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Sunday, June 27, 2010

Prevent Diabetes With Lifestyle Changes

Prevent diabetes complications is one that Shields focused on and is to be commended for being such a good role model for diabetic to emulate. For in only looking after ourselves in changing our lifestyle to a healthy one will we be able to avoid the complications that type 2 diabetes can bring along.

Preventing diabetes through lifestyle changes has been documented and proven by studies after studies. People at risk for developing diabetes should stand up and take notice of this. The trouble is people who read this type of item either has diabetes or know someone with the condition.

That said, those who are at risk and are not interested in alerts such as this will not know that they can prevent diabetes. So it is for us people to try to spread the word around so that all those concerned will avail themselves of strategies that can prevent diabetes.

One such study was conducted by researchers in Finland. They found that eating healthy and exercising were able to stave off the beginning of diabetes. They studied 522 middle-aged people who had impaired glucose tolerance. We know that this is an intermediate step to develop diabetes. They divided this group into two sets.

They assigned one set to receive ordinary help and advice while the other group received personalized guidance and health counseling on eating healthy and moving more. They named this set the intervention group. Which group did better? I know that in your heart, I will bet my bottom dollar, you know which group showed better rates, diabetes-wise.

You are right for at the end of the research, they found the intervention group who received personalized care from exercise specialists and dietitians had better diabetes rates meaning, the number of people who developed diabetes was 58% lower. In fact, 27 people developed diabetes compared to 59 in the group that received the standard care.

Can you blame the lead author of the study for saying that they have proven that type 2 diabetes can be prevented? The lead author, Jaakko Tuomilehto, MD, PhD, said further that the lifestyle changes do not have to be drastic. Even small changes can help. The people in the intervention group, for example, lost an average of 9.26 pounds during the first year of the study.

So what is the recommendation? Talk to your doctor about the ways you can become healthier and your risk to develop diabetes. The benefit is not only confined to diabetes but also there is improvement in blood pressure, blood lipid levels like triglycerides which can show the risk to develop heart disease. So spread the word to your friends and loved ones so they can prevent diabetes.

Sunday, June 20, 2010

Organic Diet Secrets of the Stars

Organic diet secrets of the stars? It's good to know what the stars do eat to get themselves healthy. Here are some of them but mostly though, they eat organic foods and they shun meats. Our parents have advocated the healthy style of eating greens so perhaps this is the way to go. Maybe it's more expensive though. Let's check them out:

Kate Bosworth, what does she do to keep her skin glowing? She said she tries hard to eat organic foods but it is clear that one cannot eat organic all the time. She therefore recommends that we just do our best. After all, eating organically some of the time is better than not at all. . Eating healthy is.

How about Marc Jacobs, the designer at Louis Vuitton? What did he do to prepare for his almost nude pictures in Harper's Bazaar? He said he switched to organic diet that has no sugar, caffeine, dairy and flour. He said he lost 20 pounds from that diet and the two-hour a day exercise, seven days a week at the gym.

Now let's go and see what Angelina Jolie's secret is in getting back her slim figure so quickly after delivering twins. She opted for a diet heavy in vegetables and Omega-3s. Her menu is like this: brown bread, organic salmon with tomatoes for breakfast, grilled fresh tuna or mackerel with spinach, tomatoes and watercress for lunch or supper.

Would you believe even the Rolling Stones try to eat organically? Bass player Wood's wife Jo introduced them to this when she went on the organic diet after suffering from perforated appendix. Herbalist Gerald Green explained to her how our immune system is destroyed by the chemicals in our food. So now the Stones drink organic vodka and wine.

Madonna is famous not only for her entertaining abilities but also for her organic and macrobiotic diet. She demands that her kids go on this diet when they stay with her ex-husband. She knows that when they're on this diet, their urine clears up carrying no more of those damaging toxins.

Ed Norton got ready to be the incredible hulk by being on an organic diet. During filming in Toronto for instance, he frequented an Organic Bar known as “raw food Shangri La”. He knows that food does not come in a box or a store, having been brought up by environmentalist parents.

Then there's Stella McCartney who has been a vegetarian all her life. Donna Karan is devoted to raw food and yoga and lost 20 pounds from going on a raw organic diet. Reese Witherspoon boyfriend, Jake Gyllenhaal, plans to open an organic restaurant. If he adds meat to the menu, it will be from animals that are hormone-free and fed with grass. There you have the stars' organic diet secrets.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

Diabetes and Pollution Linked

Diabetes and pollution is the topic of a study conducted at Ohio State University that found links between several pesticides, air pollution and diabetes. They say that breathing soot affects the way insulin works in mice and make these fat mice at risk to develop Type 2 diabetes. The National Instituted of Health paid for this study which was published in Circulation.

This research that linked diabetes with pesticides include the ones used on golf courses. They are also used to kill pests that are supposedly harmful to food crops. The researchers also tied diabetes to air pollution. They found that breathing soot affects the work of insulin in mice. This made fat mice to develop type 2 diabetes.

The National Institute of Health funded this research which showed that fat mice that were already vulnerable to develop type 2 diabetes because of unhealthy diet increased their risk with air pollution. In other words, air pollution was the trigger that determined which of the fat mice would develop diabetes and which would not.

What is soot? This is also known as fine particulates. Mind you, there is more regulation now with the government stepping in trying to improve the smokestacks and diesel engines. Sadly, the air still remains unhealthy on some days in certain areas of the country because of the fine particulates.

Heart troubles and lung disease have been triggered by the unhealthy air. This is the reason the government stepped in to regulate the emission. And now the experts are saying that pollution may also be a factor in the obesity epidemic. This is why continuing work on this will help prevent heart attack and stroke.

Epidemiological researches have suggested the diabetics are at risk to develop cardiovascular problems. They say that this is associated with exposure to air pollution associated with power plants that burn coal and those emitted from traffic.

In one study the findings reported that exposure to air pollution consistently showed positive points estimates associated with inflammatory markers. This suggests that inflammatory mechanism is behind the increased risk to cardiovascular events due to air pollution.

Standards of air quality outdoors help protect the population's sensitive people. The trouble is despite the standards, association between diabetes and pollution can still be detected even when the levels are below the standards. So there is still room for improvement in this regard.

One important pollutant is formed by such sources as power plants and also formed due the fossil-fuel combustion by motor vehicles. This is quite a concern for health as these pollutants are deposited in portions of the lungs and the lower airways. More has to be done to stop the link between diabetes and pollution.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Low-Dose Aspirin Therapy Did Not Prevent Type 2 Diabetes

Low-dose aspirin therapy research result is some kind of a bad news because I thought taking low-dose aspirin has a dual purpose in avoiding cardiovascular events and preventing type 2 diabetes. Now they have just shot down the second benefit and for the research that did, it appears to be legitimate as they have a large number of participants.

Here's what the researchers did. They examined the efficacy of the aspirin therapy for the incidence of type 2 diabetes. They enrolled 38,716 women who did not have diabetes between 1992 and 1995. They randomly divided this set into two groups. One of the groups was assigned to take a low-dose aspirin on alternate days while the other group was given a placebo.

Here's what the researchers found. There was no difference shown by both the placebo and the aspirin groups as to the incidence of type 2 diabetes. As a matter of fact, 849 cases of diabetes was found in the aspirin group while the placebo group had 847 cases of diabetes.

Adverse events and bleeding episodes were higher in the aspirin group though than in the placebo group. The rate of the bleeding episode among the women in the aspirin group was 4.5% while the placebo group showed the rate of bleeding episode as 3.7%.

The researchers conducted this study due to the increasing number of diabetes cases, the high cost of treatment and the influence this has on the cardiovascular disease among women. They felt a need to determine appropriate strategies to prevent this.

The researchers believed that zeroing into both the reduction of diabetes and cardiovascular events was very appealing especially so the risk for both often appear in the same person. So identifying the preventive measures would have made the health condition among these women better.

No one was surprised at the finding because the type of aspirin used was low-dose. They already knew that high dose aspirin have shown that it can decrease the resistance to insulin, thus improvement in the functioning of the beta cells is the result.

Now that the new guidelines on aspirin for the diabetics have arrived, the experts are weighing the pros and cons or rather the benefits and risk of the low-dose aspirin treatment. It looks like that women who are under 60 and men under 50 who have no risk for heart disease should not be on low-dose aspirin therapy.