Whether you are on a hike or a long car trip, only one food is better than trail mix. It’s customized trail mix.

Until yesterday the only way to get it just to your liking, however, was to go shopping for each of the ingredients you wanted and then put them together. But without a lot of calculations that few of us would bother to figure out, we wouldn’t have any idea how many calories, carbohydrates, and other nutrients those bags of trail mix would have.

Now, YouBars has expanded from their original customized nutrition bars, which last year I wrote about here. CEO Anthony Flynn offered me the chance to place an advance order for my own customized trail mix.
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Another name for baby soybeans, whether fresh or frozen, is edamame. Most people call them edamame, but that Japanese word was hard for me to learn. And I do like babies of all sorts.

Edamame, usually pronounced in English as something like ed-a MA may, by whatever name you call them is one of the most nutritious vegetables on the planet. Unfortunately, however, it’s not a food that most of us who have diabetes know well enough.

For the past few years I’ve run across them from time to time at farmers markets. Generally, they have been available in the pod from which we can squeeze out the beans. I know that some people prefer to buy them in the pod because it slows them down.
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Just a few minutes of exercise can have a big effect on the action of insulin that keeps our glucose levels in balance. The trick is to go all out.

While we have known for years that aerobic exercise like walking improves the health of our hearts and helps prevent or control diabetes, it can take a lot of time. Until now, however, we didn’t know if quick bursts of exercise would help.

Recent research now shows that it does. Scientists in Scotland reported their findings in BioMed Central Endocrine Disorders. Just 15 minutes of high-intensity interval training in a two-week period had a “remarkable” effect on the insulin action of the sedentary young men in the study, the researchers wrote.
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A single research report that found risks in one of the medications that we take to control our diabetes would warrant our attention. But when three separate studies find serious side effects from all our major drugs, the time is right for us to reconsider how we control our blood glucose levels.

Most of us think of our diabetes drugs, diet, and exercise as the three basic ways we do that. But drugs come first. Maybe they should come last, at least for all of us with type 2 diabetes, who unlike type 1s have a choice.

Since March 10, studies have called into question the side effects of metformin, the glitazones, insulin, and the sulfonylureas.
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Maybe some day I will question the advice of the American medical establishment to eat the 2.5 cups of vegetables that they say I should eat every day. Already I doubt the wisdom of eating starchy vegetables, peas, and beans, and avoid almost all fruit except avocados, green peppers, and lemons (in the form of TrueLemon). But so far I still think that it’s a good idea to eat lots of the good veggies.

Except that I haven’t been eating enough. Oh, for lunch I do get my big salad, which usually includes lettuce, BroccoSprouts, chia seeds, avocados, and green peppers. It’s my main meal.

But that alone doesn’t give me enough of the good veggies. And it’s not enough variety to make sure that I cover all the nutritional bases.
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Few of us can afford the insane cost of health care without health insurance. But in this sinking economy more and more of us have lost that safety net.

The good news is that some strands of the net remain in place. I’m lucky to be old enough to hang on to the biggest one, Medicare.

In November when I had to spend one night in the local hospital, they billed my insurance $2,310 for the room. But that was a minor part of the $11,518 bill. And it didn’t include bills from two doctors.

Because of the deal that my insurance company cut with the hospital, that was a lot less than the room rate and other hospital charges they would have billed me as an uninsured patient. Is that unfair or what! I was lucky that my co-pay was only $450.
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Earlier studies that I reviewed here indicated that when we take our food in liquid form rather than in a solid one, we consume more calories that day. And now a big new study shows that when we cut back on the amount of liquid calories that we consume, we do lose weight.

But, unlike the earlier studies, the new one finds only one liquid culprit: sugar-sweetened beverages. No other type of beverage is associated with a change in weight.

This is good news for people with diabetes. More than 85 percent of us are overweight or obese, according to a survey by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
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Some of our doctors don’t help us when they use insulin as a threat: “Unless you reduce your blood glucose, I am going to have to put you on insulin.”

So it’s no surprise that many of us who have type 2 diabetes think we have failed when our doctors prescribe it. This comes from thinking of injecting insulin as a last resort.

It isn’t. More and more of us are now starting to take insulin as soon as our doctors have diagnosed our type 2 diabetes. Probably half of the men in my diabetes support group started taking insulin as a first choice.
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When you consider how many of us have problems with our feet, you might expect to find lots of resources full of good advice. Then, when you reflect that peripheral neuropathy is one of the most serious complication of diabetes, you could hope to find a book that could help you to keep the legs you stand on.

Until now I have looked in vain for such a book. But I just read it.

Dr. Mark Hinkes, a podiatrist and amputation prevention specialist, wrote Keep the Legs You Stand On and sent me a copy. This big book — 537 pages — is the definitive guide for those of us with diabetes who want to keep both of our legs.
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