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1. The Symptoms Surrounding Type 2 Diabetes
2. High Blood Pressure and Type 2 Diabetes
3.Are pre-packaged “Low Carb” foods really low carb?

The Symptoms Surrounding Type 2 Diabetes!

Diabetes is a condition caused by a diet that is too high in carbohydrates over a long period of time. Ultimately, the high carbohydrate diet brings about a condition known as insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance occurs as a result of the body continuously producing increased insulin in an attempt to maintain normal blood sugar levels. The body does this because the digestive process converts carbohydrates into sugar that goes directly into the blood stream.

Insulin resistance as it progresses results in many symptoms, one of which is high blood sugar levels called “diabetes.”

Not everyone experiences all of these symptoms and there is no specific sequence in which these symptoms appear. Some symptoms may appear before the blood sugar levels rise above normal and others may not show up until after the blood sugar levels have gone up.

“High insulin levels, not low insulin levels, are the problem originally associated with Type II diabetes, and high insulin levels are harder to detect because it is normal for insulin levels to rise under many circumstances. The slightly higher insulin level causes slow weight gain, small increases in blood pressure, slow changes in cholesterol numbers and the beginning of artery plaque formation.

“One by one, diagnoses of obesity, hypertension, cholesterol abnormalities, and heart disease are made without taking into account that these are all related to higher insulin levels and to each other. If the underlying physiology is not corrected, Type II diabetes will likely be the next diagnosis.

“The physical changes that occur when you have higher insulin levels are so subtle and cause damage over so many years that it takes approximately ten to thirty years for your blood sugar-levels to rise after the initial changes in insulin levels begin. By the time Type II diabetes is diagnosed, chronic high insulin levels have done a lot of metabolic damage – though it will seem to happen overnight.”

excerpted from The Schwartzbein Principle II, The Transition
by Diana Schwartzbein, M.D.

In an attempt to reduce the symptoms of insulin resistance or hold them in check, the symptoms are often treated by drugs, medications or insulin. Addressing symptoms does nothing to handle the underlying condition causing it, and so the condition continues to get worse, resulting often in more and more medications to keep the symptoms “under control.”

It can get so crazy that diabetics can wind up being prescribed for several drugs for high blood sugar, as well as another drug for high triglycerides, and another for high cholesterol, and another one for high blood pressure. Yet none of these drugs addresses or corrects the underlying cause of the diabetic condition, insulin resistance!

If you have not yet done so, you can turn your diabetic condition around and improve your overall health by getting onto a high protein/low carbohydrate diet, taking the correct nutritional supplements, and putting a little exercise into your life!

This is the first in a series of articles that will discuss in more detail each of the symptoms resulting from insulin resistance. Each article will give you a better understanding of what is causing these symptoms to occur and how to effectively reverse them.

For more information on diabetes go to:  http://www.mcvitamins.com/diabetes.htm

High Blood Pressure and Type 2 Diabetes!

High blood pressure commonly occurs to diabetics. In truth, diabetes and high blood sugar levels are really only two of the many symptoms caused by insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance is caused by a diet that is too high in carbohydrates over a long period of time. In an attempt to keep blood sugar levels in a normal range the body produces increased levels of insulin.

Increased insulin levels can cause blood pressure to increase in one or both of the following ways:

The arteries of the body are normally like soft flexible rubber tubes. Each time the heart pumps the arteries expand slightly to maintain the blood pressure within normal levels.

The arteries are lined with smooth muscle tissue. High insulin levels promote the strengthening and thickening of smooth muscle tissue. This results in the walls of the arteries becoming thicker and more rigid. Thus when the heart beats the arteries can no longer expand as well as before and the blood is now forced through a narrower tube resulting in higher blood pressure levels.

Another way blood pressure levels go up is that insulin resistance (high insulin levels) promotes the buildup of plaque within the arteries of the body (atherosclerosis). This has been observed in numerous clinical trials and long-term studies. As plaque builds up within the arteries, the opening for blood to flow through the arteries becomes narrower, the heart must beat harder, resulting in raised blood pressure levels.

In some cases people will develop high blood pressure before developing high blood sugar levels. In other cases high blood sugar levels show up first, which is followed by high blood pressure levels.

To lower high blood pressure levels, most doctors prescribe one or more pharmaceutical drugs. These drugs can often artificially lower the blood pressure levels, but they do not address or correct that which is causing the blood pressure to be high in the first place — the high insulin levels in the body. This results in people often having to take blood pressure medications for life and never being rid of the problem.

The reason that blood pressure medications are normally by prescription only is that they can be lethal if taken incorrectly.

This is clearly covered in the following excerpt by two professionals in the medical field:

“A type of therapy used by the majority of physicians in our country for the past forty years is the administration of drugs at sublethal levels. Drugs, of course, are alien chemicals that are not normally present in the cellular environment of the human body. They radically alter man’s biochemical-physiological internal environment and often occasion very severe side effects. Needless to say, drugs do not halt or prevent the disease process, especially degenerative disease; at best they offer symptomatic relief, while the fundamental, underlying disease process continues uninterrupted.”

excerpted from Brain Allergies
by William H. Philpott, M.D. & Dwight K. Kalita, Ph.D.

This is the second in a series of articles that is discussing in more detail each of the symptoms resulting from insulin resistance. Each article is designed to give you a better understanding of what is causing these symptoms to occur and how to effectively reverse them.

For more information about High Blood Pressure go to:  http://www.mcvitamins.com/high-blood-pressure.htm

Are pre-packaged “Low Carb” foods really low carb?

In the last couple of years there have been more and more prepackaged foods going onto shelves in supermarkets and health food shops that are advertised as having a “Low Carb” content.

Being a diabetic, it is important to maintain a low carb intake for several reasons: 1) carbs convert to sugar (glucose) in the digestive tract and raise blood sugar levels, 2) to compensate for the increase in sugar coming into the bloodstream, the body increases its production of insulin, which adds to the already existing problem of insulin resistance that diabetics must deal with, and 3) the excess sugar in the bloodstream that cannot be pushed into the cells of the body for food and energy get converted into triglycerides (fat) and get packed away in the fat cells causing weight gain.

To maintain a low carb diet the diabetic must have the correct information on the carb content of the food he or she is eating. Many new pre-packaged foods today have prominent wording the front of the packaging about it being “Low Carb” and stating that the product has only so many “net carbs” or “effective carbs” per serving.

Some of the “low carb” products that can be found on shelves are energy bars, noodles and even cookies. In inspecting several of these products, the energy bars had 2 “Effective Carbs” per serving, but when looking at the nutritional panel on the back it said Total Carbohydrates per serving was 24. The noodles advertised 5 “Net Carbs” per serving on the front, but the nutritional panel on the back stated Total Carbohydrates per serving was 43. The cookies advertised at only 2 “Net Carbs”, yet the nutritional panel stated Total Carbohydrates at 15.

How can this contradiction be and which information is correct?

Not counting carbs occurs two ways: The first is that some food manufacturers use sugar alcohols as ingredients to sweeten their products. The common sugar alcohols used are mannitol, sorbitol, xylitol, lactitol, isomalt, and maltitol amongst others.

Because these sugar alcohols are not technically sugar (even though they do contain carbs and do raise blood sugar levels — but more slowly than sugar) the food manufacturers do not count their carb content or label it as zero.

The second way that carbs are not counted is: Fiber is known to help lower blood sugar levels. Because of this, certain food manufacturers count the number of grams of fiber per serving and subtract that number from the number of carbohydrates. Of course this is not based on any scientific evidence that the fiber cancels the carbs, but these food manufacturers do it anyway.

By using the above two techniques the result is “Net Carbs” or “Effective Carbs” which are advertised on the front of the packaging as the carb contents per serving.

But if you look at the nutritional panel on the back of these products it lists the true Total Carbohydrates per serving, which is required by law to be shown there.

So, do not be fooled by misleading advertising gimmicks, judge the carb content by looking at the Total Carbohydrates in the nutritional panel on the back of the product. If you have been using these incorrectly labeled products, you now know the real carb content of the foods you are eating. This will make it easier to keep your blood sugar levels under control.