Meet the Fast Food Challenge in Diabetes

A deep crust pizza with your favorite toppings; an ice-cream float with irresistible colors, syrup, and caramel; a diabetes diet is much easier to follow when all you see is the boring old menu your nutrition expert has written out for you!

Looking at delicious meals, snacks, and beverages you enjoyed in your days before diabetes, can melt the steeliest resolve. That goes for portion control as well, when you have a hotel buffet before you with no spouse watching over your shoulder!

Satiety hormones can rescue diabetes diets from ruin. They work very much like insulin, with injections under the skin before major meals. You do need separate syringes though, because these hormones cannot be mixed with insulin.

Pramlintide is an important satiety hormone which can improve your diabetes management by helping you feel satisfied with the food and portions prescribed for your condition.

Ask your doctor about the link below, which I retrieved earlier today, if you have trouble sticking to your diabetes diet, or if you are sorely tempted to have flings with fast food and sodas:

http://symlin.com/2000-symlin-information.aspx

Benefits and Risks of RYGB in Type 2 Diabetes

Four letter acronyms are like expletives with that number-effective but hurtful. RYGB can sure help with type-2 diabetes, but then it can kill you as well!

RYBG (Roux-en-Y gastric bypass) is a form of major surgery which physically curtails how much you can eat or drink, restricts calorie uptake from ingestion, and protects essential digestive processes, all in one go. Every major surgery carries risks of infections and clots in blood vessels, but RYGB is even more dangerous because it involves stitching back excised parts of intestines and stapling parts of the stomach as well.

Any man more than 100 pounds overweight, and women more than 80 pounds overweight, is a candidate for RYGB. However, you may wish to consider the option even if you have trouble managing your type 2 diabetes. I would hope that this should not be the case, given the state-of-the-art in terms of diet control, exercise management, and the latest drugs and insulin delivery forms. Perhaps the dire risks of RYGB will entice you to follow your prescription for type 2 diabetes control more strictly! Seriously, RYGB is a realistic option if you run the risk of developing complications from uncontrolled or poorly managed diabetes. Better lose a part of your gut than your eyes, feet, or kidneys!

Ask you doctor about RYGB or let me know if you would like links to detailed information

Diabetes and Celiac Disease

Oats and barley are not as popular today as they should be, but rye and wheat are almost inevitable in a typical diet. Such foods are important sources of complex carbohydrates. They play pivotal roles in keeping blood glucose levels stable in people under treatment for diabetes. Cookies with sugar are out, but the average diabetes diet is built around plenty of bread and pasta.

Celiac disease, like diabetes, is difficult to suspect in its early stages. You could have a bout of diarrhea, but then that can happen to anyone, and there are myriad reasons for such an event. A child may fall off planned diabetic meals, but that could be plain boredom? A person with diabetes may suffer from hypoglycemia, but then the doctor may have got drug doses wrong. Yet, any of these transient conditions may be because of developing celiac disease, and your physician might not think of it: actually, you may even forget to report it!

Celiac disease is the inability to digest gluten, a substance found in wheat, barley, oats, and rye. The disease results in physical damage to the lining of the digestive tract, so it has serious implications for the long term if it is neglected or ignored. Celiac disease is easy for a doctor to confuse with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and some other disorders of the digestive tract. It is tempting to overlook symptoms as well when we are busy with the more pressing issue of diabetes. Unfortunately, diabetes and celiac disease can and do co-exist in some patients.

Celiac disease can be uncovered by blood tests after consuming food with wheat or any of the other cereals which contain gluten. A person with celiac disease will produce antibodies after eating bread or pasta, and these can be picked up through tests for specific antigens. A surgeon can also excise a small portion of the intestine for microscopic examination, which will reveal the characteristic physical damage of celiac disease.

Do ask your doctor whether you have been tested for celiac disease, whether or not you have diabetes, and if you believe that you do not digest bread, pasta, and other processed foods.

Rice is a great option if you have celiac disease. The flour can make great pancakes, apart from getting your carbohydrates from the fragrant grains. However, staying away from gluten altogether can be quite a chore because powdered wheat flour is so ubiquitous, not just in processed and restaurant food, but in packaging material for some products such as chewing gum.

The best way to stay away from gluten altogether should your blood test and biopsy show that you have celiac disease, is to shop and dine at specialty outlets which certify their products and offerings to be completely gluten free.

Your nutrition expert needs to know if you have celiac disease, especially if you have diabetes. Remember that children with type 1 diabetes may have gluten intolerance as well.

Something for People with Diabetes to Try

High blood pressure and diabetes are dangerous but common bed fellows. Many people with either one of these conditions often develop the other over time. Neither hypertension nor diabetes have obvious distinguishing symptoms in their early stages, so large numbers of people may suffer for long periods of time without knowing.

Both high blood pressure and diabetes require lifelong or long term prescription medicines. It is not usual to come across things which you can do on your own to keep either blood pressure or blood sugar under control.

That is why you should click on the following link which I found earlier today:

http://www.resperate.com/

Rest assured that I have no financial interest in the company which makes this device, or in enticing you to buy a unit. However, I can vouch from personal experience, that regulating breathing, especially slowing down expiration, does help bring down blood pressure, and that learning to regulate breathing on your own needs weeks with an expert guide.

Pros and Cons for a new U.S. Ally for Diabetes

It is not often that people with diabetes can buy medicines on their own. However, U.S. residents with this disease are now one up on other nationalities with glucose metabolism issues and weight problems.

The U.S. FDA has cleared a new presentation of a drug which doctors have prescribed for some time now, for weight loss: you can buy the new product without a prescription. You should remember to take a multi-vitamin pill every day with this stuff, because it could deprive you of a few important dietary nutrients.

The medicine works by preventing fat in your food from crossing your gut and entering the blood stream. The unabsorbed fat just passes out with stools, which can become oily with more wind than usual, as a result.

This does not mean that you can gorge on fats-certainly not if you have diabetes. However, it will help as an overall weight loss plan. It could therefore help to keep the creeping pounds away when you first get your diabetes under control.

The medicine has had some disturbing side-effects in animals, but U.S. regulators have sided with the brand owner, and have allowed the product on U.S. retail shelves.

Why not take a print out of the product web-site when you call on your physician next? Here is the link, which I accessed earlier today:

http://www.myalli.com/

The active ingredient on which Alli is based, is available in the United States and in most other countries, in a different presentation, by prescription.