A recent study has shown that eating whey protein before meals lowers the postprandial blood glucose (BG) peaks. Here is the research paper. The study subjects consumed 15 g of whey protein in a beverage 10 minutes before eating the meal. They found that this procedure reduced the prevalence of daily hyperglycemia by 8% thus increasing the time spent in daytime euglycemia (normal BG levels) by 9%. Nighttime BG levels were not affected.  Now, this study concerned only whey protein, in a beverage, but there's no reason to think that other proteins would have different effects. And it ..read more

 Your gut and your brain are in constant communication. This is not really surprising, as essentially everything in your body is connected, as I've noted before. But some connections are stronger than others. Your gut contains zillions (really scientific term) of bacteria, which are not only helping you to digest what you eat but are also releasing what to them are waste products but may be active compounds that will get into your circulation and affect your physiology. In other words, you should be kind to your gut bacteria as much as you can because if you are, they will help you. This ..read more

 Most of us with type 2 diabetes don't stuff ourselves with huge plates of spaghetti, but some nondiabetics and even some people with diabetes do, sometimes because they're still brainwashed by the low-fat diet fad of the 1990s. And when you limit fat, you eat more of other things, especially carbohydrates, which are both cheap and filling, at least for a short time.  When I was diagnosed with type 2 in 1996, I started off following the ADA-recommended low-fat diet. I did lose weight on this diet, which limited calories as well as fat, but I was ravenously hungry 24 hours a day. I fi ..read more

 If you're overweight and feeling that it's all your fault, the headline of this article, Scientists Claim that Overeating is not the Primary Cause of Obesity, should remove some of the guilt. The full text is here. Of course, most people reading this blog already know that overeating is not the main cause of all cases of obesity, but it's nice to have attention called to that fact. Weight control is complex and depends on numerous factors including genetics, income, access to physical activity, social class, what our friends are eating and a need to fit in (especially among adolescents ..read more

Einstein has little to say about diabetes. Or maybe he does, in addressing questions like how we come to solutions. Deric Bownds, an emeritus biology professor at the University of Wisconsin, has reposted some quotes from Einstein, and those concerning how we solve problems could apply to anyone trying to decipher the very complex disease we call diabetes. For instance, "I think 99 times and find nothing. I stop thinking, swim in silence, and the truth comes to me." Our brains keep working on problems even when we're not consciously thinking about them, one reason for the old adage "sleep on ..read more

 We all know that insulin resistance (IR) is one of the main causes of type 2 diabetes. Many people with type 2 can produce some insulin, but it's just not enough to overcome the IR. What causes this sluggishness? No one knows for sure. A recent paper suggests that the key is ATP, the energy-containing molecule that is produced when you eat and can then be used to drive other reactions in the cell. I always thought ATP was good to have, and the more ATP the more energy. But this author (Jianping Ye) suggests that too much ATP can cause what he calls overheating. In the winter, it's nice t ..read more

 In 2008, the results of the ACCORD "landmark" trial were published and were interpreted by some to mean that people with diabetes shouldn't get their blood glucose (BG) levels down to normal or below. This is because those whose diabetes was treated aggressively in this trial had greater mortality than those with less aggressive treatment. Sadly, some physicians used these results to urge their patients to have higher hemoglobin A1c levels. Patients were reporting on diabetes lists that their doctors told them that their normal A1c levels were too low and they should get them up. Careful ..read more

Some time ago, in an online suport group I started, one woman said her biggest problem was that she couldn't stop eating potato chips after she'd had one. I knew she lived alone, so I asked why she bought potato chips, and she said, "Because I like them." I think this is a common problem.  The most important thing you can do when you're diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is to accept that your life is going to have to change if you want to control it. Of course, that's not easy. If you live with others who aren't diabetic, you're probably going to keep buying food you shouldn't eat. That's di ..read more

 Most of the news about people who are overweight or obese is bad. We see a constant stream of articles saying obese people are at higher risk of this and they're at higher risk of that. But here is an article saying that obesity protects you from dying from severe bacterial infections. In this study, 26 percent in the normal weight group were dead within a year. The corresponding figures in the groups with higher BMI were 9-17 percent. Full text is here. The authors note that although obesity is associated with higher survival in bacterial infections, it's associated with lower survival ..read more

 When I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 1996, it was thought that although fructose, which is half of sucrose (table sugar; the other half is glucose), didn't raise blood glucose (BG) as much as glucose, it could have an effect on triglycerides (fats). One source said that although fructose didn't affect blood triglycerides in people with unimpaired glucose tolerance, it could raise them in people with defects in carbohydrate metabolism (e.g., people with diabetes) even at relatively low levels of fructose intake. Yet despite this, products sweetened with fructose were sold as diabe ..read more