LifeCare Chiropractic

The Best Chiropractic Care in Mesa, Arizona

prediabetes

Artificial Sweeteners: Lessons for the Slow Learners

by

sucralose side effects

It seemed like, for a brief period, society was finally catching onto the idea that artificial sweeteners, in all amounts and all types, was a bad thing.

Then the moment passed.

I continue to see almost every single gum available in stores with artificial sweeteners (and typically more than one type is used).  And just in the past few weeks I’ve had patients ask me about “medical” weight loss plans that contain sucralose.  And of course diet sodas continue to grace the shelves in every store known to man.

When I ask the distributors about the artificial sweeteners in their products, I ALWAYS get the same answer: “Well it’s just a little bit.”

If it’s just a “little bit” then why is it even in the product?  For taste, of course.  This means that there is enough for your body to recognize the “sweet” in whatever product it’s in.  This is where the problem starts.  You see–we don’t just have taste buds on our tongues–we also have them in the small intestine in cells called the L cells.  When the L cells taste sweet, even VERY small amounts, it sends a signal to the rest of the body that calories are on their way.

But alas!  It is just a trick we play on our intestinal L cells when we use artificial sweeteners.  No calories are on their way.  Over time, we begin to disassociate our sense of taste from our body’s reaction to sweet.  This is a disastrous outcome, especially in our children, in whom artificial sweeteners should not even be kept in the same room.

And they are everywhere.  Think you’re doing good by avoiding diet soda?  How about that pack of gum in your pocket or purse?  I’m betting that it’s got multiple types of artificial sweeteners.  Ask for lemonade at a restaurant?  There’s a chance that it’s sugar free and the waiter failed to mention it.

You need to extra vigilant about reading labels to make sure you’re avoiding artificial sweeteners.  Anything less is going to have consequences to your health.

Every time I present a research study on the topic of the lie-that-is-artificial-sweeteners-to-manage-weight, I wonder just how much accumulated research it’s going to take for society to wake up and kick these chemicals to the curb.

Maybe this particular study will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back.  In it, researchers looked at four different drink options  and how they each related to the risk of prediabetes in a large group of 1868 people free from prediabetes at the beginning of the study.  Sugar sweetened beverages, artificial sweetened beverages, natural fruit juices and bottled juices were compared.   Here’s what they found over the course of 3.24 years:

  • When compared to those who consume less than one serving per week, those who had more than 5 servings/wk of bottle fruit juices were 14% more likely to be diagnosed with prediabetes.
  • Natural fruit juices increased the risk by 30%.
  • Sugar sweetened beverages increased the risk by 43%.
  • And artificial sweeteners? Almost double the risk of prediabetes at 74%.

There are a few pretty darn important take home messages from this study.

First, even if you think drinking fruit juice is a good idea for your health, it’s NOT.  In this study, rather than being good for participants, it actually increased the risk of prediabetes.  We should never drink our calories.  There will never be as many nutrients per calorie in a fruit juice than there will be in the fruit whole.  Period.

Second, rather than protecting against diabetes, artificial sweeteners dramatically increased the risk.  Totally the opposite of what society has been led to believe for years now.  It is now clearly at the point where no one can rightfully claim that the use of artificial sweeteners have any place in the diets of humans.

Have I Mentioned that Prediabetes is Bad for the Heart?

by

I have said before that, from my standpoint, diabetes and heart disease are the same thing.
Seventy percent of diabetics die of cardiovascular causes.   Almost all heart disease sufferers have some trace of diabetes or prediabetes.  The lifestyle changes that impact one impact the other, both negative and protective.
In the medical research over the past few years, there has been a very strong push towards using a compound called brain natriuretic peptide (BNP) to estimate risk for heart attacks and strokes.
In this particular study, research found that the more prediabetic factors someone had, the higher his or her levels of BNP.
You can rest assured that this is because a drug to control BNP levels would then be a brand new blockbuster drug worth untold billions of dollars.  In the end, this would really just create another drug to dance around the problem of insulin and the cell not playing well together and not actually fix anything but a number found on bloodwork.
Just like blood pressure meds, diabetic drugs and statins for cholesterol.

Are Public Health Recommendations Increasing the Risk of Diabetes?

by

You will find that most who understand physiology and stay current with the medical literature are no fans of dairy products for multiple reasons.

It’s a common allergen.  It has been linked to type 1 diabetes.  It is mucous forming and contributes to ear infections in children.

And there really are no benefits, despite what the public health messages continue to drill into us.  Dairy is NOT good for our bones (unless you are comparing it to Coke…).

In this particular study, we see that increased intake of dairy decreases a marker that indicates worse blood sugar handling (lower levels of 1,5 AG = increased risk of diabetes) that would increase the risk of diabetes.

Think about this…  Name another mammal that continues to drink milk after they’re weaned?  Mammalian milk is a high calorie drink designed to support rapid growth in the early stages of life.  How many of us need “rapid growth” at 30 years old?

So I’m Prediabetic. Does This Mean I’ll Get Diabetes?

by

First of all, let me stress again that probably HALF of you reading this are prediabetic.

High cholesterol, low HDL, high triglycerides, high blood pressure, ringing in the ears, gallbladder problems, abdominal obesity, gout, skin tags…the list of problems associated with being prediabetic is quite extensive.

One of these is bad enough, but what if you happen to have, say, THREE of these factors?  Just how high is your risk?

In my experience, it is rare that someone is told they are prediabetic and had some concern over what this really means.  This condition is grossly and severely, unrecognized by mainstream medicine.

Back to the risk…

This particular study looked at how likely someone is to go on to develop diabetes is he or she has a certain number of these elements of prediabetes.  The bottom line?  While there is a lot of variability, there are some things that stand out.  The more risk factors you have, the more likely you are to go on to develop diabetes in 5 years.  If one of your risk factors includes high blood sugar, your risk is much higher.

To me, this means that, regardless of how high your risk is or how many people in your family have diabetes, it does NOT mean that you are going to develop diabetes.  Provided, of course, that you are making the right lifestyle choices.  You choose.

Prediabetes Makes Your Brain Fat

by

I have forever been preaching on just how incredibly dangerous prediabetes is to pretty much every organ system in your body.

The disturbing fact is that over HALF of the industrialized world is prediabetic.  The prediabetic condition is largely ignored by mainstream medicine until it crosses that magical point and earns the name diabetes.

Because prediabetes has already been shown to be devastatingly bad for the brain and has been strongly associated with migraines, Parkinson’s disease as well as Alzheimer’s dementia, this particular article should come as no big shocker.  In it, researchers looked at the percentage of palmitate (a fatty associated associated with things like heart disease) in the brains of those people with prediabetes and found the levels 86% higher.

More disturbing, though, is that metformin is the mainstay of treatment of diabetics in the initial course of the disease, but ONLY affects the liver, leaving the fat, bone, muscles, heart and brain (as we see here) in jeopardy.

Which Comes First? Abdominal Fat or Prediabetes?

by

Which comes first?  The insulin reistant chicken or the egg with abdominal fat?

To a certain degree, the answer doesn’t really matter all that much because the answer (lifestyle changes) is the same in either case.  But it may change the perspective on which we view the condition of obesity and diabetes.  Diabetics and overweight people are constantly being told they need to take off weight to be healthier.

Unfortunately, the reality of the way our bodies work is the opposite of this common misconception.

I have always told patients that taking off weight is a side effect of taking better care of yourself.  The key is to not focus on the weight.

This particular study supports this idea, AND shows just how fast the fecal matter hits the physiological fan.

In just 28 days of taking in too many calories (1250 extra calories / day) in healthy adults set up prediabetes / insulin resistance without accompanying inflammation in the abdominal tissue.  The insulin resistance in the abdominal fat will then lead to more fat and subsequent inflammation.  THEN things get progressively, rapidly worse.

In other words, excess fat in the abdominal region is the secondary consequence of taking in too many calories.  It is only later that inflammation and abdominal fat starts to accumulate.

Laser Liposuction Versus Traditional Lipo; Which is Better?

by

Lipo light laser lipo unit
Lipo laser prices

You have tried everything.  Diet, exercise, the latest supplements, but the love handles just won’t go away.

At this point, you hit the Internet to find other options.

Before we do this, though, we need to make something very clear.  Anything else that you do should be IN ADDITION TO lifestyle choices that are consistent with a low calorie, high phytonutrient diet.  Avoid refined carbs, keep overall carb intake under control, short burst aerobic activity combined with strength training and a strong intake of healthy fats.

There’s something else I need to make clear.  Abdominal fat is NOT a good thing.  Abdominal fat begins as a storage area for extra calories, just like a bear getting ready for hibernating out the winter.  But this is where the similarity ends because, after a too much fat accumulates, your abdominal fat begins to run out of blood flow.  Without enough blood flow, your abdominal fat gets pissed off and inflamed.

This is were bad things happen.

Your inflamed abdominal fat is now secreting its own set of hormones called adipokines that drive further inflammation and increase your risk of things like cancer, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and osteoporosis.  Not good.

At this point you can now consider your abdominal fat as its own organ system.  And is some cases, this organ becomes the largest organ in your body.

Anything at all you can do to lower the inflammation in this abdominal fat region is a good thing.  This is where lifestyle comes in.  Lifestyle changes are the most powerful tool for lowering inflammation in your body, abdominal region included.

That being said, it might make sense that, if you could remove some of the abdominal fat with surgical procedures or destroy it with cold, heat or sonic waves, this would help with the overall inflammation.

But you didnt really think it was going to be that easy, did you?

Previous research has demonstrated that this is NOT a good idea and works quite the opposite.  Traditional liposuction led to a 10% increase in visceral fat around the heart–a MUCH worse option.

This particular study further points to any type of invasive liposuction as being a bad idea.  In it, researchers looked across 11 studies that included 271 individuals to see if lipectomy (any procedure that removes or kills off fat cells would fall under lipectomy) had any effect whatsoever on diabetic markers after the procedure.

The result?  No evidence that lipectomy does anything positive for your overall metabolism.

Now, I may be biased because our office has had a non-invasive laser lipo unit for almost 4 years now that uses LED diodes to reduce inflammation in the gut and thereby reduce the size of your inflamed abdominal organ safely.

Unlike lipectomy, LED diode laser lipo HAS been shown to positively affect certain diabetic markers like LDL cholesterol (no published studies that I can link to at this time), but this makes sense because the effect of laser and LED has been known to lower inflammation levels for many years now.

For me, the choice would be simple.  Lower inflammation in your abdminal fat safely using light or destroying it without actually fixing the problem.

But, as I mentioned, I’m biased…

Migraine Patients at High Risk for Dangerous Condition

by

Have I mentioned that patients with migraines are at increased risk for all kinds of bad things because the headache is merely a reflection of something going very wrong with their physiology?  I wasn’t sure if I had…

This particular study finds a strong association between migraines and prediabetes.  Given how very dangerous prediabetes is for us (arguably more dangerous to our health than cigarette smoking), it does not surprise me that there is an association.

The good news for those with migraines?  Regardless of whether the prediabetes is contributing to the headaches or the physiological disturbances leading to the migraines also increase the risk of diabetes, it really doesn’t matter.  Improving the way your brain functions will impact both scenarios.  Kind of simple, huh?

Every migraine sufferer should be leading a lifestyle that is anti-diabetic.  This is of critical importance for chronic migraine relief and not usually a discussion that neurologists typically have with their headache patients.  You can not rely on medications to be the answer–lifestyle is the key to long term relief.