| Eating a late dinner can result in either low or high blood sugar levels by morning, which will diminish your energy levels and make you dependent on the transient stimulating effects of caffeine and sugar. If you work the swing or the graveyard shift, avoid eating anything for two to three hours before going to sleep, although drinking water is perfectly fine.
Go to bed at a consistent time. We often push ourselves on workdays, staying up too late and waking up early. Come the weekend, we sleep late at least one day. In the process, we go from feeling sleep deprived to sleep saturated. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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 I am a heart specialist, yet I help a lot of patients with a disease that involves high blood sugar. Sounds strange, doesn't it?
Even more curious—many of my heart patients don't even know they have insulin resistance or diabetes before I diagnose them. Many of these patients come to me with a big belly, low levels of HDL (the "good" cholesterol), high triglycerides, and high blood pressure. We now call this scenario metabolic syndrome. |
Andreas Moritz
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 According to Jacobs, vitamin C has been shown, in the test tube, to damage cell proteins in the same manner that high blood sugar harms diabetics' body cells. Jacobs also pointed to the complexity of the "antioxidant defense system." When antioxidants interact with free radicals, he explained, they become "pro-oxidants" that must be detoxified by other antioxidants. "It's possible," Jacobs speculated, "that this detox process happens more slowly in diabetics—both women and men—and that under certain circumstances, the altered vitamin C molecules are able to harm body cells. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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 Foods we can eat that are rich in anti-inflammatories (and foods we can avoid that create chronic high blood sugar, an emerging risk factor for Alzheimer's). Aerobic exercise that gets oxygen into our brain. Antioxidants, like ginkgo and vitamin E, which protect neurons from damage. And other, less well known supplements we can take.
Like huperzine A, for example.
Huperzine A is a naturally occurring alkaloid that's found in the plant Huperzia serrata, also known as the Chinese club moss plant. For centuries, it's been used in Chinese medicine, mostly for things like fevers and inflammation. |
Andreas Moritz
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| An insulin surplus in the blood can seriously injure blood vessels and lead to similar defects as high blood sugar.
The thiazolidinediones are known for causing liver cancer. One of them, Rezulin, was designed to stimulate the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream by the peripheral cells and inhibit the normal secretion of glucose by the liver. After the drug killed well over 100 diabetic patients and crippled many more, it was pulled off the market. Neither the oral hypoglycemic agents nor insulin injections have any effects on increasing the uptake of glucose by the cells of the body. |
Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., C.N.S.
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| A Low-Carb Diet Is the Answer
High-carbohydrate diets stimulate high blood sugar, which in turn stimulates high levels of insulin, especially in susceptible people. High levels of insulin then stimulate the androgen receptors on the outside of the ovary, which may lead to more cysts as well as other problems related to too much androgen production. And high insulin levels are thought to increase the production of male hormones. Thus high levels of insulin are intimately connected to the typical PCOS symptoms of excess facial hair, thin hair on the head, and acne. |
| Because cinnamon can affect insulin and blood sugar, work with your health-care practitioner on adding this natural prescription to your routine if you currently take insulin or medications for high blood sugar.
Cranberryjuice for Urinary Tract Infection pk^ IT*
IF YOU'VE EVER HAD a urinary tract infection (UTI)—-and you'd know if you had—you know it's not particularly pleasant. Urinary tract infections are a serious health problem, and they affect millions of people. (They're actually the second most common type of infection in the body. |
| High blood sugar (greater than 125 mg/dl) almost doubled the risk for men and more than doubled the risk for women.
"It puzzles me why the simple concept 'sugar feeds cancer' can be so dramatically overlooked in a comprehensive cancer treatment plan," says my friend, Joe Mercola, D.O., author of Dr. Mercola's Total Health Plan.
Have I convinced you yet that controlling your blood sugar should be one of your top health priorities?
The Proof is in the Phytochemicals
Enter cinnamon. |
| The cells become "resistant" to the effects of insulin, and the person is left with both high blood sugar and high insulin, which often puts you on the fast track to diabetes and metabolic syndrome (itself a risk factor for heart disease; see page 192). It's not a great scenario, and it's increasingly common.
What chromium does is help insulin do its job better. In this way, it works much like certain "insulin-sensitizing" medications, such as glucophage. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| Today, of course, it's obvious why, after eating high-sugar, low- or noprotein meals, my mom would frequently swing from episodes of low blood sugar, where she'd get shaky, sweaty, or faint, to high blood sugar, where she'd have ketosis, with blurred vision, the shakes, difficulty concentrating, weakness, and a strong acetone breath.
Once I'd begun practicing as a cardiologist, I realized how inappropriate my mother's dietary recommendations had been. For years she had eaten poorly, yet she was simply following standard teachings of the day! |
| Simply put, high blood sugar and high insulin are a lethal combination. Later in SUGAR SHOCK! you'll learn more about advanced glycation end products, or AGEs, which—as my colleague Dr. Nicholas Perricone mentioned in the foreword—occur when insulin levels are consistently elevated as a result of consuming too much sugar. What you need to know now is that inflammation causes AGEs to be formed, which fatigues the vital mitochondria, your cells' source of energy. |
| For instance, I recieved e-mails and letters from upset people who had been originally diagnosed as having low blood sugar and then developed high blood sugar or diabetes a few years later. When they first received their hypoglycemia diagnosis, their doctors gave them no diet advice, no direction, and told them not to worry, because they just had borderline or mild hypoglycemia. So not being concerned, they continued with their poor diet and then a few later they developed diabetes." dr. |
| In particular, experts say, those with either low blood sugar (hypoglycemia) or high blood sugar (diabetes and prediabetes) are at risk for wreaking havoc on their relationships. (You'll learn more about both of these conditions in the next two chapters.)
In fact, Roberta Ruggiero, founder and president of the Hypoglycemia Support Foundation, Inc., whose website (www.hypoglycemia. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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 On the other hand, if it's chronic heartburn, high blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, or headaches, would not you want to solve the problem at the root cause?
In my practice, I do go under the hood, and work with patients to get to the bottom of their discomfort and find the most effective, lasting solution. Even though my specialty is psychiatry, my medical training, and license to practice, includes general medicine. Your brain is an organ, and most often, any condition affecting the brain, such as low blood sugar or poor circulation, also affects the rest of the body. |
Connie Bennett, C.H.H.C. with Stephen T. Sinatra, M.D.
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| Therefore, when Connie first approached me to come on board as medical consultant for her book, I jumped at the opportunity to get the truth out—that overconsuming sugar and your resulting high blood sugar levels can be highly toxic.
Furthermore, I'm eager to correct the misconception about the dangers of high cholesterol that's been so widely accepted by an unsuspecting public. |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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 For people with high blood sugar, there are now concentrates on the market without the fruit sugar in them, so everyone can get the benefits of drinking a lot of fruit juice. Remember that red fruits and their concentrates repair damage to your DNA. This is crucial because once you repair the damage to the DNA, the cell can regain much, if not all, of its previous functioning.
Exercise to Lower Cholesterol_
When you exercise aerobically for up to an hour a day, you are increasing the good HDL cholesterol and reducing the bad LDL cholesterol. |
Hyla Cass
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| He had prescribed metformin for her high blood sugar, a statin drug for her cholesterol, a diuretic for her high blood pressure, and a low-fat, low-calorie diet for her weight.
His prediction was accurate: she was on her way to becoming a fullblown diabetic. However, she was concerned about medication side effects, and asked me whether there was a better, more natural approach she could try before resorting to drugs. |
| If you're insulin resistant or diabetic, the state of high insulin and high blood sugar is creating even worse inflammation. This inflammation creates plaques in the twists and turns of the blood vessels that feed the muscular walls of the heart. This, in turn, drastically increases your risk of having a heart attack.
Where does that "bad" LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol come in? It's used as a sort of spackling and filling material within those plaques. Once there, it can contribute to the inflammatory process even more—especially if it has been attacked by free radicals (oxidized). |
| On the other hand, if it's chronic heartburn, high blood sugar, elevated cholesterol, or headaches, would not you want to solve the problem at the root cause?
In my practice, I do go under the hood, and work with patients to get to the bottom of their discomfort and find the most effective, lasting solution. Even though my specialty is psychiatry, my medical training, and license to practice, includes general medicine. Your brain is an organ, and most often, any condition affecting the brain, such as low blood sugar or poor circulation, also affects the rest of the body. |
Gabriel Cousens
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 They found that high blood sugar levels led to complications such as blindness, kidney failure, and heart disease. The key factors were being overweight and physically inactive, as well as having a diet that was not prudent. They concluded that all three were important and it was difficult to separate the risk of diet from the risk of being overweight and physically inactive. The study made crystal clear the importance of all three in creating Type-2 diabetes.84
Hyperinsulinemia, a metabolic time bomb, is associated with a whole series of chronic degenerative diseases. |
| Other good news is that the high blood sugar of diabetes and the increased risk for Alzheimer's is related to consumption of processed high-glycemic foods, not natural foods. Juicy new research suggests that antioxidants in fruit and vegetable juices may lower the risk of Alzheimer's disease. The Kame Project, a long-term study of more than 1,800 Japanese Americans conducted in Seattle, began in 1992-1994 to study participants who had no dementia, and averaged 71 years of age. The group was followed through 2001. |
Mark Sircus
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 Resnick has shown in the test tube that an increase in glucose in the fluid leads to the release and/ or displacement, of magnesium from the red blood cells, thus in the body hyperglycemia, high blood sugar, will cause a total body magnesium deficiency.50
A more recent study shows us that "Serum magnesium depletion is present and shows a strong relationship with foot ulcers in subjects with Type II diabetes and foot ulcers, a relationship not previously reported. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| The sorbitol is involved in a variety of ways, but the basic mechanism can be seen in cataracts, as an example. high blood sugar, either from an inability to metabolize the sugar or by eating too much sugar foods, results in the shunting of glucose to the sorbitol pathway, which is a secondary pathway. But since the lens of the eye is impermeable to sorbitol, the lack of the polyol dehydrogenase enzyme occurs from excess demand, and the sorbitol accumulates to high concentrations. It persists even if glucose levels go to normal. |
Mark Sircus
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| Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA)7 is a state of inadequate insulin levels resulting in high blood sugar and accumulation of organic acids and ketones in the blood. Increased blood acids (ketoacidosis) can be an acute complication of diabetes. It occurs when your muscle cells become so starved for energy that your body takes emergency measures and breaks down fat, a process that forms acids known as ketones.8
Hyperglycemia initially causes the movement of water out of cells, with subsequent intracellular dehydration, extracellular fluid expansion and hyponatremia (sodium loss). |
Gary Null and Amy McDonald
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| High blood sugar or low blood sugar manifests as depression. To get away from the chronic feeling of emptiness that frequently occurs with depression, people start to drink, which takes away the feelings and gives them the sense of being in a never-never land. The same is true of many drugs. People take drugs to get a euphoria they wouldn't have achieved on their own or that they may have had but couldn't sustain. Once you get used to that, the quick and easy route is just to stick a needle in your arm or some form of narcotic up your nose or drink it or ingest it. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| Pre-diabetes and diabetes mean high blood sugar, greatly increasing the chance of developing diabetes, obesity, heart disease, and, according to new research, Alzheimer's. This link could foretell a dramatic increase in Alzheimer's cases, unless dietary and lifestyle interventions are made now.138
Researchers are beginning to connect Alzheimer's with diabetes, obesity, and heart disease. It is such a strong connection that Alzheimer's is being referred to by scientists at Brown Medical School as Type-3 diabetes. |
Dr. Steven R. Gundry
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 His blood test results told the whole story: high blood sugar; very high insulin levels; a great total cholesterol of 133, but his HDL was very low and the dangerous type of LDL particles made up nearly half of all his cholesterol. He was shocked. His regular doctor had assured him that his cholesterol was perfect. I assured him that this was typical of my business, just as it is in his: "Rabbi," I said, "People look, but many do not see what is before them." He started Diet Evolution that day.
That was a year and a half ago. |
Gabriel Cousens
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| New research linking diabetes and Alzheimer's suggests that the high blood sugar of diabetes can lead to the formation of advanced glyca-tion end products, or AGEs.141 AGEs are sugar-derived substances that form in the body through an interaction between carbohydrates and proteins, lipids, or nucleic acids such as DNA. AGEs adversely affect the structure and function of proteins and the tissues that contain proteins.142 Recent studies have shown that both the formation and accumulation of AGEs are enhanced in diabetes.143 According to evidence provided by Edward R. |
Hyla Cass, M.D.
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| At this point, some glucose will be carried into the cells, and the high blood sugar levels will come down toward normal. This is why insulin resistance can continue for some time without causing any symptoms; the insulin response rises in intensity in order to maintain more or less normal blood sugar levels. Weight gain, caused by the body's natural response to high levels of insulin, may be the only sign for a long while. You may just think that you're taking in too many calories, not getting enough exercise, and just plain getting older. |
David Winston, RH(AHG), and Steven Maimes
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 Asian Ginseng
In animal studies, Asian ginseng (Panax ginseng) has been shown to prevent high blood sugar levels and neurological damage caused by lack of oxygen to the brain. It also has been shown to enhance exercise performance, learning, and memory. In one study on dogs (Kwon 2003), red ginseng significantly helped lower liver enzyme levels and regenerate liver tissue in animals that had hepatic surgery.
Astragalus
Astragalus (Astragalus membranaceus) is used for elderly or debilitated pets and can be taken regularly. |
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