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Diabetes Diet

Diabetes Diet

Broken Link Between Saturated Fat and Heart Health

You won’t read it in the mainstream press. But the most significant study ever of the effect of saturated fat on our hearts appeared Wednesday.

In fact, I couldn’t find any mainstream articles about it today. Not one of the four sources that I rely on heavily for leads to new studies has carried a word about this one. In fact, another source, Google News, instead turned up articles headlined like “Reduce your intake of saturated fats or suffer a heart condition,” “Ban butter to save our hearts, says doctor,” and “Not all fats are equal – saturated fat is the real baddie.”

Not.

The new study should drive the last nail in the coffin of the supposed link between eating saturated fat and getting heart disease. Since heart disease is the most common as well as the most serious complication of diabetes, nothing could be more relevant to us.

Ever since 1953, when a physiologist named Ancel Keys, Ph.D., compared fat intake and deaths from heart disease in six countries, including the U.S., the American medical establishment has clung to an unproven belief that saturated fat was evil. But even by 1957 we should have known better, after Jacob Yerushalmy, Ph.D., established that Keys was guilty of the sin of cherry picking. While Dr. Keys used data from six country, he actually had statistics from 22 countries available. And when scientists analyzed those statistics, the apparent link between eating fat and heart disease disappeared. Continue Reading

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Diabetes Testing

Testing Omega 3

If we can easily test our blood glucose and cholesterol levels, why can’t we test the level of omega 3 fatty acids in our blood? Nothing — not cholesterol or even C-reactive protein levels — is better at predicting sudden cardiac death, which still causes about 60 percent of cardiac disease death in the United States, according to an analysis by Centers for Disease Control researchers.

For years this lack of an omega 3 blood test puzzled me. No more. It has finally arrived.

The HS-Omega-3 Index uses a standardized methodology to measure the percentage of eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) plus docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) in red blood cells. It also measures the ratio of omega 3 to omega 6.

Some cold water fish like salmon, mackerel, herring, albacore tuna, and sardines have a lot of this healthy omega 3 fat. I follow the standard recommendation to eat one of these fish at least twice a week. I supplement my fish with krill oil capsules for even more omega 3. Continue Reading

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Diabetes Diet

“Food, Inc.”

American agriculture changed more in the past 50 years than it did in the previous 10,000 years since humans started cultivating grains and domesticating cattle, pigs, and poultry. This affects all Americans, but none more than those of us who have diabetes, which started its steep rise at about the same time that our farms became so much more efficient under the management of just a few huge multinational corporations.

This correlation certainly isn’t proof that modern agriculture caused the rise of diabetes. It remains, however, a likely suspect.

Neither can we fairly claim that the giant corporations that control most of American agriculture are the cause of anything more than being efficient. These companies are doing what companies are supposed to do — making a lot of money by doing what all companies try to do.


The root of the problem is our government. The federal government of the United States of America set the conditions under which the great consolidation of American agriculture took place. This is our “farm policy.”
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Diabetes Diet

Fructose and High Blood Pressure

If you have high blood pressure, your doctor has probably told you a dozen times to cut way back on salt (sodium). But this works only for people who have a “salt-sensitive phenotype,” which results from both genetic makeup and environmental influences.

New preliminary research offers another strategy that might work for more of us. If we cut back on the fructose that we eat from added sugars, we may be able to control high blood pressure.

Most people with diabetes have high blood pressure, or to use the technical name, hypertension. High blood pressure is, after all, one of the key components of the metabolic syndrome, or syndrome x, that leads to diabetes.

When doctors talk about our blood pressure being high they mean a level of more than 120/80 mmHg. Those numbers are shorthand for a systolic or peak pressure of 120 and a diastolic or minimum pressure of 80 millimeters of mercury. Continue Reading

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Diabetes Diet

Nothing to Eat

If you listen to all the so-called experts on nutrition, we can’t eat anything. But here’s the good news.

We can at least drink one thing, water. Nobody argues against water itself, although some of the experts tell us that it has to be filtered and we shouldn’t buy bottled water because it’s not well tested and all those bottles are bad for the environment. Maybe I shouldn’t even drink the sparkling water that I love. One correspondent told me that it will do terrible things to my body, like leaching out certain minerals. Another reminds me that the plastic bottles that it comes in also degrade the environment. Maybe I will have to buy a machine so I can make it at home if I can outlast the leaching.

Once upon a time I wrote that if you listened to all the experts, then water and fiber were the only things that we could safely consume. Now, however, it seems, according to one expert, that even additional fiber is bad for us. If you still believe that your body needs you to take fiber supplements, please read this post by Michael Eades, M.D. Continue Reading

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Diabetes Diet

The Grain Drug

For more than a quarter of a century whenever I would mention coffee, a good friend of mine would smugly comment, “I don’t do drugs.” The caffeine in coffee is, of course, a stimulant drug. But he didn’t know that he does use a drug, one that is even more common than caffeine.

My friend didn’t realize that the wheat bread and other grains that he eats every day contain chemicals related to morphine called opioids. The daily bagel is addicting. No wonder that so many people who have diabetes find that as much as they want to control their blood glucose levels they have a devil of a time giving up grain.

When Rachael F. Heller and Richard F. Heller published The Carbohydrate Addict’s Diet in 1993, they were certainly on to something. While not all carbohydrates contain addictive opioids, grains do, and they are a large part of the American diet. Continue Reading

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