Girl Diagnosed Her Own Diabetes

Source: snshn29366 on YouTube, Dec. 1, 2010

“I Love to Snack!”- quote from Dr. Travis Stork

“Good! If you snack in a good way, you’ll build more healthy foods into your diet, keep your belly full, and avoid the binge eating that leads to huge calorie payloads. So if you love snacking, make a snack using three food groups, and make sure at least one of them is protein. Examples: cheese (dairy/protein) + pear (fruits/vegetables) + whole-grain crackers (complex carbs). Or banana (fruit) + peanut butter (legumes/protein) + a glass of milk (dairy/protein). Or turkey (protein) + tomato (vegetable) on a whole-wheat tortilla (complex carbs). Eating a three-part snack like this about two hours before mealtime will dramatically decrease the amount you eat later on. And by the way, plenty of your favorite foods will work quite well at snack time.

A study presented at the Experimental Biology conference in 2009 showed that people who ate 1 cup of microwave popcorn (whole-grain!) 30 minutes before lunch consumed 105 fewer calories at the meal than people who snacked on a cup of potato chips. Morever, the popcorn had 15 calories; the chips had 150. In another study, people who consumed dark chocolate, ate 15 percent fewer calories in their next meal. Plus, they showed less interest in fatty, salty and sugary foods. Just make sure it’s a specialty dark chocolate, with at least 65 percent cacao content. The goal here: Have a reasonably sized snack (2 tablespoons of peanut butter, a handful of celery sticks, 8-ounce glass of milk) to undercut your appetite, and keep you from a big indescretion at the vending machine, or at dinner. Use good foods to manage hunger and they’ll manage your waist size and health risks, too!

A great option: Two 200-calorie snacks every day – one mid-morning, the other mid-afternoon. Combine protein (nuts, yogurt, cheese) with whole grain (crackers, black bean chips, pita), and produce (fruit, celery, carrots).

You could lose: 7 pounds in four weeks!”

Source: Quote from the book “The Lean Belly Prescription” by Dr. Travis Stork (Rodale 2010, page 42) Dr. Stork is also the host of the TV show The Doctors.

Type 1 Diabetes, Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow

Diabetes, Type 1

YESTERDAY

• In the 1950s, about one in five people died within 20 years after a diagnosis of type 1 diabetes. One in three people died within 25 years of diagnosis.
• About one in four people developed kidney failure within 25 years of a type 1 diabetes diagnosis. Doctors could not detect early kidney disease and had no tools for slowing its progression to kidney failure. Survival after kidney failure was poor, with one of 10 patients dying each year.
• About 90 percent of people with type 1 diabetes developed diabetic retinopathy within 25 years of diagnosis. Blindness from diabetic retinopathy was responsible for about 12 percent of new cases of blindness between the ages of 45 and 74.
• Studies had not proven the value of laser surgery in reducing blindness.
• Major birth defects in the offspring of mothers with type 1 diabetes were three times higher than in the general population.
• Patients relied on injections of animal-derived insulin. The insulin pump would soon be introduced but would not become widely used for years.
• Studies had not yet shown the need for intensive glucose control to delay or prevent the debilitating eye, nerve, kidney, heart, and blood vessel complications of diabetes. Also, the importance of blood pressure control in preventing complications had not been established yet.
• Patients monitored their glucose levels with urine tests, which recognized high but not dangerously low glucose levels and reflected past, not current, glucose levels. More reliable methods for testing glucose levels in the blood had not been developed yet.
• Researchers had just discovered autoimmunity as the underlying cause of type 1 diabetes. However, they couldn’t assess an individual’s level of risk for developing type 1 diabetes, and they didn’t know enough to even consider ways to prevent type 1 diabetes.

TODAY

• The long-term survival of those with type 1 diabetes has dramatically improved in the last 30 years. For people born between 1975 and 1980, about 3.5 percent die within 20 years of diagnosis, and 7 percent die within 25 years of diagnosis. These death rates are much lower than those of patients born in the 1950s, but are still significantly increased compared to the general population.
• After 20 years of annual increases from 5 to 10 percent, rates for new kidney failure cases have leveled off. The most encouraging trend is in diabetes, where rates for new cases in whites under age 40 are the lowest in 20 years. Improved control of glucose and blood pressure and the use of specific antihypertensive drugs prevent or delay the progression of kidney disease to kidney failure.
• Annual eye exams are recommended because, with timely laser surgery and appropriate follow-up care, people with advanced diabetic retinopathy can reduce their risk of blindness by 90 percent.  A new study shows that vision loss that is often associated with laser therapy can be reduced when the drug ranibizumab is used in combination with laser.
• For expectant mothers with type 1 diabetes, tight control of glucose that begins before conception lowers the risk of birth defects, miscarriage, and newborn death to a range that is close to that of the general population.
• Patients use genetically engineered human insulin in a variety of formulations, e.g., rapid-acting, intermediate acting, and long-acting insulin, to control their blood glucose. Insulin pumps are widely used.
• A major clinical trial, the Diabetes Control and Complications Trial (DCCT; http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/control), showed that intensive glucose control dramatically delays or prevents the eye, nerve, and kidney complications of type 1 diabetes. A paradigm shift in the way type 1 diabetes is controlled was based on this finding. As researchers continued to follow study participants, they found that tight glucose control also reduces cardiovascular complications, such as heart attack and stroke.  This research has contributed to greatly improved health outcomes for patients.
• Patients can regularly monitor their blood glucose with precise, less painful methods, including a continuous glucose monitor (CGM).  Technology pairing a CGM with an insulin pump is also available and was found to help patients achieve better blood glucose control with fewer episodes of dangerously low blood glucose compared to standard insulin injection therapy.
• The widely used HbA1c test shows average blood glucose over the past 3 months. The HbA1c Standardization Program enabled the translation of tight blood glucose control into common practice.
• Scientists have identified a key gene region that contributes nearly half the increased risk of developing type 1 diabetes, and have also learned a great deal about the underlying biology of autoimmune diabetes. They have used this knowledge to develop accurate genetic and antibody tests to predict who is at high, moderate, and low risk for developing type 1 diabetes. This knowledge and recent advances in immunology have enabled researchers to design and conduct studies that seek to prevent type 1 diabetes and to preserve insulin production in newly diagnosed patients. This new understanding has prevented life-threatening complications in clinical trial participants at risk for developing diabetes.
• Scientists have identified nearly 50 genes or gene regions associated with type 1 diabetes. 
• Many people who received islet transplants for poorly controlled type 1 diabetes are free of the need for insulin administration a year later, and episodes of dangerously low blood glucose are greatly reduced for as long as 5 years after transplant. But, the function of transplanted islets is lost over time, and patients have side effects from immunosuppressive drugs.
• The SEARCH for Diabetes in Youth Study (www.searchfordiabetes.org/) provided the first national data on prevalence of diabetes in youth: 1 of every 523 youth had physician diagnosed diabetes in 2001 (this number included both type 1 and type 2 diabetes). SEARCH also found that about 15,000 youth are diagnosed with type 1 diabetes each year.

TOMORROW

• By finding the environmental factors (e.g., viruses, toxins, dietary factors) that trigger type 1 diabetes through the NIH’s TEDDY study (www.teddystudy.org), researchers will identify ways to safely prevent the autoimmune destruction of insulin-producing cells. 
• Approaches to prevent or slow progression of type 1 diabetes will be identified through research conducted by NIH’s Type 1 Diabetes TrialNet (www.diabetestrialnet.org).  TrialNet will also be poised to test new therapies emerging from research on environmental and genetic contributors to disease.    
• Research by the NIH’s Clinical Islet Transplantation Consortium (www.citisletstudy.org) will improve methods for islet transplantation, allowing more people to benefit from this treatment strategy. 
• Methods for safely imaging the insulin-producing beta cells will help scientists better understand the disease process and assess the benefits of treatments and preventions that are under study.
• Knowledge from the NIH’s Beta Cell Biology Consortium (www.betacell.org) about biological pathways regulating development and growth of insulin-producing beta cells will help scientists generate beta cells in the lab. This progress may relieve the shortage of beta cells for transplantation and lead to ways to promote beta cell regeneration in people with type 1 diabetes.
• New technologies, such as a closed loop system that automatically senses blood glucose and adjusts insulin dosage precisely, will become available—allowing patients to more easily control their blood glucose levels and develop fewer complications.
• As molecular pathways by which blood glucose causes cell injury are better understood, scientists will develop medicines to prevent and repair the damage.
• Tracking the number of children with diabetes through SEARCH will allow scientists to see how rates are changing over time and inform research and public health efforts to combat the disease.

For more information, contact The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK): NIDDKinquiries@nih.gov

Source:
The National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases www.niddk.nih.gov

Beginner Pilates Workout

Source:  Uploaded by ErinHuggins on May 28, 2008 to YouTube

*CLICK HERE FOR A FREE WEIGHT LOSS WORKBOOK* http://www.erinhuggins.com/
*CLICK HERE FOR FULL LENGTH PILATES VIDEOS*
http://www.erinhuggins.com/erinondemand/

Erin Huggins gives a basic pilates workout for beginners or anyone wanting to ease back into their pilates routine!
Get your pilates workout started. This is a great beginner pilates routine. Beginners can learn the basic moves before doing more advanced pilates moves. Pilates is so great for strengthening your core, your back, your arms, your legs and your butt! Pilates is an amazing workout for your whole body. You can lose weight with pilates and tone and strengthen. Pilates is also so amazing for exercising your mind. You have to be really focused on building strength while you are working out. Please practice this great beginner routine. Remember we get really good at what we practice a lot! The more you do pilates the better and easier pilates will be for you!
http://www.erinhuggins.com

Good luck rock star!

Relationship Between Diabetes and Acne

 

By Pauline Go

In present times, nearly 85 percent people all over the world carry on a daily battle with acne and many of these people get it because acne is linked with many other problems and diseases. Research has been conducted as to why people get acne but until now no cause has been found, but most dermatologist agree that acne is caused due to hormonal imbalance.

Many people with diabetes also suffer from acne and they would like to know whether there is a link between diabetes and acne. However, there seems to be no consensus in the scientific world and there is controversy surrounding the link between diabetes and acne.

If a person suffers from acne and the pustules show little or no sign of healing, or they tend to reappear over and over again, many people think that it may be a sign of diabetes. This is because the first sign of diabetes is poor wound healing ability of the body. So, if you are over 40 and suffer from acne, there is a high possibility that you have diabetes.

In fact, you might be surprised to hear that Type II diabetes has acne as one of the symptoms. Usually in this type of acne, the acne pustules are painful and do not heal easily. Unfortunately many people suffering from diabetes do not notice acne symptoms. They pay more attention to frequent thirst and urination. However, if you have all the three symptoms, it is best to get your blood glucose level checked.

If you are diagnosed with diabetes, you can be sure that the acne will disappear once your start receiving treatment for diabetes. It is important that you learn not your scratch or burst the acne or it will aggravate your condition further.

Even with this, the link between diabetes ad acne is not very clear. According to some scientists, the excess insulin in the body causes the male hormone levels to increase and this in turn causes the acne. However, other scientists do not agree with this theory.

About Author:
Pauline Go is an online leading expert in medical industry. She also offers top quality medical tips like:
Facts About The Mosquito, Male Baldness Organin

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Pauline_Go

Genetically Modified Food – Panacea or Poison

 

In the last thirty years global demand for food has doubled. In a race to feed the planet, scientists have discovered how to manipulate DNA, the blueprint of life, and produce what they claim are stronger, more disease-resistant crops.

However, fears that Genetically Modified Food may not be safe for humans or the environment has sparked violent protest. Are we participating in a dangerous global nutritional experiment?

This informative film helps the viewer decide if the production of genetically modified food is a panacea for world hunger or a global poison.

Source: UFOTVstudios on YouTube

Is Sugar Toxic ?

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April 13, 2011

Is Sugar Toxic?

By GARY TAUBES 

On May 26, 2009, Robert Lustig gave a lecture called “Sugar: The Bitter Truth,” which was posted on YouTube the following July. Since then, it has been viewed well over 800,000 times, gaining new viewers at a rate of about 50,000 per month, fairly remarkable numbers for a 90-minute discussion of the nuances of fructose biochemistry and human physiology.

Lustig is a specialist on pediatric hormone disorders and the leading expert in childhood obesity at the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine, which is one of the best medical schools in the country. He published his first paper on childhood obesity a dozen years ago, and he has been treating patients and doing research on the disorder ever since.

The viral success of his lecture, though, has little to do with Lustig’s impressive credentials and far more with the persuasive case he makes that sugar is a “toxin” or a “poison,” terms he uses together 13 times through the course of the lecture, in addition to the five references to sugar as merely “evil.” And by “sugar,” Lustig means not only the white granulated stuff that we put in coffee and sprinkle on cereal — technically known as sucrose — but also high-fructose corn syrup, which has already become without Lustig’s help what he calls “the most demonized additive known to man.”

It doesn’t hurt Lustig’s cause that he is a compelling public speaker. His critics argue that what makes him compelling is his practice of taking suggestive evidence and insisting that it’s incontrovertible. Lustig certainly doesn’t dabble in shades of gray. Sugar is not just an empty calorie, he says; its effect on us is much more insidious. “It’s not about the calories,” he says. “It has nothing to do with the calories. It’s a poison by itself.”

If Lustig is right, then our excessive consumption of sugar is the primary reason that the numbers of obese and diabetic Americans have skyrocketed in the past 30 years. But his argument implies more than that. If Lustig is right, it would mean that sugar is also the likely dietary cause of several other chronic ailments widely considered to be diseases of Western lifestyles — heart disease, hypertension and many common cancers among them.

The number of viewers Lustig has attracted suggests that people are paying attention to his argument. When I set out to interview public health authorities and researchers for this article, they would often initiate the interview with some variation of the comment “surely you’ve spoken to Robert Lustig,” not because Lustig has done any of the key research on sugar himself, which he hasn’t, but because he’s willing to insist publicly and unambiguously, when most researchers are not, that sugar is a toxic substance that people abuse. In Lustig’s view, sugar should be thought of, like cigarettes and alcohol, as something that’s killing us.

This brings us to the salient question: Can sugar possibly be as bad as Lustig says it is?

It’s one thing to suggest, as most nutritionists will, that a healthful diet includes more fruits and vegetables, and maybe less fat, red meat and salt, or less of everything. It’s entirely different to claim that one particularly cherished aspect of our diet might not just be an unhealthful indulgence but actually be toxic, that when you bake your children a birthday cake or give them lemonade on a hot summer day, you may be doing them more harm than good, despite all the love that goes with it. Suggesting that sugar might kill us is what zealots do. But Lustig, who has genuine expertise, has accumulated and synthesized a mass of evidence, which he finds compelling enough to convict sugar. His critics consider that evidence insufficient, but there’s no way to know who might be right, or what must be done to find out, without discussing it.

If I didn’t buy this argument myself, I wouldn’t be writing about it here. And I also have a disclaimer to acknowledge. I’ve spent much of the last decade doing journalistic research on diet and chronic disease — some of the more contrarian findings, on dietary fat, appeared in this magazine —– and I have come to conclusions similar to Lustig’s.

The history of the debate over the health effects of sugar has gone on far longer than you might imagine. It is littered with erroneous statements and conclusions because even the supposed authorities had no true understanding of what they were talking about. They didn’t know, quite literally, what they meant by the word “sugar” and therefore what the implications were.

So let’s start by clarifying a few issues, beginning with Lustig’s use of the word “sugar” to mean both sucrose — beet and cane sugar, whether white or brown — and high-fructose corn syrup. This is a critical point, particularly because high-fructose corn syrup has indeed become “the flashpoint for everybody’s distrust of processed foods,” says Marion Nestle, a New York University nutritionist and the author of “Food Politics.”

This development is recent and borders on humorous. In the early 1980s, high-fructose corn syrup replaced sugar in sodas and other products in part because refined sugar then had the reputation as a generally noxious nutrient. (“Villain in Disguise?” asked a headline in this paper in 1977, before answering in the affirmative.) High-fructose corn syrup was portrayed by the food industry as a healthful alternative, and that’s how the public perceived it. It was also cheaper than sugar, which didn’t hurt its commercial prospects. Now the tide is rolling the other way, and refined sugar is making a commercial comeback as the supposedly healthful alternative to this noxious corn-syrup stuff. “Industry after industry is replacing their product with sucrose and advertising it as such — ‘No High-Fructose Corn Syrup,’ ” Nestle notes.

But marketing aside, the two sweeteners are effectively identical in their biological effects. “High-fructose corn syrup, sugar — no difference,” is how Lustig put it in a lecture that I attended in San Francisco last December. “The point is they’re each bad — equally bad, equally poisonous.”

Refined sugar (that is, sucrose) is made up of a molecule of the carbohydrate glucose, bonded to a molecule of the carbohydrate fructose — a 50-50 mixture of the two. The fructose, which is almost twice as sweet as glucose, is what distinguishes sugar from other carbohydrate-rich foods like bread or potatoes that break down upon digestion to glucose alone. The more fructose in a substance, the sweeter it will be. High-fructose corn syrup, as it is most commonly consumed, is 55 percent fructose, and the remaining 45 percent is nearly all glucose. It was first marketed in the late 1970s and was created to be indistinguishable from refined sugar when used in soft drinks. Because each of these sugars ends up as glucose and fructose in our guts, our bodies react the same way to both, and the physiological effects are identical. In a 2010 review of the relevant science, Luc Tappy, a researcher at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland who is considered by biochemists who study fructose to be the world’s foremost authority on the subject, said there was “not the single hint” that H.F.C.S. was more deleterious than other sources of sugar.

The question, then, isn’t whether high-fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar; it’s what do they do to us, and how do they do it? The conventional wisdom has long been that the worst that can be said about sugars of any kind is that they cause tooth decay and represent “empty calories” that we eat in excess because they taste so good.

By this logic, sugar-sweetened beverages (or H.F.C.S.-sweetened beverages, as the Sugar Association prefers they are called) are bad for us not because there’s anything particularly toxic about the sugar they contain but just because people consume too many of them.

Those organizations that now advise us to cut down on our sugar consumption — the Department of Agriculture, for instance, in its recent Dietary Guidelines for Americans, or the American Heart Association in guidelines released in September 2009 (of which Lustig was a co-author) — do so for this reason. Refined sugar and H.F.C.S. don’t come with any protein, vitamins, minerals, antioxidants or fiber, and so they either displace other more nutritious elements of our diet or are eaten over and above what we need to sustain our weight, and this is why we get fatter.

Whether the empty-calories argument is true, it’s certainly convenient. It allows everyone to assign blame for obesity and, by extension, diabetes — two conditions so intimately linked that some authorities have taken to calling them “diabesity” — to overeating of all foods, or underexercising, because a calorie is a calorie. “This isn’t about demonizing any industry,” as Michelle Obama said about her Let’s Move program to combat the epidemic of childhood obesity. Instead it’s about getting us — or our children — to move more and eat less, reduce our portion sizes, cut back on snacks.

Lustig’s argument, however, is not about the consumption of empty calories — and biochemists have made the same case previously, though not so publicly. It is that sugar has unique characteristics, specifically in the way the human body metabolizes the fructose in it, that may make it singularly harmful, at least if consumed in sufficient quantities.

The phrase Lustig uses when he describes this concept is “isocaloric but not isometabolic.” This means we can eat 100 calories of glucose (from a potato or bread or other starch) or 100 calories of sugar (half glucose and half fructose), and they will be metabolized differently and have a different effect on the body. The calories are the same, but the metabolic consequences are quite different.

The fructose component of sugar and H.F.C.S. is metabolized primarily by the liver, while the glucose from sugar and starches is metabolized by every cell in the body. Consuming sugar (fructose and glucose) means more work for the liver than if you consumed the same number of calories of starch (glucose). And if you take that sugar in liquid form — soda or fruit juices — the fructose and glucose will hit the liver more quickly than if you consume them, say, in an apple (or several apples, to get what researchers would call the equivalent dose of sugar). The speed with which the liver has to do its work will also affect how it metabolizes the fructose and glucose.

In animals, or at least in laboratory rats and mice, it’s clear that if the fructose hits the liver in sufficient quantity and with sufficient speed, the liver will convert much of it to fat. This apparently induces a condition known as insulin resistance, which is now considered the fundamental problem in obesity, and the underlying defect in heart disease and in the type of diabetes, type 2, that is common to obese and overweight individuals. It might also be the underlying defect in many cancers.

If what happens in laboratory rodents also happens in humans, and if we are eating enough sugar to make it happen, then we are in trouble.

The last time an agency of the federal government looked into the question of sugar and health in any detail was in 2005, in a report by the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the National Academies. The authors of the report acknowledged that plenty of evidence suggested that sugar could increase the risk of heart disease and diabetes — even raising LDL cholesterol, known as the “bad cholesterol”—– but did not consider the research to be definitive. There was enough ambiguity, they concluded, that they couldn’t even set an upper limit on how much sugar constitutes too much. Referring back to the 2005 report, an Institute of Medicine report released last fall reiterated, “There is a lack of scientific agreement about the amount of sugars that can be consumed in a healthy diet.” This was the same conclusion that the Food and Drug Administration came to when it last assessed the sugar question, back in 1986. The F.D.A. report was perceived as an exoneration of sugar, and that perception influenced the treatment of sugar in the landmark reports on diet and health that came after.

The Sugar Association and the Corn Refiners Association have also portrayed the 1986 F.D.A. report as clearing sugar of nutritional crimes, but what it concluded was actually something else entirely. To be precise, the F.D.A. reviewers said that other than its contribution to calories, “no conclusive evidence on sugars demonstrates a hazard to the general public when sugars are consumed at the levels that are now current.” This is another way of saying that the evidence by no means refuted the kinds of claims that Lustig is making now and other researchers were making then, just that it wasn’t definitive or unambiguous.

What we have to keep in mind, says Walter Glinsmann, the F.D.A. administrator who was the primary author on the 1986 report and who now is an adviser to the Corn Refiners Association, is that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup might be toxic, as Lustig argues, but so might any substance if it’s consumed in ways or in quantities that are unnatural for humans. The question is always at what dose does a substance go from being harmless to harmful? How much do we have to consume before this happens?

When Glinsmann and his F.D.A. co-authors decided no conclusive evidence demonstrated harm at the levels of sugar then being consumed, they estimated those levels at 40 pounds per person per year beyond what we might get naturally in fruits and vegetables — 40 pounds per person per year of “added sugars” as nutritionists now call them. This is 200 calories per day of sugar, which is less than the amount in a can and a half of Coca-Cola or two cups of apple juice. If that’s indeed all we consume, most nutritionists today would be delighted, including Lustig.

But 40 pounds per year happened to be 35 pounds less than what Department of Agriculture analysts said we were consuming at the time — 75 pounds per person per year — and the U.S.D.A. estimates are typically considered to be the most reliable. By the early 2000s, according to the U.S.D.A., we had increased our consumption to more than 90 pounds per person per year.

That this increase happened to coincide with the current epidemics of obesity and diabetes is one reason that it’s tempting to blame sugars — sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup — for the problem. In 1980, roughly one in seven Americans was obese, and almost six million were diabetic, and the obesity rates, at least, hadn’t changed significantly in the 20 years previously. By the early 2000s, when sugar consumption peaked, one in every three Americans was obese, and 14 million were diabetic.

This correlation between sugar consumption and diabetes is what defense attorneys call circumstantial evidence. It’s more compelling than it otherwise might be, though, because the last time sugar consumption jumped markedly in this country, it was also associated with a diabetes epidemic.

In the early 20th century, many of the leading authorities on diabetes in North America and Europe (including Frederick Banting, who shared the 1923 Nobel Prize for the discovery of insulin) suspected that sugar causes diabetes based on the observation that the disease was rare in populations that didn’t consume refined sugar and widespread in those that did. In 1924, Haven Emerson, director of the institute of public health at Columbia University, reported that diabetes deaths in New York City had increased as much as 15-fold since the Civil War years, and that deaths increased as much as fourfold in some U.S. cities between 1900 and 1920 alone. This coincided, he noted, with an equally significant increase in sugar consumption — almost doubling from 1890 to the early 1920s — with the birth and subsequent growth of the candy and soft-drink industries.

Emerson’s argument was countered by Elliott Joslin, a leading authority on diabetes, and Joslin won out. But his argument was fundamentally flawed. Simply put, it went like this: The Japanese eat lots of rice, and Japanese diabetics are few and far between; rice is mostly carbohydrate, which suggests that sugar, also a carbohydrate, does not cause diabetes. But sugar and rice are not identical merely because they’re both carbohydrates. Joslin could not know at the time that the fructose content of sugar affects how we metabolize it.

Joslin was also unaware that the Japanese ate little sugar. In the early 1960s, the Japanese were eating as little sugar as Americans were a century earlier, maybe less, which means that the Japanese experience could have been used to support the idea that sugar causes diabetes. Still, with Joslin arguing in edition after edition of his seminal textbook that sugar played no role in diabetes, it eventually took on the aura of undisputed truth.

Until Lustig came along, the last time an academic forcefully put forward the sugar-as-toxin thesis was in the 1970s, when John Yudkin, a leading authority on nutrition in the United Kingdom, published a polemic on sugar called “Sweet and Dangerous.” Through the 1960s Yudkin did a series of experiments feeding sugar and starch to rodents, chickens, rabbits, pigs and college students. He found that the sugar invariably raised blood levels of triglycerides (a technical term for fat), which was then, as now, considered a risk factor for heart disease. Sugar also raised insulin levels in Yudkin’s experiments, which linked sugar directly to type 2 diabetes. Few in the medical community took Yudkin’s ideas seriously, largely because he was also arguing that dietary fat and saturated fat were harmless. This set Yudkin’s sugar hypothesis directly against the growing acceptance of the idea, prominent to this day, that dietary fat was the cause of heart disease, a notion championed by the University of Minnesota nutritionist Ancel Keys.

A common assumption at the time was that if one hypothesis was right, then the other was most likely wrong. Either fat caused heart disease by raising cholesterol, or sugar did by raising triglycerides. “The theory that diets high in sugar are an important cause of atherosclerosis and heart disease does not have wide support among experts in the field, who say that fats and cholesterol are the more likely culprits,” as Jane E. Brody wrote in The Times in 1977.

At the time, many of the key observations cited to argue that dietary fat caused heart disease actually support the sugar theory as well. During the Korean War, pathologists doing autopsies on American soldiers killed in battle noticed that many had significant plaques in their arteries, even those who were still teenagers, while the Koreans killed in battle did not. The atherosclerotic plaques in the Americans were attributed to the fact that they ate high-fat diets and the Koreans ate low-fat. But the Americans were also eating high-sugar diets, while the Koreans, like the Japanese, were not.

In 1970, Keys published the results of a landmark study in nutrition known as the Seven Countries Study. Its results were perceived by the medical community and the wider public as compelling evidence that saturated-fat consumption is the best dietary predictor of heart disease. But sugar consumption in the seven countries studied was almost equally predictive. So it was possible that Yudkin was right, and Keys was wrong, or that they could both be right. The evidence has always been able to go either way.

European clinicians tended to side with Yudkin; Americans with Keys. The situation wasn’t helped, as one of Yudkin’s colleagues later told me, by the fact that “there was quite a bit of loathing” between the two nutritionists themselves. In 1971, Keys published an article attacking Yudkin and describing his evidence against sugar as “flimsy indeed.” He treated Yudkin as a figure of scorn, and Yudkin never managed to shake the portrayal.

By the end of the 1970s, any scientist who studied the potentially deleterious effects of sugar in the diet, according to Sheldon Reiser, who did just that at the U.S.D.A.’s Carbohydrate Nutrition Laboratory in Beltsville, Md., and talked about it publicly, was endangering his reputation. “Yudkin was so discredited,” Reiser said to me. “He was ridiculed in a way. And anybody else who said something bad about sucrose, they’d say, ‘He’s just like Yudkin.’ ”

What has changed since then, other than Americans getting fatter and more diabetic? It wasn’t so much that researchers learned anything particularly new about the effects of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup in the human body. Rather the context of the science changed: physicians and medical authorities came to accept the idea that a condition known as metabolic syndrome is a major, if not the major, risk factor for heart disease and diabetes. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention now estimate that some 75 million Americans have metabolic syndrome. For those who have heart attacks, metabolic syndrome will very likely be the reason.

The first symptom doctors are told to look for in diagnosing metabolic syndrome is an expanding waistline. This means that if you’re overweight, there’s a good chance you have metabolic syndrome, and this is why you’re more likely to have a heart attack or become diabetic (or both) than someone who’s not. Although lean individuals, too, can have metabolic syndrome, and they are at greater risk of heart disease and diabetes than lean individuals without it.

Having metabolic syndrome is another way of saying that the cells in your body are actively ignoring the action of the hormone insulin — a condition known technically as being insulin-resistant. Because insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome still get remarkably little attention in the press (certainly compared with cholesterol), let me explain the basics.

You secrete insulin in response to the foods you eat — particularly the carbohydrates — to keep blood sugar in control after a meal. When your cells are resistant to insulin, your body (your pancreas, to be precise) responds to rising blood sugar by pumping out more and more insulin. Eventually the pancreas can no longer keep up with the demand or it gives in to what diabetologists call “pancreatic exhaustion.” Now your blood sugar will rise out of control, and you’ve got diabetes.

Not everyone with insulin resistance becomes diabetic; some continue to secrete enough insulin to overcome their cells’ resistance to the hormone. But having chronically elevated insulin levels has harmful effects of its own — heart disease, for one. A result is higher triglyceride levels and blood pressure, lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good cholesterol”), further worsening the insulin resistance — this is metabolic syndrome.

When physicians assess your risk of heart disease these days, they will take into consideration your LDL cholesterol (the bad kind), but also these symptoms of metabolic syndrome. The idea, according to Scott Grundy, a University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center nutritionist and the chairman of the panel that produced the last edition of the National Cholesterol Education Program guidelines, is that heart attacks 50 years ago might have been caused by high cholesterol — particularly high LDL cholesterol — but since then we’ve all gotten fatter and more diabetic, and now it’s metabolic syndrome that’s the more conspicuous problem.

This raises two obvious questions. The first is what sets off metabolic syndrome to begin with, which is another way of asking, What causes the initial insulin resistance? There are several hypotheses, but researchers who study the mechanisms of insulin resistance now think that a likely cause is the accumulation of fat in the liver. When studies have been done trying to answer this question in humans, says Varman Samuel, who studies insulin resistance at Yale School of Medicine, the correlation between liver fat and insulin resistance in patients, lean or obese, is “remarkably strong.” What it looks like, Samuel says, is that “when you deposit fat in the liver, that’s when you become insulin-resistant.”

That raises the other obvious question: What causes the liver to accumulate fat in humans? A common assumption is that simply getting fatter leads to a fatty liver, but this does not explain fatty liver in lean people. Some of it could be attributed to genetic predisposition. But harking back to Lustig, there’s also the very real possibility that it is caused by sugar.

As it happens, metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance are the reasons that many of the researchers today studying fructose became interested in the subject to begin with. If you want to cause insulin resistance in laboratory rats, says Gerald Reaven, the Stanford University diabetologist who did much of the pioneering work on the subject, feeding them diets that are mostly fructose is an easy way to do it. It’s a “very obvious, very dramatic” effect, Reaven says.

By the early 2000s, researchers studying fructose metabolism had established certain findings unambiguously and had well-established biochemical explanations for what was happening. Feed animals enough pure fructose or enough sugar, and their livers convert the fructose into fat — the saturated fatty acid, palmitate, to be precise, that supposedly gives us heart disease when we eat it, by raising LDL cholesterol. The fat accumulates in the liver, and insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome follow.

Michael Pagliassotti, a Colorado State University biochemist who did many of the relevant animal studies in the late 1990s, says these changes can happen in as little as a week if the animals are fed sugar or fructose in huge amounts — 60 or 70 percent of the calories in their diets. They can take several months if the animals are fed something closer to what humans (in America) actually consume — around 20 percent of the calories in their diet. Stop feeding them the sugar, in either case, and the fatty liver promptly goes away, and with it the insulin resistance.

Similar effects can be shown in humans, although the researchers doing this work typically did the studies with only fructose — as Luc Tappy did in Switzerland or Peter Havel and Kimber Stanhope did at the University of California, Davis — and pure fructose is not the same thing as sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. When Tappy fed his human subjects the equivalent of the fructose in 8 to 10 cans of Coke or Pepsi a day — a “pretty high dose,” he says —– their livers would start to become insulin-resistant, and their triglycerides would go up in just a few days. With lower doses, Tappy says, just as in the animal research, the same effects would appear, but it would take longer, a month or more.

Despite the steady accumulation of research, the evidence can still be criticized as falling far short of conclusive. The studies in rodents aren’t necessarily applicable to humans. And the kinds of studies that Tappy, Havel and Stanhope did — having real people drink beverages sweetened with fructose and comparing the effect with what happens when the same people or others drink beverages sweetened with glucose — aren’t applicable to real human experience, because we never naturally consume pure fructose. We always take it with glucose, in the nearly 50-50 combinations of sugar or high-fructose corn syrup. And then the amount of fructose or sucrose being fed in these studies, to the rodents or the human subjects, has typically been enormous.

This is why the research reviews on the subject invariably conclude that more research is necessary to establish at what dose sugar and high-fructose corn syrup start becoming what Lustig calls toxic. “There is clearly a need for intervention studies,” as Tappy recently phrased it in the technical jargon of the field, “in which the fructose intake of high-fructose consumers is reduced to better delineate the possible pathogenic role of fructose. At present, short-term-intervention studies, however, suggest that a high-fructose intake consisting of soft drinks, sweetened juices or bakery products can increase the risk of metabolic and cardiovascular diseases.”

In simpler language, how much of this stuff do we have to eat or drink, and for how long, before it does to us what it does to laboratory rats? And is that amount more than we’re already consuming?

Unfortunately, we’re unlikely to learn anything conclusive in the near future. As Lustig points out, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are certainly not “acute toxins” of the kind the F.D.A. typically regulates and the effects of which can be studied over the course of days or months. The question is whether they’re “chronic toxins,” which means “not toxic after one meal, but after 1,000 meals.” This means that what Tappy calls “intervention studies” have to go on for significantly longer than 1,000 meals to be meaningful.

At the moment, the National Institutes of Health are supporting surprisingly few clinical trials related to sugar and high-fructose corn syrup in the U.S. All are small, and none will last more than a few months. Lustig and his colleagues at U.C.S.F. — including Jean-Marc Schwarz, whom Tappy describes as one of the three best fructose biochemists in the world — are doing one of these studies. It will look at what happens when obese teenagers consume no sugar other than what they might get in fruits and vegetables. Another study will do the same with pregnant women to see if their babies are born healthier and leaner.

Only one study in this country, by Havel and Stanhope at the University of California, Davis, is directly addressing the question of how much sugar is required to trigger the symptoms of insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome. Havel and Stanhope are having healthy people drink three sugar- or H.F.C.S.-sweetened beverages a day and then seeing what happens. The catch is that their study subjects go through this three-beverage-a-day routine for only two weeks. That doesn’t seem like a very long time — only 42 meals, not 1,000 — but Havel and Stanhope have been studying fructose since the mid-1990s, and they seem confident that two weeks is sufficient to see if these sugars cause at least some of the symptoms of metabolic syndrome.

So the answer to the question of whether sugar is as bad as Lustig claims is that it certainly could be. It very well may be true that sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, because of the unique way in which we metabolize fructose and at the levels we now consume it, cause fat to accumulate in our livers followed by insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome, and so trigger the process that leads to heart disease, diabetes and obesity. They could indeed be toxic, but they take years to do their damage. It doesn’t happen overnight. Until long-term studies are done, we won’t know for sure.

One more question still needs to be asked, and this is what my wife, who has had to live with my journalistic obsession on this subject, calls the Grinch-trying-to-steal-Christmas problem. What are the chances that sugar is actually worse than Lustig says it is?

One of the diseases that increases in incidence with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome is cancer. This is why I said earlier that insulin resistance may be a fundamental underlying defect in many cancers, as it is in type 2 diabetes and heart disease. The connection between obesity, diabetes and cancer was first reported in 2004 in large population studies by researchers from the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer. It is not controversial. What it means is that you are more likely to get cancer if you’re obese or diabetic than if you’re not, and you’re more likely to get cancer if you have metabolic syndrome than if you don’t.

This goes along with two other observations that have led to the well-accepted idea that some large percentage of cancers are caused by our Western diets and lifestyles. This means they could actually be prevented if we could pinpoint exactly what the problem is and prevent or avoid that.

One observation is that death rates from cancer, like those from diabetes, increased significantly in the second half of the 19th century and the early decades of the 20th. As with diabetes, this observation was accompanied by a vigorous debate about whether those increases could be explained solely by the aging of the population and the use of new diagnostic techniques or whether it was really the incidence of cancer itself that was increasing. “By the 1930s,” as a 1997 report by the World Cancer Research Fund International and the American Institute for Cancer Research explained, “it was apparent that age-adjusted death rates from cancer were rising in the U.S.A.,” which meant that the likelihood of any particular 60-year-old, for instance, dying from cancer was increasing, even if there were indeed more 60-years-olds with each passing year.

The second observation was that malignant cancer, like diabetes, was a relatively rare disease in populations that didn’t eat Western diets, and in some of these populations it appeared to be virtually nonexistent. In the 1950s, malignant cancer among the Inuit, for instance, was still deemed sufficiently rare that physicians working in northern Canada would publish case reports in medical journals when they did diagnose a case.

In 1984, Canadian physicians published an analysis of 30 years of cancer incidence among Inuit in the western and central Arctic. While there had been a “striking increase in the incidence of cancers of modern societies” including lung and cervical cancer, they reported, there were still “conspicuous deficits” in breast-cancer rates. They could not find a single case in an Inuit patient before 1966; they could find only two cases between 1967 and 1980. Since then, as their diet became more like ours, breast cancer incidence has steadily increased among the Inuit, although it’s still significantly lower than it is in other North American ethnic groups. Diabetes rates in the Inuit have also gone from vanishingly low in the mid-20th century to high today.

Now most researchers will agree that the link between Western diet or lifestyle and cancer manifests itself through this association with obesity, diabetes and metabolic syndrome — i.e., insulin resistance. This was the conclusion, for instance, of a 2007 report published by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research — “Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity and the Prevention of Cancer.”

So how does it work? Cancer researchers now consider that the problem with insulin resistance is that it leads us to secrete more insulin, and insulin (as well as a related hormone known as insulin-like growth factor) actually promotes tumor growth.

As it was explained to me by Craig Thompson, who has done much of this research and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York, the cells of many human cancers come to depend on insulin to provide the fuel (blood sugar) and materials they need to grow and multiply. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor (and related growth factors) also provide the signal, in effect, to do it. The more insulin, the better they do. Some cancers develop mutations that serve the purpose of increasing the influence of insulin on the cell; others take advantage of the elevated insulin levels that are common to metabolic syndrome, obesity and type 2 diabetes. Some do both. Thompson believes that many pre-cancerous cells would never acquire the mutations that turn them into malignant tumors if they weren’t being driven by insulin to take up more and more blood sugar and metabolize it.

What these researchers call elevated insulin (or insulin-like growth factor) signaling appears to be a necessary step in many human cancers, particularly cancers like breast and colon cancer. Lewis Cantley, director of the Cancer Center at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at Harvard Medical School, says that up to 80 percent of all human cancers are driven by either mutations or environmental factors that work to enhance or mimic the effect of insulin on the incipient tumor cells. Cantley is now the leader of one of five scientific “dream teams,” financed by a national coalition called Stand Up to Cancer, to study, in the case of Cantley’s team, precisely this link between a specific insulin-signaling gene (known technically as PI3K) and tumor development in breast and other cancers common to women.

Most of the researchers studying this insulin/cancer link seem concerned primarily with finding a drug that might work to suppress insulin signaling in incipient cancer cells and so, they hope, inhibit or prevent their growth entirely. Many of the experts writing about the insulin/cancer link from a public health perspective — as in the 2007 report from the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute for Cancer Research — work from the assumption that chronically elevated insulin levels and insulin resistance are both caused by being fat or by getting fatter. They recommend, as the 2007 report did, that we should all work to be lean and more physically active, and that in turn will help us prevent cancer.

But some researchers will make the case, as Cantley and Thompson do, that if something other than just being fatter is causing insulin resistance to begin with, that’s quite likely the dietary cause of many cancers. If it’s sugar that causes insulin resistance, they say, then the conclusion is hard to avoid that sugar causes cancer — some cancers, at least — radical as this may seem and despite the fact that this suggestion has rarely if ever been voiced before publicly. For just this reason, neither of these men will eat sugar or high-fructose corn syrup, if they can avoid it.

“I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can,” Thompson told me, “because I believe ultimately it’s something I can do to decrease my risk of cancer.” Cantley put it this way: “Sugar scares me.”

Sugar scares me too, obviously. I’d like to eat it in moderation. I’d certainly like my two sons to be able to eat it in moderation, to not overconsume it, but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that’s one thing. We start gaining weight, we eat less of it. But we are also talking about things we can’t see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows. Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.

Gary Taubes (gataubes@gmail.com) is a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation independent investigator in health policy and the author of “Why We Get Fat.”

Source: Organic Consumers Association/New York Times

The Five Signs of Stroke

Franciscan Health System supports stroke education during National Stroke Awareness Month.
The St. Joseph Medical Center (SJMC) Stroke Care program was recognized as a Center of Excellence and earned the Gold Seal of Approval™ from the Joint Commission for primary stroke centers.
Learn from SJMC Stroke Coordinator Gena Kreiner, RN, as she discusses the five signs of stroke and ways to reduce the associated risk factors.

Source:
Franciscanhealth on YouTube

Financial Help for Diabetes Care

 

Financial Help for Diabetes Care

On this page:
•Medicare
•Medicaid
•State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)
•Health Insurance for Those Not Eligible for Medicare or Medicaid
•Health Insurance after Leaving a Job
•Health Care Services
•Hospital Care
•Kidney Disease: Resources for Dialysis and Transplantation
•Prescription Drugs and Medical Supplies
•Prosthetic Care
•Classroom Services
•Technological Assistance
•Food and Nutrition Assistance for Women with Diabetes or Gestational Diabetes
•Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Benefits
•Local Resources
•Acknowledgments
•National Diabetes Education Program

 

Diabetes treatment is expensive. According to the American Diabetes Association, people with diabetes spend an average of $11,744 a year on health care expenses—more than twice the amount spent by people without diabetes.

Many people who have diabetes need help paying for their care. For those who qualify, a variety of governmental and nongovernmental programs can help cover health care expenses. This publication is meant to help people with diabetes and their family members find and access such resources.

Medicare

Medicare is federal health insurance for the following groups:

• people 65 or older
• people younger than 65 with certain disabilities or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also called Lou Gehrig’s disease
• people of any age with end-stage renal disease—permanent kidney failure requiring dialysis or a kidney transplant

Medicare Health Plans

People with Medicare can choose how to get their health and prescription drug coverage. The following options are available:

• Original Medicare
• Medicare Advantage Plans—such as health maintenance organizations (HMOs) or preferred provider organizations (PPOs)
• other Medicare health plans

Original Medicare. Original Medicare, managed by the Federal Government, has two parts: Medicare Part A is hospital insurance and Medicare Part B is medical insurance. People in this plan usually pay a fee for each health care service or supply they receive.

People who are in Original Medicare can add prescription drug coverage—Medicare Part D—by joining a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan. These plans are run by insurance companies and other private companies approved by Medicare.

People can also choose to buy insurance to help fill the gaps in Part A and Part B coverage. This insurance is known as Medigap or Medicare Supplement Insurance.

Medicare Advantage Plans. Medicare Advantage Plans are health plan options, like an HMO or PPO, approved by Medicare and offered by private companies. These plans are part of Medicare and are sometimes called Part C or MA Plans. Medicare Advantage Plans provide Medicare Part A and Part B coverage and usually Medicare Part D coverage. The companies that run these plans must follow rules set by Medicare. Not all Medicare Advantage Plans work the same way. People considering one of these plans should find out the plan’s rules before joining.

Other Medicare Health Plans. Other Medicare health plans include Medicare Cost Plans, Demonstrations/Pilot Programs, and Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE). These plans provide hospital and medical insurance coverage, and some also provide prescription drug coverage.

To get more information about Medicare coverage, see “More Information about Medicare.”

Medicare Covers Diabetes Services and Supplies

Original Medicare helps pay for the diabetes services, supplies, and equipment listed below. Coinsurance or deductibles may apply. In addition, Medicare covers some preventive services for people who are at risk for diabetes. A person must have Medicare Part B or Medicare Part D to receive these covered services and supplies.

Medicare Part B helps pay for

• diabetes screening tests for people at risk of developing diabetes
• diabetes self-management training
• diabetes supplies such as glucose monitors, test strips, and lancets
• insulin pumps and insulin if used with an insulin pump
• flu and pneumonia shots
• foot exams and treatment for people with diabetes
• eye exams to check for glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy
• medical nutrition therapy services for people with diabetes or kidney disease, when referred by a doctor
• therapeutic shoes or inserts, in some cases

Medicare Part D helps pay for

• diabetes medicines
• insulin, but not insulin used with an insulin pump
• diabetes supplies like needles and syringes for injecting insulin

People who are in a Medicare Advantage Plan or other Medicare health plan should check their plan’s membership materials and call for details about how the plan provides the diabetes services, supplies, and medicines covered by Medicare.

More details are available by calling 1–800–MEDICARE (1–800–633–4227) and requesting the free booklet Medicare Coverage of Diabetes Supplies & Services. This booklet is also available at www.medicare.gov/publications/pubs/pdf/11022.pdf (PDF, 4.7 MB) *.

More Information about Medicare

More information about Medicare is available at www.medicare.gov, the official U.S. Government website for people with Medicare. The website has a full range of information about Medicare including free publications like Medicare & You, the official Government handbook about Medicare, and Medicare Basics—A Guide for Families and Friends of People with Medicare. Through the Medicare website, people can also

• find out if they are eligible for Medicare and when they can enroll
• learn about their Medicare health plan options
• find out what Medicare covers
• find a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan
• compare Medicare health plan options in their area
• find a doctor who participates in Medicare
• get information about the quality of care provided by nursing homes, hospitals, home health agencies, and dialysis facilities

Calling 1–800–MEDICARE (1–800–633–4227) is another way to get help with Medicare questions, order free publications, and more. Help is available 24 hours a day, every day, and is available in English, Spanish, and other languages. TTY users should call 1–877–486–2048.

Medicare information can also be obtained from the following agencies or programs:

• Each state has a State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) that provides free health insurance counseling. A state’s SHIP may have a unique name. SHIP counselors can help people choose a Medicare health plan or a Medicare Prescription Drug Plan. The phone number for the SHIP in each state is available by by calling Medicare or visiting www.medicare.gov and selecting “Find Helpful Phone Numbers and Websites” under “Search Tools.”
• The Social Security Administration can provide information about eligibility for Medicare. People can contact the agency at 1–800–772–1213, visit its web-site at www.socialsecurity.gov, or check with their local Social Security office to learn if they are eligible for Medicare.
• State Medical Assistance (Medicaid) offices in each state can provide information about help for people with Medicare who have limited income and resources. The phone number for each state’s Medicaid office can be obtained by visiting www.medicare.gov or calling Medicare.

People who enroll in Medicare can register for MyMedicare.gov, a secure online service, and use the site to access their personal Medicare information at any time. People can view their claims, order forms and publications, and see a description of covered preventive services.

Help for People with Medicare Who Have Limited Income and Resources

People who have Medicare and have limited income and resources may qualify for help paying for some health care and prescription drug costs from one of the following programs:

• Extra help paying for Medicare prescription drug coverage. Those who meet certain income requirements may qualify for extra help from Medicare to pay prescription drug costs. People can apply for this help by calling Social Security; visiting www.socialsecurity.gov to apply online; visiting their local Social Security office; or by contacting their State Medical Assistance (Medicaid) office. Each state’s SHIP can provide information and answer questions about this program.
• State pharmacy assistance programs (SPAPs). Several states have SPAPs that help certain people pay for prescription drugs. Each SPAP makes its own rules about how to provide drug coverage to its members. Information about each state’s SPAP can be obtained by calling Medicare or the state’s SHIP.
• Medicaid programs for people with Medicare. State Medicaid programs help pay medical costs for some people with Medicare who have limited income and resources. People who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid may get coverage for services that aren’t fully covered by Medicare, such as nursing home and home health care. States also have programs called Medicare Savings Programs that pay Medicare premiums and, in some cases, may also pay Medicare Part A and Part B deductibles and coinsurance. More information is available at www.medicare.gov. The phone number for the State Medical Assistance (Medicaid) office for each state can be obtained by calling Medicare. Each state’s SHIP can also provide more information.

Medicaid

Medicaid, also called Medical Assistance, is a joint federal and state government program that helps pay medical costs for some people with limited income and resources. Medicaid programs and income limits for Medicaid vary from state to state. The State Medical Assistance (Medicaid) office can help people find out whether they qualify for Medicaid or provide more information about Medicaid programs. To contact a state Medicaid office, people can

• search for Medicaid information for a state at www.GovBenefits.gov
• visit www.medicare.gov and select “Find Helpful Phone Numbers and Websites” under “Search Tools,” or call 1–800–MEDICARE (1–800–633–4227) and say “Medicaid”
• check the government pages of the phone book for the local department of human services or department of social services, which can provide the needed information

 

State Children’s Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)

SCHIP is a federal and state government partnership to expand health coverage to uninsured children from families with income that is too low to afford private or employer-sponsored health insurance but too high to qualify for Medicaid. The free or low-cost coverage is available to eligible children younger than 19.

SCHIP provides an extensive package of benefits including doctor visits, hospital care, and more. Information about the program is available at www.insurekidsnow.gov or by calling 1–877–KIDS–NOW (1–877–543–7669). Callers to the toll-free, confidential hotline are automatically connected to their state’s program.

Health Insurance for Those Not Eligible for Medicare or Medicaid

People who are not eligible for Medicare or Medicaid may be able to purchase private health insurance. Many insurers consider diabetes that has already been diagnosed a pre-existing condition, so finding coverage may be difficult for people with diabetes. Insurance companies often have a specific waiting period during which they do not cover diabetes-related expenses for new enrollees, although they will cover other medical expenses that arise during this time.

Certain state and federal laws may help. Many states now require insurance companies to cover diabetes supplies and education. The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), passed by Congress in 1996, limits insurance companies from denying coverage because of a pre-existing condition. Information about HIPAA is available at www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/portability.htm.

More information about these laws is available from each state’s insurance regulatory office. Some state offices may be called the state insurance department or commission. This office can also help identify an insurance company that offers individual coverage. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ website, www.naic.org/state_web_map.htm, provides a membership list with contact information and a link to the website for each state’s insurance regulatory office.

The Georgetown University Health Policy Institute offers consumer guides on health insurance topics, including guides for each state about getting and keeping health insurance. The guides are available at www.healthinsuranceinfo.net.

Health Insurance after Leaving a Job

When leaving a job, a person may be able to continue the group health insurance provided by the employer for up to 18 months under a federal law called the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA. People pay more for group health insurance through COBRA than they did as employees, but group coverage is cheaper than individual coverage. People who have a disability before becoming eligible for COBRA or who are determined by the Social Security Administration to be disabled within the first 60 days of COBRA coverage may be able to extend COBRA coverage an additional 11 months, for up to 29 months of coverage. COBRA may also cover young people who were insured under a parent’s policy but have reached the age limit and are trying to obtain their own insurance.

More information is available by calling the U.S. Department of Labor at 1–866–4–USA–DOL (1–866–487–2365) or visiting www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/cobra.htm.

If a person doesn’t qualify for coverage or if COBRA coverage has expired, other options may be available:

• Some states require employers to offer conversion policies, in which people stay with their insurance company but buy individual coverage.
• Some professional and alumni organizations offer group coverage for members.
• Most states have a high-risk health insurance pool or other means for covering people otherwise unable to get health insurance. Information about high-risk pools is available at www.nahu.org/consumer/hrpguide.cfm.
• Some insurance companies also offer stopgap policies designed for people who are between jobs.

Each state insurance regulatory office can provide more information about these and other options. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners’ website, www.naic.org/state_web_map.htm, provides a membership list with contact information and a link to the website for each state’s insurance regulatory office. Information about consumer health plans is also available at the U.S. Department of Labor’s website at www.dol.gov/dol/topic/health-plans/consumerinfhealth.htm.

Health Care Services

The Bureau of Primary Health Care, a service of the Health Resources and Services Administration, offers primary and preventive health care to medically underserved populations through community health centers. For people with no insurance, fees for care are based on family size and income. Information about local health centers is available by calling 1–888–ASK–HRSA (1–888–275–4772) and asking for a directory, or by visiting the Bureau’s website at www.bphc.hrsa.gov.

The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) runs hospitals and clinics that serve veterans who have service-related health problems or who simply need financial aid. Veterans who would like to find out more about VA health care can call 1–800–827–1000 or visit www1.va.gov/health.

Many local governments have public health departments that can help people who need medical care. The local county or city government’s health and human services office can provide further information.

Hospital Care

People who are uninsured and need hospital care may be able to get help from a program known as the Hill-Burton Act. Although the program originally provided hospitals with federal grants for modernization, today it provides free or reduced-fee medical services to people with low incomes. The Department of Health and Human Services administers the program. More information is available by calling 1–800–638–0742 (1–800–492–0359 in Maryland) or visiting www.hrsa.gov/hillburton.

Kidney Disease: Resources for Dialysis and Transplantation

Kidney failure, also called end-stage renal disease, is a complication of diabetes. People of any age with kidney failure can get Medicare Part A—hospital insurance—if they meet certain criteria. To qualify for Medicare on the basis of kidney failure, a person must

• need regular dialysis

or

• have had a kidney transplant

and must

• have worked long enough—or be the dependent child or spouse of someone who has worked long enough—under Social Security, the Railroad Retirement Board, or as a government employee

or

• be receiving—or be the spouse or dependent child of a person who is receiving—Social Security, Railroad Retirement, or Office of Personnel Management benefits

People with Medicare Part A can also get Medicare Part B. Enrolling in Part B is optional. However, a person needs to have both Part A and Part B for Medicare to cover certain dialysis and kidney transplant services.

Those who don’t qualify for Medicare may be able to get help from their state to pay for their dialysis treatments. More information about dialysis and transplantation is available by

• calling Social Security at 1–800–772–1213 or visiting www.socialsecurity.gov for information about the required amount of time needed under Social Security, the Railroad Retirement Board, or as a government employee to be eligible for Medicare based on kidney failure
• visiting www.medicare.gov to read or download the booklet Medicare Coverage of Kidney Dialysis and Kidney Transplant Services or calling 1–800–MEDICARE (1–800–633–4227) to request a free copy; TTY users should call 1–877–486–2048
• reading the National Kidney and Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse’s publication Financial Help for Treatment of Kidney Failure, available at www.kidney.niddk.nih.gov or by calling 1–800–891–5390
• visiting Medicare’s “Dialysis Facility Compare” at www.medicare.gov/dialysis for important information about chronic kidney disease and dialysis, including choosing a dialysis facility

Information about financing an organ transplant is available from the following organization:

United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS)
P.O. Box 2484
Richmond, VA 23218
Phone: 1–888–894–6361 or 804–782–4800
Fax: 804–782–4817
Internet: www.unos.org

Prescription Drugs and Medical Supplies

Health care providers may be able to assist people who need help paying for their medicines and supplies by directing them to local programs or even providing free samples.

A free nylon filament—similar to a bristle on a hairbrush—is available to check feet for nerve damage. The filament, with instructions for use, can be obtained by calling 1–888–ASK–HRSA (1–888–275–4772) or by accessing www.hrsa.gov/leap.

Prescription drug coverage for those eligible for Medicare is available through Medicare’s Prescription Drug Plans and many Medicare Advantage Plans. More information is available at the Medicare website at www.medicare.gov.

Drug companies that sell insulin or diabetes medications usually have patient assistance programs. Such programs are available only through a physician. The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America and its member companies sponsor an interactive website with information about drug assistance programs at www.PPARx.org.

Also, because programs for the homeless sometimes provide aid, people can contact a local shelter for more information about how to obtain free medications and medical supplies. The number of the nearest shelter may be listed in the phone book under Human Service Organizations or Social Service Organizations.

Prosthetic Care

People who have had an amputation may be concerned about paying their rehabilitation expenses. The following organizations provide financial assistance or information about locating financial resources for people who need prosthetic care:

Amputee Coalition of America
900 East Hill Avenue, Suite 205
Knoxville, TN 37915–2566
Phone: 1–888–AMP–KNOW (1–888–267–5669)
Fax: 865–525–7917
Internet: www.amputee-coalition.org

Easter Seals
230 West Monroe Street, Suite 1800
Chicago, IL 60606
Phone: 1–800–221–6827
Fax: 312–726–1494
Internet: www.easterseals.com

Classroom Services

Public agencies and other organizations that provide services and assistance, such as providing special equipment, to children with diabetes and other disabilities and to their families are listed on the State Resource Sheets published by the National Dissemination Center for Children with Disabilities (NICHCY). Each state’s resource sheet lists the names and addresses of agencies in the state. The free resource sheets are available at www.nichcy.org/states.htm or by contacting

NICHCY
P.O. Box 1492
Washington, DC 20013
Phone: 1–800–695–0285
Fax: 202–884–8441
Email: nichcy@aed.org
Internet: www.nichcy.org

College-aged students who have diabetes-related disabilities may be faced not only with the costs of tuition, but also with additional expenses generally not incurred by other students. These costs may include special equipment and disability-related medical expenses not covered by insurance. Some special equipment and support services may be available at the educational institution, through community organizations, through the state vocational rehabilitation agency, or through specific disability organizations. The names and addresses of these and other agencies are also listed in the State Resource Sheets available from the NICHCY.

The HEATH Resource Center, an online clearinghouse on postsecondary education for individuals with disabilities, offers information about sources of financial aid and the education of students with a disability. Contact the clearinghouse at

The George Washington University
HEATH Resource Center
2134 G Street NW
Washington, DC 20052–0001
Phone: 202–973–0904
Fax: 202–994–3365
Email: AskHEATH@gwu.edu
Internet: www.heath.gwu.edu

Technological Assistance

Assistive technology, which can help people with disabilities function more effectively at home, at work, and in the community, can include computers, adaptive equipment, wheelchairs, bathroom modifications, and medical or corrective services. The following organizations provide information, awareness, and training in the use of technology to aid people with disabilities:

Alliance for Technology Access (ATA)
1304 Southpoint Boulevard, Suite 240
Petaluma, CA 94954
Phone: 707–778–3011
Fax: 707–765–2080
Email: ATAinfo@ATAccess.org
Internet: www.ATAccess.org

United Cerebral Palsy (UCP)
1660 L Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20036
Phone: 1–800–872–5827 or 202–776–0406
Fax: 202–776–0414
Email: info@ucp.org
Internet: www.ucp.org/ucp_channelsub.cfm/1/14/86

Food and Nutrition Assistance for Women with Diabetes or Gestational Diabetes

Food, nutrition education, and access to health care services are available through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program. The WIC program provides assistance to women during pregnancy or the period following childbirth and to infants and children up to age 5. Applicants must meet residential, financial need, and nutrition risk criteria to be eligible for assistance. Having diabetes or gestational diabetes is considered a medically based nutrition risk and would qualify a woman for assistance through the WIC program if she meets the financial need requirements and has lived in a particular state the required amount of time. The WIC website provides a page of contact information for each state and Indian tribe. Contact the WIC’s national headquarters at

Supplemental Food Programs Division
Food and Nutrition Service—USDA
3101 Park Center Drive
Alexandria, VA 22302
Phone: 703–305–2746
Fax: 703–305–2196
Email: wichq-web@fns.usda.gov
Internet: www.fns.usda.gov/wic

Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) Benefits

The Social Security Administration pays disability benefits through the SSDI and SSI programs. These benefits are not the same as Social Security benefits. To receive SSDI benefits, a person must be unable to work and must have earned the required number of work credits. SSI is a monthly amount paid to people with limited income and resources who are disabled, blind, or age 65 or older and meet certain other conditions.

More information is available by calling Social Security at 1–800–772–1213 or contacting the local Social Security office for more information. TTY users should call 1–800–325–0778. A “Benefit Eligibility Screening Tool” is available at www.socialsecurity.gov to check whether a person is eligible for benefits.

Local Resources

Local resources such as the following charitable groups may offer financial help for some of the many expenses related to diabetes:

• Lions Clubs International can help with vision care. Visit www.lionsclubs.org.
• Rotary International clubs provide humanitarian and educational assistance. Visit www.rotary.org.
• Elks clubs provide charitable activities that benefit youth and veterans. Visit www.elks.org.
• Shriners of North America offer free treatment for children at Shriners hospitals throughout the country. Visit www.shrinershq.org.
• Kiwanis International clubs conduct service projects to help children and communities. Visit www.kiwanis.org.

In many areas, nonprofit or special-interest groups such as those listed above can sometimes provide financial assistance or help with fundraising. Religious organizations also may offer assistance. In addition, some local governments may have special trusts set up to help people in need. The local library or local city or county government’s health and human services office may provide more information about such groups.

The National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NDIC) gathered information from various agencies and organizations to try to provide the most comprehensive and helpful information possible. Changes may occur in these programs from the time this fact sheet is published. Please contact each organization directly for the most up-to-date information. The NDIC welcomes corrections and updates to the information in this fact sheet. Updates should be sent to ndic@info.niddk.nih.gov.

Source:

National Diabetes Education Program

1 Diabetes Way
Bethesda, MD 20814–9692
Phone: 1–888–693–NDEP (1–888–693–6337)
TTY: 1–866–569–1162
Fax: 703–738–4929
Email: ndep@mail.nih.gov
Internet: www.ndep.nih.gov

The National Diabetes Education Program is a federally funded program sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and includes over 200 partners at the federal, state, and local levels, working together to reduce the morbidity and mortality associated with diabetes.

How to Start The Raw Foods Diet

This is a short and simple video that offers suggestions on how you can start to transition your diet from cooked foods to raw foods. Discover how you can change your life and level of health by consuming a 100% RAW FOOD DIET.

Source: letsgetraw on YouTube

2011 UN NCDs Summit: the European Story

Noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) – cancer, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, and chronic lung diseases -are Europe’s main killers and impact on all levels of society, particularly on the most disadvantaged groups.

Around 40 countries participated in the November 2010 UNDESA/WHO European Regional High-Level Consultation on the Prevention and Control of Noncommunicable Diseases in Oslo, Norway. The consultation described the health and developmental impacts of NCDs in Europe and planned the region’s role in the first-ever UN General Assembly High-level Meeting on NCDs being held 19-20 September, 2011.

Source: Uploaded by who on Feb 3, 2011 on YouTube (World Health Organization)

Natural Cures For Diabetes –Treat it the Natural Way

 

 

By Marilyn Reid

Frequent urination, unquenchable thirst, weakness, fatigue, tingling, numbness of extremities, and sudden weight loss. These are the common symptoms that a person suffering from diabetes experiences. Are you experiencing the same thing? If you are, then it’s high time you pay your doctor a visit and have your blood sugar checked.

What is diabetes? Diabetes is a disorder on which the body is not able to regulate the amount of sugar, particularly glucose, in the blood. Glucose plays a vital function in the body as it provides you with the energy to perform daily activities like brisk walking, working, jogging, and many others. It is regulated by the insulin, the hormone produced by the pancreas, and allows it to move from the blood to the muscle, liver, and fat cells to be used for fuel.  Now, if a person’s body does not produce enough insulin, also known as type 1 diabetes, or produce enough but does not use it properly, referred to as type 2 diabetes, then he or she should find diabetes treatment at once.

What are some natural cures for diabetes? When you are diagnosed with diabetes, perhaps the first thing that comes to your mind is to know what medications to take in order to treat it. Although it’s true that there are prescribed medicines for this disorder, you can always treat it the natural way just by knowing what the natural cures are. Natural cures for diabetes could range from regular exercise, good eating habits, and including raw foods in your diet.

Make sure that you get enough physical exercise to burn off the extra energy producing glucose. It can also help prevent complications that may arise from diabetes like poor circulation in the feet and legs and nervous disorders. Good eating habits, on the other hand, means managing what you eat, how much you eat, and when during the course of the day you sit down to eat. People suffering from diabetes should commit to keeping their diet varied and include a large amount of vegetables, fruits, and whole grains and they should see to it that they do not eat too much or too little during every meal.

A raw food diet can also do a lot to treat diabetes the natural way. People who have tried a diet of raw and organic foods revealed that it had helped reverse diabetes without the need for pharmaceutical medication. Although it can be difficult to change your diet, especially from cooked meals to raw, the little sacrifice can be worth it in the end as it helps you achieve a healthier you.

Diabetes may be a serious disorder but it can be easily managed and treated if done the right way. Regular exercise, good eating habits, and eating raw foods can certainly do a lot. The first two may be easy for you to follow, but the third could be not. Why not learn more about rawfood nutrition and sunfoods from David Wolfe for you to be enlighten further as to what it can do to treat diabetes?

For the past 10 years Marilyn Reid has been active as an advocate for Alternative Health Therapies, with an emphasis on healthy living and raw food diets. Marilyn has been fascinated with the work of the Healthy Lifestyle Nutritionist and Guru, David Wolfe and has a blog which keeps up with the latest in the world of Healthy Lifestyles. See more facts about Diabetes.

Source:www.isnare.com

Certificate of Confidentiality

Certificates of Confidentiality

• Certificate of Confidentiality Application Instructions
• Frequently Asked Questions

Purpose

Certificates of Confidentiality are issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to protect the privacy of research subjects by protecting investigators and institutions from being compelled to release information that could be used to identify subjects with a research project. Certificates of Confidentiality are issued to institutions or universities where the research is conducted. They allow the investigator and others who have access to research records to refuse to disclose identifying information in any civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceeding, whether at the federal, state, or local level.

Identifying information is broadly defined as any item or combination of items in the research data that could lead directly or indirectly to the identification of a research subject.

By protecting researchers and institutions from being compelled to disclose information that would identify research participants, Certificates of Confidentiality help achieve the research objectives and promote participation in studies by assuring privacy to subjects.

Statutory Authority

Under section 301(d) of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 241(d)) the Secretary of Health and Human Services may authorize persons engaged in biomedical, behavioral, clinical, or other research to protect the privacy of individuals who are the subjects of that research. This authority has been delegated to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Persons authorized by the CDC to protect the privacy of research subjects may not be compelled in any federal, state, or local civil, criminal, administrative, legislative, or other proceedings to identify them by name or other identifying characteristic.

Extent and Limitations of Coverage

Certificates can be used for biomedical, behavioral, clinical or other types of research that is sensitive. Research data is sensitive when disclosure of identifying information could have adverse consequences for subjects or damage their financial standing, employability, insurability, or reputation.

Examples of sensitive research activities include but are not limited to the following:

• Collecting genetic information;
• Collecting information on psychological well-being of subjects;
• Collecting information on subjects’ sexual attitudes, preferences or practices;
• Collecting data on substance abuse or other illegal risk behaviors;
• Studies where subjects may be involved in litigation related to exposures under study (e.g., environmental or occupational exposures).

In general, certificates are issued for single, well-defined research projects rather than groups or classes of projects.

A Certificate of Confidentiality protects personally identifiable information about subjects in the research project while the Certificate is in effect. Generally, Certificates are effective on the date of issuance or upon commencement of the research project if that occurs after the date of issuance. The expiration date should correspond to the completion of the study. The Certificate will state the date upon which it becomes effective and the date upon which it expires. A Certificate of Confidentiality protects all information identifiable to any individual who participates as a research subject (i.e., about whom the investigator maintains identifying information) during any time the Certificate is in effect. An extension of coverage must be requested if the research extends beyond the expiration date of the original Certificate. However, the protection afforded by the Certificate is permanent. All personally identifiable information maintained about participants in the project while the Certificate is in effect is protected in perpetuity. Some projects are ineligible for a Certificate of Confidentiality. To be eligible for a CDC Certificate, a project must be: (1) research, (2) funded by CDC, (3) collecting personally identifiable information that is sensitive and, if disclosed, could significantly harm or damage the participant, and (4) reviewed and approved by IRB(s).

While Certificates protect against involuntary disclosure, investigators should note that research subjects might voluntarily disclose their research data or information. Subjects may disclose information to physicians or other third parties. They may also authorize in writing the investigator to release the information to insurers, employers, or other third parties. In such cases, researchers may not use the Certificate to refuse disclosure. Moreover, researchers are not prevented from the voluntary disclosure of matters such as child abuse, reportable communicable diseases, or subject’s threatened violence to self or others. (For information on communicable disease reporting policy, see Notifiable Disease Reporting with Confidentiality Certificates). However, if the researcher intends to make any voluntary disclosures, the consent form must specify such disclosure.

Certificates do not authorize researchers to refuse to disclose information about subjects if authorized DHHS personnel request such information for an audit or program evaluation. Neither can researchers refuse to disclose such information if it is required to be disclosed by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.

In the informed consent form, investigators should tell research subjects that a Certificate is in effect. Subjects should be given a fair and clear explanation of the protection that it affords, including the limitations and exceptions noted above. Every research project that includes human research subjects should explain how identifiable information will be used or disclosed, regardless of whether or not a Certificate is in effect. The Office of Human Subjects Protection (OHRP) provides guidance on the content of informed consent documents.

Assurance of Confidentiality

Purpose

An Assurance of Confidentiality is a formal confidentiality protection authorized under Section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act. It is used for projects conducted by CDC staff or contractors that involve the collection or maintenance of sensitive identifiable or potentially identifiable information. This protection allows CDC programs to assure individuals and institutions involved in research or non-research projects that those conducting the project will protect the confidentiality of the data collected. The legislation states that no identifiable information may be used for any purpose other than the purpose for which it was supplied unless such institution or individual has consented to that disclosure.

Statutory Authority

Under section 308(d) of the Public Health Service Act surveys conducted by the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) as part of their authorizing legislation are automatically protected by an Assurance of Confidentiality. In addition, Assurances of Confidentiality may be issued to projects conducted by all other CDC components, after formal application to and approval by the CDC Confidentiality Review Group has been obtained.

Information about institutions and/or individuals of research or non-research projects that involve the collection or maintenance of sensitive identifiable or potentially identifiable information and for which an Assurance of Confidentiality has been approved is protected. At CDC, the 308(d) assurance has most often been used to protect sensitive identifiable data for non-research projects, but has also been used for research studies collecting sensitive identifiable data.

Extent and Limitations of Coverage

Protected information includes identifiable or potentially identifiable information on institutions or individuals who are the subjects of research or non-research studies with an approved Assurance of Confidentiality.

Disclosures can be made without individual authorization only for purposes stated at the time of data collection or specifically consented to thereafter by each of the parties who were provided the promise of confidentiality.

Certificates and Assurances of Confidentiality do not take the place of good data security or clear policies and procedures for data protection, which are essential to the protection of participants’ privacy. Investigators should take appropriate steps to safeguard data and findings. Unauthorized individuals must not access the data or learn the identity of participants.

Certificates and Assurances of Confidentiality Contact
Phone: 404-639-4642
Email: cdccoc@cdc.gov

Source: CDC

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention   1600 Clifton Rd. Atlanta, GA 30333, USA
800-CDC-INFO (800-232-4636) TTY: (888) 232-6348, 24 Hours/Every Day – cdcinfo@cdc.gov

Hungry Planet

It’s an inspired idea–to better understand the human diet, explore what culturally diverse families eat for a week.

That’s what photographer Peter Menzel and author-journalist Faith D’Alusio, authors of the equally ambitious Material World, do in Hungry Planet: What the World Eats, a comparative photo-chronicle of their visits to 30 families in 24 countries for 600 meals in all.

Their personal-is-political portraits feature pictures of each family with a week’s worth of food purchases; weekly food-intake lists with costs noted; typical family recipes; and illuminating essays, such as “Diabesity,” on the growing threat of obesity and diabetes.

Among the families, we meet the Mellanders, a German household of five who enjoy cinnamon rolls, chocolate croissants, and beef roulades, and whose weekly food expenses amount to $500. We also encounter the Natomos of Mali, a family of one husband, his two wives, and their nine children, whose corn and millet-based diet costs $26.39 weekly

Source: psychetruth on YouTube

Ayurvedic Medicines For Diabetes

By Ella Depp

Ayurveda is the life science that deals with the medicines extracted from natural products such as plants and green vegetation. According to Ayurveda, diabetes is the disease that takes place due to the deposition of harmful substance in the tissues. This eventually results in blocking the circulatory system. Apart from these, poor diet, lack of physical activities, imbalanced nervous system, mental stress, and disturbed natural biological cycle also cause diabetes.

The practitioners of Ayurveda recommend various medicines gained from nature to control diabetes. Diabetes cannot be cured, but can be controlled and managed. Even practicing yoga and aerobic exercises are effective to control diabetes. The Ayurvedic medicines naturally heal the symptoms of diabetes. In this article, we will deal with certain Ayurvedic medicines that are effective in the case of diabetes. Herbs such as turmeric, neem, amalaki (Indian gooseberry), and shilajit (asphaltum) are the main herbs used to control diabetes. These are the main ingredients that are comprised to prepare herbal remedies for diabetes. They help in restoring imbalanced level of sugar in the blood stream.

Generally, diabetes is the result of malfunctioned pancreas and liver. Some herbalogists  recommend consuming turmeric with pure extract of aloe vera in the initial stage of diabetes. It will prevent critical conditions. Some of the Ayurvedic medicines suggested by Ayurvedic practitioners are as follows:
^ You can have two capsules of turmeric three times in a day.
^ Consume small amount of fenugreek seeds, triphala, Arjuna, Ajwain (Bishops weed), and haritaki mixed with ghee.
^ You can have powdered form of rose apple stones three times in a day.
^ Mix the powdered form of Indian gooseberry and turmeric with honey. Have this mixture two times in a day.
^ Add the powder of white pepper, fenugreek seeds, and turmeric with glass of milk. Drink this mixture two times in a day.

Apart from these herbal medicines, you should follow a proper diet for diabetes. It is very important to maintain a proper weight. Excessive intake of fats disturbs the normal function of the body. It blocks the circulation of blood and thus supplies fewer amounts of nutrients to different parts of the body. It affects the production of insulin, which helps in converting sugar into glucose. Once the body does not generate required amount of insulin, sugar directly enters the blood stream. The presence of sugar in the blood stream spikes the blood pressure. This all create complicated conditions and thus provoking several other health issues.

Regular consumption of nutritional food, adequate sleep, and regular exercise will help in controlling diabetes. Along with the help of above mentioned herbs, you need to follow a proper diet. This diet will control the level of sugar in the blood stream.
* Avoid heavy consumption of sweets, diary products, and carbohydrates.
* Include ample of fresh green leafy vegetables and fruits in your daily diet.
* Even consume herbs regularly as prescribed by the experts
* Consume more of citrus fruits such as oranges, cantaloupes, berries, kiwi, and lemons.
* Eat good amount of black gram, green veggies, and soy.

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Article Source: http://www.articlesnatch.com

Superfoods, Raw Foods and Fighting Disease With Raw Food Author and Chef Paul Nison

By Kevin Gianni

This interview is an excerpt from Kevin Gianni’s Renegade Health Inner Circle, which can be found at http://www.RenegadeHealth.com. In this excerpt, Paul Nison shares on raw foods and super foods fighting disease.

 Paul Nison is a raw food chef and educator. He is also the author of seven books including “The Raw Life.” Kevin: I wanted to talk a little bit more about the Crohn’s Disease. What does someone do when the doctor says to them, “You can’t have fruit.” Or, this happened to me before, someone comes to me – I know what to say – and they say, “I have Crohn’s Disease so I can’t eat fruit or vegetables.” What do you do? Paul: It’s quite simple. With all disease we’re stressing something out, we’re overdoing something in our body. So we just have to figure out ways to reduce the stress.Only in severe cases do you completely need to stop everything. Crohn’s and colitis are severe cases of intestinal disorders. So for a temporary time we might have to stop doing certain things that are contributing tremendously to the issue.

Overeating is more of the problem than the actual thing that you’re eating many times. That’s the first thing we have to cut down. What I tell people, I don’t even tell people to eat raw, whole foods when they have an intestinal disorder because any time a disease ends in “itis” it means there’s inflammation somewhere in the body – colitis, proctitis, all these other illnesses. Inflammation is a later stage of disease but disease doesn’t start with these later stages. It means you’ve missed these beginning stages.

Two beginning signs of disease are laziness and constipation, which most people suffer from and all these things start from overeating, usually, or not getting enough rest. So those are the first things I would tell people – you have to look at how much you’re eating and how much you’re sleeping. If people neglect sleep too much, good quality sleep, that’s a big part of healing. But when it comes to someone saying they can’t eat fruit I tell people is if you sprain your ankle and you try to jump rope you’re going to make the problem worse.

You have to rest your body. You have to rest your body from food, your intestinal tract. I would put them on blended foods and give them probiotics to help their colon and intestine heal. Then after the bleeding stops and the inflammation goes down that’s when you would start introducing — first I would put them on juices, then I would introduce blended foods and then when they were ready for it I would introduce whole foods. Some people, depending how deep their wound is, it will take weeks and some people it’s months. Now most people don’t have the patience or support around them to go through that process. That’s why I would recommend a place like Hippocrates Health Institute or one of these other places because they’re filled with great support and information.

It’s really not that difficult to get better from colitis, Crohn’s Disease and all these other things, physically. Mentally and emotionally it is a big challenge. Then when you have something like cancer it’s a whole other story. In those cases you really need to get to one of these institutes. It’s not something you want to do on your own at home.

Kevin: What do you think of superfoods? What do you think about the buzz? Paul: I think the most important place to get our nutrients from is from whole sources of raw, ripe, fresh, organic foods, vegetables, nuts and seeds eaten in the right amount at the right time. That should take precedence over anything else out there. Those are the real superfoods. There are certain times and cases where people might need to take supplements. I think that’s where superfoods are, as supplements.

I don’t believe in synthetic supplements but I believe in whole foods in a supplement form when needed and used appropriately. They should never take the place of the whole food, number one. We just had the Raw Food Summit with the raw food leaders from around the world with 500 years of experience. They all agreed that there’s a place for these certain foods but they’re not to take precedence over the whole foods.

The problem with the superfoods is some of them are truly healing to the body. These green powders are excellent. E3Live, even though it’s a whole food it’s classified as a supplement or a superfood. These are wonderful but the problem today is there’s a lot of things mixed in there that are junk food that people are calling superfoods and they’re really not. This is the dangerous thing in the raw food movement. I’d rather everyone completely avoid every single superfood out there if they don’t know what’s truly good and truly bad.That’s the big problem today. There are a lot of people out there today promoting things as superfoods and they’re actually not even not-healthy, they’re actually harmful. So we really have to be careful and show discern and realize who is saying what, what claims are being made and why.

Some of the claims out there are just ridiculous. Unfortunately it the world today people follow crowds and they go with the most charismatic person out there. That’s the person that’s going to say things to get people to follow them. It’s a big problem. So superfoods are excellent if they’re true superfoods but if they’re these fake superfoods they’re not great. Let me tell you, you could stick a “raw” sticker on a piece of candy and call it healthy. That doesn’t make it healthy. There’s a lot of junk out there that people are sticking stickers on and saying it’s a healthy superfood. It certainly isn’t.

As for the super berries and all these other things, I think the best berries we can get for our bodies are locally grown produce that are fresh. Berries that have to be flown from halfway around the world and dried, that just became popular within the last ten years or so, they’re not needed for health. I know somebody that’s 107 years old. He never had one of these berries from halfway around the world. For example, goji berries. They taste great and they do have a lot of healing properties but I’ll tell you what, a fresh blueberry or mulberry, right off the tree, is healthier than any berry that’s dried and flown around the world. If anyone out there is going to do things like goji berries, soak them overnight and re-hydrate them. Most people don’t like it like that because it takes a lot of the sugar out of it. It doesn’t actually take the sugar out it just re-hydrates it to where it should be. But it’s going to be better off for you.

There are other superfoods out there. It would be a waste of my breath even talking about some of these things because it’s a joke what people are saying with these things. We really have to wake up and show discern with these things. I plead with everyone out there, look at what’s happening and who’s saying what and what claims are being made. Not only at the Raw Food Summit that we have our leaders at with over 500 years combined, but we have people with scientific information that backs up what we’re saying. We didn’t just have, “I’m going to wake up one day and want to make a lot of money so I’m going to slap this on some dried fruit or powder and call it an amazing superfood.”

So we really have to show discern and be careful. Kevin: One of the superfoods that I had personal experience with is cacao. I know that you’re not very favorable for it. Can you just tell us what your experience with it is? Paul: First of all, I call it crack-cao because it’s one of the most addicting things out there. Fred Bisci and everyone else confirms this but what happened to me was I used to be a big fan of it because I loved the way it tasted. I started noticing I didn’t feel that great when I took it. But even more concerning was I contacted Jeremy Saffron who is a good friend of mine and he told me that he too thought it was once good and he did more research and found out it really wasn’t. It’s high in caffeine, theobromine and has some other issues with it. The bad weighs out the good.

People started coming to my lectures literally shaking. I do a lot of lectures. They were often shaking and saying, “I can’t get off this. Help me. It’s really bad.” It’s basically a drug. I’m not one to say nobody can ever take it and you can’t use it, but I believe it should be used in the same way a person would use like vanilla extract. You use it as a flavoring in very small amount and that’s fine. But when you’re told you need it to be healthy and you have to take pounds and pounds of it every day, that’s a whole other story. That’s where the problem lies. So we really have to be careful. Nobody is going to buy a month’s worth of vanilla extract, tons and tons of it, so they can pour it down their throat the way they do this crack-cao.

It’s just really a marketing scheme here. It’s really dangerous. It is a drug and a lot of people out there feel great taking it because they don’t know the difference between stimulation and true energy. We really have to be careful out there. Yes, it tastes great but there are other things that taste great as well that don’t have the same problems. We need to realize what those are. Give it up. Realize, “I don’t need this. Why am I taking this? Is it as good as it claims to be?”

I got a book from the publisher that publishes Arnold Ehret’s books. If nobody out there has read Arnold Ehret’s books you have to read “Mucusless Diet Healing,” which is a classic. Anyway, the publisher had another book “Live Food Recipe Book.” It was probably one of the first ones that were out. They actually spoke about it and they said it was a bad food. It’s becoming more common sense and more knowledge and people need to wake up. I know half of you probably hung up the phone because you didn’t want hear it was bad, but I’m not here to become your friend. I’m here to tell you the truth. If you can deal with it great. If you can’t, you’ll come to me later when you’re sick. So that’s that.

To read the rest of this transcript as well as access Renegade Roundtable experts just like Paul Nison please click here! Kevin Gianni is an internationally recognized health advocate, author & film consultant. He has helped thousands of people take control of their own health naturally. For more information visit raw food diets and holistic nutrition.

Source:www.isnare.com

The New Food Wars: Globalization GMOs and Biofuels

Across the world, food riots are taking place. Scientist and activist Vandana Shiva explores whether the future will be one of food wars or food peace. She argues that the creation of food peace demands a major shift in the way food is produced and distributed, and the way in which we manage and use the soil, water and biodiversity, which makes food production possible.

Source: UCtelevision on YouTube

The Truth About Sugar – Parts 1 and 2- Time: 18:36

Nutrition by Natalie

Sugar Shock

How much sugar do you consume? You might be surprised just how much sugar there is in everyday food. In this video, Natalie shows you the shocking truth about how much sugar you’re consuming.

You will be surprised just how much sugar there is in common things like a soft drink, McDonalds Value Meal, fast food, Starbucks drinks, etc.

Natalie shows you how much sugar there is in certain food items including; blueberry muffins, orange juice, a poptart, Lucky Charms cereal, barbecue sauce, a Coke, Gatorade sports drink, a Starbucks Chocolate Frappuccino Mocha, a chocolate cake dessert and others.

Natalie also talks about the relationship of sugar and high fructose corn syrup to weight gain, energy, diabetes and health.

This video is an eye opener even if you aren’t on a diet.

Part Two

Frankenfoods in Your “Natural” Foods Store: Whole Foods or Whole Hypocrisy?

 

By Ronnie Cummins -
Organic Consumers Association, April 12, 2011

 

“The reality is that no grocery store in the United States, no matter what size or type of business, can claim they are GE-free. While we have been and will continue to be staunch supporters of non-GE foods, we are not going to mislead our customers with an inaccurate claim… We have advocated for mandatory labeling of GE foods since 1992…”  —  Whole Foods Market Internal Company Memo 1/30/2011.

“Whole Foods claim they support mandatory labeling of GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms). Well, where are the labels on the vast array of non-organic foods in their stores that contain genetically engineered soybeans, corn, canola, cottonseed oil, or sugar beets? Where are the labels on their so-called “natural” meat, eggs, or dairy products, reared on GMO grains and animal drugs?”
  —  Protester in front of a San Francisco Whole Foods Market, April 11, 2011.

After two decades of biotech bullying by Monsanto and Food Inc., a grassroots movement of organic consumers and farmers is rising up across the United States. Inspired by the success of their European counterparts in driving genetically engineered crops and foods off the market, not through an EU ban, but through mandatory labeling, several thousand protesters took to the streets on March 26, 2011 in 30 different cities, under the banner of  “Rally for the Right to Know,” and “Millions Against Monsanto.”
At the same time, anti-GMO activists have stepped up the pace of grassroots lobbying, successfully pressuring state legislators in at least 14 states to introduce bills calling for mandatory labeling of genetically engineered foods.

Reflecting widespread public concern over the health and environmental hazards of GMOs, recent polls by National Public Radio and MSNBC have found that more than 90% of Americans support mandatory labeling. Mandatory labeling of GMOs, of course, is bitterly opposed by Monsanto and the supermarket lobby, who understand, as a Monsanto executive admitted, “If you put a label on genetically engineered food you might as well put a skull and crossbones on it.”

Angered by the Obama administration’s recent controversial approvals of GMO alfalfa, salmon, sugar beets, and corn, and the compromise or surrender of organic industry leaders, including Whole Foods, in agreeing to accept the “co-existence,” of GMO and organic crops and foods, organic consumers across the U.S. have decided to take matters into their own hands.

Spearheaded by the industry watchdog group, the Organic Consumers Association, and powerful alternative health consumer networks such as NaturalNews.com and Mercola.com, millions of health and environmental-minded consumers are starting to demand that the $60 billion “natural” products industry take GMO products off their shelves, or at least clearly label them, so that consumers can seek certified organic and other GMO-free alternatives.

In an interview at the Green Festival in San Francisco on April 9, Alexis Baden-Mayer, OCA Campaign Director, explained the strategy behind the Millions Against Monsanto Truth-in-Labeling Campaign.
“Over 90% of Americans want GE-tainted foods labeled. Why? So that we can avoid buying these foods.  This is a major reason why millions of us are buying certified organic products, which preclude the use of GE ingredients, as well as toxic chemicals and animal drugs. Since the politicians in Washington apparently prefer to listen to Monsanto rather than their constituents, we need to put our efforts where we currently have the most power, in our local communities, especially at the retail grocery store level, where 50 million of us are regularly buying certified organic and so-called ‘natural’ foods.
“What most green consumers don’t understand yet, is that most of the so-called “natural” processed foods and animal products (which make up 2/3 of the sales of Whole Foods Market) that we are still buying are GMO-contaminated. Either they contain GMO ingredients like soy, corn, canola, cottonseed oil or sugar beet sweetener, or else the animals have been force-fed fed a steady diet of GMO grains and drugs.
“We need to clean up our act and walk our talk in the green and natural products sector. We need to tell natural food giants like Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s that you can’t claim to support GMO labeling, and then proceed to sell billions of dollars of unlabeled GMO food in your stores, greenwashed as ‘natural.’ We’re protesting this week in front of Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s to make our views on GMOs absolutely clear. Like our banners say: ‘GMOs: Don’t buy them! Don’t sell them! Don’t grow them!’ Once we drive GMOs out of our organic and natural food stores, or at least force retailers to label them, we will then be able to turn our attention to conventional supermarkets and do the same thing.”
“But this means we’ve got to build a mass movement of Millions Against Monsanto. By World Food Day, October 16, we plan to mobilize a powerful and unprecedented coalition that can pressure, and if necessary boycott, industry leaders such as Whole Foods and Trader Joe’s…”

Across the U.S. and the world, people are fed up. Moving beyond ineffectual compromise and co-existence with a green-washed business-as-usual and politics-as-usual, more and more of us are drawing lines in the sand. Nuclear power, genetic engineering, dirty coal and other out-of-control technologies have revealed themselves for what they really are: deadly threats to our survival. Monsanto has deservedly become one of the most hated corporations on earth. It’s time to drive their evil products out of the marketplace, starting with the green or natural products sector, utilizing the most powerful tools at our disposal, public education, agitation, and Truth-in-Labeling. Get up. Stand up for your rights. Tell Whole Foods Market and Trader Joe’s to stop selling Monsanto’s unlabeled genetically modified organisms. Join the Millions Against Monsanto Campaign. http://www.MillionsAgainstMonsanto.org

Source: Organic Consumers Association

Diabetes: A Guide for African American Families, Parts 1,2 & 3 – Time: 27:54

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