Today I want to focus on two of the core messages to which I continue to return time and time again: First, there is an enormous difference between real food and manufactured calories. And, second, as we have been discussing at length in recent weeks, manufactured calories have been associated with an epidemic of chronic diseases, including not only diabetes, coronary artery disease, and obesity, but also depression, dementia, and other brain diseases. Continue reading
Tag Archives: insulin
Toast and Jelly Waste Your Insulin
You probably already know that diabetes and obesity in the United States have reached epidemic proportions, but you may be surprised to learn that many, if not most, cases of diabetes are preventable. How? The best strategy for preventing diabetes and obesity is to learn how to conserve your body’s insulin supply. Continue reading
Insulin: A Very Good Place to Start
Here is why it’s important to use less insulin: The fact is that insulin is not your friend. You need it to live, but you want to use as little as possible. You want the levels of insulin in your bloodstream to stay as low as possible. Like sugar. The lower the better (within reason, say 80 to 99 for fasting blood sugars). When it comes to insulin, you want your levels to remain as low as necessary to do the job, not zero of course, but on the low side. Why is that? There are a number of reasons. Continue reading
Insulin: Like Money in the Bank
Have you ever considered that the amount of insulin you are capable of making over your lifetime is limited? Maybe your pancreas can make, let’s just call it 1000 pounds worth of insulin, and after that it starts to have trouble keeping up with the demand? What would happen if you used up most of your supply by the time you were 40 or 50? Then what? Then your blood sugars would probably start to rise dramatically, and you would need to start taking medicine, whether to make your remaining insulin work more efficiently, to get your pancreas to make more, or to augment your existing supplies. Continue reading
Make Your Insulin Last a Lifetime
If you’ve seen my TED talk, then you know I spend a fair amount of time teaching folks how to use their insulin more efficiently so that they don’t run out, and so they have enough (hopefully) to last a lifetime. Insulin is like a valet service that escorts blood sugar from your blood to all your cells. If you don’t have enough, your sugars start to rise. The fact is that even though you need insulin to live, it is not your friend. You want to use as little as possible. You want the levels of insulin in your bloodstream to stay as low as possible. Just like blood sugar, you want your insulin levels to remain low. Why? Continue reading
Stripped Carbs First Thing in the Morning? No!
Having a hard time understanding why breakfast is the one meal of day that you should not eat toast, bagels, muffins, waffles, pancakes, cereal, biscuits, bread or grits? Here’s why:
When you eat foods that are rich in fiber, fat and protein, it takes quite a while for your body to break them down. So they get absorbed into your bloodstream very slowly. But whenever you eat items made primarily from sugar and other kinds of stripped carbs, your digestive system absorbs the ingredients very quickly. Continue reading
Gains and Losses
There is a clear connection to be made between stripped carbs, insulin release, and weight gain. High insulin levels cause us to gain weight and store fat. How does that happen? Little by little we are figuring it out. The fact that the obesity and diabetes epidemic continues to worsen day by day underscores that we are operating under a fundamental misconception: If things continue to get worse no matter how hard you try, it’s time to reexamine the fundamentals. The information we get from advertisements and cereal boxes is frankly inaccurate. I have a special name for the nutritional claims on food products: advertising. Continue reading
The Glycemic Index
Many people have heard of the glycemic index (GI), but they are not exactly sure what it means, or how it works. A low glycemic index diet is thought to significantly lower your risk of type 2 diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease and even certain cancers. This is probably true, but not for the reasons people think. Continue reading