Archive for the ‘Diabetes’ Category

Brown Rice Reduces Diabetes Risk

August 3rd, 2010

White Rice, Brown Rice, Diabetes, Heart Disease, Whole Grains, Refined Grains

Finally in 2010, the medical community has gotten hip to what Francis Lappe Moore, author of the cookbook Diet for a Small Planet, preached in 1971. Whole grains are better for you than refined grains…and in ways you might not suspect. In fact, recent studies confirm that, if you switch from white rice to brown rice, you can reduce your risk of diabetes significantly. According to a study led by Dr. Qi Sun, M.D., a nutrition researcher at the Harvard School of Public Health, in Boston, Massachusetts, eating two servings per week of brown rice instead of two servings of white rice will reduce your risk of contracting type-2 diabetes by 16 percent.  And your risk will decline by 36 percent if you choose whole grains in general in place of those servings of refined grains.

The researchers looked at data from three long-term health studies involving over 200,000 nurses and health practitioners.  The studies ran for 14 to 22 years, and during that time, roughly five percent of the subjects developed type-2 diabetes.  The researchers noted a 17 percent greater risk of contracting type 2 diabetes in those who ate five or more servings of white rice per week, as compared to those who ate little or none. And in subjects who ate at least two servings of brown rice per week, the risk decreased by 11 per cent.

Even more interesting is the fact that the magic may not reside in the brown rice itself.  Dr. Sun and colleagues theorized that brown rice eaters might simply be more "health-conscious" and have a better diet overall.  In fact, the brown rice eaters were likely to have a number of advantages over the white rice eaters (and no this isn’t a variation on the Dr. Suess story about the Zooks who eat butter-side down versus the Yooks who prefer butter-side up).  They were likely to be slimmer than their white rice counterparts, they were less likely to smoke, they were less likely to have a family history of diabetes, and they were more likely to be physically active. Certainly, these factors provide a recipe for minimizing diabetes risk.

But to be sure, white rice does have inherent disadvantages.  According to nutritionist Alissa Rumsey, R.D. at New York-Presbyterian Hospital, in New York City, "White rice is digested much faster and converted into sugar in your blood much quicker, so your body puts out a lot more insulin in response to white rice." In fact, instant and quick cook versions of white rice are off the charts on the glycemic index — coming in higher than table sugar. On the other hand, whole grains like brown rice are broken down into glucose a lot slower. Ms. Rumsey adds that whole grains have much more fiber, vitamins, minerals, and protein, "so you get a lot more nutritional bang for your buck than with refined carbohydrates like white rice or white bread."

In 2006, separate studies by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health and at Tufts University supported the advantages of whole grains for people with diabetes. The Harvard study measured levels of insulin, hemoglobin A1C, homocysteine, and cholesterol levels in 1000 healthy, middle-aged adults.  It also looked at their diets.  The scientists found a significantly reduced risk of type-2 diabetes and heart disease among those who ate whole grains. Similarly, the Tufts researchers showed that fasting blood sugar levels in older adults decreased as their whole grain intake increased.  Conversely, those with a high intake of refined grains had twice the risk for type 2-diabetes and heart disease compared to those who ate whole grains.  These findings confirmed several earlier large-scale studies that showed eating whole grains could reduce diabetes risk by as much as 42 percent.

But the researchers may not have the whole story. I recently wrote about the impact of high-glycemic foods on risk of heart disease. The glycemic index of foods indicates their potential to raise blood sugar. The greater the potential for raising blood sugar levels, the higher the glycemic index of the food; the lower the potential, the lower the glycemic index. So if people with diabetes monitor the glycemic index of their food intake, they can help control their blood sugar levels. And although brown rice is a "medium" glycemic food that performs better than white rice in studies, it may not be the optimal choice for keeping blood sugar levels low. "It turns out that a two-ounce serving of cooked pasta, which has a glycemic index of 42, elevates blood sugar less than a serving of brown rice, which has a glycemic index of 55."

In either case, grains of any kind (either refined or unrefined, rice or wheat) may not be your best choice for consuming in large quantities.

Which brings me to what is increasingly becoming a familiar refrain in my columns. If you want to reduce your risk for type-2 diabetes (and for heart disease while you’re at it), it’s hard to do better than the Mediterranean diet. While it is true that the rapid increase of blood sugar and the associated rapid release of the hormone insulin damages cells throughout the body, which leads to heart disease, diabetes, and other ills, all this nitpicking about high- versus low-glycemic foods becomes irrelevant if you stick to the Mediterranean diet, which emphasizes fresh vegetables, fruits, olive oil, a bit of fish and very little meat or grain.

And for those of you who insist on making grains a major part of your diet, check out my two-part series on grains, The Whole Grain and Nothing but the Grain.

:hc

Vitamin D and Diabetes

July 1st, 2010

Vitamin D, Diabetes, Metabolic Syndrome

Score yet one more in favor of having fun in the sun. A new study indicates that lack of vitamin D may be a major factor in the development of diabetes, and as you probably know, sunshine provides one of the best sources of vitamin D. The research, which comes from Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, found a startling correlation between Type 2 diabetes and lack of vitamin D. Of the 124 diabetic subjects aged 36 to 89 in the study, more than 91 percent were found to be vitamin D deficient or insufficient. Plus, the severity of the deficiency correlated to the severity of the diabetes. In other words, the more deficient the subjects were, the more out-of-control their diabetes was.

Both the director of the study, Dr. Esther Krug, and her colleagues nationwide warned the public not to jump to the conclusion that a vitamin D shortage leads to diabetes. Dr. Krug said, "Our study could not show cause and effect." She points out that people who have developed diabetes may simply neglect their health in general, foregoing sunshine and outdoor exercise, which could contribute to their vitamin D deficiency. Dr. Ritchie Mathur, M.D. of the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles concurs: "At present," she says, "a direct link between vitamin D and Type II diabetes is not conclusively established. One important point that is missing… is the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the general population, compared to those in the study."

Here’s the thing. Studies have shown the prevalence of vitamin D deficiency in the general population to be around 36 percent. But the prevalence among diabetic subjects is so much higher — almost 200 percent higher — that a link between diabetes and vitamin D look plausible, in spite of the reticence among the scientists to admit it. In fact, seemingly practicing doublespeak, Dr. Krug also said, "This finding supports an active role of vitamin D in the development of Type 2 diabetes… Since primary care providers diagnose and treat most patients with Type 2 diabetes, screening and vitamin D supplementation as part of routine primary care may improve health outcomes of this highly prevalent condition."

The study also found that the hemoglobin A1c value was higher in subjects with lower vitamin D levels. This inverse relationship was even more pronounced among patients of color than among whites. Hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c) indicates how well the body controls blood sugar levels. It is a measure of the blood glucose concentration over the most recent 30 to 120 days. The higher the levels of HbA1c, the more sugar the red blood cells have been exposed to. So in other words, low vitamin D levels seem to have led to poor control of blood sugar levels over time.

Meanwhile, over in Holland, another study also found a link between vitamin D and diabetes, plus, it confirmed that vitamin D may play a role in developing metabolic syndrome. In that study, which followed 1300 subjects, all over the age of 65, about half had vitamin D deficiency, a percentage that still exceeds that found in the general population. Plus, 37 percent had metabolic syndrome, meaning that they had hypertension, high cholesterol, high blood sugar levels, and abdominal obesity — a constellation of factors considered precursors to both heart problems and diabetes.

I’ve written before about the profound health implications of vitamin D deficiency — beyond diabetes and skeletal problems. As I’ve said, vitamin D deficiency has been implicated in the development of various cancers, cardiovascular disease, psoriasis, Lupus, multiple sclerosis, osteoporosis, arthritis, lupus, and liver, and kidney disease.  A new study this year, out of Loyola University, found that vitamin D deficiency may even lead to depression over the dark winter months, and likewise, supplementing with vitamin D may lift mood.

The moral of the story seems fairly obvious. Get enough vitamin D. It can’t hurt to supplement with 1000 to 2000 IU of vitamin D3 daily (taken with your largest meal), and it may even pay to have your blood levels of vitamin D tested, even if you assume you’re fine because you frolic in the sun every day. In fact, a study of vitamin D levels in Hawaii in 2007 found that 51 percent of the 93 subjects were vitamin D deficient, even though these subjects had abundant exposure to sunlight year-round. The study authors wrote, "These data suggest that variable responsiveness to UVB radiation is evident among individuals, causing some to have low vitamin D status despite abundant sun exposure." Or perhaps, they were just using too much sunscreen.

:hc

Posted in Diabetes | 5 Comments »

Quit Smoking, Get Diabetes? Health Blog

February 20th, 2010

Diabetes and Smoking

If you love to smoke and want a reason to keep it up, here’s something you can use. A new study found that quitting smoking raises your risk for diabetes. Of course, it’s a lame rationale, given that smoking increases your risk for just about every other destructive health condition. And yes, smoking also raises diabetes risk, but apparently, diabetes risk goes up even more after quitting smoking (for a period of time) than it does while keeping it up.

The study, recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, followed 11,000 middle-aged, non-diabetics for a period of nine years. Forty-five percent of the subjects smoked. Three years into the study, those who continued smoking had a 31 percent elevated chance of developing diabetes compared to the nonsmokers. That’s certainly a significant risk factor, given that smoking also multiplies the chances of getting cancer, heart disease, lung disease, osteoporosis and so on. But some of the subjects quit smoking during the study, and those who did quit raised their risk of developing diabetes a whopping 73 percent three years later compared to the nonsmokers. In the months and years right after quitting, that risk factor is even higher.

“Based on our analysis, [it's] probably 80 percent or even 90 percent [in the first few years after quitting],” says the study’s lead author, Dr. Hsin-Chieh Yeh of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. On the other hand, the elevated diabetes risk goes down over time. By 12 years post-quitting, the nonsmokers and the former smokers were on par.

But is the increased risk directly related to quitting smoking…or to changes in behavior that quitting may initiate?

It’s no secret that smoking suppresses appetite. Those who smoke crave an oral fix after quitting, and so tend to eat more and put on weight. That’s the factor the researchers blame for the spike in diabetes. Those subjects who quit smoking gained an average of 8.4 pounds and 1.25 inches around the waist, and not surprisingly, the more weight they gained and the more the waistline increase, the greater the likelihood that they developed diabetes.

The researchers wisely suggest that people avoid taking up smoking in the first place. Given that smoking kills over five million people annually in the U.S., that it’s the number one leading cause of preventable death worldwide, and that current trends indicate it will take a billion lives this century, the advice certainly seems sound. But for those who already have been smoking and now see the light, the experts agree: the benefits of quitting far, far outweigh the elevated risk of diabetes.

As for those who have already quit, Dr. Yeh suggests that their physicians should monitor them closely in the years right after. “You should probably do more frequent glucose testing after quitting for early detection,” she says. She and her colleagues also suggest that individuals who have quit need to be especially vigilant about doing the things that prevent diabetes in the first place — exercising and eating well.

For instance, Dr. Richard D. Hurt, director of the Nicotine Dependence Center at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, has some practical ideas. He suggests that former smokers should walk for 30 minutes daily, which “reduces the urges to smoke and reduces withdrawal symptoms. People are able to distract themselves,” he says, “it makes them feel better, and it uses up some of the calories.”

But Dr. Hurt has other ideas, too. Nicotine replacement products suppress appetite much like tobacco does, so he thinks using them may help. On the other hand, they work slowly and so subtly that they may not do enough to quell hunger, so he says larger doses may be required. On the other hand, given that all of these products have side effects, using high doses seems questionable. The side effects usually are minor, but there is some real risk of heart complications and at higher doses, that risk goes up. Along the same lines, he suggests that certain antidepressant drugs, such as Zyban or Wellbutrin, may do the trick. Again, though, there’s the side effect issue, with problems like headaches, nausea and vomiting, neurological issues, seizures, sleeping problems, skin problems such as rashes, stomach problems and so on are all possible.

The bottom line, voiced by Natasha Marsland, of Diabetes UK, is that “The health benefits of giving up smoking far outweigh the risk of developing type-two diabetes from modest, short-term weight gain.” But even that risk can be countered with exercise and diet. Of course, those who weren’t disciplined enough to avoid cigarettes in the first place might have some trouble motivating themselves to hike every day — or even simply to avoid consuming high fat, high-glycemic junk foods, which may explain why post-quitting weight gain is so prevalent. Perhaps lifestyle support programs for quitters might be needed to translate good ideas like eating well and exercising into reality. And in the meantime, instead of using drugs for appetite suppressants, you can try a natural alternative and avoid the health risks.

:hc

Diabetes Rates Keep Escalating: Health Blog

November 12th, 2009

Diabetes Prevention

Incredible though it seems, over 11 percent of Americans now have diabetes, and the rate keeps climbing. In another few years, at the current pace of increase, a full 15 percent of the population will have the disease according to the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index. And those figures only count the people who already have been diagnosed with diabetes. An NIH study earlier this year found that 13 percent of the population already has the disease, though many of those haven’t yet been diagnosed. Plus, if you count pre-diabetics, the numbers skyrocket. A few years ago, when “only” seven percent of the population had been diagnosed with diabetes, another 20 percent qualified as pre-diabetic, and among the 40 to 74-year-old set, the pre-diabetic rate registered at an astronomical 40 percent. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. According to the US Government, one third of all children currently in the population pipeline will eventually become diabetic — half if they are black or Hispanic.

Translated into numbers, at least 26 million Americans now are diabetic and 37 million will be by 2015. This represents a more than 90 percent increase in the past decade. And the increase extends to other countries, as well. In Mexico, diabetes has become the number one cause of death, and yet, the disease hardly existed in that country just 10 years ago. Worldwide, 30 million people had diabetes in 1985, but by 2000, that number had increased almost 700 percent to 150 million. (As a side note, no health care system in the world can accommodate those kinds of numbers when it comes to long-term medical care. The costs are beyond astronomical.)

The blame, experts say, rests in the ballooning numbers of obese individuals. While it is true that diabetes runs in families, it’s also true that the fatter you are, the greater the chance that you’ll become diabetic. According to Gallup Healthways, “More than one-fifth of obese adults [have diabetes]” — or 21.2%, compared to 7.4% of non-obese people of comparable ages.” It’s no coincidence that obesity rates have increased one percent since last year, keeping perfect pace with diabetes, which also increased one percent.

The disease demolishes health, causing neuropathy, kidney damage, heart disease, stroke, and wounds that don’t heal. Diabetes related infections lead to 150,000 amputations annually in the US.) Plus, it causes retinopathy, which can lead to blindness, and in fact, diabetes is the leading cause of blindness in the US.

Diabetes also is a problem for the pocketbook (unless you happen to be a stakeholder in a pharmaceutical company that manufactures diabetes drugs). Articles in the Archives of Internal Medicine indicate that spending on diabetes drugs has doubled since 2002, with annual expenditures exceeding $12.5 billion!

But the expensive drugs do nothing to heal or prevent diabetes; they merely control or treat symptoms. If obesity triggers the disease, then to intervene in the diabetes epidemic, lots of people need to lose weight. Exercising even a minimal amount not only takes pounds off, but slashes diabetes risk. The study found that those who had exercised for 30 minutes at least four times the previous week had almost half the incidence of diabetes compared to those who hadn’t done any exercise.

While the diabetes drug industry keeps blossoming, fewer and fewer people are making the lifestyle modifications that might prevent diabetes in the first place. Gallup-Healthways found “a 2009 decline of 2.7 points in the percentage of American adults who say they are exercising at least 30 minutes three or more times per week, compared with 2008.”

And yet, a study just published in The Lancet found that lifestyle changes trump drugs in diabetes prevention. In fact, the study, which involved 3000 pre-diabetic patients followed for 10 years, found that lifestyle modifications resulting in a weight loss of even a few pounds were roughly twice as effective as medications. The researchers found that those who exercised 30 minutes five times a week plus stuck to a low-fat diet reduced diabetes incidence by 34 percent over the 10 years compared to a control group that implemented no changes. Those who took the diabetes drug metformin instead of trying lifestyle modifications reduced incidence by only 18 percent. The impact of lifestyle modifications was particularly notable in those over 60 years of age.

The advantage of modifying diet and exercising rather than popping pills extends beyond the fact that the lifestyle changes work better. Getting in shape means keeping the body working well, whereas diabetes drugs don’t improve the natural functioning of the body. Plus, they cause all sorts of side effects. Metformin is considered one of the more benign diabetes pharmaceuticals, and yet, it commonly causes digestive problems and gastrointestinal distress, and can cause more serious conditions such as lactic acidosis and heart failure.

As I’ve written before, forcing blood sugar levels down with medications does nothing to relieve the underlying diabetic condition. It merely suppresses just one of its manifestations. If you want to prevent and reverse diabetes, you have to reduce sugar intake, reduce insulin resistance, improve beta cell function in the pancreas, and protect and repair insulin/sugar damage to mission critical organs in the body. And you have to do all of these things all at once.

It’s the same old story all over again. There’s no substitute for avoiding obesity in the first place by eating well and exercising. But if you’ve already crossed the line to become diabetic or at high risk for diabetes, you’ll still benefit from utilizing natural methods for regulating blood sugar metabolism.

:hc

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Way Over Sugar Threshold: Health Blog

September 17th, 2009

Diabetes, Sugar

Let’s say you’re a woman, aged 54, who just played tennis as you do every Monday and Wednesday, and on your way home you stop for a small soda. By the time you finish that drink, you’ll have consumed about 50 percent more added sugar than you should for the entire day, according to the American Heart Association (AHA). That means that anything else you eat with added sugar — cereals, crackers, snacks, treats, ketchup, frozen meals, barbecue sauce, salad dressing, and so on — puts you even more over the top. Everyone pretty much knows they eat too much sugar during the day. The surprise is how much too much and in how many foods it’s hidden.

According to a new report by the AHA, Americans eat way too much sugar — an average of 22 teaspoons a person daily. That’s almost half a cup every single day. If someone handed you a half cup filled with cane sugar, it’s unlikely that you’d even think of downing the entire amount, and yet, if you’re a typical American, you probably eat double that on your more indulgent days. In fact, teens eat 34 teaspoons daily, on average, or almost three-quarters of a cup. And note that these figures do not include sugars from natural sources, such as fruits and fruit juices. This only counts sugars added to food.

How much sugar should you have at the upper limit? The AHA has established specific guidelines for adults based on how much you can burn off calorie-wise, totally ignoring sugar’s other detrimental qualities. The amounts vary wildly, depending on your age, sex, and activity level. For instance:

  • Active men aged 21-25 can have up to 18 teaspoons, maximum
  • Sedentary men aged 46-50: up to nine teaspoons
  • Moderately active women aged 51-55: up to five teaspoons
  • Sedentary women aged 71-75: up to three teaspoons

Plus, the report says, the average woman shouldn’t consume more than 100 calories per day from added sugars, and the average man should limit added sugars to 150 calories per day. For some perspective, that’s less than you’ll get in a bowl of oatmeal with cinnamon and spice. “Excessive consumption of sugars has been linked to several metabolic abnormalities and adverse health conditions, as well as shortfalls of essential nutrients,” says the AHA statement.

Unfortunately for those who rely on the AHA guidelines, the problem with all that extra sweetness goes far beyond weight gain, and even tooth decay. “Excessive consumption of sugars has been linked to several metabolic abnormalities and adverse health conditions, as well as shortfalls of essential nutrients,” says the AHA statement. Studies show that high-sugar diets boost triglycerides and increase risk of stroke, hypertension, and heart disease. And of course, eating a sugar overload depletes the pancreas, builds up cellular resistance to insulin, and increases diabetes risk.

Where do all the extra sugars come from? Certainly sodas and candy drive up the numbers, with a 12-ounce soda adding eight to 12 teaspoons. A bag of Skittles adds another 12 teaspoons, and a cup of ice-cream piles on 10 more. But it’s obvious that desserts and soft drinks would up the sugar quota. What if you never have dessert, if you eat “healthy” packaged foods? Well, if you have a small fruit-flavored yogurt for breakfast, you’ll pick up six teaspoons. Raisin Bran adds another six. Fruitopia in a 20-oz serving gives you 18 more. Add on another 3.5 from baked beans, another four from your low-fat salad dressing, and another six for a snack of 1/3 cup of dried cranberries.
In other words, it’s easy to accumulate added sugar without even opting for “sweet” foods. Sugar keeps sneaking into prepared foods, disguised by names such as maltose, dextrose, high-fructose corn syrup, and so on. But for the average American, it’s soda that’s really the culprit, according to lead author Rachel Johnson of the University of Vermont. It’s the number one source of added sugars in the diet, fueling the $115 billion revenues that sodas rake in each year. In the three decades from 1970 to 2000, soft-drink consumption increased by 70 percent in the US. Given that a regular can of soda averages 135 calories from sugar, and that amount exceeds the allowable amount for women according to the AHA, it’s no wonder we’re getting increasingly fat.

Predictably, the sugar and soft-drink industries found creative ways to double-talk around the AHA report. The American Beverage Association, for instance, issued a statement claiming that, “Like many foods, soft drinks and other sugar-sweetened beverages are a source of calories, but in and of themselves, they are not a unique risk factor for obesity or other negative health outcomes — including heart disease.” Being generous, I guess we could call that a point of view.

The Sugar Association then ramped up the nonsense, accusing the American Heart Association of “[issuing] a scientific statement titled ‘Dietary Sugars Intake and Cardiovascular Health’ without a higher standard of evidence to support its contentions and therefore misleading the average consumer.” They go on to say that “every major systematic review of the body of scientific evidence exonerates sugar as the cause of any lifestyle disease, including heart disease and obesity.” (Perhaps it’s just me, but I have to think that claiming that “every major systematic review” exonerates sugar would qualify as a tad hyperbolic.) Finally, they resort to finger-pointing, noting that the European Food Safety Authority and an expert panel convened by the Institute of Medicine in 2002 did not set an upper limit for added sugars.

Seems rather a desperate response, perhaps compounded by the fact that a sugar shortage looms on the horizon. According to a report just issued by the USDA, because so much corn formerly used for corn sweetener has been getting repurposed for ethanol, and because of strict import limits on sugar, “the United States will end the next fiscal year with less than 13 days’ worth of sugar on hand, unless imports are increased…our nation will virtually run out of sugar.” What sweet irony that these two reports — the one from the AHA and one from the USDA–came out at about the same time, and that the sugar shortage, should it occur, will naturally take care of the sugar overload problem the AHA cites.

Thank goodness we have artificial sweeteners to fall back on.

:hc

Black Tea Inhibits Diabetes: Health Blog

August 10th, 2009

Black Tea, Diabetes

Everybody knows green tea is healthier than black tea. Right? Well, not so fast! Though green tea has received much acclaim because of its superstar antioxidant content, black tea, it turns out, does more to lower blood sugar. Black tea contains a polysaccharide that works very much the way pharmaceutical diabetes drugs work, according to a new study out of Tianjin University in China.

It’s been known for some time that tea offers benefits to diabetics, but previous research hasn’t compared the various kinds of tea to see which works best. This study compared the effects of green tea, black tea, and oolong. Although all three types of tea come from the same type of plant — camellia sinensis — they get processed differently, and it is the processing that creates differences in flavor and composition. Black tea undergoes the most processing and is fully fermented; green tea, which is unfermented, undergoes the least, and oolong tea fits right into the middle.

The natural assumption is that less processing is better, and in fact, green tea does preserve its antioxidant content better, plus has less caffeine. It’s the catechins in green tea that confer all those health benefits, and in processing, those catechins convert into other compounds. Still, according to Dr. John Weisburger of the Institute for Cancer Prevention, “Whether it’s green or black, tea has about eight to 10 times the [antioxidants] found in fruits and vegetables.”

Plus, a closer look at what happens to the catechins in the process of making black tea reveals that they simply convert into other antioxidants — theaflavins and thearubigens, which, although probably not as powerful as catechins, do confer health benefits that just now are starting to be investigated. Studies have shown that in addition to lowering blood sugar, black tea has antiviral properties, anticancer properties, and it improves cardiovascular function to a remarkable degree.

But the research on the blood-sugar lowering properties of tea focused not on the catechin content, but on the polysaccharide content in the tea. It seems that processing tea reduces the molecular weight of the polysaccharides, and according to head researcher Haixia Chen, those lighter-weight polysaccharides actually work better to block an enzyme called alpha-glucosidase, which converts starch into glucose. This is exactly what the mainstay diabetes drugs Precose and Glyset do. Plus, black-tea polysaccharides showed the best ability to scavenge disease-causing free radicals. In other words, the polysaccharides in black tea have far more powerful antioxidant properties than the polysaccharides in other teas. The game is still on.

Black tea already has been used in diabetes treatment in China and Japan because of its ability to reduce blood sugar, but this research takes it one step further by demonstrating that black tea actually stops the blood sugar spike triggered by eating. Dr. Chen says, “Many efforts have been made to search for effective glucose inhibitors from natural materials. There is a potential for exploitation of black tea polysaccharide in managing diabetes.”

The researchers say they don’t know if simply drinking black tea will do the trick. They used black tea extract derived by chemically processing the tea leaves. Certainly, drinking organic tea minus the chemicals has far more appeal from the standpoint of both pleasure and cost, to say nothing about consuming chemical residue, but there’s a potential goldmine in selling tea extract that might influence what consumers get told. Given that in the US alone, eight percent of the population already has diabetes and that percentage keeps increasing, the pharmaceutical companies may be poised to elbow out the tea companies and exploit a fortune in prescription Earl Gray. Already, US consumers pay $116 billion annually for diabetes medication, much of which could be converted to tea medication. (If you want to partake in the profits and you live in warm, wet climes, this might be a good time to plant some camellia sinensis — seriously.)

It also might be a good time to start drinking it, because in spite of what the researchers say, previous studies have shown that merely drinking tea does work. A study a few months ago, for instance, found that drinking three cups of black tea daily cut stroke risk by 21 percent. Another study last year found that both green tea and black tea reduced blood sugar as well as the incidence of diabetic cataracts in rats. The researchers concluded that average-weight adults could get the same effect by drinking 4.5 cups of tea daily.

One note before you start taking tea breaks every few hours: drink your tea without milk of any sort, including soy milk, as some studies indicate that milk blocks the action of the beneficial compounds in tea (1, 2, 3). Although the studies are conflicting, it’s probably best to err on the side of caution. And by the way, if you don’t enjoy tea, studies show that drinking six cups of coffee daily cuts diabetes risk by 50 percent for men and 30 percent for women. Of course, imbibing six or more cups of coffee daily simultaneously ups the risk of bouncing off the walls, annoying your spouse, and setting off hypertension, kidney stones, osteoporosis, and so on. You’ll probably stay safer and more civilized drinking 4.5 cups of tea.

Or, you can just look for a black tea extract in your neighborhood health food store.

:hc

Intense Exercise Slashes Diabetes Risk: Health Blog

January 31st, 2009

Prevent Diabetes

Here’s some miracle news for those who want to stay in shape and ward off disease, but also want to spend most of their time slouching and lounging around.  A new study has found that very short but intense bursts of exercise prevent diabetes and cardiac problems more effectively than long, sweat-provoking workouts. In fact, the mini-exercise sessions that work so well are short enough that you could almost complete them during a commercial break.

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Posted in Diabetes | 1 Comment »

Arsenic, Diabetes, and Drinking Water: Health Blog

September 11th, 2008

Arsenic Drinking Water

A new study out of Johns Hopkins has found that, even at low levels, exposure to the heavy metal arsenic may lead to a fourfold increase in the risk of developing type 2 diabetes. This could be a problem for you if you’re drinking water directly from the tap because the public water supply in most locals contains trace amounts of arsenic. The study, out of Johns Hopkins, measured the arsenic content in the urine of nearly 800 individuals and found a strong association between high arsenic content and the presence of the diabetes. In fact, arsenic in the urine is about equal to obesity as a diabetes risk factor.

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Stevia Approved, Sort of: Health Blog

August 1st, 2008

Diabetes Prevention

Move over aspartame and sucralose. A new, natural sweetener has finally come to market. The Coca-Cola Company and Cargill just announced the introduction of Truvia — a zero-calorie sweetener derived from natural sources. But wait — is the product really new? Not exactly. Truvia is a derivative of stevia — that previously maligned sweetener that the FDA disparaged as a mere dietary supplement (upgraded from its previous status as an unsafe food additive).

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Depression Causes Diabetes – Diabetes Causes Depression: Health Blog

June 30th, 2008

diabetes, depression, johns hopkins

A study out of Johns Hopkins in Baltimore has shown that depressed people have a stunning, 42- percent increased risk of developing diabetes when compared to people who aren’t depressed. The study followed 5,201 people, aged 45 to 84, for three years. The subjects did not have diabetes at the outset of the study. Even when the researchers controlled for pre-existing factors such as obesity, inactivity, and smoking, they found that risk for diabetes was still 34 percent higher in patients with depression. They also found that the deeper the depression, the greater the likelihood that the subject would become diabetic.

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