Exercise and control diabetes

If you take control of your diet and exercise, you really can grab a hold of your diabetes and make your whole life a lot better. Exercise has specific benefits for people with diabetes and the best part about it is that it does not require a prescription from your doctor. In this article we'll discuss what exercise does for diabetics and how it does it.

Working your muscles into action instantly boosts the demand for fuel, glucose. Once your muscles exhaust their own supply of glucose, they clean out the stores in your liver, then draw glucose straight from the bloodstream, lowering your blood sugar. When you're done exercising, your body gives top priority to replenishing glucose stores in the liver and muscles rather than the blood, which means that your blood sugar will stay lower for hours, sometimes for as long as a couple of days, depending on how hard you worked out.

Exercising regularly may actually lower your level of insulin resistance. That's because exercise forces muscles to use glucose more efficiently by making cells more receptive to insulin. It's as if getting physical gives your cells a kick in the pants. If they must have more glucose, they'll work harder to get it. Exercise also boosts the number of insulin receptors. Do it regularly and you'll habituate good blood sugar control. In fact, the effect won't entirely fade away unless you go for about 72 hours without a workout. Even if you've been a couch potato for years, you can ratchet up your insulin sensitivity with exercise in as little as one week.


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Power Nap

In a recent study scientists have found that a power nap, at least three times a week, can lower the risk for cardiovascular diseases by 30%. In this study, the scientists studied the famous siesta that is usual in the Mediterranean and several latin-american countries. These areas have a very low mortality due to heart problems. This is the first extensive study where all the participants were healthy when the study began. This is also the first study that controls all risk factors as diet and physical activity.

Scientists at Harvard School of Public Health and University of Athens Medical School in Greece performed this study on power naps. 24,000 participants living in Greece took part in this study. They differed in age from 20 to 86 years. None of them had any heart problems, stroke or cancer when the study began. The study lasted over six years. During this time 792 participants died. Of them, 113 died from cardiovascular diseases.

The results from this study showed that the participants who took a power nap (siesta) for 30 minutes three times a week had a 37% lower mortality rate than those who didn’t take a siesta. Those who occasionally took a siesta had 12% lower risk, but this wasn’t statistically significant. The siesta had a more protecting effect on men who were working. They had 64% lower risk for heart problems. For working women there were too few deaths to come to any conclusions. The power nap had a very little effect on retired people and those who didn't work.

The scientists behind this research stated that the relation between retired people and workers reflect the different stress levels in these groups.

So go back to your college days and reward yourself with a much needed siesta.


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Go nuts!

Everyone nowadays is going nuts for nuts. That's because while they are relatively high in fat, they're high in unsaturated fats, including omega-3s, and also high in fiber. In recent years numerous studies have linked eating nuts to better heart health and improved cholesterol levels.

In August 2002 a study published in Circulation, a journal of the American Heart Association, found that when 27 people with high cholesterol ate one or two handfuls of almonds daily for a month, they reduced their LDL levels between 4.4 and 9.4 percent. Another study found that two handfuls of pecans a day for four weeks lowered LDL by 10 percent. And when it comes to walnuts, researchers found that eating 1.6 ounces a day for six weeks lowered LDL and total cholesterol, and also decreased dangerous low-density LDL 27 percent.

Some nuts may be better for lowering your cholesterol than others. Thus far the best evidence of heart-health promoting properties has been generated for walnuts, followed by almonds.

Nuts can be included in many dishes so feel free to use your creativity when eating them:

* Toss them on salads.

* Toast them to bring out their full flavor.

* Sprinkle them on cereal.

* Grind them and use as a coating for cooking salmon or chicken.

* Stir them into low fat ice cream.

Yes, nuts do have calories but studies show that people who eat nuts actually tend to be thinner than those who don't, perhaps because nuts are so filling that eating them helps you eat less of other foods.

But don't go overboard. Aim for 1 to 2 ounces of nuts (1 ounce is about 7 shelled walnuts) as a daily average, and try to eat them instead of other sources of calories, rather than as an addition.


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Move it!

Sitting for long periods of time, such as during long car rides and airplane trips, has been known to trigger problems with blood clots. A new study, published in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine (2008;101:237–43) provides new evidence that prolonged sitting at work is no exception.

The maximum number of hours sitting at work during a 24-hour period and the maximum number of hours sitting at work without getting up, were both linked to an increased risk for the development of blood clots in the legs…a condition known as VTE (venous thromboembolism). For every additional hour seated, the risk increased by 10%, and for every additional hour seated at work without getting up, the risk increased by 20%.

The study’s co-author, Professor Richard Beasley at the Medical Research Institute of New Zealand concluded that, “measures to reduce both of these factors may be important from an occupational health perspective.”
Here are their recommendations:

1. Stay hydrated. Drink plenty of water and avoid over-consumption of alcohol and caffeine.

2. Wear loose clothing that does not restrict the waist or legs.

3. Flex and extend the ankles regularly while sitting to encourage blood in the veins of the lower legs to continue flowing.

4. Stand up and move around at least once every hour, and try to restrict total sitting to less than eight hours per day.

BOTTOMLINE: According to the Ethnicity and Disease study cited above, “exercise, as part of a comprehensive lifestyle-modification program including weight loss, low-salt diet, diets rich in fruits and vegetables and low in saturated fats, has beneficial effects on blood pressure. This is what we’ve been saying for years…the cause and solution to most health problems is more related to lifestyle than to treatment. Why wait for a problem, change to a healthier lifestyle now!

How much sleep is good for you?

Scheduling a good night's sleep could be one of the smartest health priorities you set for yourself and your family. Documented potential health consequences of getting too little or poor sleep involve the cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, and nervous systems. In addition to letting life get in the way of good sleep, between 50 and 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep disorders that affect daily functioning and negatively impacts health. Here’s some research:

1. The 04/08 issue of the Archives of Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine found that children with insomnia or short sleep duration are more likely to have behavioral issues like ADHD.

2. Oddly enough, you may also make bad food choices. A 10/15/08 study in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine found that people with restless sleep patterns ate a diet higher in cholesterol, protein, total fat, and total saturated fat. Women were especially affected.

3. Diabetes may become more likely. A 2005 study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found that people getting 5 or fewer hours of sleep each night were 2.5 times more likely to be diabetic, while those with six hours or fewer were 1.7 times more likely.

4. A 2007 report in the New England Journal of Medicine noted that ~20% of serious car crash injuries involve a sleepy (independent of alcohol) driver.

BOTTOMLINE:
Lifestyle is in the Health News again and again and again. The importance of living a healthy lifestyle to both avoid unnecessary illness and to promote health and wellness seem to be in the news on a daily basis. Yet, the decision or personal choice to change one’s life by changing one’s lifestyle seems to continue to take second place to “I’ll deal with the problem after if occurs.” This approach has led to a deterioration of our individual and family health status.


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Green Tea Benefits

Help with your weight
Overweight or obese exercisers burned off three more pounds and 7 percent more belly fat when they drank green tea instead of another beverage with the same calories, according to a new multicenter study.

Protection against cancer
Regular drinkers were 12 percent less likely to develop breast cancer than nondrinkers, according to research in 6,928 Chinese women.

Reduced risk of stroke
A UCLA review of nine studies found three cups a day cut the risk of stroke by 21 percent (black tea was protective too).

Healthier gums
In a study of 940 men, the more green tea a man drank, the less likely he was to have gum disease.


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