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
Category Archives: Insulin
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
Insulin is Like Money in the Bank
Have you ever considered that the amount of insulin you are capable of making over your lifetime is limited? That your pancreas can make, oh, let’s just call it 1000 pounds, of insulin, and that after that it starts to have trouble trying to keep up with demand? Think about that. What would happen if you used up most of your supply by the time you were 40 or 50? Then what? Continue reading
Let’s Start at the Very Beginning
Wherever I go, people always want to talk with me about the blog. Lately, I’ve heard a lot of this: “I went to your website and saw a lot of interesting stories, but I didn’t know which ones to read first. Where should I start? What is the first thing you would want me to understand?”
There are two things I want everyone to understand: First, there’s a big difference between real food and manufactured calories. And second, manufactured calories cause all kinds of serious medical problems, like diabetes and obesity.
So today I want to take you on a field trip. We’re going to step out the back door, and into a field of wheat. Pick a single grain, and take a good look at that grain. What do you see? Each and every grain contains 1) a bran fiber coat; 2) an endosperm, composed primarily of starch; and 3) the wheat germ, where the nutritious oils are. If you strip away the bran coat and wheat germ, as we humans figured out in the past two hundred years or so, all that’s left is a pellet of white starch. This is also known as white flour.
Now, if you could look at that pellet of white starch under a microscope, you would see a long, simple chain of sugar molecules. Our bodies are able to break the links between those sugar molecules so efficiently that when you eat white flour, your blood sugar rises as fast as — if not faster — than when you eat sugar straight from a sugar bowl. How do I know this? I learned it from my diabetic patients who check their blood sugars after they eat. White flour and sugar both spike blood sugar.
You may have heard white flour and sugar referred to as “refined” carbohydrates. According to the dictionary, to refine is to remove coarse impurities. The term “refined” was selected to intimate that whole grain flour was coarse, or unrefined. With rare exceptions, like honey and maple syrup, refined carbohydrates are not found in nature. In nature, carbohydrates are almost always found attached to fiber. Consider dates and beets, for example. Both of these are used by industry as raw material for the manufacture of sugar. But in their original state, they are so rich in fiber and phytonutrients that they are considered superfoods.
When you eat, your gut breaks down food into sugar, which is then absorbed into your bloodstream. When foods are easily broken down (like white flour and sugar), absorption is quick and blood sugars rise rapidly. When food is broken down slowly (like produce, nuts, whole grains, beans, eggs, meats), it is absorbed slowly so that blood sugars remain more or less stable.
After food crosses the walls of your gut to enter the bloodstream, the body releases insulin to catch the incoming sugar and escort it to the cells of your body. The insulin is manufactured by your pancreas.
Here comes the most important part of this explanation: The more quickly you absorb sugar, the more insulin you need to escort it to its destination. The more slowly you absorb the sugar, the less insulin you need. This works like a valet service. Imagine you were invited to a huge party, and the invitation said to arrive at 7 pm. So at exactly 7 pm, 1000 cars show up at the party center, in which case there will need to be a great many valet staff to park those cars.
But let’s consider another scenario, one in which you receive an invitation to an open house from 3 to 9 p.m. At the end of the day, the party center will still park 1000 cars. But they won’t need nearly as many valet staff.
The sugar is the cars, and the insulin is the valet staff. If all the sugar shows up all at once, you’re going to need a lot of insulin. But if the sugar gets absorbed bit by bit, you won’t need nearly as much insulin. The more insulin you use, the higher your levels go. The higher your insulin levels, the more fat you store in your belly. Insulin is a fat-storage hormone.
Which nutrients do we absorb slowly? Fiber, protein, fat. Think whole grains, dates, beets, avocados, peanuts, eggs, beans, fruits, vegetables. Which ones do we absorb quickly? Stripped carbs such as cake, sugar, breakfast cereals, doughnuts, bagels, cookies. Is it starting to make sense?
Don’t Eat Bread for Breakfast
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 your body a while to break them down. They get absorbed into your bloodstream very slowly. But whenever you eat foods (or food-like products) made primarily from sugar or refined (stripped) flour, your digestive system breaks down the ingredients and absorbs them very quickly. The faster you absorb food, the more insulin your body has to release to catch the food and escort it to the cells throughout your body. Now it’s important to remember that insulin doesn’t work very efficiently in the early morning hours. In the early morning hours, we are all somewhat resistant to the effects of insulin. Naturally. All of us. Believe me — you’re not alone.
Think of it like this: Let’s pretend that you have two cars in your garage. One is a Ford F-150 truck, and the other is a Volkswagen. And now let’s say, for the sake of argument, that due to atmospheric conditions, gasoline doesn’t work as efficiently in the morning. That’s not really true, of course. I’m just saying it to set up a teaching point. So…back to the garage. Now, all things being equal, and assuming that gasoline works inefficiently at daybreak, which vehicle are you going to choose to drive your kid to school tomorrow morning? The Volkswagen, of course! Does this mean you’re never going to drive your Ford truck? No. But you’re not going to drive it in the morning — you’d just be wasting your gasoline. Most of the time you’ll drive the Volkswagen. Unless you have some really good reason why not. Like you want to impress your kid. Or the Volkswagen is in for a tune-up.
Now, just like it doesn’t make sense to waste the gasoline in this story by driving a gas-guzzler first thing in the day, it doesn’t make sense to waste your insulin by eating rapidly-absorbed food for breakfast. I’m not saying that you can never eat white flour. I am saying you can’t eat it for breakfast. It’s okay to eat a slice of toast, or a bagel, or pancakes for lunch, or for dinner. (As long as your blood sugars can handle it: Folks with diabetics, please take note!) Or to have a bowl of cereal for dessert, after lunch. But not for breakfast.
Here’s another way to think about it. Eating stripped carbohydrates (like white flour and sugar, both of which have had all the color and fiber stripped out of them) first thing in the morning is like hitting a man when he’s already down. Stripped carbohydrates stress out your insulin-production system. Why stress your insulin production at the one time of day when it works least efficiently? Imagine that it takes a gallon of insulin to eat a bowl of cereal. But if you eat that cereal at breakfast time, it will take a gallon and a half. And you don’t have a gallon of insulin to waste in the first place! It just doesn’t make sense to eat stripped carbs for breakfast. Well then, you might ask, how did they get to be typical breakfast foods? And that is a topic for another day.
Beverages to Spike Your Blood Sugar
Many people wrote to me about my recent post on soda and juice, so I thought it would be worth talking about the various kinds of drinks that are marketed to us right here in Ohio, the middle of America. Remember my vignette about the diabetic character on TV? Suddenly the character begins to act a little strangely, but she’s not too confused to murmur to her friend, “Help me check my blood sugar. I think it’s too low.” Sure enough. Now everyone on the set starts to run. What are they getting? Something with loads of sugar, something she will absorb very quickly. Like orange juice. Or a fruit drink, or maybe a coke.
So…sweet beverages like juices and sodas (many with 12 teaspoons of sugar per can) are good choices if you want to spike your blood sugar. None for me, thanks.
I decided to visit the “beverage center” at our local Walmart to see what’s in stock. I especially wanted to look at the names of some of these beverages. My hypothesis, borne out of experiences with margarine and breakfast cereals, is that the more manufactured the product type, the more creative the brand names.
Here’s what I found in the beverage aisles: Excluding carbonated drinks entirely, there was Sunny D, Powerade, Gatorade (11 flavors), Juicy Juice, Country Time, Tahitian Treat, Hawaiian Punch (many flavors), “Propel vitamin enhanced water beverage mix” (raspberry lemonade naturally and artificially flavored, and berry naturally flavored), and “Dasani Natural Lemon Flavored Water Beverage.” V8 Splash (not the well known V8 tomato juice) was available in mango peach, fruit medley, berry blend, and tropical blend, which also has a “diet” version.
Caffeinated or coffee-flavored beverages included Red Bull energy drink (original and sugar free), Monster (regular, mega and lo-carb), Starbucks Frappucino coffee drink in 3 flavors (coffee, mocha, vanilla), and Starbucks doubleshot espresso & cream premium coffee drink (regular and light).
Country Time Lemonade Drink Mix gets consumed in quantity around these parts, so I thought I’d check it out online. According to the official website, Country Time’s name is “reminiscent of a time when it was easier to get good old-fashioned lemonade.” The powdered mix was first marketed in 1975 by a TV character named “Grandpa.” Cans and bottles hit the market in 1982. Then came Pink Lemonade (1995), Iced Tea with Lemon (2003), Strawberry Lemonade (2004), and Country Time Light Lemonade (2005). The Strawberry Lemonade is “the perfect blend of two favorite flavors: sweet, sun-ripened strawberries and the classic taste of lemonade.” Or, you could buy strawberries and lemons, and mix them with sugar and water.
In addition to V8 and V8Splash, V8 makes a fruit juice product called “V8 Vfusion.” No matter which V8 Vfusion you buy, the first ingredient is sweet potato juice. The flavors at Walmart included acai-mixed berry, strawberry-banana, pomegranate-blueberry, goji-raspberry,and passionfruit-tangerine. The acai was listed 6th, the strawberry 7th, and the banana 8th in the list of ingredients. You’re not really eating tangerines, passionfruit or berries; you’re just eating the names. You’re not even eating sweet potatoes. And you’re paying a price that is much higher than the one marked on the bottle.
Among the powdered mixes, Crystal Light took the cake. The juxtaposition of the words “natural,” “flavor,” and “artificial” was curious. I didn’t even know about Crystal Light live active (with 3g of fiber), Crystal Light energy, Crystal Light focus, or Crystal Light sunrise prior to my Walmart excursion. Wouldn’t it be better just to get some sleep and exercise?
I also found Crystal Light natural lemonade flavor, natural pink lemonade flavor, peach artificial flavor, raspberry lemonade flavor, white grape artificial flavor, crystal light red tea, crystal light white tea and, believe it or not, “crystal light green tea natural honeylemon flavor with other natural flavor.” You can’t get a whole lot more creative than that. The word “natural,” which appears twice, describes not the product itself, but its flavor. It surely took a lot of work to figure out how to make those eleven words sound so natural.
So what else is there to drink? If you don’t care for a glass of cool water, right from the tap, or a glass of milk, or unsweetened iced tea, then try this recipe: Dissolve ¼ c. sugar with ¼ c. water in a saucepan over low heat. Set aside. Mix 2 cups of water and 1 + 1/2 c. lemon juice (fresh squeezed if you’d like) together in a large pitcher filled halfway with ice while you allow the syrup to cool. Stir the syrup into the contents of the pitcher. Add lemon slices, strawberry slices or mint leaves, slightly bruised, to garnish. Serves 4-6. To your good health!