All the real diet books say to start with a food diary. For the 85 percent of those of us with diabetes who are overweight or obese and are presumably trying to get down to something more healthy that sounds easy enough. [Read more →]

Who would have thought that we can think better after eating whole grain barley for breakfast?

We knew that barley kernels cause our blood glucose levels to rise much less than any other grain. Whole pearl barley has a glycemic index of 25; the next lowest whole grain tested, rye kernels, has a GI of 34. [Read more →]

We already had several good reasons to lose weight. Now we have another one.

The overwhelming majority of those of us adults who have been diagnosed with diabetes are overweight or obese. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that 85.2 percent of us are either overweight or obese, of which 54.8 percent of us are obese. This is based on large surveys of Americans with diabetes. [Read more →]

Most of us believe in some of the myths about diabetes. Even the American Diabetes Association.

The ADA has a pretty good list of what it thinks are the main myths. But a lot of us think that its “myth #5” is in fact a fact. “If you have diabetes, you should only eat small amounts of starchy foods, such as bread, potatoes and pasta,” the ADA says. [Read more →]

Practically every day the media reports on another new herb, vitamin, or mineral that supposedly will help us control or even cure our diabetes. It’s been almost impossible even for people who try to keep up with diabetes developments to know which of these supplements might help us. [Read more →]

We know that exercise somehow reduces our risk of heart disease, the most common complication of diabetes. But we really haven’t known how. [Read more →]

Today we have even more bad news in two separate studies about the diabetes drug Avandia. With the bad news we get all the time about diabetes you might wonder why I report more negative stuff.

It’s because we have much better alternatives. [Read more →]

It was easier for me to find the trail at nearly 11,000 feet in the Indian Peaks Wilderness yesterday than to find the theater where I saw Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko. That’s because I hike a lot and this was the first time I have ever gone to a movie theater since 2004, when I moved to Boulder, Colorado. This isn’t a big town – barely 100,000 people, but I just didn’t know where the theater is and had to drive all around to find it. [Read more →]

The new diabetes drug, Byetta, can help us control our blood glucose and lose weight. In animal experiments it stimulates the birth of new beta cells, make more beta cells develop, and increase the mass of beta cells. [Read more →]

The third day of the American Diabetes Association’s convention in the so-called Windy City blew me away in more ways than one. [Read more →]