more, and want to spend more time with their families (this link opens a press release in an MS Word document).
• The color of orange juice made people think it was sweeter.  Researchers wanted subjects to choose the "sweetest" orange juice (this link opens a press release in an MS Word document).  The subjects perceived no difference when one cup had a lot of sugar added and the other didn't, but they perceived a huge difference in sweetness when the orange juice was brighter, thanks to food dye.  Eyesight trumped the taste buds!

Book Recommendations

That Nice Girl I Married and our daughter who is visiting from Utah took off for the weekend with a bunch of women in our ward, so I had a lot of time to read, and read I did.  I read two books on diabetes that I can now highly recommend.

The first is Blood Sugar 101 by Jenny Ruhl.  Jenny Ruhl also has a web site by the same name, but I found the book much more accessible.  She advocates the low carb diet and gives specific blood sugar guidelines to strive for.  Her book lists all of the possible drugs to treat type II diabetes, and the strengths and drawbacks of each drug.  Perhaps the most useful part of the book was the section on physicians.  She deftly describes physician attitudes towards diabetes and suggests that if your physician doesn't live up to a list of criteria, it's time to get a new doctor.  She made me realize that my doctor, an internist, is out of date and out of touch with type II diabetes.  I need a new doctor.  She also mentioned how a type II diabetic who actively manages and controls the disease needs a letter signed by your doctor about your treatment plan, in case you are ever hospitalized, as they will put you on the insane high carb, low fat diet that is the exact opposite of what you need.  Plus take away your diabetes management tools (blood glucose meter, drugs, insulin) while you are in the hospital and, Because They Know Better, treat you the way they always treat diabetes.  Which is to say, very poorly.

The second book I read was Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars.  A very interesting, if somewhat dogmatic book about the management of type I or type II diabetes.  Unlike other books, this one strives to get you to normal blood sugar levels, the type that non-diabetics routinely achieve.  This means HgA1C levels in the 4.2 to 5.0 range.  His solutions work, though he did come across as a bit insistent and dogmatic ("use this chart and these abbreviations in this way....") but I learned a tremendous amount about managing the disease, the drugs used to treat it, insulin therapy, exercise, and diet.  He, too, recommends a low carb diet for the management of both types of diabetes.  His recommendations boil down using a blood glucose meter aggressively and following as many of the following four steps as it takes to achieve normal blood sugars:

1.  Follow a low carb diet (and lose weight).  For some, this may be enough to normalize blood sugars.
2.  Get plenty of anaerobic exercise, mostly resistance training (weight lifting).
3.  If the first two aren't enough to manage type II diabetes, use drugs
4.  If the first three aren't enough, use a consistent, low dose of insulin

The book has tremendous details for each of the steps mentioned above.

After reading the two books, I was left with one big question: why didn't any of the physicians I have used over the past ten years know this information?  I have consistently been given the wrong information about treating type II diabetes.  How can a non-M.D. like Jenny Ruhl, who also writes bodice ripper romance novels (under the pen name Jenny Brown), know so much more about managing the disease than any doctor I have used?

Diabetes Update

I am sure my physician will be more than pleased on my next visit.  My blood sugars are down, I am not using injectable insulin anymore, my lipid profile is improving, and I am losing weight.

That said, pleasing my current physician is not my goal, as she is following standard medical guidelines that will still leave me with diabetic complications if I use her goals and ranges.

I am reading a really interesting book called Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution: The Complete Guide to Achieving Normal Blood Sugars.  I will review it more properly when I have finished, but he is a big advocate of achieving normal blood sugar levels for everyone, including type I diabetics.  He advocates a low carb diet and a combination of weight loss, exercise, medication, and insulin to achieve normal blood sugars.  Some people can achieve normal levels by weight loss alone; some by weight loss and exercise; some by weight loss, exercise, and oral medications; and some by weight loss, exercise, oral medications, and/or insulin.  By his definition of "normal" (that is, blood sugar levels of non-diabetics), I have a bit of work to do, but I am willing to put forth the effort.

When I lost 115 pounds on Weight Watchers, I was able to get off medications completely.  I am hoping that is still the case, but we will see.  As it is now, I can see a dramatic effect on blood glucose levels by hardly eating any carbs and by exercising.

Low Carb Living to Help Overcome Type II Diabetes

File this under the label, "Information I wish I knew when I was first diagnosed as diabetic."  Low carb living is an excellent way to deal with the onset of type II diabetes, often without resorting to drugs.

A recent study compared a low carb diet with a more traditional, low fat, high carb, low glycemic index diet and concluded the following.  "Dietary modification let to improvements in glycemic control and medication reduction/elimination in motivated volunteers with type 2 diabetes.  The diet lower in carbohydrate led to greater improvements in glycemic control, more frequent medication reduction/elimination than the low glycemic index diet.  Lifestyle modification using low carbohydrate interventions is effective for improving and reversing type 2 diabetes."  Low carb subjects in this study lost significantly more weight and significantly lowered their HBA1C readings more  than those on the low glycemic index diet.  "Significantly" as it is used here is a statistical term, and if you are really curious, you can read all the gory details in the article linked above.

Interested in reading something less dense about low carbohydrate diets and type II diabetes?  This article recommends two books by medical doctors written for the lay person that spell out how to reverse diabetes by following a low carb lifestyle.  Caveat: I haven't read either book (yet), but I trust the source of the recommendation.

Blood Sugar 101

Of all the sites on the web about type II diabetes, the Blood Sugar 101 site is by far the best and most helpful.  It tells you a lot of things about blood sugars, how to control them, and what to eat to get them low.  It is all really common sense and I cannot believe that my physician and "diabetes educator" didn't tell me this information.  Actually, I am finding my physician and diabetes educator to be less than useless in helping me manage my diabetes.

While the entire site is very good, two pages in particular were helpful.  First, the Healthy Blood Sugars page gave me a lot of information about where my sugar levels should be, backed with empirical data.  And the "Lower Your Blood Sugar" flyer was priceless.  I printed it out and hung it up at work.  If diabetes is an issue for you, I would highly recommend this site.

There is a sister site, by the same author, on low carb dieting that is also quite good.  Funnily enough, the author writes bodice ripping romance novels.  I haven't read any of those, nor will I, but her blood sugar and low carb information is quite good.