Every person I have met who has diabetes has a diagnosis story.  And every person I have met who has diabetes has vivid memories of this incident.  Since I was recently diagnosed and am just entering the diabetes community, I feel as though I’ve told my diagnosis story more often than any other story I’ve told in my life.  The people I meet are often eager to share their diagnosis stories with me and our connection is made over the shared experience of the simple blood test and doctor’s statement.  Focusing on my diagnosis...

View from the top of Norumbega Mountain In terms of health, vacation means different things to different people. Some people see vacation as a time to indulge their food cravings and not worry about exercise. Others use the break in routine as a stimulus to change unhealthy habits. When I went with my family on our annual vacation in Maine last week, my goal was to get exercise (which I figured would somewhat counterbalance any unhealthy eating I did end up doing). I didn’t think this would be a challenge. Where we stay, on Mount...

One of the toughest things about being a diabetic is your relationship with sweet foods. It’s no secret that when someone is diagnosed with diabetes, they’re told to limit the amount of dessert they eat. But the flip side of this is also true. At times, diabetics have to eat sweet foods when they don’t want to, i.e., when they have low blood sugar. It might be hard for everyone to sympathize with this complaint. Yeah, right, a non-diabetic might think after reading this. I wish I sometimes had to eat a cookie. The problem...

I am not the type of person who likes to go to the gym. The ritual of packing a bag, driving to the gym, changing clothes, working out, showering, changing clothes, and driving home again always seems like such a major undertaking that it stresses me out before I’ve even started. But because I’m diabetic, exercise isn’t optional for me. In order to maintain control of my blood sugar, I have to get some type of exercise whether I’m in the mood or not. I don’t mind exercise so much when it’s integrated into my day. And...

If you are taking Avandia or Actos and you have been reading about heart disease you may be concerned and you should be. As a class, these drugs increase your risk of heart disease and recent studies are confirming what we already suspected: Avandia is a bit worse on the heart than Actos. However, there is something you can do to protect yourself. It seems that exercise does a very good job of reversing the problems caused by Avandia. I came across this clinical study last week and I wanted to share it with you. The 1 year study...

According to Dr. Bryan Bergman, exercising every other day appears to be the minimum  amount of exercise necessary to maintain insulin sensitivity (the opposite of insulin resistance). If someone exercises on Monday afternoon, for example, his insulin sensitivity is better later on that day. On Tuesday, assuming no exercise was done, insulin sensitivity will still be better than it was on Monday before the exercise. By Wednesday insulin sensitivity will be back to Monday’s pre-exercise level. If you are physically able, try...

Insulin resistance, the hallmark of prediabetes, is compensated for by an increase in insulin output. Since the pancreas will eventually work itself to death it would behoove us to decrease the work load of this poor organ. A great deal of work has gone into understanding the factors that regulate insulin resistance and as it turns out; simply exercising regularly is sufficient to maintain a degree of insulin sensitivity. We understand many aspects of how exercise does this down to the molecular details and sometime I will describe...

The Lancet reports on a 10-year follow-up study of the Diabetes Prevention Program Research Group, which showed dieting and exercise can keep diabetes at bay more effectively than the prescription drug metformin. Researchers followed  approximately 3000 overweight people who were divided into 3 groups and assigned either a diet and exercise program, metformin, or a placebo.  After 10 years, the participants taking metformin saw an 18% reduction in their rate of developing diabetes, compared with those taking a placebo.  The participants...

Unlike the more aggressive form of diabetes, Type 1, where the immune system actively searches out and kills islet cells, in Type 2, the cells die through a long process of overwork and poor waste management. Insulin, as you probably know, is the hormone that  plays the important role of getting fuel (glucose) into cells.  It’s also involved in the storage of glucose, and in getting glucose out of the bloodstream. This is important because glucose is reactive. Exposing tissues to high blood glucose is like exposing metal to...