High glycemic foods make the major blood vessel of our upper arms swell out or expand from internal pressure, according to new research. This brachial artery is the most convenient place that scientists and doctors have to measure how elastic our arteries are.

The elasticity of our arteries anywhere in our body is a measure of our heart health. When the walls of an artery anywhere in our body expand suddenly, this can lead to heart disease or sudden death.

Those of us who have diabetes need to do what we can to keep our arteries healthy. The statistics are shocking: 68 percent of Americans 65 or older die from heart disease, and adults with diabetes are two to four times more likely to die from a heart attack than other Americans. [Read more →]

Motivating people with diabetes to control this disease is my goal in life. For most of my life I consciously took in information, but now what gives me the greatest joy is to share it.

But what motivated me to control my own diabetes?

Yesterday afternoon I gave my chiropractor a copy of the article that I wrote here on Chia Seeds, mentioning that many people had read and commented on it. While he was treating me, he said that my articles must help many people to control their diabetes.

Maybe, I acknowledged.  But I’m trying to help just one person at a time. [Read more →]

A few days ago when I finally was able to see a neurologist for the headaches that started four months ago, the first part of his examination was of my feet. I had heard of referred pain, but this seemed extreme to me, and I told him so.

The doctor replied that he would get to my head. In the meanwhile he gave me a complete examination. He used a tuning fork, similar to what musicians use. I could feel it as he went down my legs. But when he got to each of my feet, I felt nothing.

Then he worked down my legs to my feet with the side of a pin. Again, my feet I had no sensation.

He told me that I had peripheral neuropathy. And I could see it for myself. None of my other doctors had ever told me that before. [Read more →]

The A1C test is our best scorecard to show how well we are controlling our diabetes. It measures how much glucose has been sticking to our red blood cells for the previous two or three months. Since our bodies replace each red blood cell with a new one every four months, this test tells us the average of how high our glucose levels have been during the life of the cells.

The experts recommend that we should get our A1C level tested at least twice a year. People who take insulin need to get it about four times a year.

If the test shows that our blood glucose level is high, it means that we have a greater risk of having diabetes problems. Think of the A1C as an early warning system for the insidious complications that we can get down the road when we don’t control our condition.

But what do we mean by a “high” A1C level? Here the experts disagree. [Read more →]

This weekend my friend Mark and I drove about 120 miles from our homes in Boulder to Leadville in Central Colorado. Mark is a member of the diabetes support group that meets monthly at my apartment, and we are both avid hikers and nature photographers.

On Friday as we set off on the Turquoise Lake trail near Leadville, Mark checked his blood glucose. It was about 75 mg/dl so he ate a chocolate bar that he had in his pack.

“I figure that as long as I have to eat something to raise my level, I may as well eat something that tastes good,” he commented.

Maybe my body language showed my disagreement. So he asked me why I didn’t like his solution. [Read more →]

The A1C is certainly the gold standard to see how well we are controlling our diabetes. But even gold isn’t good enough for us.

The A1C doesn’t show our glycemic variability. For those of us who have our blood glucose levels under reasonably good control, our glycemic excursions are even more important than our average level.

A low A1C level can mask a lot of lows and highs. The experts call these hypos and hypers “glycemic variability” or “glycemic excursions.” Our level can be all over the place, while our A1C looks fine.
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More and more research pinpoints inflammation as a root cause of type 2 diabetes. Being overweight makes it harder for us to control our diabetes, but that can’t be what causes it. Since a lot more people are overweight or obese than have diabetes, weight alone can’t lead to diabetes.

No one ever demonstrated that obesity causes diabetes or even insulin resistance. In my most recent book, Losing Weight with Your Diabetes Medication, I speculated that essentially it might be the other way around: That what makes so many of us overweight could be insulin resistance or impaired beta cells.

Type 2 diabetes generally results from the combination of impaired beta cell function and insulin resistance acting on susceptible genes. Why then is there such a large overlap between being heavy and type 2 diabetes?
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Today Bayer Diabetes Care launched the A1CNow SELFCHECK that we can use to check our A1C level at home. Finally.

Many of us have been waiting for years. In September 2006 I wrote here that we would have it “soon.” Then, a year ago at last year’s convention of the American Diabetes Association in San Francisco a Bayer spokesperson told me that next year they plan to sell it over-the-counter in three-packs. Now that the SELFCHECK is finally available online, the two-pack version is even better for us.

Until now, if you wanted to use the A1CNow, you had to buy the commercial version. The problem with that version is that we don’t need to use all of its 10 cartridges within their one-year expiration date. Since the A1C test measures our average blood glucose level over the previous two to three months, our doctors generally recommend two to four A1C tests each year.
[Read more →]