Is Your Lifestyle Risking Diabetes?

” IS YOUR LIFESTYLE RISKING DIABETES’?

The most recent research from the University of Missouri indicates that Type 2 diabetes is continuing to grow at alarming rates with 26 million sufferers and 79 million Americans on the verge. That is 1 in every 4 Americans being impacted by this lifestyle induced disease.

The sad misconception is that the general view pushed by the medical profession is that those that have been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes can only now “control” their diabetes with pharmaceuticals. More than half of Type 2 diabetics are not even aware they have the disease, or millions of people living in a state of insulin resistance (pre-diabetes) that can progress to diabetes at any time.

There may be many reasons for the lack of education by the medical profession of keeping people dependent on a life of medications, which merely mask the problem, as opposed to giving a solution or permanent cure, a topic that i am not going to fully uncover with this article, but it is quite obviously not in their best interests…

There is a FREE solution ??? It’s lifestyle, that easy i hear you say? YES exercise and diet. It is a change you can make for yourself without the use of doctors or expensive drugs. They will not like it as it will put a great deal of them out of work, as it will with the pharmaceutical industry that relies on your dependance on them to stay wealthy!

The great thing about exercise is that it can be effective very quickly. Of course, you will definitely benefit from long-term exercise, with its benefits of protecting against various other lifestyle induced diseases. There are numerous immediate benefits from exercise,not only being the best thing for anti-aging, but also improving and regulating the way your body uses glucose and blood sugar, and most importantly insulin, the critical factor in helping prevent the incidence of diabetes.
The human body was designed for physical activity and the utilization of the food we eat for those activities. With the modern day American diet of high glycemic carbohydrates( meaning the speed with which they make blood sugar available to the body), and sedentary lifestyle it makes for the perfect condition for the current epidemic of Type 2 diabetes.

WHY IS EXERCISE THE BEST MEDICAL PRESCRIPTION UNDER THE SUN FOR DIABETES TREATMENT;

One of the most permanent solutions to the epidemic disease of Type 2 diabetes is not an expensive drug with many contra-indications, but free and what the body was designed by God to do, be used, in the modern world otherwise referred as exercise. Exercise offers us the most effective and permanent ways to lower insulin and leptin resistance. It means going against the grain of the medical profession, which promotes taking insulin, as this in the long term increases insulin and leptin resistance. Blood sugar is not the root problem and cause, it is brain signaling hormonal levels.

Leptin is a key player in the body’s inbuilt information signaling system to the brain, by offering a key link between nutrition and the body’s feedback loop regulating appetite and hence bodyweight. When leptin levels are balanced energy levels remain stable, when unbalanced energy levels are negatively impacted, due to an increased plasma leptin level. The other functions of leptin are to signal to the brain when to eat, how much, and most importantly when to stop eating. The reason why people become overweight or obese is in part due to their brain signaling mechanism being scrambled, causing compulsive eating to balance their hormonal system.

Leptin teams up with another hormone, gherlin a faster acting hormone that tells the body when it is hungry, whereby leptin mediates long term energy balance, controlling food intake and hence preventing weight gain. In overweight or obese people leptin is increased and gherlin is surprisingly decreased. It has been substantiated in various research that overweight or obese people are leptin resistant, meaning that their brain’s signaling mechanism is not told when to stop eating.

Insulin is a hormone that regulates the absorption of sugar (blood glucose) into the cells. If your body has too much blood glucose (insulin) in the cells, the body cannot utilize them and stores it as fat. When this occurs a small amount is stored as glycogen, but most as a source of stored energy in the form of fat. The most important role of insulin is not to reduce blood sugar, but to store excess energy for when it is next needed. The effect of insulin to lower your blood sugar is only a by- product of the process of energy storage.

The more your body remains in a state of increased insulin levels, the more the likelihood of insulin resistance developing. The more you eat high glycemic carbohydrates the more insulin is released by the pancreas, leading to insulin resistance. The more you overload your system with insulin, the less your body responds to it. This can be compared to coffee, if we drink it in the morning we get the benefit of a boost, as opposed to drinking it all day long, we get the reverse which equals resistance.

The great thing about life once we connect to source, is that all things in nature work optimally for our good, and in the case of our body if we use it for what nature intended,such as activity, we create balance and harmony. This is a permanent way to eradicate sugar and hormone messaging imbalances without the side effects of the pharmaceutical drugs that are constantly being pushed on society. So the answer is EXERCISE!!!… on a regular basis to maintain benefits, just like you brush your teeth. Type 2 diabetes is reversible and avoidable with a little change of lifestyle. It takes a little inconvenience to prevent and or reverse diabetes with diet and exercise, but a lot less inconvenience than a life of drug dependency, with possible harmful side-effects.

EXERCISE AS A PREVENTATIVE OR REVERSING STEP AGAINST DIABETES;

The key areas to focus on for training for maximum results are as follows;

Intensity;

. Correct resistance training application will stimulate lean tissue muscle cell rejuvenation, and burn fat. I will use core functional training, therefore stimulating more of your body’s 206 muscles giving you more efficient results in quicker time than the average Personal Trainer’s count from 1 -10, machine to machine approach.

. The great thing about core/functional training, is that because it’s stimulates many of your body’s 206 during each movement, is that you get more intensity and more effective results, than conventional machine to machine training performed by most people and trainers at gyms today! A comprehensive program would incorporate stretching, weight training , HIIT cardio and core movements.

Time Period

. Overdoing it for hours on end on gym cardio equipment is not only counterproductive, but can lead to boredom, and worse still deplete your body and hence cause injury.

. With my Fat Loss/Burn program you continue to burn fat long after you have put your time in at the gym, with most conventional programs only burning fat while you are exercising- see my Article ‘HIIT’ cardiovascular for fat burn for more detail.

. Regularity;

I would recommend starting with (3) days per week with a day in between, and then increasing it to (4) days per week max.

Nutrition/Diet

WHY EATING PIZZA AND BAGELS ARE LIKE EATING PURE SUGAR?

It is ok to enjoy a bagel or pizza, but the key here is two or three times per month maximum, and not as for most on the modern American diet almost everyday!

Included in this would be many of the foods we eat, white rice, baked potato, rice crackers, Cliff bar, cornflakes, (most cereals in actual fact), pretzels,muffins, sandwiches (white bread). Any of these sound like your diet? Let me explain why you would be better making some changes, small but nonetheless very significant ones, that can directly impact your body- fat index!

Everyday we are surrounded by foods that are marketed, and pushed on us under the guise of being, convenient, healthy, and low fat = so we eat them regularly not being aware of the long term damage we could be sawing! They may indeed be low- fat, however, are ultimately a sugary poison to our body!!!

Sounds confusing doesn’t it? Low- fat YES, convenient YES, popular YES… so what’s Nick talking about??

Well here comes the ‘catch’ – The items are all very high glycemic, meaning that they convert very quickly to insulin (blood sugar) once ingested, and this is where the dilemma lies. The consuming of these modern day foods will eventually be a major factor in developing insulin resistance, leading to possible Type 2 diabetes.

Your diet can determine whether you are at risk, or have diabetes, but Americans are consuming a modern day diet of high-complex carbohydrate, low saturated-fats which is just the opposite of what is healthful. High complex carbohydrates include legumes, potatoes, corn, rice and cereals. Besides legumes,eradicating all the others from your eating lifestyle is the best way to prevent insulin resistance and possible diabetes. Avoiding processed foods, most of which are full of corn syrup and other harmful sugars, is also a way to regulate your signaling system. I would even recommend to a client to reduce or cut- out fruit for a period of approximately (4) weeks, as even though this is fructose the body will still count it as a sugar. Restricting fructose to 15grams per day or less during this time is a must!

If you regularly eat any of the foods i noted above, then you will cause blood sugar spikes, which will cause more insulin resistance, which leads to more fat storage. More fat produces more leptin. The problem comes with chronically elevated leptin levels. When your body reaches the point of leptin resistance , it scrambles the normal function of leptin to signal to your brain that you are full and that you should stop eating, hence making you eat more, creating more leptin resistance and more eating.

As the fat reserves increase, your body weight increases, and insulin resistance kicks in. Your body now has become unaware to signals of the two hormones (leptin and insulin), with this leading to possible diabetes. Taking high glycemic carbohydrates out of your diet, and substituting sugars for other foods, like lean proteins, green vegetables and healthy Omega 3 fat sources is the best way forward.

Just one sweetened drink per day can increase diabetes risk by 25 per cent compared with one sweetened drink per month. You will really need to consider your diet and look for hidden sources of sugar and fructose. I would drink (3) litres of water per day, and no juice or soda, as these are loaded with potential Type 2 diabetes precursors.

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