Dieting with Obstacles - diabetes and other problems

Hi,I am new to this but need the emotional support we all need to be successful. I am 53 years od, married for 33 years have 2 daughters and 4 wonderful grandkids. I have been overweight all my life, hate exercise,and all my hobbies are sedntary. On a routine check up I found out I was diabetic,I allready had high blood pressure so the diabetes scared me into action as my father died young from this and it was not going to happen to me. I did well onmy diet and meds, exercise was another story, but managed to loose 30#, and kept my sugar levels fairly stable. But I played with food to see just how much and what I could get awaywith eatng. I was bad and in denial. This years check up wen well until the blood tests came back, sugars where fine but cholesteral bad,more medicine, now I take 6 diff, meds and have been scared serious. I am strugglng but am determined to succeed. I need verbal supprort and encouragement, and also some advice on foods and recipes. I have made small changes and have allready lost 12# this last month, but I have a long way to go. I have struggled with various diets all my life, but this is a wake up call right?? Hope to here from some of you and would be grateful for your support.

Hi AKROSEY49,

I think there are a few topics already started here for diabetes - look through them also.

Sounds like you are doing the right stuff. I know what you mean about the wake up call. I needed the same wake up call 3 times, so I hope you learn sooner :)

I was diagnosed at 36 - with high, but on the low-side blood sugars. Got sugar into control very fast and lost about 70 lbs. Gained again. Lost again. Gained again (all over about 7 years), till by last July was up to my all-time high in weight and sugars.

Was also on meds for first time for the last year before that. Suddenly I HEARD the wake up call and started losing (have lost 110 lbs since July 9th, 2001 and got off meds as of last December). Not sure what the trigger was, but it definitely is working.

Anyway - feel free to post any questions or whatever. The only specific I will add is something you already seem to know - get out and exersize. Even if you just go for a walk. I am lucky in that I love my exersize, and being single and have a job that allows for lunch walks, etc. plus I swim) and do about 1-1.5 hours of aerobic a day plus weights 2-3 X week (now - did not start there). But lots of folks on the diabetes forum I read say they have better luck just doing a 15-20 minute walk after each meal.

Hi there! I'm "close" to being diabetic. I'm in the high rick catagory and I am sure that given another year at this weight and this rate, I'll be a full blown diabetic. I'm on metformin for PCOS (Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome) and while that's helping with insulin resistance, I'm also on Weight Watchers to get my weight under control. I've been on it for just over a week now and am really liking it, PLUS I'm forcing myself to exercise.

What I've noticed is that after my walks my legs are so very sore, but I'm walking THROUGH the pain. It's simply because I've not realy exercised in a long time. I think my leg muscles have atrophied! Each day is a bit bettter,though.

Anyway, I have a long way to go, but would love to offer whatever words of encouragement I can.

Hang in there!

Debbiebec

:o Hi,
I am Patricia and am interested in this thread about diabetes. I am 60, married 45 yrs; have 3 daughters and 6 grandchildren. Akrosey's story sounds very similar to mine. I have just returned from the Dr. office where I learned my glucose levels have gotten worse. I know I have been in denial for the past few months and haven't done as I should. I would like to know how others have responded to the various diabetic medications. I did not do well on Glucophage or Amryl, both caused a lot of gastric problems. My Dr. has recommended a combination of Glucotrol and Actos. Has anyone tried these drugs? If so, any reactions? Hope you'all are doing well.

Hi to the previous posters on this thread. I'm Pam. I'm almost 36 and was diagnosed with type II in February. My mom died of complications of type I before she turned 61 (weird too, she always said she wouldn't make it past 60) my sister was diagnosed with the type II about 7 years ago in her early 30's and my uncle (mom's brother) was type II by his early 50's and we won't even go into the aunt's, grandmother and grandfather who all got it in their 60's and 70's so needless to say, there's some sad looking pancreas in my gene pool! I was (still am) overweight (another family defect) and with this family history, you'd think I would have taken better care of myself (my pancreas doesn't understand, it was supposed to skip me!)So I completely and utterly freaked and lost 25 pds in less than 2 months (mainly from being scared and disovering what anxiety attacks were) now that the sugar comes down some, want to pig out more than I know I can, so that's what I'm working on. I was at 235 this time last year and when I saw my female type dr (hadn't seen mine primary physician in over a year cause I knew she'd tell me to lose weight and I didn't want to hear it- so easy coming from a 4'11" women who doesn't top 100 pds) in December, I was down to 227. Now folks, that should have set up bells, whistles, lights, fireworks etc...Let's see eating what I want, not exercising, working 68 hrs between 2 jobs and I lost 8 pds without trying? I ignored the signs as they were creeping up.... increased thirst, and urination, infections. I am now down to 202 and my realistic goal is 180 (that would actually qualify me as one of the thinner folks in my family-just kidding, it's the whole Eastern Europe/Slavic gene's you know when the when woman were supposed to be fat and round and have a stomach?) I pulled some old clothes from the back of the closet that I hadn't worn in about 3/4 years and after blowing the dust off these things I could almost fit in them again, so that tells me how much I had put on during the last few years. I just wanted to join in, I find this website great for those of us who are forever battling the bulge. I say instead of finding a cure for diabetes, we should figure out how to suck the part of the dna that controls weight/metabolism out of the naturally skinny girls and stick it into us! Feel free to write back! It's easier to handle when you know other people are going thru the same thing!

I'm Judy, I'm 44. Was diagnosed with Diabetes in January of this year. I've lost about 50 lbs to date (ok, 49) but it was mostly out of fear LOL and now that I'm settled down a little bit about all this and learning the ropes I could use some support too. I'm
so much more active than I was even a few months ago I can't believe it but I am now finding myself 5 months into this journey thinking "Hey, I did so good up to now, I can slack off for awhile"
I need to nix that thought right off the bat now don't I? :)

For exercise, I bought myself a treadmill and a friend gave me an exercise bike and I walk outside now that it's finally nice out. I'm trying to stay at 1500 calories a day and about 20% fat and that is mostly the 'good' fats like olive oil etc... Trying is the key word there..!!! This was so easy at first but it's getting harder everyday to stick to the 'plan'. I think I've reached a 'comfort' zone with the diabetes as they took me off Glucophage (too many side effects for me and it didn't do anything for my glucose at all) and my A1C was still 5.3
:?:
Good luck to all of you and have a good Sunday

Justcuz40a, WOW 5.2 A1C. I don't do another test until August. When I was diagnosed, it was 10.9, a month later down to 9 and I'm hoping I'm in the 7 range in August. I'd probably be up you know what creek without the glucophage. I take 2000 mg a day plus I've looked in the "natural" remedies too. I now swear by cinnamon. I take a teaspoon in the am (I buy empty capsules at the health food store and this little machine that holds them to get cinnamon in the capsule. Big mess!) and am using bitter melon and fengureek to help keep it down with meals. I swear an apple in the afternoon and a cup of black tea really helps too!. It's just so hard counting those freaking carbobydrates though. I've spent how many years, looking at the fat and calories, sodium and every other content, BUT carbohydrates! It's ironic, cause I really wasn't eating a ton of bad things (no donuts or bagels in the am because they always left me hungry 2 hrs later anyway, what a waste of calories!) but I was really bad about portion control. I mean, have you read the back of a box of Kraft mac and cheese? There's 2.5 servings in a box? Yeah, right, not when I'm eating it straight out of the pot after I've cooked it. And who's the .5 for anyway? the people who have 1.3 kids? and we won't even go into the whole "fried rice" issue. I tell you, in 10 more pds, that's it, I'm having my favorite Thai fried rice and some steamed dumplings,sugars be damned!. I promise to actually make 2 or 3 servings out of it, not the usual 1 that I've done in the past. It's amazing I wasn't a diabetic long before this. I don't think people remember to appreciate their pancreas! Yes, I have always been a walker. Tried to get 2 miles in 3 to 4 times a week. I started a 2nd job last August and ended up doing a ton of hrs to pay for some new dental work, and I think that's when everything started to hit the fan. Even being overweight as I was, my cholesterol and blood pressure had always been good, I've been drinking over 64 ozs of water a day since I was like 16. So now, I just do 16 hrs at the 2nd place on weekends and exercise 5 to 6 times a week. I've pulled something in my hip, so it's the bike for this week. I do some arm weights a few times a week, and 90 sit ups every morning. I figure the biggest problem area for diabetics is the "visceral" fat around the stomach/abdomen. Well, you know that's the last place the weight wants to leave...so I figure if I can at least get that to turn into some muscle, maybe that will help with the insulin "resistance". Good to talk to you Justcuz40a

Serving size was THE biggest thing for me to learn.. WOW 1/3 of a cup of rice is a carb serving LOL I was eating tons of it before the big "D" , to fill up!! I was in love with rice and now I eat none to extremely little of it. I also wish for fried rice.. ohhh the ache in my heart when we go out for chinese and I have to skip it. I have found that Beef and vegetables or Chicken and Broccoli entree's don't mess with my blood sugar much and I just bank my fat gms for the day so I can enjoy. (A dietician told me I could do that when I knew I was going out... hehe very little fat all day and then get the whole shabang at dinner.. lol but she said it was ok and it doesn't matter what time of day you eat it, it still counts for the day)

I've discovered so many great 'substitutes' now, that I don't feel like I'm missing much other than the fried rice and oh yeah french fries.. the oven ones from scratch are just not the same as McDonalds or Burger King lol My son and I have been enjoying Hormel Fat Free Hot Dogs this weekend on Light Whole Wheat buns... I was so hungry for a hot dog and these are great. Get these stats...! Hot dog: Calories = 45 Fat gms = 0 Carbohydrates = 2 gms. Light Wheat bun Calories = 80 Fat gms = .5 and Carbohydrates = 14 gms (for the whole bun)
So that was a low cal, mostly no fat, and only one carb serving and sooooo good... I had one last night with corn on the cob, a salad, a caffeine free diet Dr Pepper and I felt like I was cheating at a nice picnic. LOL

Tonight it's smoked turkey breast and what ever else I decide to fix with it.. :)

See you all later and have a nice night.
*J

yup, all about that lousy portion control. I've looked everywhere for some low fat (not even so much low fat as low carb buns) and haven't located any. Wonder makes the low fat, but 1 bun still has 23 carbs, so why bother. I've put my low fat hot dogs in my low fat/carb bread and eat them that way. Yeah, I can't remember the last time I had some rice either. Sometimes it's easier to stay away than to try and have just a little. I'm kinda of sorta following the weight watchers system to lose weight. I try to stay at about 6 point at breakfast, lunch and dinner and then allow a few points for some yougart and a piece of fruit during the day. If I work out, I get to have a little snack before bedtime (actually I always try to eat something before bedtime, so I don't wake up in the middle of the night) but I save that time for a couple of rasberry Milanos or 2 low fat chip's ahoys and/or 1/2 of healthy choice low fat vanilla ice cream. Nice way to end the night.

Hey, Pamela and Judy, and everyone else..I forget to check this post and there you are..how nice to here from you..it helps to talk about our special problems, besides diabetes, i now have to whatch my colesteral..i am doing ok..it took me a year to adjust to the no sugars..i was the deseart queen..i was so bad i would put jelly on garlic toast.. and loved to bake..it has been a big adjustment but boy do i feel better.. and i am loosing and i know i will get used to the lofat too..i just want to be healthy..i have along way to go ..my goal now is to move the clunker from the 300,s to the 200,s.. i have about 15#s to loose and i will do it..all of your posts have been so helpful..i have trouble finding lofat products esp.breads here in alaska..i dont eliminate them just am more careful about reading labels..heres to our continued success..ak rosey

Let me ask you gals something? What do you consider to be high sugars? You know all you ever hear about is keep your sugar in control to avoid long term complications...what is your idea/conception of high sugars? I wake up usually around 115-120 and consider it pretty good if I don't go over 190 about 1-2 hrs after a meal (by the 3rd hr, I'm heading right back down to the 130 range again) In fact, on Sunday afternoon, I got a little shaky, I checked my sugar, I was at 96. What's normal for some has me shaking like I'm low. I was wondering if that could mean I just function at a higher sugar level. I'm kind of at a plateau weight wise, I know my levels good be better if I get that next 20 pds off. I can do the exercise, it's still about keeping the portion control in check. Hey JustCuz, I see you are also on diabeteschat.net also. I've been reading out there too for information. I've tried to sign on 3 times now without any success, so eventually I'll email the help person and figure out why I can't get on. Good chatting with everyone.

Hi there everyone,
For me good blood sugars are between 100-120. If I go below 100 I can start to feel the shakes like you mentioned. Not everytime but more than I like. I have had hypoglycemia all my life (since age 6 my mom says) so I don't like that feeling at ALL!!
I test in the morning (fasting), before meals, and at bedtime. My new doctor told me I didn't have to test after meals because she knows I'm a diabetic and it will be high after I eat, she wants to see if it's still high when it's time to eat again. Right now, it never is. I limit carbs to 45 gms at a meal max so I don't go too high because when I go over 180, I crash fast and then I get sick. I used to test after meals, 1 hour, 2 hours etc.. and it showed over 3 months that I was going high sometimes (200+) but by 3 hours I was at 80. I wake up in the morning between 90-120 everyday and before meals are usually 90-100. Now that I have the meals figured out and the exercise going on I think my body is doing as it should finally. My doc said I have a 'lazy pancreas'. it produces insulin but not when it's supposed to when it senses food, it just does what it does when it wants to. Last night I went to bed at 108 and woke up this morning at 104 so I guess I've licked to Dawn Phenomenon for now. Now I know this could all change in a heartbeat so I'm very thankful.

My cholesteral went from 242 in January to 177 in April so it's working for that too..;)

Yeah I read and post at diabeteschat.net. Not much going on there lately though. I've heard others having a problem with signing on too.

Peace

Hey girls..I too have wondered what was to high forsugar levels..when i was diagnosed a year ago i tested 4 x a day before meals and before bed.. the sugar levels stayed around120 to 130..i panicked if they went over 150..meant i ate something i shouldnt.. then when i had this years check up the colesterol was to high so i started lo fat-no fat besides the locarb no sugar..my levels are now between96 and 120..usually around 105..If they are really lo, below 90 i get shakky, head ache, cranky, and agitated.. if they go to high over 150 i get sleepy and lethargic..i feel pretty good when they stay about 110..when i go to bed the level is usually about 105 or so and when i get up they are sometimes 120 oe even 130..why is that..i take glucophage x after supper and then i dont eat again until breakfast..so donot know why it goes upduring the nite???also i know fruit really raises my sugars so avoid it almost always and i miss it..i also limit the carbs. to about 2 servings a day.. like 1/2 bagel 1/2 b potatoe..or 1/2 cup of pasta.. im pretty strict and thats why i am hungry all the time..or, are all diabetics hungry all the time and its part of the disease??i splurge once inawhile if we eat out, or at aparty.. as little as i ahve been eating you would think i would shrink to nothing,not so..altho thats where exercise comes in.. i know that iam to sedentary.. the first year i lot fast, about 40# then leveled off, at xmas, iwas really bad with my eating and gained back 10.. but kept off the 30 so that was good.. now since the high colesterol and whatching the fats i have lost 18# and feel great.. and have added some exercise. i am determined but know i am at a critical time for me.. i have never stayed with a diet past 6 weeks and i am feeling bored withthis all..so one day at atime right.. am glad to here from you all and what works for you.. let me know.. talk soon..rosey

Hi Rosey,
The reason your blood sugar goes up during the night is because your body senses that you are going low so it sends out stored glucose to assist. A normal process in the body.

I read that you only eat 2 carb servings a day. That's would be why you are hungry all the time. The body changes uses all food carbohydrate, fat, and protein in different ways. Carbs are turned to glucose which is the 'fuel' for every bodily function and with Diabetes the insulin production to convert that 'fuel' is either limited or resistant.
I eat 3 carb servings at each meal (3) and 1 serving at each snack (3) thoughout the day and while I get hungry when it's time for the next meal I am not hungry all the time. So in answer to your question are all diabetics hungry all the time, I'd have to say no. Everyone is different in how they handle certain carbs but everyone needs them to function. I don't think starving yourself so that you have good blood sugar is the answer, although it was 50 years ago it's very different now. I saw a dietician at the hospital here a few times and while she wasn't much help to me at all she did give me a few pointers on eating.
I've designed my own plan and it's working for me. I was on glucophage but they took me off of it because I had terrible side effects from it and it didn't do any good anyway. The doctor I had then was trying to control the after meal highs and the glucophage didn't do anything for that. My new doctor told me I don't need any meds right now. :0) I've read that a typical healthy diet for anyone is good for a diabetic. 3-4 carb servings at a meal and 1-2 at snacks throughout the day. Your snacks could be fresh fruit and if you stick to the serving sizes recommended it could be included in your diet.
I'm not telling you what to do at all, just suggesting as this is what works for me. I hope you can find a plan that works for you so you can stick with it and see some success in diabetes and weight loss. I've been sticking to mine for almost 5 months now with occasional 'sways' but nothing serious. I think once you find what works for you you'll be ok with it.
I eat a lot of fresh veggies now in place of the lowfat carbs (rice, pasta etc...) that I used to eat trying to lose weight. I still eat those things but measured out so it's the right amount.

I you need some help with a meal plan to try just let me know and I can see if I can help. Starving yourself to have good numbers isn't the answer because sticking to that will be so hard, it would be for anyone!!

Peace Rosey

What I've learned about myself if that I go high in the morning with almost no carbs(I take my am meds with 1/2 container yougart when I get up) and then have an eggbeater and 2 pieces bacon or my favorite is 2 whole grain waffles with some ricotta cheese in between(sometimes strawberries on top)around 9am so that tends to hold me over to lunch -that's still in the 30 carb range, but since the waffles are whole wheat, I don't spike as high so I try to keep that to a bare minimum. For lunch and dinner, I'm the same as Justcuz, I try to not eat more than 45 grams and I usually have an afternoon snack of the 1/2 container yougart of a small apple (the pectin seems to help bring sugar down) along with a cup of black tea (helps bring the sugar down) -Now AKRosey, you mentioned you wake up higher. The diabetes educator stressed to my class the whole time that we should always have a bed time snack of a little carb and protein to help keep you stable through the night, so that the little ole liver doesn't start shooting sugar out before it needs to and bring you up. That's were I mentioned before I have a couple of cookies and a little skim milk or even some low fat icecream. In fact, I've heard a lot of those dieticians talk about the ice cream before bed. It has some fat, so it metabolizes slowly through the night. I was having issues of always waking up at 4:30 am after this all started and it's finally gone away and I can sleep later now. Thanks for your inputs. I've been reading some view points on the fact that dr's say don't worry about the post meal spike, it's natural, as long as you come back down, but then I've read where the specialists think that's the link to the "long term" complications. It's like you can't win! For dinner this week, I cooked some ground turkey w/taco seasoning mix, cooked some brown rice and cut up some tomatoes, onions,lettuce and some low fat cheese. Throw it all together for a taco salad with a spoonful of salsa and low fat sour cream. It really fills me up for the evening.

Hey.. thankyou pamela and judy for answering some of my questions..i have been limiting carbs thinking they were bad for me..and no sugar, no fruit, mostly protein and vegies, and lofat..no wonder i am frustrated and hungry..when you eat fruit and carbs what happens to your sugars several hours later?? what is normal for a diabetic?? or is every one diff. i want to experiment and see what happens.. if my levels stay at 100 t 130 is that good..i only test before meals and before bed so do not know how high it goes after eating .. it is suppose to go up and then come down right??boy am i ignorant about this stuff and i thought i had reseached it real well hmmm..makes sence now..i want to loose too so have been really limiting myself.. have you lost on your eating plan?? i also have a lofat sugar free ice cream that i eat once in a while.. wow a bed time ice creamm.. never thought of it that way..i always panicked if my sugar levels were over 150 before meals..and curbed my diet or next meal based on that reading..i take glocophage x 1500mgs every nite after dinner and have not had any side affects..so like i said i will add a few more carbs to my diet and see what happens and some fruit as i have been craving watermelon..thanks fro the info.rosey

Hi Rosie,
Eating carbs in moderation is good! I've lost 50 lbs since January eating the way I do so I'm living proof that it works. My blood sugar tests (A1C) went from a 8.0 in January to a 5.3 in April so it's working there too. (<6.5 is normal) Start slow, you don't want to overload and get huge spikes. My testing goals are like this: fasting in the morning, before meals 80-120
1 hour after a meal <180
2 hours after a meal <160
3 hours after a meal <140
bedtime 100-140
Try a slice of whole wheat toast in the morning for a few days and test 1 hour after to see what happens, don't panic if it's higher than 150.. then test at 2 hours to see if it's coming down. My dietician told me a good reading at 2 hours is <160. By the next meal you should be down to your normal before readings. It will take some extra testing for a few days to see what types of carbs you can add but it's worth it. And remember everyone reacts differently to different foods so if one doesn't work, try something else, don't give them all up right away. I eat 1 cup of Special K cereal with 1/2 cup of skim milk in the morning and two pieces of light wheat toast. I found a type of bread in the supermarket that is low carb. Wonder makes one too called Light I believe. You can have two slices for 1 carb serving instead of one of the regular wheat breads. Stick to serving sizes on packages so you know exactly what you are ingesting while you are testing. Good luck hon!

well, I almost fit into the range Judy listed, so that's make me feel better and something to strive for. I think I just lost weight because I am probably eating 1/2 of what I ate before and am getting twice the exercise.

Hey pamela and Judy, thankyou for the advice..i tried more carbs for lunch and i was certainly more satisfied..tested before dinner nad sugars were at 114..i was diognosed a year and 6 monthe ago.. and lost and kept off 30 #s the first year..at my yearly check up when the colesterol problem showed up i got more serious..my A1c was 6.7.. my doctor said that was good becuz it was way less then when i had started ayear ago..your hints and advice i will try tomorrow..and will let you know how it goes..thankyou..rosey

Hi pamela and judy i have been trying out your advice..last nite my sugars where 103..so i ate some no sugar icecream before bed..loved it but the sugars where 158 when i tested before breakfast.. had wwtoast and tested 2 hours later..still high 147..for lunch had a grilled chix sandwhich at mcdonalds no mayo and iced tea( i was in town doing errands) tested again and it was 152, 2 hours later..will test agin before supper.. maybe it is to much carbs for me or i have to adjust to this..a am not as hungry tho and that helps as if i am hungry i tended to eat things i shouldnt, or snack to much.. anyways will keep trying till i hit the right combo..thank you for the help..talk later rosey

Hi everyone,
Rosey glad you are trying new things, give it some time, your body may need some time to adjust.. ;)

I haven't posted much the last 2 days because I haven't been feeling too good. I get this every month when I have my period, don't know what causes it either. I feel like I have the flu, achey, headache, general fatigue... it's bizarre. I used to get this all the time, which is why I went for a physical in January to begin with.(that's when I found out I had diabetes) and this is what I feel like when my blood sugar goes too high.
Now it seems to only come once a month... I think my body can only handle one hormone at a time!!! Very strange though, one month I have high blood sugar with it and this month it was low. I was below 110 even 2 hours after eating lunch today. I thought there was something wrong with my meter so I got out my other one and it was exactly the same <scratching head> I know some women have issues with diabetes and monthly things so maybe that's it. I have a doctor's appt July 3 so hopefully she can shed some light on it and help me to avoid this. I hate feeling sick!!

Hope everyone else is doing good today.

Peace
*Judy

Hi judy..thanks for the post..I have never experienced the monthly thing becuz i donot have them anymore(lucky me yippee) and when i did i did not have diabetes that i know of..it is awful feelng like that tho..some days i feel sick like that for no reason atall..so make yourself some hot tea and curl up with a good book or a chick flick..and pamper yourself if you can..this disease is all trial and error for me.. but the extra carbs has helped that hungry feelng..lets see what it does to the surgars..i will keep you informed..hope you feel better..talk soon rosey

Thanks for telling me that you feel sick sometimes too, I thought I was going nuts getting this all the time. My first doctor said it was part of the 'game' with diabetes, some days for no reason you just don't feel good and I agree with that but I sure hate it.
Trial and error is right. We had a late supper tonight at about 7:00pm and I made a low fat beef stew. I ate a bowl of it and it had potatoes and peas etc in it and an hour and a half later my blood sugar was 119. Now that's very good but today is sooo odd. All those starches would normally send me higher than a kite. (180+)
I guess I'll take it for what it is. I have to go to work tomorrow so I better feel better. I have a ton of work sitting on my desk for me to do and I also have a date for lunch with a 'hot' new man so I better perk up huh? :dizzy:

Ohh one thing I meant to mention to you about carbs. I had to cut out anything made with bleached white flour as it made my blood sugar go through the roof. (why? noone knows) I eat whole wheat now and it doesn't do that. I don't eat fast food anymore except Subway and I can get whole wheat there.

Take care
*Judy

Hey judy..no you are not going nuts..i think it is just a part of being diabetic..somedays you just feel yukky no matter what and donot know why..other days i have so much energy i am jumping thru the roof..i think its the new way i eat and also the losses..hope you have a great date..hmm cannot remember when i had a date but then i am a old married lady still i like to be wined and dined once in awhile..my husband doesnt tho cuz he has his meals served all the time by me.. its not the eating out i enjoy but the being waited on..i still like to look at the guys tho..hee hee..i do eat wheat bread to so we will see what happens..hope you feel better..talk soon..rosey

hey gals!- fortunately, I don't have too many issues at that time of the month. I am following a few medium sized fibroids that I developed. I usually have bad cramps and get somewhat moody, but exercise definately keeps that in check. Let us hear how your sugars are after consuming carbohydrates. I tell you, I swear by a cup of black tea to bring down the sugars in the afternoon if they go to high from lunch. I've had the same issue Judy has with white flour. As far as normal sandwiches go, I've always used wheat, but at a restaurant or a sub shop, sourdough is my favorite in the world, so I miss that and like Judy, if I go by Subway, I use their wheat, but jeez, I miss their white bread (also that I use to polish off a footlong in 1 sitting, now it's just 6 inches and no chips usually, cause the wheat bread is still a lot of carbs) Have a good weekend!

Hey pamela and everyone..its is beautiful out this am..i love to get up before anyone else and enjoy coffee and the peace before the day gets to hectic..the carbs where pretty high yesterday..at least i thought so..maybe i went to hog wild..this morning in spite of the ice cream before bed they were 116 not to bad..yesterday they were 158..i just have to findwhat works for me..but that hungry unsatisfied feeling goes away with more carbs..and i like that..i will cont. to experiment.. and see what happens.. weekends are always hard as hubby is home during the day and it is more cooking for me..talk to you soon..rosey

Hi Judy and Rosey, How's everybody's sugars diet and in general lives doing? I'm doing ok, just living day to day. Nothing new. Rosey how are the sugars coming with carbs? I tell you what I went to one of my best friends baby showers on Saturday night and yes, went thru 1/2 a bowl of chex mix. The lady hosting this is like a gourmet cook and served us chicken kabobs, some pasta salad with salmon in it and parsley potatoes. I had a little of everything. About an hour later had a piece of the cake. Knew I was going to have it, didn't even check my sugar, so thankfully I woke up Sunday morning at 112. The problem was I felt so guilty for having the cake and knowing that it would spike my sugar levels, that I ate it down in 1 minute, instead of taking the time to really enjoy it. I've got to work on that!

Nothing real exciting happening here today. I'm just doing what I always do and maintaining. I really have to say though that when my doctor told me in January that I had diabetes I NEVER thought that in June this way of life would be so part of me already. Who'da thunk it!!! lol
I'm glad that it is and that I've calmed down a lot about the diagnosis in general. I know it's serious to have this disease but I refuse to let it control me anymore than it already does.. :0)

Peace ladies.
*J

Hey ladies..nice to here form you..i am doing ok..goofed up on the weekend some but got back withit..weighed today..no loss..iwas real disapointed..but no gain either..my sugars have been fluctuating..not to badly tho..i too eat cake and stuff at partys..but plan for it by not eating much before or after..also i drink a glycerna..its a slimfast made for diabetics..this weekend we are haveing a house full of company,means lots of cooking and a big BD/BQ on sat..should be areal challenge for me esp. since everyone knows about me and watches what i eat, esp my motherinlaw.. love her dearly..shes 80 so i just grin and bear it..but really makes me angry..i sometimes wonder why i have this miserable disease..i hate it but the truth is if i did not have it i probably would have continued my bad habits to the grave..so this was a awake up call..usually i am pretty careful..but sometimes goof up and feel real guilty..but we are human right..its raining cats and dogs out right now..hope it stops before this weekend..glad you are both doing well..your posts inspire me and i thankyou..you understand the speacial problems we have..hope your day goes well..talk soon rosey

ugh, I never drink those gylcerna's- it's all fat and protein, with still a lot of carbs in my opinion. I don't do protein bars either. They taste like crap and you have to treat them as "meal replacement" which just ain't going to cut it for me. I had a slice of cheese and turkey before I went to the shower to fill me up some. Yeah, more people "watch" me when I eat, but if I want it, I'm having it. I was looking at this website called www.ketofoods.com. I've heard of the other products that are low carb pasta's, bread mixes, cookie mixes. a store close to me sells these, me and my sister are going to try them. Yum, bbq is delicious. I'm really good about not eating it that often, but last year that's what my aunt made me, bbq pork spareribs, salad and a bunch of other stuff, that I won't be having this year, but I'm still doing the bbq plus salad and maybe corn on the cob and maybe a couple hours later, I can have a "little" cake. Have a great time and don't let anyone stop you. Yeah, I keep telling myself, if I was doing weight watchers for example (w/o diabetes) would I be as stringent or do I really like the will power to control myself and that the diabetes is the only thing that's got me behaving better....to know thyself....

Hey girls..i dont mind the glycerna once in awhile when im in ahurry..am prepared for this weekend and know in advance what i plan to eat..makes it easier for me..havehad a real struggle this weekend and monday nite i was like an eating machine..i think i was medicating my self with food as i was so disapointed for a no loss this week..some logic..but today has been great..back to square one and i had some one i hadnt seen in a while tell me she noticed my weight loss..i cannot tell you how good that made me feel..it was just what i needed.I have walked around with agrin allday..hope you all had agood day too and thankyou for your help, as i couldnt have done this without all of you...talk soon..rosey

Good for you Rosey, those compliments are what keep me motivated... :0) Everyday someone else comments on my weight loss at work or when I run into someone I haven't seen in awhile and now every morning when I look in the mirror at myself I smile and say "Good girl, you did it one more day" :0) Like I've said before I never imagined that this way of life could EVER be my way of life.

Peace

Hey Rosey, guess what I ended up having for dinner last night? BBQ spareribs, corn on the cobb and green beans. It was my birthday dinner early....My uncle and aunt from South Dakota came to town and are staying with my other aunt and she invited me over for dinner. I ate way too many ribs! (only do this approx 1 time a year) and afterwards me and 1 aunt were on our bikes and the other put on her rollerblades and we did about 8 miles...so I felt a little better about that. My aunt said she'd still make me more ribs for my birthday next month, but I figured I'd still be working off last nights calories even then, so I said that was enough...maybe a nice grilled fish dinner for the birthday this year! hang in there. I haven't checked the scale in a week now!

Hey ladies..glad to talk to you again..i am still smiling from yesterday and have not even thought of cheating..my grand daughter is spending the next 2 days with me and company comes thurs..so i have tons todo..today had to make alist so i would not forget anything..did mager grocery shpping yesterday grrr..not my favorite chore any more..hope you have agreat day..talk soon..rosey

Hey Rosey, I know what you mean. I look at everything so different now, including the grocery store. I mean, this did make me realize how much crap I was always buying, but it's really weird after drinking OJ for unmeasurable years to walk by the display. Even eating fruit has to be measured out...and the bakery, oh boy, forget about that area of the store. It's still a whole new world out there!

Hey ladies..i am back..yes i agree about the shopping..i used to love it but now it is torture..to by pass the foods i love..and my husband still eats them so some i still buy..it takes alot o will power to leave them alone..i had a great weekend..i was really pooped sun. nite but am better today..the bq went great..it was sunny and hot.. and i had lots of fun with the grandkids..i planned ahead what i was going to eat and what to avoid and stuck to it..i felt really proud of mysef..still no loss this am but i expected that..stayed the same and i am ok with that..back on track today..hope you all had a fun weekend too..talk soon.. rosey

Good for you Rosey, you are doing great! The mighty Oak doesn't become mighty in a day so take it one day at a time!

I just got home from spending the day with a man that I am very fond of.. well ok I realized today that I do love him and he told me that he loves me more everytime he sees me.. wow! bang zowie lol I haven't felt this way ever in my life. I won't be going on lunch dates with anyone but him from now on. :) Ahhh what a sense of peace! My grandmother always told me I'd know when I met Mr. Right but she failed to tell me it would take until I was 44 years old! LOL Oh well, good things come to those who wait I'm told. I'm smiling from ear to ear tonight.

I also lost 2 more lbs last week so that has me dancing in the streets too! I don't know if I posted that here already or not. So much going on in my life right now I just don't remember. lol

January 2002 278
June 2002 226
Goal 160

glad to hear you 2 are doing well. Good to hear you had a good time at the bbq Rosey, and love???what's that. I'm 36, so I guess there's still hope!...not going near a scale until the end of this week. was bad, bad, bad Saturday day...not necessarily sugar level wise, but lets just say the day consisted of some raisinets, cookies, and McD french fries....yum, yum, yum. Again, for irony sake, prior to begin diagonosed, I very rarely ate fries just because they were so bad, so I'd get like a McD cheeseburger to take to work, or another favorite was Steak and Shake chili mac. I guess I could still have some of their chili, just not on the pasta!. Rode my bike long and hard on Sunday for penance. Have a nice week!

Hey girls, nice to here form you..i spent the day doing a whole lot of nothing..i was recuperating from the weekend..i was up to early and stayed up to late but i sure had fun..sorry you had a bad eating day pamela..just get back and dont feel guilty..its the guilt that makes it hard for me.. why do we do that to ourselves?? better days ahead..judy i am happy you are in love..its great isnt it..i have neen married for 32 years and love my hubby about 99% of the time.. the rest id like to pinch his little head off..hee hee..cannot imagine my life withot him tho and we are so opposite from each other..well talk soon..take care..rosey

Hi Judy and Rosey and any other lurkers out there....How have you been doing this last week? Hope all is well for you gals. Just eating a little lunch at work, hoping it doesn't rain tonight, cause I'm in the mood for a good bike ride....Happy Monday (if there is such a thing!)

Hey girls..i am glad this week is over..the cake i made for my friends daughters wedding was a real challenge for me..for one i have not made a cake like that in 5 years and have never made one with tiers and pillars.. it turned out real nice but to stressful in the making.. i wanted it perfect..also the sampling of the frosting was not good either..the wedding was beautiful but the brides skirt fell off as she was making her grand entrance..i swear..i felt so sorry for her..she was standing in her slip in front of us all..and it was so funny..i am still chuckling about it even now..poor girl..the rest of the week i have been so lazy..i swear my butt is glued to my chair..i am never going to lose more if i do not exercise..i just keep making excuses..i need acattle prod..the diets going fine tho so thats a plus..but need to shake up my metabolism or i wont loose..have stayed the same for 2 weeks now.. and that has got me bugged..am going to have all 4 of my grandkids for a week starting wed. so that should keep me moving..esp the 2 year old..hope you both are ok..takl again soon.. rosey

I guess she should just be thankful there was a slip there!

Oh my god what a memory that poor girl will have huh? Oh well could have been worse I guess.

I'm doing good here this week, don't have much to say. Blood sugar is ok, losing weight, exercising.. same ol same ol.

The man is telling me I lost enough weight still, :lol:
I tell him to shush and just work with me here... it's nice that someone finally accepts me for who I am but I'm not done with me yet!!! His comments of 'Is that all you are going to eat?' make me laugh now... :D

Take care everyone... I'm off to the grocery store AGAIN! My 13 year old son decided to join me on my food plan for diabetes ( he doesn't have it but is at risk) and we are running out of stuff every day :^: I can't really scold him for eating cuz he's eating healthy food!!! He's lost 25 lbs since January and he's doing good.. gotta love the support there.. ;)

Later friends..
*Judy

hey ladies..this has been such a busy weekend for me...have had the grandkids since wed..it seems i spent alot of my time inthe kitchen..had people over for dinner 3 nites this weekend...it was a lot of fun but i sure did not eat right..tomorrow is another day.. hopeyou all had a good weekend....will talk more later..after ever one is gone..rosey

hi ak rosey!

it sure sounds like you've been having fun with your grandkids--and busy! glad to hear it! like you said, regarding the food, tomorrow is another day. i have been doing o.k. with my food recently, but not quite as well with the water. it's a process--- this lifestyle change. well, take care.

wsw

Hi everyone,
I've been pretty busy too but I'm here. I'm doing pretty good here with the food and exercise. Lost another pound this week!
I'm feeling do good I can hardly believe it. It's been hotter than a pistol here for a week so my exercise has been indoors. Thank god I have a treadmill and an exercise bike I can use.

Hope everyone has a good week and a Happy 4th!!

January 2002 278
June 2002 223
Goal when? 165

RUT ROH!!!didn't excercise this week and was pretty bad food wise. Gained 2 pds. That will be gone by the end of this week or else!. Glad you are doing good. I'm in Florida, hot??? between this humdity and evening rain, I'm dying...I love outdoor exercise and it's so hard to be motivated to stick the Richard Simmons tape in (Disco Sweat is my favorite). I don't have the $ for a decent treadmill at this time. I have a friend who's bringing me his old roomate's mini trampoline after he cleans it off (it's been in the garage for awhile, you know where most peoples exercise equipments ends up at) so I'll give that a shot and my best friend bought herself an elyptical machine for home. There's 2 things I know about myself. It's doesn't matter if I weighed 90 pds, I would still hate running and still wouldn't ever get an a stair climber or elyptical machine. They require way too much energy! Have a good week!

Morning ladies..boy am i glad the weekend is over...i was so pooped i didnot do anything yesterday..chasing after the grand kids wore me out but we had such a good time and i miss them allready..i did not weigh as i usually do on monday becuz i had not taken my dieretic since last wed.. and wanted to get rid of the water i had retained first..and boy did it work..also i was chicken to weigh as with the kids here and all the commotion i was not a good girl..so i was worried i would have a gain and since i had not lost in 2 weeks..i was really avoiding the scale..but today i bit the bullet and weighed and was i surprized, i lost 3#s..am so excited.. must have been all that running after the kids...so how did your weekends go?? judy congrats on your loss too..way to go...keep it up....Pamela do not be discouaged..just keep at it and it will happen...am thinking of you both..and thankyou for the support it really helps me..my husband is not that supportive becuz i have never been successful before and have been on numerous diets so i understand why he reacts this way but it is nice to get an atta-girl once in awhle..anyways heres to succcess to all us chubby girls( i hate the word fat)..have agreat day...rosey

Way to go Rosey!! 3# is a great loss for a week.. :) Keep it up everyone!

*Judy

yeah to weight loss for the Big Chicks!

Morning ladies..am still happy as a clam..thnkyou for the atta-girls...hope you have agreat and safe 4th..talk soon.. rosey

hi rosey!

Congrats on the 3 lb weight loss this week! That's great! Thanks for the pep talk, too. It helped. All the best to you. Have a good 4th of July! Take care.

wsw

Hi everyone.. Well my doctor's appointment on Wednesday was good, she told me I'm doing great and to keep doing what I'm doing <glowing smile>. I did my official weekly weighin today and I've hit the 60 lbs mark... woohoo! Lost 5 lbs this week, don't know why but I'm not questioning it.. lol I've been pretty busy with my walking and cleaning and just keeping busy so that could be it... We've been taking advantage of the local farmers market too eating a lot more fresh veggies and fruit. My son and I actually eat vegetarian about 4 times a week now it seems. We are careful to watch the protein and iron intake though, making sure we get enough. :0)

I'm ecstatic today only 50 more lbs to go!!! lol
Jan - 278 July - 218 Goal - 168

Good luck to you all this week and keep on moving even if its pretending to swim in your chair or leg lifts anything is better than nothing... :0)

*Judy

Morning ladies..Judy..yahoo..yahoo..yahoo for you..congratulations..am so happy for you..doesnt it feel great?? sunday is my day and am going to do what i want today which means no cooking and i get to play bingo tonite..i am so addicted..but it is so much fun..hope you all do something fun today to..talk soon..rosey

Congrats Judy on the weight loss! That's wonderful... I need your good fortune and hard work to rub off on me! Going to go biking right after i get done with this. Pam

Thanks Rosey and Pamela.. it sure is a good feeling to be successful at this finally! I guess Diabetes wasn't a 'curse' afterall it was a blessing in disguise to get me on the right track.. :0)

*Judy

That is great Judy - you are an encouragement to me too....I go to dr. tues....a little nervous...I haven't been feeling real good - my sugar is up a little....but I did lose 3#'s this week...just since I found this web site....I am so thankful.

Rosey, you have been a real encourager too...thanks. Did a little gardening today, plus napped....just so tired, though I think it is myh sugar out of wack. But I am thrilled to have lost some weight....Tomorrow I quilt with ladies at library....always a good day for me, the oldest inour group is 92..then the others are in their 80's & 70's on down....I think I might be one of the youngest..ha, ha.

Think of you all - thanks for your positive input. Stitch.

Good luck at the doctor :0) I am told that the heat and humidity is causing some people to have higher glucose levels.. Doesn't seem to be affecting me but I've heard it a lot from them. Keep cool! and congrats on the weight loss although I hope it's not from the elevated sugars.. :(

*Judy

Thanks Judy, Feeling better today, went for a walk and know it is going to be hot and humid....thats ok, my garden is doing great and loves the weather. I think my diabetes is a blessing too, I just need to keep reminding myself to stay on the course. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me. Have a great day. Stitch

My Aunt's been giving me her issues of Prevention magazine when she's done reading them and a co-worker subscribes to Shape. They have good articles and feedback from people who are forever trying to win the battle of the bulge. I clip the "success" stories out and hang them on my bulletin board. They are a reminder that it is possible to lose weight, be healthier without feeling like you are sacrificing everything you love. i bought some sugar free jello and sugar free/fat free jello for my snacks this week. Time to get back on track. Road my bike hard for an hour last night. Let me ask you gals, what are your am fasting sugars like? Just last month, the average was 115, I've now gotten it down to like 100, but I tested as low 88 to 93. Have a good week all! POWER TO THE BIG CHICKS! (hope you ladies don't mind that term, it's my favorite. A couple of years back I went to Atlantic City with about 9 co-workers at my old job and there wasn't one of us under a size 12, so we named ourselves the big chicks)

Morning ladies..sounds like you are all doing so well..congrats on your losses..i need apep talk..i have been very bad..eating things i know i am not to have..with a bad attitude..like cookies..chcolate..and chips..and my portions are to big..sometimes i just say the h--- with it and go bonkers..so today it is back on track before i undo all the good i have done..help..i know only i can do this for me but what makes us go off the deep end.. i guess we are just human..hope to do better thanks for listening..rosey

I just started getting Prevention.. I like it so far!

LOL you can call me a BIG CHICK but not for long... Heehee!

*Judy

Hang in there Rosey! You can do it. I threw out the rest of my cookies (after eating the 5 remaining Keebler chocolate something or others) and there is an unopened bag of low fat Chips Ahoy's in there but I really, really like those and 3 cookies has like 5 or 6 grams of fat and like 22 carbs and 3 cookie feels really good, like you actually got something, you know? I had some grilled salmon and green beans with those cookies last night. Yum, tried to walk, got rained on after 5 minutes, actually ran 2 blocks, and didn't hear the pavement cracking so that's good. Woke up at 92, Yeah!. Uh oh, I am going to have to work on this to try to keep pace with Judy, I was at 237 last year, now at 205- aiming for 180.

Hey ladies..am better today..but sure felt yucky yeasterday..both physically and mentally..if i pay attention to how i feel my body will tell me when i eat wrong..and i hated cheating on myself..the cooikes..m&ms..chips and mashed potatoes with real gravy did me in..i wanted to hurl..i really felt awful..so it wasnt worth my temporary binge..am ok now..do you find being diebetic that you can tell when you eat wrong by how you feel??am getting company again so have alot of chores todo..housework is not my idea of fun..grr and also cooking..always a challenge when i cant eat what i cook and also finding the most economical meals as my budget is small rite now..wouldnt having a maid and a cook be nice..some dream..thankyou for the support..talk soon..rosey

I'm 33 y.o. and was just recently diagnosed as type II diabetes, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. I also just gained 9 pounds. I don't know how that could have happened. And all of my weight is in my stomach. Being short it makes me look like a bowling ball. I was so depressed yesterday that I was looking on the web just yesterday and found this board. I sure am glad that I did. It'll be great to talk with other's with the same problems as me. Maybe I can help you, and you can help me too! :^:

Join the club! We're all here to help and support each other. I turn 36 in 8 days and was diagnosed back in the end of February with my type II. sucks doesn't it? didn't think I would be dealing with it until I was 45 or 50. As the other regulars here (Judy and Rosey) can tell you, it's about eating healthy, EXERCISING, and trying to get the nast visceral abdomen fat (it's the stuff that's causing the insulin resistance) trimmed down through enjoyable but consistent, steady exercise.

Hi everyone,
I haven't been around much lately, busy as heck at work.. Hope everyone is doing ok.. :0) I'm doing fine, still doing the same ol same ol. Eating healthy, walking everyday, and keeping my life in perspective with all this Diabetes stuff... Overwhelming? Sometimes yes it gets sickening to think about this all the time but then on the other hand it is a wake up call to do what I need to do... :)

Again hope you are all well and talk to you all soon!

*Judy

Hi everyone...interesting thread you have going on. I am 26 yrs old, have PCOS, borderline Type 2 Diabetic, & Insulin Resistance. Trying my hardest to get this all under control. But as you all know, it's not that easy.

I post over on the PCOS/Insulin Resistant forum, as well as The 100 Lb Club here at 3FC. Would love to see some you join us.

Wishing you all the best..

Uh Oh Jennifer, "borderline" diabetic? They way my dr, the diabetes educator, the other message boards I go too, they all say the same thing...either you're diabetic or you're not....and the 1 example that they ALL love to give is...you're not borderline pregnant are you???? I've skipped over to the PCOS board before and it's interesting. When I was first diagnosed with my type II back in February, I thought maybe I had PCOS, but I miss on the one big characteristic that everyone talks about...irregular periods....I'm like clockwork in that dept and my gyn didn't think I met the criteria for PCOS. Not only that, if I did have it, I'm already on glucophage which I know some PCOS sufferers take to control those symptoms. Take care! Pam

Hey ladies..i am here..just been real busy and i have been struggling with the food thing..i have lost my incentive..still trying just not as hard as i was..want to get it back..one day at a time..right..hope you all are doing well..talk soon..rosey

hey rosey, its me marlene, i am so happy to have met u and i was wondering is it daylight or nighttime in alaska? how do u stand that??? does it affect ur eating habits? i just got back from vacation and lost 2.6lbs for a total of 18.8lbs in 7weeks i am so thrilled and i hope i can keep up the pace i really want to lost 30lbs by my birthday and 50lbs by xmas do u think that is reachable? it is hard when u are on meds i take 7 different meds a day so i know what it is like plus insulin pen too i am hoping that i lose enough weight to get off of most of these meds i go to the docs on wed i know she will be pleased with my weight loss and maybe adjust my meds for diabetes and high blood pressure we will see
well have a nice evening or daytime

Hello ladies..marlene nice to meet you too..i must be the only one posting from alaska..the dark and lite was hard to get used to at first but i have lived here for 26 years now..so no it dosent affectme at all..and it is lite in the summer and dark in the winter..congratulations on your loss..it does feel great doesnt it..just keep doing what works for you..we are all diff..and follow your drs advice..i too take alot of meds..didnt know how sick i was but feel pretty good now..some days are better than others but thats part of this disease..you asked if it was possible to loose that much by your bday and xmas..well anythings possible and you have made agood start..i try and take each day as she comes..more like life style changes then a diet..i struggle everyday but even small successes help in the big picture..i have so much to loose that smaller goals work best for me..i will bet your dr. is relly happy with you..keep it going..and let me know how i can help...it been a quiet weekend so far..i really needed that after so much company..am off to bingo tonite..hope i am a winner..wish me luck..talk tomorrow..rosey

oh rosey i do wish u all the luck at bingo.... thanks for ur encouragement and for answering my questions about alaska
i have never been there and would like to visit there some day
well i will keep u posted and u do the same ok i am always a email away

Well, I turned 36 today!!! My sugars have looked so good this week, it's scary. I've put those same 3 pds back on. Kind of hard to get them off this week. It was my sister's birthday yesterday (she's an insulin and oral meds dependent type II herself) and we went to Arigato's Japanese steakhouse for dinner...yum, yum, yum....I won't even mention how much rice I ate and then Publix (southeast chain of grocery stores -who make the best yellow cake!)for dessert...I walked w/in an hour after getting home and never went over 105? Whatever I'm doing I hope it lasts...We are going out the Cheesecake Factory for dinner (and obviously as the name implies, dessert) There will be about 9 of us, so we are going to order only about 3 pieces of the most delectable dessert ever created and split it. More walking tonight!

good morning all, well pamela happy birthday to u,,,i noticed my sugars dropping immediately being on ww...they are super now and in fact they drop faster than usual and my doc put me on different insulin 70/30 which acts faster in a shorter amt of time which insulin are u on? i also take glucophage, actos, amaryll for my diabetes plus i am on diovan (blood pressure), dipentium for (ulcerated colitis), paxil ( aniexty) and a aspirin regimen
i know it is hard being on a diet but ww really allows u to eat what u want as long as u stay within points alloted let me know how u make out this week ok u can email me if u want mardav@comcast.net
marlene

Hi Marlene, thankfully I'm not on insulin yet(I'm covering my pancreas up as I write this, don't want it to get any ideas!) I've been type II (diagnosed anyway) since the end of February and am taking 2000 gms of Glucophage XR everyday. I wanted the extended release and not the regular dose. I lost 25 pds in the beginning but am in kind of a rut right now. Finding the motivation to lose more!. The restaurant was terrific last night and there were only 3 pieces of cheesecake that we all split that were devine. I took my dinner and split it in 1/2 and brought the rest for lunch today. It was 9:45pm by the time I got home, so no walking last night, but I'll be on the bike or walking tonight, for sure. Weird thing again. Sugar was only 100 at 10pm last night? after a couple of nachos (nephew's appetizer) a small slice of bread, a cup of mashed potatoes (real, but too much pepper) and the cheesecake sampling? yeah!!!

gee that does seem to be low have u asked ur doctor about it cause i take 1 glucophage in the am and 2 at night sometimes mine is around 120 at night or so what is it when u wake up in the am??? then is when u want it around 100 let me know and u did super with ur dinner out and all
my husband is taking me out to dinner tomorrow night but where we are going they have a salad bar so i will eat that and very little meat at least that is the plan...lol
well have a good night and keep in touch once again u can email me direct if u want to
mardav@comcast.net

intially my fasting am bg's were about 115 but my gyno wanted to see them more around 90. I guess my body listened to her and I'm in the 85-99 range now. The lowest I've been is 76 so I don't think I'm in any danger of low issues. My concern is working on not getting big spikes from 110 up to 180 or 190 and then back down to 110. That concerns me. Don't want to abuse the pancreas that much.

have u tested ur sugar right after u have eaten??? then mine shoots up past 200 and then it should take about 2hrs for it to come back down to normal range.... so what have u done interesting this week? i go to ww in the am but i am afraid i gained a few this week so hopefully i can lose them plus for next week, have a great weekend

I check my bg right about 2 hrs after I eat something. They say that gives you the most accurate figure and shows how your body is responding to the carbs going in. I try to not to spike up more than 50 points from a meal. Earlier in the game, I would spike up like 90-100 points, but as long as I did some kind of exercise, I would be back to down to like 110-120 2-3 hours later which is not bad. Have a great weekend! (I take 1000 of glucophage xr in the am and at dinner)

well then it is good that u r keeping ur sugars under control and exercise does lower ur sugar by 50 pts or so so good for u
i am on my way to weight watchers this am so catch up with u later have a great day!!!!!

Good morning and good week to all...here's to health and happiness!

Hi Judy and Rosey, how are things going???

Hey ladies..i am here..sorry i have not posted..i am at a stand still..am really struggling to get that will power back..i have not gained but have not been working hard to loose either..it makes me angry at myself as i know where i want to go..am just procrastinatiing..my sugar levels are not where they should be either..been between 120 to 145..i really need to get a handle on this..also have been incredibly busy with comany and have more comming next weekend..it is lots of fun tho and i love having family come to visit..any sugestions in getting my willpower back?? i now it has to come from me..just wishful thinking.. i hate this disease..talk soon..rosey

Hey Rosey, do you mean your fastings are in between 120-145 or after you've eaten? I don't think those #'s are all that bad.I can stay below 140 at breakfast and dinner (approx 2 hrs after I've taken my am and pm doses of glucophage) but my bs have scared me at lunch this week. I don't even think I'm eating many carbs (who does when they are indenial) and I'll shoot up to 180-190 2 hrs after I've eaten. By the 3rd hour, I'm back down to 130 but that bugs me alot. Don't know what to tell you for willpower. I'm so thankful that I can have a sweet in the evening and not spike up much and that makes me feel like I'm still one of the "boys" so to speak but I live with this underlying fear that it won't last for long and I'll be on more drugs or insulin in a couple of years and I just can't stand the thought of that. I just keep reminding myself, 20 more pds Pam, and your levels will be so much better! I just got a new bike and tried it out last night. Going out again tonight. The last couple of weeks, I've only exercised 3 nights, so I'm trying to get back into the habit of at least 5 nights. My dinners have comprised of a bowl of Special K and a turkey or bologna sandwich. Can or do you walk much? It's always been my favorite exercise. It's because I dropped some weight off that I've been able to ride a biker easier and have enjoyed it more.

Hey pamela..thanks for the kind words..i just have to learn that i cannot eat like iused to..and i have been diagnosed for 1 ans 1/2 years now..you would think i had it down by now..i think the thing is that i just feel deprived and am used to using food as areward and to medicate myself when i feel bad or upset or angry..and when i cannot have it it makes me mad like a child i suppose..and sometimes i just eat like i want anyways..and then feel gulity..i am suppose to test before every meal and before bed..so in the morning..it is usually about 120 sometmes if i am really working at it it has been 108..i have not tested 2 hrs after i eat so i will do that tonite and see where it is at..it has been as high as 140 before lunch or dinner but is always lowest before bed..usually about 108-120..its never the same..but evenwhen i am bad with my food choices it has never been over 165 that i know of..i think i will experiment and test after eating to see where i am..i take 1500mg of glucophage ex at nite after dinner..am also taking blood pressure meds..and colesterol meds..am suppose to be on a fat free diet too..so with lo carbs..nosugar..nofat..the choices are limited and boring..and i can eat that way for several weeks and then i just have to splurge..i am real lax about exercise too.. i can do walking and exercise tapes etc..i just dont..talking about all of this really helps and i realize and know what i am suppose todo so i just need akick in the butt and get back on track..so what is a bad sugar level?? i donot think mine are all that off..but my doctor said all diabetics will one day be on insulin..that the pills are only a bridge..i dont want that so have all the reasons inthe world to get it right..so i am trying to change years of bad habits and maybe i should be just patient with myself.. i guess if it was easy we would all be thin and healthy..and none can make me do this but me..but it helps to vent a little..it reminds me of my goals..anyways i will check my bs after i eat and see where they are at and get back withyou..thanks for listenng..i guess you can tell that i am frustrated..bu mostly at myself..rosey

I hear you Rosey, loud and clear...I'm on 2000 xr of glucophage a day and can still spike really high if not careful...I truly don't think you numbers are all that bad (especially if your eating many things you shouldn't be) I mentally challenge myself everday. I keep saying I just trying to lose weight. I'm am not eating any different than anyone else who's dieting (ok, hate that word) or just trying to be healthier. This is no different than people who don't have diabetes. If I want spaghetti or some carb's, than eat them, but I try to use only a WW frozen dinner then to keep the carbs portion reasonable. I've always liked wheat and multri grain bread, so that's no big whoop. I just hate the fact that I feel so "focused" on food...so what, I was fat before, ate almost the same food I eat now (except smaller portions and cutting back more on the sugar/fat crap and no white bread when I order a Subway sub -now 1/2 of one instead of a whole) went around hungry, ate when I needed to etc, didn't give things a second thought..but now it's like you've got to think of everything ahead of time, the consequences of eating too much. I panic when I see numbers over 160 (even though they come right back down) I hate when I feel shaky from either feeling a little low or high etc...I just want to go back and start over and you can't!

Hey pamela...i did experiment last nite..i tested before dinner..bs was 121..then ate dinner..hamburger steak(no bread)..about a cup of potatoe salad..and ice tea..2 hours later the bs was 142..i had some nosugar added ice cream and a little chcolate sauce about 9pm and tested at bedtime again..it was 115..then before breakfast this am..it was 139..and before lunch 122..my bs always goes up in themorning whither i ate after dinner or not..if i am really watching things the bs stay around 108..but lately they have been running from 108 to 145..i feel best when they are around 120..if they go below 100 i get shacky..cranky and headachy..if they are up around 145 i am sleepy and dont feel like doing any thing..you are right tho i focus more on food now than i ever did..what to eat and when and how much and do i have anything on hand etc ..i hate it and there is nothing i can do about it..no cure..maybe it was a wake up call for me..as the way i was eating before would have eventually killed me..so i am learning..but donot like it..i have alot to lose and i keep saying one day at atime..but lately have been really frustrated..so i continue to try..and thats the best ican do..do you think my bs levels are to high? my doctor was pleased with my progress..anyways thankyou for being there..you really understand..if i can help you too..just ask..i realize that i am the only one that can do this..it is my journey to make but it helps to talk about it..take care..rosey

rosey it sounds like ur doing everything right so keep up the good work everything will setlle down once ur body gets used to the adjustments. keep on keeping on
have a good evening!

Hi Ladies

I have been reading your posts. You both have so much good things to say - I have been diagnosed since January of 1997 and still have trouble staying focused. It is the hardest thing to keep focused when you have large family who expects you to still cook all the things they loved when growing up and you made for them. I have to admit I am one of those taste as you go cooks too. I have trouble maintaining my bs too. In the mornings it is usually around 130 or so and that is usually fasting - not really physically capable of exercising to well so do not get much help from that. And still have not got the meals co-ordinated to set times as both my husband and I work outside the home. I have been known to spike up to over 400 right often. I am on the insulin pen, actos and glucotrol xl. Just reading your posts has really helped this week though. Will continue to read them and take strength from them - have actually stayed around 103 this week but feel just a little shaky that low - just got to used to it I guess.

Thanks again for being a really wonderful incentive.
_________________
Carolyn

Hi Rosey, Caroline and Marlene....1st Rosey, I think your sugars are great! I don't think hitting 145 is going to cause those "long term" complications that everyone loves to talk about. Plenty of non diabetics hit 180-190 after a meal (carb loaded) and come right back down (although I don't know if that's a separate issue or going high like that and falling back down creating insulin resistance) I'm jealous quite frankly. What was your last A1C? I go in a couple of weeks for my 3 month check up so I'll see how much I've fallen from the 9 I was in April. As far as the fastings...not sure if all of you know about the "dawn" phenonmem? It's where you liver starts shooting out sugar right about dawn to help you wake up and prepare for the day. That can cause you to wake up with higher fasting #'s (the only comparison would be to check you sugar at say 3 am or something and then again when you get up) That's why all the info I've had says you should have a little carb/protein snack before bed to keep you from going to low (I would not know of such a thing!) and help with the liver kicking out sugar in the am. As far as shaky, I was like the others, I'd shake at a 100, then got used to going to the 90's. I can wake up in the am around 88 and not be shaky. I've read some other posts that talk about that maybe now that you've been diagnosed and are in better control, it's sign that you probably haven't been that low in awhile (or possibly a long time if undiagnosed for too long). I can get shaky again when too high. It all varies. Here's to a good successful, unfocusing on food weekend for all!

Hi everyone:

Well, my last A1C was 7 and I can tell you that I certainly did not do like I should have during that time. Some of that time I had even been without my medicine due to a financial setback when my husband lost his job. But I am really trying to watch what I eat right now, moreso than before. I really want to beat this stuff. I have to much to live a good, active life for and reading the posts on here really help out a lot.

Hey ladies..my A1c was 6.5 in feb..my doctor was pleased with that but not with my colesteral..thats when she put me on zocor and i put me on a fat free diet..so i eata fat free-lo carb-no sugar diet..boring boring boring..thats why i am having a tuff time sticking with it..i had lost 30 #s last year and kept it off and after the nofat diet lost another 21#s but have stayed the same for the last 3 weeks becuz i have been not as dilegent in watching what i eat..have not gained tho..so thats a good thing..from what i am picking up from all of you it seems that i am doing ok so i am going to quit stressing about it..even tho i am not loosing i feel relly good..and if i apply myself it will come off..it is great to talkto you as no one but a diebetic truly understands about this disease and i thank all of you..am going to a family bq and bday party today ..there are 4 generations of us and alwayshave fun and lots of food ( iwill try and be good girl) hope you have agreat weekend..talk soon.. rosey

Hi Everyone:

I have not posted here in a verrrrry long time! I was diagnosed just over one year ago with Type II diabetes and due to the fact that my husband is an insulin-dependent diabetic, decided to do something to control it.

I am taking Metformin twice a day (1/2 a pill morning and night) and dropped 40 pounds within 5 months. I have put about half of that back on and thought I could manage this on my own by dropping to only 1/2 pill once a day.

This past week I have had horrific headaches and have started to take both doses of the medicine. I will be rejoining WW in September, but wondered if anyone can offer any suggestions in the meantime.

My sugars were doing terrific at 5.1 or slightly higher, but this past few days they have been up in the high 7's and 8's. I am not sure how to convert to the readings that most of the posts here are using.

Any and all ideas will be greatly appreciated.

:cool:

I take 2000 of the glucophage XR a day. I didn't have good luck with Metaformin (generic for regular glucophage) and it's funny you mention it. Jennifer over on the PCOS thread was mentioning she had just started it and was having headaches too. Iwould give it a couple of weeks back on your full dose to see if the headaches stop. I hear you. I lost 25 and not a pd more and am working with my WW to try and get more off. We are here to talk. My mom had type I so I know what you are going through.

Hi Pamela:

Thank you for the response and for the information regarding PCOS. I think that is what I truly suffer from and not diabetes. It seems that my periods have become regular since beginning the Metformin when they never were before that. I am working through the dosage issue and will hopefully resolve the headache problem by next week.

Poohbear

Hi Ladies……

I have been posting with the Thin Group for a couple of years now and just looked around and found you ladies….

I was diagnosed with Diabetes Type II in April of 2000. I am still in denial…. Admitting it for the first time after reading your posts… didn’t know your liver produces sugar in the a.m. to help wake you up but always wondered why sometimes my numbers were higher when I woke up than it was when I went to bed, it didn’t make sense to me…. I’ve been reading books but have found them boring sometimes with the numbers and meals…. (denial?) Diabetes runs rapid in my family on both sides… and I’ve watched 3 friends die young with Diabetes Type I. Denial? You would think that I would wake up.

I am 46 years old, single, I am a legal secretary for a large firm, have been there 27 years. I have been over weight all of my life, have fought the ups and downs…. I reached 379 pounds about 4 years ago and have dropped between 85 – 90 pounds since then…. I have really just leveled off recently and then started to gain… I gained 13 pounds recently and have lost 5 of that….. back and forth it seems. The medication that I am on is 850 mg Metformin HCL twice a day and Glyburide 5 mg twice a day. My numbers lay right around 175 and shoots up…. I was down in the 105 to 120 area for a short while when the Glyburide was added…. Before the second medication was added I was so sick for that first year. I was taking the medication wrong, on an empty stomach. I was a mess. I was dehydrating and was so sick. My A1C is 9…… and I am not eating properly at all….. That’s where the problem lies I know. I still am drinking a regular soda once a day. I hate the taste of diet soda. I will have chocolate or M & M’s when the urge strikes me…. I had two pieces of cake last week… on different days…. They were not small pieces either…. I go to the doctor every 3 months…. And she warned me that if my numbers were down when the blood work was done she would still know, if I was “cheating” because of the A1C number would show it…. Think I would heed the warning? I was on WW for awhile as we had the class at work, which was so much easier than getting in your car and driving to a meeting…. God forbid I should have to actually go somewhere after work in the evening…. I have a lifetime membership with Fitness U.S.A. and I love to swim… exercising bothers my knees to much… but I love to swim, do you think I’ve used it in the last 6 months? No… not me…. I am sorry, I am pouring my heart out and feel I am confessing some terrible crime…. I just know that “I am out of control” and need some discipline in my life. Maybe now that I have actually admitted to being out of control and eating wrong a/k/a denial…. I can actually help myself. Thanks for listening.

Carolyn

carolyn, please get control now it is very important as diabetes is not a disease to play around with ur eyes will suffer, ur blood pressure will rise, not to mention stroke or a heart attack i don't mean to sound cruel but i know u are a smart woman and don't want to die.....i have a 12yr old son and i will be 54 this october and i am just getting it so learn quicker than me i have broken blood vessels behind my left eye that keep getting worse, high blood pressure, ulcerated colitis and have anixety so i know some of the troubles and fears u r feeling....the reason why ur numbers are high in the am cause at night time while we sleep sometimes our sugar drops and the body has to protect it and shoots out sugar in our bodies so therefore the higher readings in the am cause we haven't worked it all out of our systems yet...if u eat a snack before bed like a half of a sandwich, a bowl of cereal, graham crackers things on that nature u will find ur numbers lower in the am plus take ur meds as prescribed u didn't mention if u were on insulin too i am and it is no fun sticking a needle in my stomach or leg day and night so please watch what u eat now
i have found loads of sweet recipes u can eat without ur sugar levels skyrocketing and it is not only the sweets that make it rise carbs do it too have u been to a diabetes class? i suggest u ask ur doctor to send u to one it is very eye opening. please if u need me at alll email me ok
take care of urself first

Thanks Marlene for answering my plea.... I know it is dangerous... and I know what I eat is dangerous. I am not on insulin shots, and pray to God that I never am. But eating the way I am lately, will be. I know this... I take my meds all the time, and I do have high blood pressure.... it was 147/87 before medication. With the meds it is down considerably. Of course the cholestrol is up too.... am now taking Lipitor for that.... just started taking this med. And I am on a water pill. UGH...... so many meds.... I am going to have to get out of denial and face up to whats really going on in my body...... and take care of what I am eating.... I have thought about a dibetic class but have not done this.... I will ask the doctor about ASAP. Thanks so much.

Carolyn

oh carolyn please do ask ur doctor they are very enlighting
remember i am in the same boat as u and so are others don't feel like ur alone and i am here like i said for u anytime u want to vent or talk.........be good to urself

Marlene....

I will let you know how it goes.... I will be calling for my test results by Thursday.... but I don't see the doctor until Sept. 23rd... I will be on vacation Friday of this week until Labor Day.... will keep you posted..... thanks so much.

Carolyn

Hi Ladies,

Have not been posting lately - had so much going on in my life. Children who have marital problems and problems at work. My sugar is still runnig around 138 most days - this is actually very good for me as I have been known to spike up in the 400s. I have not been as compliant as I could have been with my eating.

Carolyn, I know what you mean about the weight and all. And as Marlene has told you - the changes this disease can bring about in your life are very real. I have a lot of vision problems. I go back to my doctor on the 3rd of September and I know that I will have gained weight again. I actually lost about 20 pounds while on vacation, but now I feel like I have gained it all back. I really have problems with swelling a lot. When I started on the lasix I actually lost 20 pounds (water weight???)

I find that the posts on this board are really helpful to me - I don't always post to much myself, but I really do find all the things posted and said help me out day to day to stay focused and trying to do better. It is an everyday battle for me - I have a lot of people rooting for me to win this everyday battle too. My family is very supportive - and my grandchildren call me everyday if they do not see me to tell me how much they love me and how proud they are of me :). This is really a great motivator. Sometimes though I just let it get away from me. I hope to hear from you and the others on the board soon and please any of you feel free to email at anytime with suggestions, or whatever it may be that comes up. I need all the help I can get that is for sure.

NannieMidder (Carolyn)

email address: moomesa4432@msn.com

hey nanniemiddler, we are all here for u so keep up doing the good things for ur body and everything will fall in place i can guarantee it i added u to my hotmail list so write me or if ur online when i am we can chat ok
i care about u too

Hi Marlene:

It was so nice to get to work and check in and see that you had answered my post - thanks so much - I have added you to my buddy list also. Thanks - I need all the help I can get I promise you! There are mornings (and evenings too, to tell the truth) when I feel like it is just so hard to keep on the doing the right things. But thank God all it takes to put me back on track is looking at my photos of my grandkids. They are what keep me going. I look forward to chatting when we are both on line together.

NannieMidder (Carolyn)

me too carolyn anytime i am a click away
be good to urself and good things will come
remember that
when i get a notion to eat i come online and i try to remember that 10min rule if i can wait 10min usually the feeling passes
later my friend

Hi Ladies:

Well, a really stressful day and night - my youngest daughter and her children will be moving in with me this weekend - but the stress is from her husband. He is definitely going to be a problem, much moreso than he is right now. Anyway, I had to fight myself to stay away from my solace in times of stress - FOOD!! That refrigerator kept calling my name last night! I did not answer the call but Lord, do I have a headache this morning. Sugar was only 138 though. Must be doing something right huh? Now if I can get rid of the headache I will be making great strides into today's battle.

Had a great supper last night before all this mess came up - my husband had fixed broiled catfish, along with lima beans and whole kernel corn and some cornbread. I love the fish fixed this way with lemon juice on it. Hate not having tartar sauce though!

Well, I need to get myself out of here and to work - hope the headache goes away. Does anyone else have really bad headaches in the mornings? Sometimes I can get rid of them, but sometimes they become full-blown migraines before I can get them to go away.

Look forward to hearing from all of you.

NannieMidder

well nanniemidder i am proud of u on dinner except u could have had tartar sauce,,, just mix light or lowfat mayo with a tea of relish and that wouldn't be so bad i would guess 1pt.....or less
the fish was the good part now don't have two starches in one meal like either have the lima beans or corn not both maybe add a green veggie along with the lima or corn do u see what i mean
and i am soooooooo proud of u fighting the refrig calling u i know sometimes it calls me too but i leave it pretty empty these day s and when i open it up there is only fruit, yogurt or veggies in there that way i have no excuses
now i can tell u of some cool low cal low sugar deserts if u would like to know them let me know
bye for now

Can't wait to hear about the desserts!! And yes I know what you mean about the veggies and the corn and limas. I have to admit that I did eat a tablespoon of each! :( Did well today - had another piece of the fish for lunch with a low cal cole slaw (YEEECHHHHHH) and nothing but water today until tonight when I finally broke and had some ice tea (and of course you know it had sugar in it) but only one glass. Fridge has all those things in it the kiddies will like nowadays, but you know I really do not have a problem with them - it is the extra helping of potatoes, or pasta and so forth or the sneaking back at night to have another helping of pasta salad. I really am doing better though - especially now that my daughter is going to be here watching me like a hawk!!
Thanks for all the support - and yes any recipes - pass them on.

NannieMidder

Hey ladies..it has been awhile since i posted here..i have had so much company that i have not had time..i read your posts and their are new names.. i can relate to all of you.. i fight the urge to eat all the time..and with all the company we have had all i have done is cook..and i love my cooking and it wasnt all what i should be eating..my sugars have been good tho..but am not loosing and that is bad..i need to get my groove back..it is really easy to slide into old habits..my hubby is on vacation and going to the cabin so all i have to worry about is me..and that is a whole lot easier.. i too use my grandkids faces to keep me in line..and it works..one day at a time ladies..talk later..rosey :dance:

Rosey you are so right - if I reach for that something in the fridge that I know I should not have and come out with it and there on the door is a photo of me and my grands - I usually wind up putting it back! I want to get to a point where I can get in the grass and roll with them and just have a ball with them but right now - sitting in the grass and letting them hug up around me is all I can manage - I also have a photo of when I actually had ankles (LOL) on the fridge as a reminder of the fact that I need to adhere to my diet (I would love to see ankles again!!!).
Thanks for all the encouragement ladies and my best to all of you also - you are my help mates and I hope that each of you will know I will be there for you too.
NannieMidder

hi ladies, how are u all doing today? well here is a cake recipe from ww

any cake mix
10oz diet soda ( any kind any flavor)
2 egg whites

mix them all together with a spoon and bake as u normally would any cake mix and u have a good tasting cake and just put a dollop of cool whip on top and 1 serving is 4pts
one day i made a german choc cake with diet pepsi boy was that good and then the other time i made a yellow cake mix with diet blk cherry soda it turned it all pink and looked and tasted great too so try this and let me know

another one i like is the dreamcycle cake
take one angel food cake any kind and break it up into little pieces and layer it in a bowl with alternating 1box of sugar free jello mixed w/ 1cup of boiling water and cooled with a 8oz ff yogurt preferrably the same flavor as the jello like for example
if u use strawberry jello use strawberry yogurt and mix that together layering that and the cake with ff cool whip until u come to the top of the bowl and refrigerate wonderful desert and my family loves it
the last time i made it i put fresh strawberries or blueberries between the layers too 3 or 4pts depending if u add extra fruit

well have a good day and keep on keeping on:dizzy: ;)

Hi ladies......

Am only checking in and copying the "any cake mix" recipe..... am leaving for Myrtle Beach for 10 days..... won't be back until after labor day..... I have been doing good in the sugar department, no regular soda, no candy.... etc.... sugar is still a little high 175.... but I am sure it will drop over the next few days or so.... take care.....

Carolyn

have a good time and be good to urself
everytime u want to reach for something u know u really shouldn't have ask urself
Am i being good to myself?
enjoy the cake it is really good
write me soon

hey Carolyn - you will be in my neck of the woods - about 1 and a half hours away from me. I live in Gaston right outside of Columbia. Hope you have a great time. Cake sounds great doesn't it? Can't wait to try it.

NannieMidder

Hello everyone - been so busy the last few days. It has really been a stressful time - what with my daughter and her children moving in with us (but I am glad they are here) and work it has really been hard to do the right things for myself. The children do not like the things I cook and of course I cannot have what they want to eat. Well, we are trying to find compromises - but how do you do that with a 2 year old and a 6 year old? It is really hard. I hate it when they are so upset over what they do have to eat. So if anyone out there has any recipes they can share that are good for me and them please let me know.
Sugar is not doing so great this week - in the 300s again! Gotta work on that and gotta get myself revved again. Hate feeling this way - well for now I have to go - see you ladies later - hope that everyone is having a great week.
Carolyn

Hi Carolyn, i can think of a few recipes they might like and on this site there is so many recipes u can look up to cook chicken is made in so many ways i am sure u can find something they like..u failed to mention what they liked to eat ....and cant ur daughter cook for them and u cook something just for u try that and see what happens it is so important to stay on track i too have gotten a little strayed but am trying hard to get back into the gunho feeling i had when i started i have played with this same weight loss for a month now and it is getting on my nerves but i am not not going to quit......
it is nice hearing from u again so try and be good to urself and remember i am here

Hey ladies - I am back - it has been one of the longest days for me today - my brother is stationed over in Bahrain and has been there since before this mess got started - with today being the anniversary of that dreadful day I have wanted to race to the refrigerator and eat everything in sight (always my solace in time of need). I can honestly say I did not give in - but it was hard. Things are going well here at home for the most part - it is hard getting used to having two toddlers in the house again on a full time basis - but it is rewarding also - all those kisses and hugs - my sugar should be out the roof LOL. My daughter is having some difficulties with her husband and his harrassing and stalking her to some extent. It makes for a lot of stress for her and then it just all seems to trickle down to me and I wind up stressed out and with headaches - tyring so hard not to say the wrong thing or not say the right thing at the wrong time I should say. My sugar is elevated a little bit right now - but I am battling a yeast infection from an antibiotic I had take for a sinus infection. It should get back to where it needs to be soon. I am doing well with the eating for the most part but it is hard sometimes not just eat until I cannot stand myself any longer. Keep me in your prayers everyone!!
Oh yeah - everyone I have a new email address: NannieMidder@sc.rr.com
NannieMidder

Don't know if this article will be of interest to any of you, but it was posted on a Fibromyalgia site. I found it very interesting and just thought I would pass it along.

Get off the Drugs and Get Well
By Ronald Rosedale, M.D.
Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest
Let's talk about a couple of case histories. These are actual patients that I've seen; let's start with patient A. This patient who we will just call patient A saw me one afternoon and said that he had literally just signed himself out of the hospital "AMA," or against medical advice. Like in the movies, he had ripped out his IV's.

The next day he was scheduled to have his second by-pass surgery. He had been told that if he did not follow through with this by-pass surgery, within two weeks he would be dead. He couldn't walk from the car to the office without severe chest pain.

He was on 102 units of insulin and his blood sugars were 300 plus. He was on eight different medications for various things. But his first by-pass surgery was such a miserable experience he said he would rather just die than have to go through the second one and had heard that I might be able to prevent that.

To make a long story short, this gentleman right now is on no insulin. I first saw him three and a half years ago. He plays golf four or five times a week. He is on no medications whatsoever, he has no chest pain, and he has not had any surgery. He started an organization called "Heart Support of America" to educated people that there are alternatives to by-pass surgery that have nothing to do with surgery or medication. That organization, he last told me had a mailing list of over a million people, a large organization, "Heart Support of America."

Patient B is a patient who had a triglyceride level of 2200. Patient B was referred by patient A. He had a triglyceride of 2200, cholesterol of 950 and was on maximum doses of all of his medications. He was 42 years old, and he was told that he had familial hyperlipidema and that he had better get his affairs in order, that if that was what his lipids were despite the best medications with the highest doses, he was in trouble. He was not fat at all, he was fairly thin

Whenever I see a patient on any of those medications, they're off the very first visit. They have no place in medicine. He was taken off the medications and in six weeks his lipid levels, both his Triglycerides and his cholesterol were hovering around 220. Six more weeks they were both under 200, off of the medications. They have no place in medicine.

I should mention that this patient had a CPK that was quite elevated. It was circled on the lab report that he brought in initially with a question mark by it because they didn't know why. The reason why was because he was eating off his muscles, because if you take (gemfibrozole) and any of the HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors together, that is a common side effect that is in the PDR, and they shouldn't be given together.

So he was chewing up his muscles, including his heart which they were trying to treat. So if indeed he was going to die, it was going to be that treatment that was going to kill him.

Let's go to something totally different, a lady with severe osteoporosis. She is almost three standard deviations below the norm in both the hip femeral neck and the cervical vertebrae, and she is very worried about getting a fracture. A fairly young woman and she was put on a high carbohydrate diet and told that would be of benefit, and placed on estrogen, which is a fairly typical treatment.

They wanted to put her on some other medicines and she didn't want to, she wanted to know if there was an alternative. Although we didn't have as dramatic a turn around, we got her to one standard deviation below the norm in a year, taking her off the estrogen she was on, anyway.

Let's go to claudication
That is severe angina of the leg when you walk, same thing as angina of the heart except of the leg. While walking, after walking a certain distance, there is pain. There was a gentleman who had extremely severe claudication, who happens to be my stepfather. It was a typical case, he would walk about fifty yards and then he would get severe, crampy pain in his legs. He was quite well off and was going to see the best doctors in Chicago, and they couldn't figure out what was wrong with him initially.
He went to a neurologist, they thought it might be neurological pain or back pain. He finally went to a vascular surgeon who said he thought it was vascular disease, so they did an arthrogram and sure enough, he had severe vascular disease. They wanted to do the typical by-pass surgery that they normally do on this. He was thinking of going in for the surgery for one reason, they had a trip planned to Europe in two weeks, and he wanted to be able to walk since they normally do a lot of walking.

Ten years previously he'd had an angioplasty for heart disease. At the time ten years ago, I told him he had to change his diet and he didn't of course. But this time he listened. I said that if he was not going to have a by-pass, then do exactly what I tell you to do and in two weeks you'll be walking just fine because by modulating this one aspect of his disease, I have never seen it not work, and it works very quickly to open up the artery.

We can talk about a patient with a very high cancer risk

She had a mother and a sister who both died of breast cancer and she didn't want to, so she came in and I put her on the exact same treatment as the other cases I just mentioned. They were all treated virtually identically because they all had the same thing wrong with them.

What would be the typical treatment of cardiovascular disease? First they check the cholesterol. High cholesterol over 200, they put you on cholesterol lowering drugs and what does it do? It shuts off your CoQ10. What does CoQ10 do? It is involved in the energy production and protection of little energy furnaces in every cell, so energy production goes way down.

A common side effect of people who are on all these HMG co-enzyme reductase inhibitors is that they tell you their arms feel heavy. Well, the heart is a muscle too, and it's going to feel heavy too. One of the best treatments for a weak heart is CoQ10 for congestive heart failure. But they have no trouble shutting CoQ10 production off so that they can treat a number. And the common therapies for osteoporosis are drugs, and the common therapy for calaudication is surgery. For cancer reduction there is nothing. But all of these have a common cause.

The same cause as three major avenues of research in aging. One is called caloric restriction. There are thousands of studies done since the fifties on caloric restriction. They restrict calories of laboratory animals.

They have known since the fifties that if you restrict calories but maintain a high level of nutrition, called "C.R.O.N.'s:" Caloric restriction with optimal nutrition, or adequate nutrition, which would be CRAN"S, these animals can live anywhere between thirty and two-hundred percent longer depending on the species.

They've done it on several dozen species and the results are uniform throughout. They are doing it on primates now and it is working with primates, we won't know for sure for about another ten years, they are about half way through the experiment, our nearest relatives are also living much longer.

Then there are Centenarian studies
There are three major centenarian studies going on around the world. They are trying to find the variable that would confer longevity among these people. Why do centenarians become centenarians? Why are they so lucky? Is it because they have low cholesterol, exercise a lot, live a healthy, clean life?
Well the longest recorded known person who has ever lived, Jean Calumet of France who died last year at 122 years, smoked all of her life and drank.

What they are finding on these major centenarian studies is that there is hardly anything in common among them. They have high cholesterol and low cholesterol, some exercise and some don't, some smoke, some don't. Some are nasty as can be and some nice and calm and nice. Some are ornery, but they all low sugar, relatively for their age. They all have low triglycerides for their age.

And they all have relatively low insulin. Insulin is the common denominator in everything I've just talked about. They way to treat cardiovascular disease and the way I treated my stepfather, the way I treated the high risk cancer patient, and osteoporosis, high blood pressure, the way to treat virtually all the so-called chronic diseases of aging is to treat insulin itself.

The other major avenue of research in aging has to do with genetic studies of so-called lower organisms. We know the genetics involved. We've got the entire genes mapped out of several species now, of yeast and worms. We think of life span as being fixed, sort of.

Humans kind of have an average life span of seventy-six, and the maximum life-span was this French lady at one-hundred and twenty-two. In humans we feel it is relatively fixed, but in lower forms of life it is very plastic. Life span is strictly a variable depending on the environment. They can live two weeks, two years, or sometimes twenty years depending on what they want themselves to do, which depends very much on the environment.

If there is a lot of food around they are going to reproduce quickly and die quickly, if not they will just bide their time until conditions are better. We know now that the variability in life span is regulated by insulin.

One thinks of insulin as strictly to lower blood sugar. Today in the clinic there was a patient listing off her drugs, she listed about eight drugs she was on and didn't even mention insulin. Insulin is not treated as a drug. In fact, in some places you don't even need a prescription, you can just get it over the counter, it's treated like candy.

Insulin is found as in even single celled organisms. It has been around for several billion years. And its purpose in some organisms is to regulate life span. The way genetics works is that genes are not replaced, they are built upon. We have the same genes as everything that came before us. We just have more of them.

We have added books to our genetic library, but our base is the same. What we are finding is that we can use insulin to regulate lifespan too.

If there is a single marker for lifespan, as they are finding in the centenarian studies, it is insulin, specifically, insulin sensitivity.

How sensitive are your cells to insulin. When they are not sensitive, the insulin levels go up. Who has heard of the term insulin resistance?

Insulin resistance is the basis of all of the chronic diseases of aging, because the disease itself is actually aging.

We know now that aging is a disease. The other case studies that I mentioned, cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis, obesity, diabetes, cancer, all the so-called chronic diseases of aging, auto-immune diseases, those are symptoms.

If you have a cold and you go to the doctor, you have a runny nose, I did Ear, Nose and Throat for ten years, I know what the common treatment for that is, they give you a decongestant. I can't tell you how many patients I saw who had been given Sudafed by their family doctors for a cold and they came to see me after because of a really bad sinus infection.

What happens when you treat the symptom of a runny nose from a cold and you take a decongestant? It certainly decongests you by shutting off the mucus. Why do you have the mucus, because you are trying to clean and wash out the membranes, and what else? What else is in mucus? Secretory IgA, a very strong antibody to kill the virus is in the mucus. If there is no mucus, there is no secretory IgA.

Decongestants also constrict blood vessels, the little capillaries, or arterioles that go to those capillaries, the cilia, the little hair-like projections that beat to push mucus along to create a stream, they get paralyzed because they don't have blood flow so there is no more ciliary movement. What happens if you dam a stream and create a pond?

In days you've got larvae growing. If the stream is moving, you are fine. You need a constant stream of mucus to get rid of and prevent an infection. I am going in to this in some detail because in almost all cases if you treat a symptom, you are going to make the disease worse because the symptom is there as your body's attempt to heal itself.

Now, the medical profession is continuously segregating more and more symptoms into diseases, they call the symptoms diseases. Using ENT for example, that patient will walk out of there with a diagnosis of Rhinitis which is inflammation of the nose. Is there a reason that patient has inflammation of the nose? I think so. Wouldn't that underlying cause be the disease as opposed to the descriptive term of Rhinitis or Pharyngitis?

Some one can have the same virus and have Rhinitis or Pharyngitis, or Sinusitis, they can have all sorts of "itis's" which is a descriptive term for inflammation. That is what the code will be and that is what the disease will be. So they treat what they think is the disease which is just a symptom.

It is the same thing with cholesterol.

If you have high cholesterol it is called hypercholesterolemia. Hypercholesterolemia has become the code for the disease when it is only the symptom. So they treat that symptom and what are they doing to the heart? Messing it up.

So what you have to do if you are going to treat any disease is you need to get to the root of the disease. If you keep pulling a dandelion out by it's leaves, you are not going to get very far. But the problem is that we don't know what the root is, or we haven't.

They know what it is in many other areas of science, but the problem is that medicine really isn't a science, it is a business, but I don't want to get in to that, we can talk hours on that. But if you really look at the root of what is causing it, we can use that cold as a further example.

Why does that person have a cold?

If he saw the doctor, the doctor might tell him to take an antibiotic along with the decongestant. You see this all the time because the doctor wants to get rid of the patient. Well we all know that in almost all cases of an upper respiratory infection it is a virus, and the antibiotic is going to do worse than nothing because it is going to kill the bacterial flora in the gut and impair the immune system, making the immune system worse.

The patient might see someone else more knowledgeable who will say no, you caught a virus, don't do anything, go home and sleep, let your body heal itself. That's better. You might see someone else who would ask why you caught a virus without being out there trying to hunt for viruses with a net. We are breathing viruses every day; right now we are breathing viruses, cold viruses, rhinoviruses.

Why doesn't everybody catch a cold tomorrow?

The Chinese will tell you that it is because the milieu has to be right, if the Chinese were to quote the French. Your body has to be receptive to that virus. Only if your immune system is depressed will it allow that virus to take hold.

So maybe a depressed immune system is the disease. So you can be given a bunch of vitamin C because your immune system is depressed and it is likely that the person has a vitamin C deficiency. That's where most of us are at right now, where we would give a bunch of vitamin C to try to pick up the immune system.

But why is the vitamin C not working. Vitamin C is make in almost all living mammals except humans and a couple other species. Vitamin C is made directly from glucose and actually has a similar structure and they compete for one another.

We've known for many years that sugar depresses the immune system.

We have known that for decades. It was only in the 70's that they found out that vitamin C was needed by white blood cells so that they could phagocytize bacteria and viruses. White blood cells require a fifty times higher concentration at least inside the cell as outside so they have to accumulate vitamin C.

There is something called a phagocytic index which tells you how rapidly a particular macrophage or lymphocyte can gobble up a virus, bacteria, or cancer cell. It was in the 70's that Linus Pauling knew that white blood cells needed a high dose of vitamin C and that is when he came up with his theory that you need high doses of vitamin C to combat the common cold.

But if we know that vitamin C and glucose have similar chemical structure, what happens when the sugar levels go up? They compete for one another upon entering the cells. And the thing that mediates the entry of vitamin C into the cells is the same thing that mediates the entry of glucose into the cells. If there is more glucose around there is going to be less vitamin C allowed into the cell and it doesn't take much. A blood sugar value of 120 reduces the phagocytic index seventy-five percent.

Here we are getting a little bit further down into the roots of disease. It doesn't matter what disease you are talking about, whether you are talking about a common cold or about cardiovascular disease, or osteoporosis or cancer, the root is always going to be at the molecular and cellular level, and I will tell you that insulin is going to have its hand in it, if not totally controlling it.

What is the purpose of insulin?
As I mentioned, in some organisms it is to control their lifespan, which is important. What is the purpose of insulin in humans? If you ask your doctor, they will say that it's to lower blood sugar and I will tell you right now, that is a trivial side effect. Insulin's evolutionary purpose, among others at least known right now, we are looking at others, is to store excess nutrients.
We come from a time of feast and famine and if we couldn't store the excess energy during times of feasting, we would all not be here, because we all have had ancestors that encountered famine. So we are only here because our ancestors were able to store nutrients, and they were able to store nutrients because they were able to elevate their insulin in response to any elevation in energy that the organism encountered.

When your body notices that the sugar is elevated, it is a sign that you've got more than you need right now, you are not burning it so it is accumulating in your blood. So insulin will be released to take that sugar and store it. How does it store it? (Someone in the audience suggest the answer glycogen)…Glycogen?

How much glycogen do you store?
Do you know how much glycogen you have in your body at any one time? Very little. All the glycogen stored in your liver and all the glycogen stored in your muscle if you had an active day wouldn't last you the day.
Once you fill up your glycogen stores how is that sugar is stored, as what particular kind of triglyceride, or fatty acid? Palmitic acid. Saturated fat, ninety-eight percent of which is palmitic acid.

So the idea of the medical profession to go on a high complex carbohydrate, low saturated-fat diet is an absolute oxymoron, because those high complex carbohydrate diets are nothing but a high glucose diet, or a high sugar diet, and your body is just going to store it as saturated fat. The body makes it into saturated fat quite readily.

What else does insulin do?
It doesn't just store carbohydrates, by the way. Somebody mentioned that it is an anabolic hormone, it absolutely is. Body builders are using insulin now because it is legal, so they are injecting themselves with insulin because it builds muscle, it stores protein too.
A lesser known fact is that insulin also stores magnesium. We mentioned it's role in vitamin C, it stores all sorts of nutrients. But what happens if your cells become resistant to insulin? First of all you can't store magnesium so you lose it, that's one effect, you lose it out the urine.

What is one of magnesium's major roles?
To relax muscles. Intracellular magnesium relaxes muscles. What happens when you can't store magnesium because the cell is resistant? You lose magnesium and your blood vessels constrict, what does that do?
Increases blood pressure, and reduces energy since intracellular magnesium is required for all energy producing reactions that take place in the cell. But most importantly, magnesium is also necessary for the action of insulin. It is also necessary for the manufacture of insulin.

So then you raise your insulin, you lose magnesium, and the cells become even more insulin resistant. Blood vessels constrict, glucose and insulin can't get to the tissues, which makes them more insulin resistant, so the insulin levels go up and you lose more magnesium. This is the vicious cycle that goes on from before you were born.

Insulin sensitivity is going to start being determined from the moment the sperm combines with the egg. If your mother, while you were in the womb was eating a high carbohydrate diet, which is turning into sugar, we have been able to show that the fetus in animals becomes more insulin resistant.

Worse yet, they are able to use sophisticated measurements, and if that fetus happens to be a female, they find that the eggs of that fetus are more insulin resistant. Does that mean it is genetic? No, you can be born with something and it doesn't mean that it is genetic. Diabetes is not a genetic disease as such. You can have a genetic predisposition. But it should be an extremely rare disease.

What else does insulin do?
We mentioned high blood pressure, if your magnesium levels go down you get high blood pressure. We mentioned that the blood vessels constrict and you get high blood pressure.
Insulin also causes the retention of sodium, which causes the retention of fluid, which causes high blood pressure and fluid retention: congestive heart failure.

One of the strongest stimulants of the sympathetic nervous system is high levels of insulin.

What does all of this do to the heart? Not very good things.
There was a study done a couple of years ago, a good, down to earth nicely conducted study that showed that heart attacks are two to three times more likely to happen after a high carbohydrate meal. They said specifically NOT after a high fat meal.
Why is that?
Because the immediate effects of raising your blood sugar from a high carbohydrate meal is to raise insulin and that immediately triggers the sympathetic nervous system which will cause arterial spasm, constriction of the arteries. If you take anybody prone to a heart attack and that is when they are going to get it.
What else does insulin do?
Insulin mediates blood lipids. That patient who had a triglyceride of 2200, one of the easiest things we can do is lower triglyceride levels. It is so simple. There was just an article in J.A.M.A. an article and they were saying that the medical profession doesn't know how to reduce triglycerides dietarily, that drugs still need to be used.
It is so ridiculous because you will find that it is the easiest thing to do. They come tumbling down. There is almost a direct correlation between triglyceride levels and insulin levels. In some people more than others. The gentleman who had a triglyceride level of 2200 while on all the drugs only had an insulin level of 14.7.

That is only slightly elevated, but it doesn't take much in some people, all we had to do was get his insulin level down to 8 initially and then it went down to six and that got his triglycerides down to under 200.

The way you control blood lipids is by controlling insulin.

We won't go into a lot of detail, but we now know that LDL cholesterol comes in several fractions, and it is the small, dense LDL that plays the largest role in initiating plaque. It's the most oxidizable. It is the most able to actually fit through the small cracks in the endothelium. And that's the one that insulin actually raises the most. When I say insulin, I should say insulin resistance. It is insulin resistance that is causing this.

Cells become insulin resistant because they are trying to protect themselves from the toxic effects of high insulin. They down regulate their receptor activity and number of receptors so that they don't have to listen to that noxious stimuli all the time. It is like having this loud, disgusting rap music played and you want to turn the volume down.

You might think of insulin resistance as like sitting in a smelly room and pretty soon you don't smell it anymore because you get desensitized.

You can think about it, its not that you are not thinking about it anymore. But if you walk out of the room and come back, the smell is back. You can get resensitized is what that is telling you. It would be like you are starting to go deaf and your are telling others to speak up because you can't hear them, so if I was your pancreas, I would just start talking louder, and what does that do to your hearing?

You would become deafer. Most cases of deafness, especially in old age is due to excessive noise exposure. All the noise exposure your ears have been exposed to, well the hair cells that end up triggering your brain to allow you to hear eventually get killed. Sometimes it just takes a single firecracker.

This is the same thing with insulin resistance. What happens is that if your cells are exposed to insulin at all they get a little bit more resistant to it. So the pancreas just puts out more insulin. I saw a patient today, her blood sugar was 102 and her insulin was 90! She wasn't sure if she was fasting or not, but I've seen other patients where their blood sugar was under 100 and their fasting insulin has been over 90.

That is a fasting insulin. I'm not sure how many people are familiar with seeing fasting insulins. But if I drank all the glucose I could possibly drink my insulin would never go above probably 40. So she was extremely insulin resistant.

What was happening was she was controlling her blood sugar. Statistically she was not diabetic. She is not even impaired glucose tolerant. Her glucose is totally normal supposedly. But her cells aren't listening to insulin, she just has an exceptionally strong pancreas.

Her islet cells that produce insulin are extremely strong and are able to compensate for that insulin resistance by producing thirty times more insulin than what my fasting insulin is. And just by mass action her pancreas is yelling so loud that her cells are able to listen, but they are not going to listen forever. Her pancreas is not going to be able keep up that production forever.

Well the usual treatment once she becomes diabetic, which would be inevitable, once her production of insulin starts slowing down or her resistance goes up any more, than her blood sugar goes up and she becomes a diabetic. For many years, decades before that her insulin levels have been elevated.

They have been elevated for thirty years probably and have never been checked. That insulin resistance is associated with the hyperinsulinemia that produces all of the co-called chronic diseases of aging or at least contributes to them. As far as we know in many venues of science, it is the main cause of aging in virtually all life.

Insulin is that important.

So controlling insulin sensitivity is extremely important.

How else does insulin affect cardiovascular disease?

We've only just touched upon it. Insulin is a so-called mytogenic hormone. It stimulates cell proliferation. It stimulates cells to divide. If all of the cells were to become resistant to insulin we wouldn't have that much of a problem. The problem is that all of the cells don't become resistant.

Some cells are incapable of becoming very resistant. The liver becomes resistant first, then the muscle tissue, then the fat. When the liver becomes resistant, what is the effect of insulin on the liver, it is to suppress the production of sugar.

The sugar floating around in your body at any one time is the result of two things, the sugar that you have eaten and how much sugar your liver has made. When you wake up in the morning it is more of a reflection of how much sugar your liver has made. If your liver is listening to insulin properly it won't make much sugar in the middle of the night. If your liver is resistant, those brakes are lifted and your liver starts making a bunch of sugar so you wake up with a bunch of sugar.

The next tissue to become resistant is the muscle tissue. What is the action of insulin in muscles? It allows your muscles to burn sugar for one thing. So if your muscles become resistant to insulin it can't burn that sugar that was just manufactured by the liver. So the liver is producing too much, the muscles can't burn it, and this raises your blood sugar.

Well the fat cells become resistant, but not for a while. It is only after a while that they become resistant. It takes them longer.

Liver first, muscle second, and then your fat cells.

So for a while your fat cells retain their sensitivity. What is the action of insulin on your fat cells? To store that fat. It takes sugar and it stores it as fat. So until your fat cells become resistant you get fat, and that is what you see. As people become more and more insulin resistant, they get fat and their weight goes up.

But eventually they plateau. They might plateau at three hundred pounds, two hundred and twenty pounds, one hundred and fifty pounds, but they will eventually plateau as the fat cells protect themselves and become insulin resistant.

As all these major tissues, this massive body becomes resistant, your liver, muscles and fat, your pancreas is putting out more insulin to compensate, so you are hyperinsulinemic and you've got insulin floating around all the time, 90 units, more.

But there are certain tissues that aren't becoming resistant such as your endothelium, the lining of the arteries do not become resistant very readily. So all that insulin is effecting the lining of your arteries.

If you drip insulin into the artery of a dog, there was a Dr. Cruz who did this in the early 70's by accident, he was doing a diabetic experiment and found out that the femoral artery that the insulin was being dripped into was almost totally occluded with plaque after about three months.

The contra lateral side was totally clear, just contact of insulin in the artery caused it to fill up with plaque. That has been known since the 70's, it has been repeated in chickens, in dogs, it is really a well-known fact. Insulin floating around in the blood causes a plaque build up. They didn't know why, but we know that insulin causes endothelial proliferation, that's the first step, it causes a tumor, an endothelial tumor.

Insulin causes the blood to clot too readily.
Insulin causes the conversion of macrophages into foam cells, which are the cells that accumulate the fatty deposits. Every step of the way, insulin's got its fingers in it and is causing cardiovascular disease. It fills it with plaque, it constricts the arteries, it stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, it increases platelet adhesiveness and coaguability of the blood.
Any known cause of cardiovascular disease insulin is a part of. It influences nitric oxide synthase. You produce less nitric oxide in the endothelium. We know that helps mediate vasodilatation and constriction, i.e. angina.

I mentioned that insulin increases cellular proliferation, what does that do to cancer? It increases it. And there are some pretty strong studies that show that one of the strongest correlations to breast and colon cancer are with levels of insulin.

Hyperinsulinemia causes the excretion of magnesium in the urine. What other big mineral does it cause the excretion of? Calcium.

What is the cause of osteoporosis?
There are two major causes, one is a high carbohydrate diet which causes hyperinsulinemia. People walking around with hyperinsulinemia can take all the calcium they want by mouth and it's all going to go out in their urine.
Insulin is one of the first hormones that any organism ever developed, and as I mentioned in genetics, things are built upon what was there before. So all the other hormones we have in our body were actually built upon insulin. In other words, insulin controls growth hormone.

How does growth hormone work?
The pituitary produces growth hormone, and then it goes to the liver and the liver produces what are called IgF 1 thru 4, there are probably more. What does IgF stand for? Insulin-like growth factor. They are the active ingredients. Growth hormone has some small effects on its own, but the major growth factors are the IgF's that then circulate throughout the body.
Why are they called IgF's or insulin like growth factors? Because they have an almost identical molecular structure to insulin. When I said that insulin promotes cellular proliferation, it is because it cross reacts with IgF receptors. So somewhere in the evolutionary tree, IgF's diverged from insulin. Insulin can work very well all by itself, it doesn't need growth hormone. Growth hormone can't do anything without insulin.

Thyroid-how does thyroid work?
The thyroid produces mostly T4. T4 goes to the liver and is converted to T3, mostly there, other tissues too, but mostly in the liver. We are getting the idea that insulin controls a lot of what goes on in the liver, and the liver is the primary organ that becomes insulin resistant.
When the liver can no longer listen to insulin, you can't convert T4 to T3 very well. Usually in people who are hyperinsulinemic with a thyroid hormone that comes back totally normal, it is important to measure their T3. Their free T3 will just as often as not be low. Get their insulin down and it comes back up.

Sex hormones, estrogen, progesterone, and testosterone, does insulin help control them? Absolutely, in various ways. Insulin helps control the manufacture of cholesterol and where do all the sex hormones come from? All the stearic hormones are originally derived from cholesterol, so that's one way. Dr Nestler from the University of Virginia who has spent the last eight years doing multiple studies to show that DHEA levels are directly correlated with insulin levels, or I should say insulin resistance.

The more insulin resistant you are, the lower your DHEA levels. He firmly believes this and has a lot of studies to back it up, that the decline in DHEA is strictly due to the increase in insulin resistance with age. If you reduce the insulin resistance, the DHEA rises.

And how are these sex hormones carried around the body? Something called sex hormone binding globulins. The more that is bound, the less free, active hormone you have. Sex hormone binding globulin is controlled by what? Insulin. There is not a hormone in the body that insulin doesn't affect, if not directly control.

Let's talk about osteoporosis.
You take a bunch of calcium. The medical profession just assumes that it has a homing device and it knows to go into your bone. What happens if you high levels of insulin and you take a bunch of calcium. Number one, most of it is just going to go out in your urine. You would be lucky if that were the case because that part which doesn't does not have the instructions to go to your bone because the anabolic hormones aren't working.
This is first of all because of insulin, then because of the IGF's from growth hormone, also testosterone and progesterone, they are all controlled by insulin and when they are insulin resistant they can't listen to any of the anabolic hormones. So your body doesn't know how to build tissue anymore, so some of the calcium may end up in your bone, but a good deal of it will end up everywhere else.

Metastatic calcifications, including in your arteries.

Diseases are a result of a lack of communication. There are certain things that your cells need to be healthy. If you learn nothing else today, you should know that everything is at the cellular and molecular level and we are nothing but a community of cells. We are a commune of cells. We are a metropolis of cells that have been given instructions to cooperate.

When you have a large number of cells, like we are, ten trillion or so, there must be proper communication so that there will be proper division of labor. You can take most any cell in your body and under the right conditions you can put it in a petrie dish and it can live all on it's own. They each have a life of their own.

You can manipulate the genetics of a cell, and we've now made a blood cell in to a nerve cell. Pretty soon we are going to be able to take any cell we want and make it into any other cell, because every cell in your body has the identical genetics, all derived from that egg and that sperm that came together. Why is one cell different from another? Because they are reading different parts of the same library.

You can influence which part of that genetic library that every cell reads by the environment of that cell. The environment of that cell is going to be very much dictated by, number one, hormones, and what you eat. Eating is just internalizing the external environment. That is what you have circulation for, to bring that external environment to each and every one of those cells that is inside of you.

I hope that by now you have gotten the idea that high insulin resistance is not very good for you. So now let's talk about what causes insulin resistance. We have been talking about high carbohydrate diets, let's start talking about that a little bit more.

This is what causes insulin resistance.

That is definitely what worsens it. Any time your cell is exposed to insulin it is going to become more insulin resistant. That is inevitable, we cannot stop that, but the rate we can control. An inevitable sign of aging is an increase in insulin resistance.

That rate is variable, if you can slow down that rate you can become a centenarian, and a healthy one. You can slow the rate of aging. Not just even the rate of disease, but the actual rate of aging itself can be modulated by insulin. We talked about some of the lower animals and there is some pretty good evidence that even in humans we still retain the capacity to control lifespan at least partially. We should be living to be 130, 140 years old routinely.

Let's talk about carbohydrates, what are they? We talk about simple and complex carbohydrates, that is totally irrelevant, it means absolutely nothing. Carbohydrates are fiber or non-fiber. Few things in life are as clear-cut as this. Fiber is good for you, and a non-fiber carb is bad for you. You can bank on that.

There is not a whole lot of middle ground. If you have a carbohydrate that is not a fiber it is going to be turned into a sugar, whether it be glucose or not. It may be fructose and won't necessarily raise your blood glucose, fructose is worse for you then glucose, so if you just go by blood sugar, which is just glucose, it doesn't mean that you are not raising your blood fructose, or your blood galactose which is the other half of lactose.

All of those sugars are as bad or worse for you than glucose. You can't just go by so-called blood sugar which is just blood glucose, because we just don't measure blood fructose or blood galactose, but they are all bad for you. Why are they bad, well number one we know that it provokes insulin and every time you provoke insulin it exposes yourself to more insulin and just like walking in a smelly room it is going to become more resistant to insulin.

So every time you have a surge of sugar and you have a surge of insulin, you get more and more insulin resistant and all of the problems we've talked about.

What else is bad about sugar?
We know it increases insulin, but even by itself, sugar is bad for you. You can divide aging into basically two major categories, there is genetic causes of aging, we know that cells have a limited capacity to divide, normally we never get there, but the more rapidly you make cells divide, the more rapidly they age.
One of the effects of insulin is to stimulate cellular proliferation and division. So we know that it increases the rate of aging of a cell population just by that, that is another whole discussion. Let's go to the other half. Our cells accumulate damage with age we cannot help that.

When I say aging, we really are talking about something called senescence, or the damage associated with aging, but the common usage is the word aging. I cannot prevent you from being a day older tomorrow, that is aging, tomorrow you will be a day older than today, and that we cannot do anything about. When we talk about aging we normally think about the damage that is associated with that day.

We have accumulated more damage during that day, that is called senescence. What causes that damage? There is often an example of test tubes in a laboratory. You don't think of test tubes as aging, yet if you mark test tubes with a little red dot and counted the number of test tubes there were at the end of the year with a little red dot left, there would hardly be any, why, because they have encountered damage. They've broken, so even though there is not aging they do have immortality rates. Aging is an increase in the rate of mortality.

In humans, the rate of mortality doubles every eight years.
That is really how you gauge the rate of aging. We found in animal studies that the rate of aging can be largely controlled by insulin. But the damage that accumulates during that aging is caused by largely by sugar.
The two major causes of accumulated damage are oxygenation, and glycation. I'm not going to spend my time talking about oxidation. Most of you know all about that.

What is oxidation?
There are several definitions but we can use a very common one, whenever oxygen combines with something, it oxidizes. Oxygen is a very poisonous substance. Throughout most of the history of life on Earth there was no oxygen. Organisms had to develop very specific mechanisms of dealing with high levels of oxygen before there could ever be life with oxygen.
So we evolved very quickly, as plants arose and developed a very easy means of acquiring energy, they could just lay back and catch rays, and they dealt with that oxygen with the carbon dioxide by spitting it out, they didn't want it around. So the oxygen in the atmosphere increased. All the other organisms then had to cope with that toxic oxygen. Many perished if they didn't have ways of dealing with it.

One of the earliest ways of dealing with all that oxygen was for the cells to huddle together, so that at least the interior cells wouldn't be exposed to as much. So, multi-celled organisms arose after oxygen did. Of course, with that came the need for cellular communication.

So let's talk about glycation.
Everyone knows that oxygen causes damage, but unfortunately, the press has not been as kind to publicize glycation. Glycation is the same as oxidation except substitute the word glucose. When you glycate something you combine it with glucose. Glucose combines with anything else really, it's a very sticky molecule.
Just take sugar on your fingers. It's very sticky. It sticks specifically to proteins. So the glycation of proteins is extremely important. If it sticks around a while it produces what are called advanced glycated end products.

That acronym is not an accident; it stands for A.G.E.'s. If you can turn over, or re-manufacture the protein that's good, and it increases the rate of protein turnover if you are lucky. Glycation damages the protein to the extent that white blood cells will come around and gobble it up and get rid of it, so then you have to produce more, putting more of a strain on your ability to repair and maintain your body.

That is the best alternative; the worst alternative is when those proteins get glycated that can't turn over very rapidly, like collagen, or like a protein that makes up nerve tissue. These proteins cannot be gotten rid of, so the protein accumulates, and the A.G.E.'s accumulate and they continue to damage.

That includes the collagen that makes up the matrix of your arteries. A.G.E.'s are so bad that we know that there are receptors for A.G.E.'s, hundreds of receptors for every macrophage. They are designed to try to get rid of those A.G.E.'s, but what happens when a macrophage combines with an A.G.E. product?

It sets up an inflammatory reaction. We know that cardiovascular is an inflammatory process, any type of inflammation. You eat a diet that promotes elevated glucose, and you produce increased glycated proteins and A.G.E.'s, you are increasing your rate of inflammation of any kind. You get down to the roots, including arthritis, headaches.

When you start putting people on a diet to remedy all of this, my practice is largely diabetes, so my patients are more concerned with their blood sugar and their heart, things like that, but it is so common to have them come back and tell me they used to have horrible headaches and now don't have them anymore, or that they had a horrible pain in their shoulder, or terrible Achilles tendonitis that they don't have any more.

The glycated proteins are making the person very pro-inflammatory.

So we age and at least partially we accumulate damage by oxidation, and one of the most important types of tissues that oxygenate is the fatty component, the lipid, especially the poly-unsaturated fatty acids, they turn rancid. And they glycate, and the term for glycation in the food industry is carmelization.

They use it all the time, that is how you make caramel. So the way we age is that we turn rancid and we carmelize. It's very true. And that is what gets most of us. If that doesn't get us, then the genetic causes of aging will, because every cell in your body has genetic programs to commit suicide. There are various theories for this, one is that if they didn't, virtually every cell in your body would eventually turn cancerous.

Whether those so-called applopatic genes developed as a means to prevent cancer or not is open to speculation but it is a good theory. We know that all cancer cells have turned off the mechanisms for applotosis, which is the medical term for chemical suicide. So we know that it plays a role.

Let's get to diet.
Diet really becomes pretty simple. Carbohydrates we started talking about. You've got fiber and non-fiber and that's real clear-cut. Fiber is good, non-fiber is bad. Fibrous carbs, like vegetables and broccoli, those are great. What is a potato? A potato is a big lump of sugar. That's all it is. You chew a potato, what are you swallowing? Glucose. You may not remember, but you learned that in eighth grade, but the medical profession still hasn't learned that.
What is the major salivary enzyme?

Amylase. What is amylase used for? To break down amylose which is just a tree of glucose molecules. What is a slice of bread? A slice of sugar. Does it have anything else good about it? Virtually no. Somebody emailed me who had decided to do a little research. And there are fifty-some essential nutrients to the human body.

You know you need to breathe oxygen. It gives us life and it kills us. Same with glucose. Certain tissues require some glucose. We wouldn't be here if there were no glucose, it gives us life and it kills us. We know that we have essential amino acids and we have essential fatty acids. They are essential for life, we better take them in as building blocks or we die. So what he did is he took all the essential nutrients that are known to man and plugged it in to this computer data bank and he asked the computer what are the top ten foods that contain each nutrient that is required by the human body. Each of the fifty-three or fifty-four, depending on who you talk to, essential nutrients that there are were plugged in, and did you know that grains did not come up in the top ten on any one.

What is the minimum daily requirement for carbohydrates? ZERO!!
What is the food pyramid based on? A totally irrelevant nutrient.
Let's go beyond Carbohydrates.

Let's back up even further? Why do we eat? One reason is energy. That's half of the reason. It is very simple, there are two reasons why we eat, one is to gather energy. We need to obtain energy. The other essential reason (Not just for fun! Fun is a good one, but you won't have much fun if you eat too much) is to replace tissue, to gather up building blocks for maintenance and repair.

Those are the two essential reasons that we need to eat. We need the building blocks and we need fuel, not the least of which is to have energy to obtain those building blocks and then to have energy to fuel those chemical reactions to use those building blocks.

So what are the building blocks that are needed, proteins and fatty acids. Not much in the way if carbohydrates. You can get all the carbohydrates you need from proteins and fats. So the building blocks are covered by proteins and fats.

What about fuel?

That's the other reason we eat. There are two kinds of fuel that your body can use with minor exceptions, sugar and fat. We mentioned earlier that the body is going to store excess energy as fat. Why does the body store it as fat? Because that is the body's desired fuel. That is the fuel the body wants to burn and that will sustain you and allow you to live. The body can store only a little bit of sugar.

In an active day you would die if you had to rely one-hundred percent on sugar.

Why doesn't your body store more sugar if it is so needed? Sugar was never meant to be your primary energy source.

Sugar is meant to be your body's turbo charger.

Everybody right here, right now should be burning mostly, almost all fat with minor exceptions. Your brain will burn sugar, it doesn't have to, it can do very well, even better by burning by-products of fat metabolism called ketones. That is what it has to burn when you fast for any length of time. They have shown that if your brain was really good at burning ketones from fat that you can get enough sugar that your brain needs actually from fat; just eating one-hundred percent fat.

You can make a little bit of sugar out of the glycerol molecule of fat. Take two glycerol molecules and you have a molecule of glucose. Two triglycerides will give you a molecule of glucose. The brain can actually exist without a whole lot of sugar, contrary to popular belief. Glucose was meant to be fuel used if you had to, in an emergency situation, expend and extreme amount of energy, such as running from a saber tooth tiger.

It is a turbo charger, a very hot burning fuel, if you need fuel over and above what fat can provide you will dig into your glycogen and burn sugar. But your primary energy source as we are here right now should be almost all fat.

But what happens if you eat sugar.
Your body's main way of getting rid of it, because it is toxic, is to burn it. That which your body can't burn your body will get rid of by storing it as glycogen and when that gets filled up your body stores it as fat. If you eat sugar your body will burn it and you stop burning fat.
We talked about a lot of the effects of high insulin. We talked about insulin causing the formation of saturated fat from sugar. Another major effect of insulin on fat is it prevents you from burning it. What happens when you are insulin resistant and you have a bunch of insulin floating around all the time, you wake up in the morning with an insulin of 90.

How much fat are you going to be burning? Virtually none. What are you going to burn if not fat? Sugar coming from your muscle. So you have all this fat that you've accumulated over the years that your body is very adept at adding to. Every time you have any excess energy you are going to store it as fat, but if you don't eat, where you would otherwise be able to burn it, you cannot and you will still burn sugar because that is all your body is capable of burning anymore.

Where is it going to get the sugar?

Well you don't store much of it in the form of sugar so it will take it from your muscle. That's your body's major depot of sugar. You just eat up your muscle tissue. Any time you have excess you store it as fat and any time you are deficient you burn up your muscle.

Getting back to the macronutrients, fuel, fat is your best fuel by far and the fuel that your body wants to use. So there are two reasons to eat, you need to gather the building blocks for maintenance and repair, that's protein and fat, no carbohydrate needed, and you eat for fuel, without question, fat is your most efficient fuel and the fuel that your body desires the most.

So where do carbohydrates come in?

They don't. There is no essential need for carbohydrates. SO why are we all eating carbohydrates? To keep the rate of aging up, we don't want to pay social security to everyone.

I didn't say you can't have any carbs, I said fiber is good. Vegetables are great, I want you to eat vegetables. The practical aspect of it is that you are going to get carbs, but there is no essential need. The traditional Eskimo diet for most of the year subsists on almost no vegetables at all, but they get their vitamins from organ meats and things like eyeball which are a delicacy, or were.

So, you don't really need it, but sure, vegetables are good for you and you should eat them. They are part of the diet that I would recommend, and that is where you'll get your vitamin C. I recommend Vitamin C supplements, I don't have anything against taking supplements, I use a lot of them.

Fruit is a mixed blessing. You can divide food on a continuum. There are some foods that I really can't say anything good about since there is no reason really to recommend them. And the other end of the spectrum are foods that are totally essential, like omega 3 fatty acids for instance which most people are very deficient in, and even those have a detriment because they are highly oxidizable, so you had better have the antioxidant capacity. So if you are going to supplement with cod liver oil you should supplement with Vitamin E too or it will actually do you more harm than good.

But most foods fall in the middle somewhere. Things like strawberries, you are going to get something bad with strawberries, you are going to get a lot of sugar with strawberries, but you are also going to get a food that is also the second or third highest in antioxidant potential of any food known, the first being garlic the second either being strawberries or blueberries. So, there is something good to be had from it. So I will let some patients put some strawberries in let's say a protein smoothie in the morning. But if they are a hard core diabetic, strawberries are out.

It doesn't take much, if you have a type I diabetic who is not producing any insulin they can tell you what foods do to their blood sugar. It doesn't take much. What is very surprising to these people once they really measure is what little carbohydrate it takes to cause your blood sugar to skyrocket.

One saltine cracker will take the blood sugar to go over 100 and in many people it will cause the blood sugar to go to 150 for a variety of reasons, not just the sugar in it.

When you are eating a high carbohydrate diet, when you are born, your mother, everbody is telling you to eat a bowl of Cheerios for breakfast. You eat that bowl of cheerios and that turns to sugar, and your sugar goes up very rapidly and that causes a big rush of insulin and your body all of a sudden senses a huge amount of sugar being delivered to it at once, of which it was never used to, in an evolutionary sense.

We only have one hormone that lowers sugar, and that's insulin. Its primary use was never to lower sugar. We've got a bunch of hormones that raise sugar, cortisone being one and growth hormone another, and epinephrine, and glucagon.

Our primary evolutionary problem was to raise blood sugar to give your brain enough and your nerves enough and primarily red blood cells, which require glucose. So from an evolutionary sense if something is important we have redundant mechanisms. The fact that we only have one hormone that lowers sugar tells us that it was never something important in the past.

So you get this rush of sugar and your body panics, your pancreas panics and it stores, when it is healthy, insulin in these granules, ready to be released. It lets these granules out and it pours out a bunch of insulin to deal with this onslaught of sugar and what does that do?

Well the pancreas generally overcompensates, and it causes your sugar to go down, and just as I mentioned, you have got a bunch of hormones then to raise your blood sugar, they are then released, including cortisone. The biggest stress on your body is eating a big glucose load.

Then Epinephrine is released too, so it makes your nervous and it also stimulates your brain to crave carbohydrates, to seek out some sugar, my sugar is low. So you are craving carbohydrates, so you eat another bowl of cheerios, or a big piece of fruit, you eat something else so that after your sugar goes low, and with the hormone release, and with the sugar cravings and carbohydrate craving your sugars go way up again which causes your pancreas to release more insulin and then it goes way down.

Now you are in to this sinusoidal wave of blood sugar, which causes insulin resistance. Your body can't stand that for very long. So you are constantly putting out cortisone.

We can talk about insulin resistance.
We hear a lot about insulin resistance, but stop and think a little bit, do you think our cells only become resistant to insulin? The more hormones your cells are exposed to, the more resistant they will become to almost any hormone. Certain cells more than others, so there is a discrepancy. The problem with hormone resistance is that there is a dichotomy of resistance, that all the cells don't become resistant at the same time.
And different hormones affect different cells, and the rate of hormone is different among different cells and this causes lots of problems with the feedback mechanisms. We know that one of the major areas of the body that becomes resistant to many feedback loops is the hypothalamus. The various interrelationships there I really don't have time to go in to here.

But hypothalamic resistance to feedback signals plays a very important role in aging and insulin resistance because the hypothalamus has receptors for insulin too. I mentioned that insulin stimulates sympathetic nervous system, it does so through the hypothalamus, which is the center of it all.

The receptors self-regulate.

If you want to know if insulin sensitivity can be restored to its original state, well, perhaps not to its original state, but you can restore it to the state of about a ten year old.

One of my first experiences with this, I had a patient who literally had sugars over 300. He was taking 200+ units of insulin, he was a bad cardiovascular patient, and it only made sense to me that you don't want to feed these people carbohydrates, so I put him on a low carbohydrate diet.

He was an exceptional case, after a month to six weeks he was totally off of insulin. He had been on 200 some units of insulin for twenty-five years. He was so insulin resistant, one thing good about it is that when you lower that insulin, that insulin is having such little effect on him that you can massively lower the insulin and its not going to have much of an effect on his blood sugar either. 200 units of insulin is not going to lower your sugar any more that 300 mg/deciliter.

You know that the insulin is not doing much. So we could rapidly take him off the insulin and he was actually cured of his diabetes in a matter of weeks. So he became sensitive enough, he was still producing a lot of insulin on his own, then we were able to measure his own insulin and it was still elevated, and then it took a long time, maybe six months or longer to bring that insulin down.

It will probably never get to the point of the sensitivity of a ten year old, but yes, your number of insulin receptors increases, and the activity of the receptors, the chemical reactions that occur beyond the receptor occur more efficiently.

You can increase sensitivity by diet, that is one of the major reasons you want to take Omega 3 oils. We think of circulation as that which flows through arteries and veins, and that is not a minor part of our circulation, but it might not even be the major part. The major part of circulation is what goes in and out of the cell.

The cell membrane is a fluid mosaic. The major part of our circulation is determined by what goes in and out. It doesn't make any difference what gets to that cell if it can't get into the cell. We know that one of the major ways that you can affect cellular circulation is by modulating the kinds of fatty acids that you eat. So you can increase receptor sensitivity by increasing the fluidity of the cell membrane, which means increasing the omega 3 content, because most people are very deficient.

They say that you are what you eat and that mostly pertains to fat because the fatty acids that you eat are the ones that will generally get incorporated into the cell membrane. The cell membranes are going to be a reflection of your dietary fat and that will determine the fluidity of your cell membrane. You can actually make them over fluid.

If you eat too much and you incorporate too many omega 3 oils then they will become highly oxidizable (so you have to eat Vitamin E as well and monounsaturates as well) There was an interesting article pertaining to this where they had a breed of rat that was genetically susceptible to cancer.

What they did was they fed them a high omega 3 diet, plus iron, without any extra Vitamin E and they were able to almost shrink down the tumors to nothing, because tumors are rapidly dividing. This is like a form of chemotherapy, and the membranes that were being formed in these tumor cells were very high in omega three oils, the iron acted as a catalyst for that oxidation, and the cells were exploding from getting oxidized so rapidly. So omega 3 oils can be a double edged sword.

Most food is a double edged sword.
Like oxygen and glucose, they keep us alive and they kill us, eating is the biggest stress we put on our body and that is why in caloric restriction experiments you can extend life as long as you maintain nutrition. This is the only proven way of actually reducing the rate of aging, not just the mortality rate, but the actual rate of aging, because eating is a big stress.
It has actually been shown by quite a number of papers that resistance training for insulin resistance is better than aerobic training. There are a variety of other reasons too. Resistance training is referring to muscular exercises. If you just do a bicep curl, you immediately increase the insulin sensitivity of your bicep. Just by exercising, and what you are doing is you are increasing the blood flow to that muscle. That is one of the factors that determines insulin sensitivity is how much can get there. It has been shown conclusively that resistance training will increase insulin sensitivity.

Back to the macronutrients because that is real simple, you don't want very much in the way of non-fiber carbs, fiber carbs are great, you are going to get some non-fiber carbs. Even if you just eat broccoli you are going to get some non-fiber carbs. That is OK since at least for the most part you are getting something that is really pretty good for you. Protein is an essential nutrient.

You want to use it as a building block because your body requires protein to repair damage and replenish enzymes. All of the encoded instructions from your DNA are to encode for proteins. That is all the DNA encodes for. You need protein, but you want to use it as a building block, but I don't believe in going over and above the protein that you need to use for maintenance, repair and building blocks.

I don't think you should be using protein as a primary fuel source. Your body can use protein very well as a fuel source. It is good to lose weight while using it a s a fuel source because it is an inefficient fuel source. Protein is very thermogenic, it produces a lot of heat, which means that less of it is going into stored energy, more is being dissipated. Just like throwing a log into a fireplace.

Your primary fuel should be coming from fat.
So you can calculate the amount of protein a person requires, or at least estimate it by their activity level. The book Protein Power actually went very well in to this. You have to calculate how much protein is required by their activity level and their lean body mass. There is still some gray area as to how many grams per kilogram of lean body mass, depending on the activity that person requires.
Anywhere perhaps one to two grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass, maybe even a little bit higher if someone is really active.

You don't want to go under that for very long. I'd say that it is better to go over than to go under that amount for very long. But I especially don't want my diabetic patients, which means all of us, because in a very real sense we really all have diabetes, it is just a matter of degree, we all have a certain degree of insulin resistance.

If you can cure a diabetic of diabetes, you can do the same thing to a so-called non-diabetic person and still improve that person. I want to improve my insulin sensitivity just as much as I do my diabetics because insulin sensitivity is going to determine for the most part how long you are going to live and how healthy you are going to be. It determines the rate of aging more so than anything else we know right now.

What about supplements such as Chromium for example?
Chromium, it depends on whom you are dealing with, but are we talking about a diabetic patient, who is supposed to be the topic of this talk, yes, all my diabetics go on 1,000 mcg. of chromium, some a little bit more if they are really big people. Usually 500 mcg for a non-diabetic. It depends on their insulin levels.
I don't care so much what their sugar levels are, I care what their insulin levels are, which is a reflection of their insulin sensitivity. We are talking about hyperinsulinemia or non-hyper-insulinemia. Its insulin we should be concerned about.

I use a lot of supplements. What you really want to do, and my purpose mostly is to try to convert that person back into being an efficient burner of fat. We talked about when you are very insulin resistant and you are waking up in the morning with an insulin that is elevated, you cannot burn fat, you are burning sugar.

They don't know how to burn fat anymore and that is your best fuel.

One of the reasons that sugar goes up so high is because that is what your cell is needing to burn, but if it is so insulin resistant it requires a blood sugar of 300 so that just by mass action some can get in to the cell and be used as fuel. If you eliminate that need to burn sugar, you don't need such high levels of sugar even if you are insulin resistant.

So you want to increase the ability of the cells in the body to burn fat.

You want to make that glucose burner into a fat burner. You want to make a gasoline burning car into a diesel burning car. Did anyone ever look at the molecular structure of diesel fuel in your spare time? It looks almost identical to a fatty acid. There is a company right now that can tell you how to alter vegetable oil to use in your Mercedes. It's just a matter of thinning it out a little bit. It is a very efficient fuel.

You can look at other variables that will give you some idea too such as triglycerides. If they are very sensitive to high levels of insulin, they come in with insulin levels of 14 and they have triglycerides of 1000, then you would treat them just as you would if they had an insulin level of 50. It gives you some idea of the effect of the hyperinsulinemia on the body.

You can use triglycerides as a gauge, which I often do. The objective is to try to get the insulin level just as low as you possibly can. There is no limit. They classify diabetes now as a fasting blood sugar of 126 or higher. A few months ago it might have been 140. It is just an arbitrary number, does that mean that someone with a blood sugar of 125 is non-diabetic and fine? If you have a blood sugar of 125 you are worse than if you had a blood sugar of 124. Same with insulin. If you have a fasting insulin of 10 you are worse off than if you had an insulin of 9. You want to get it just as low as you can.

With athletes, let's think about that. What is the effect of carbohydrate loading before an event. What happens if you eat a bowl of pasta before you have to run a marathon. What does that bowl of pasta do? It raises your insulin. What is the instruction of insulin to your body?

To store energy and not burn it. I see a fair amount of athletes and this is what I tell them, you want everybody, athletes especially, to be able to burn fat efficiently. So when they train, they are on a very low carbohydrate diet. The night before their event, they can stock up on sugar and load their glycogen if they would like.

They are not going to become insulin resistant in one day. Just enough to make sure, it has been shown that if you eat a big carbohydrate meal that you will increase your glycogen stores, that is true and that is what you want. But you don't want to train that way because if you do you won't be able to burn fat, you can only burn sugar, and if you are an athlete you want to be able to burn both.

Few people have problems burning sugar if they are an athlete, but they have lots of problems burning fat, so they hit the wall. And for a certain event like sprinting it is less important, truthfully, for their health it is very important to be able to burn fat, but a sprinter will go right into burning sugar. If you are a 50 yard dash man, whether you can burn fat or not is not going to make a huge difference in your final performance.

Beyond your athletic years if you don't want to become a diabetic, and if you don't want to die of heart disease and if you don't want to age quickly…It is certainly not going to do you any harm to be able to burn fat efficiently in addition to sugar.

Vanadyl Sulfate is an insulin mimic, so that it can basically do what insulin does by a different mechanism. If it went through the same insulin receptors, then it wouldn't offer any benefit, but it doesn't, it actually has been shown to go through a different mechanism to lower blood sugar, so it spares insulin and then it can help improve insulin sensitivity. On someone who I am trying to really get their insulin down I go 25mg 3X/day temporarily.

I put people on glutamine powder. Glutamine can act really as a brain fuel, so it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings while they are in that transition period. I like to give it to them at night and I tell them to use it whenever they feel they are craving carbohydrates. They can put several grams into a little water and drink it and it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings between meals.

It is a high protein diet that will increase an acid load in the body, but not necessarily a high fat diet. Vegetables and greens are alkalinizing, so if you are eating a lot of vegetables along with your protein it equalizes the acidifying effect of the protein. I don't recommend a high protein diet. I recommend an adequate protein diet.

I think you should be using fat as your primary energy source, and fat is kind of neutral when it comes to acidifying or alkalinizing. In general, over 50% of the calories should come from fat, but not from saturated fat. When we get to fat, the carbohydrates are clear cut, no scientist out there is really going to dispute what I've said about carbohydrates.

There is the science behind it. You can't dispute it. There is a little bit of a dispute as to how much protein a person requires. When you get to fat, there is a big grey area within science as to which fat a person requires. We just have one name for fat, we call it fat or oil. Eskimos have dozens of names for snow and east Indians have dozens of names for curry. We should have dozens of names for fat because they do many different things. And how much of which fat to take is still open to a lot of investigation and controversy.

My take on fat is that if I am treating a patient who is generally hyperinsulinemic or overweight, I want them on a low saturated fat diet. Because most of the fat they are storing is saturated fat. When their insulin goes down and they are able to start releasing triglycerides to burn as fat, what they are going to be releasing mostly is saturated fat. So you don't want to take anymore orally. There is a ration of fatty acids that is desirable, if you took them from the moment you were born, but we don't, we are dealing with an imbalance here that we are trying to correct as rapidly as we can.

You have plenty of saturated fat. Most of us here have enough saturated fat to last the rest of our life. Truthfully. Your cell membranes require a balance of saturated and poly-unsaturated fat, and it is that balance that determines the fluidity. As I mentioned, your cells can become over-fluid if they don't have any saturated fat.

Saturated fat is a hard fat. We can get the fats from foods to come mostly from nuts. Nuts are a great food because it is mostly mono-unsaturated. Your primary energy source ideally would come mostly from mono-unsaturated fat. It's a good compromise. It is not an essential fat, but it is a more fluid fat. Your body can utilize it very well as an energy source.

Animal proteins are fine and are good for you, but not the ones that are fed grains.

Grainfed animals are going to make saturated fat out of the grains. Saturated fat in nature occurs to a very tiny degree. Not in the wild there is very little saturated fat out there. If you talk about the Paleolithic diet, we didn't eat a saturated fat diet. Saturated fat diets are new to mankind. We manufactured a saturated fat diet by feeding animals grains. You can consider saturated fat to be second generation carbohydrates. We eat the saturated fats that other animals produce from carbohydrates.

Zone was a good diet compared to the American diet it was unusual. Is it an optimal diet? No. Is it optimal for what is known today about nutrition, it is not. He is stuck in this mold he can't get out of but now he is trying to get out of it through the back door. Initially the author spoke about how it made no difference if you got your carbohydrate from candy or vegetables.

The Volkswagen was a good car, but eventually they had to change it to keep up with modern technology. What he is doing now is changing his recipes so that the 40% carbohydrates are coming primarily from vegetables, and the carbohydrates are going way down because he knows that if he doesn't it's not as good a diet.

I would go 20% of calories from carbs. Depending on the size of the person, 25 to 30% of calories from protein, and 60-65% from fat. You can get non-grain fed beef.

Insulin is not the only cause of disease.
There are other considerations such as iron. We know that high iron levels are bad for you. If a person's ferritin is high, red meat is out for a while, till we get their iron down. SO there are other things involved about if we are going to allow a person to eat red meat or not.
There is a great deal of difference between a non-grain fed cow and a grain fed cow.

Non-grain fed will have only 10% or less saturated fat. Grain fed can have over 50%.

There is a big difference. A non-grain fed cow will actually be high in Omega 3 oils. Plants have a pretty high percentage of Omega 3, and if you accumulate it by eating it all day, every day for most of your life, your fat gets a pretty high proportion of Omega 3. I would try for 50% oleic fat, and the others would depend on the individual, but about 25% of the other two.

In a fat diabetic I would probably go down on the saturated fat and go 60% oleic. I would go 1 to 1 on the omega 6 to 3, that would be therapeutic. The maintenance ratio would be about 2.5 to 1 omega 6 to 3. Arachadonic acid, DHA, to EFA. Therapeutic, I would go lesser on the saturated fats. I would try to do most of this through diet. There are some practicalities involved. I would ask the person if they like fish and if they practically puke in front of me they are going on a tablespoon of cod liver oil, the best brand is made by Carlson which doesn't taste fishy at all.

There are probably some others too that are okay. Most people end up going on a supplement of Omega 3 oils because most of them are not going to eat enough fish to get it, which would be about four days a week, and it can't be overcooked etc., it is a little hard to get that much entirely from diet.

I like sardines if they will eat them. Sardines are a very good therapeutic food. They are baby fish so they haven't had time to accumulate a bunch of metal. They are smoked so they are not cooked and the oil is not spoiled in them. You have to eat the whole thing. Not the boneless and skinless. You need to eat all the organs and they are high in vitamins and magnesium.

DNA glycates.

So if people are worried about chromosomal damage from chromium, what they should really be worried about instead is high blood sugar. DNA repair enzymes glycate as well. Insulin is by far your biggest poison. They disproved that study that was against chromium many times. They showed that it only happens if you put cells in a petrie dish with chromium but in vivo studies prove otherwise. The lowering of insulin is going to be better than any possible detriment of any of the therapies you are using. Insulin is associated with cancer, everything.

Insulin should be tested on everybody repeatedly, and why it is not is only strictly because there hasn't been drugs till recently that could effect insulin, so there is no way to make money off of it. Fasting insulin is one way to look at it, not necessarily the best way. But it is the way that everybody could do it. Any family doctor can measure a fasting insulin. There are other ways to measure insulin sensitivity that are more complex that we do sometimes.

We use intravenous insulin and watch how rapidly their blood sugar crashes in a fasting state in 15 minutes and that assesses insulin sensitivity, then you give them dextrose to make sure they don't crash any further. There are other ways that are utilized to directly assess insulin sensitivity, but you can get a pretty good idea just by doing a fasting insulin.