Nutrition. Vitamins. You.
This is Part 3 of Living A Healthy Life with Diabetes, where Amanda discusses specific omega-3 fatty acids and herbal extracts and how they provide additional support to enhance insulin sensitivity and regulate blood glucose levels.
In Episode 2 of Living A Healthy Life with Diabetes, Amanda Williams, MPH breaks down the difference between prediabetes and metabolic syndrome. Plus, essential nutrients to help counteract the impact of the SAD diet.
Subscribe Today!
This is the Invite Health Podcast, and I am your host, Amanda Williams! On today’s episode, I am going to be delving into diabetes. This is such a complex disease and there is so much misinformation out there. I really want to be able to break this down for you into completely understandable terms, as well as provide you with a foundational understanding as to what you can be doing with your diet, as well as nutrients that can be very beneficial. I will be breaking this down into multiple episodes to better help you understand all of the components of diabetes.
I take a lot of pride in this area of nutrition; I have a specialized certification in diabetes self management, and a Master’s degree in public health. I actually worked in the disease state management program at a local hospital, working directly with diabetics. Let’s get started!
What is Diabetes?
When you breakdown diabetes, you have type 1 diabetics and type 2 diabetics. Now, type 1 diabetes is oftentimes called juvenile diabetes because the onset is, generally speaking, at a much younger age due to a lack of insulin that the pancreas could not produce. This is more autoimmune driven, as opposed to type 2 diabetics where, overtime, the insulin response (or insulin sensitivity) becomes less and less. This is also known as developing insulin resistance.
Now, because of the misinformation and mismanagement of diabetes, many times type 2 diabetes will present itself as type 1, getting to the point where the pancreas is no longer producing insulin, becoming insulin dependent. The majority of diabetics in the US are of the type 2 nature.
Pre-diabetics are marching down the pathway of becoming a type 2 diabetic. This represents approximately 85 – 90 million Americans. This is truly a public health epidemic. There are many long term complications when individuals with diabetes do not take action, which includes lifestyle and dietary modifications.
Many times, there seems to be a reactive approach to diabetes, with individuals waiting until their numbers are so bad that they require medication, as opposed to being proactive. I always recommend a proactive approach with type 2 diabetes, because I have seen the impact of taking control of your own health.
Take A Deeper Look Into Your Body
Many times, when you think of an individual with diabetes, you may think that they are eating nothing but sugar and unhealthy foods (which can definitely be the case). But what about looking into the way your body is working on an everyday basis? What actually is happening when you eat?
This is truly a public health epidemic.
– Amanda Williams, MPH
Go back into your childhood and picture a teeter-tooter – one person sits on a side, another person sits on the opposite side and goes up and down. When you eat, there is a release of glucose – the glucose is going up and our insulin is down low. What should happen, is the pancreas responds with insulin to help lower the glucose levels. When you have insulin resistance, you have a very delayed response in the release of insulin from your beta cells. This causes access glucose to circulate the body for a long period of time. This is why it is so important to pay attention to what you are eating – in order to address which foods are ideal, which foods spike glucose too fast, which are slower, and more.
When you are in a fasting state, like overnight, oftentimes your liver overproduces glucose, which is why you may have a really elevated blood glucose level if you test first thing in the morning.
Every body is different so there are some lifestyle changes that others will react well to, whereas some do not. But there are some general rules you can follow in terms of the right nutrients – like Magnesium and Vitamin D. These are the basic necessities for individuals with diabetes.
You must understand that there is an essential role for important nutrients and vitamins in our body. When our diets are lacking these essential vitamins and minerals, you start to see long term implications. In part 2 of The Tools You Need to Lead a Healthy Lifestyle with Diabetes, I will take you into the world of essential vitamins and nutrients when managing Diabetes.
Thank you for tuning in to the Invite Health Podcast. You can find all of our episodes for free wherever you listen to podcasts or by visiting www.invitehealth.com/podcast. Make sure you subscribe and leave us a review! Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram at Invite Health today. We’ll see you next time on another episode of the Invite Health Podcast!
Key topics:
Photo by Dane Deaner on Unsplash Researchers at The Ohio State University wanted to know what happens to obese individuals with metabolic syndrome – a precursor to diabetes – when they eat a diet low in carbohydrates but don’t shed any pounds. Following A Low-Carb …
Photo by Gregory Pappas on Unsplash According to findings of a new study published in the American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism, losing a single night’s sleep may affect the liver’s ability to produce glucose and process insulin, increasing the risk of metabolic diseases such …
According to a new study, outdoor air pollution (even at levels deemed safe) is linked to an increased risk of diabetes globally.
Diabetes is one of the fastest growing diseases, especially in the United States, affecting more than 420 million people worldwide and 30 million Americans. The causes of this disease are due to individuals following an unhealthy diet and lifestyle, but new research indicates outdoor air pollution plays a role. This suggests health-conscious individuals may want to consider using dust masks to help avoid inhalation of toxic air.
Ziyad Al-Aly, MD, the study’s senior author and an assistant professor of medicine at Washington University reports, “Our research shows a significant link between air pollution and diabetes globally. We found an increased risk, even at low levels of air pollution currently considered safe by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the World Health Organization (WHO). This is important because many industry lobbying groups argue that current levels are too stringent and should be relaxed. Evidence shows that current levels are still not sufficiently safe and need to be tightened.”
To evaluate outdoor air pollution, researchers studied particulate matter – airborne microscopic pieces of dust, smoke, soot and liquid droplets. Previous studies have found that such particles can enter the lungs and invade the bloodstream, contributing to major health conditions, including heart disease and cancer, according to the study.
New Study: Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Diabetes! Read More >>
The Washington University team, along with scientists at the Veterans Affairs’ Clinical Epidemiology Center, examined the relationship between particulate matter and the risk of diabetes by first analyzing data from 1.7 million U.S. veterans who were followed for a median of 8.5 years. The veterans did not have a history of diabetes. This data was paired with NASA’s land-based air statistical models, which tested the validity against controls like air sodium concentrations. Researchers then devised a model to evaluate diabetes risk across various pollution levels.
The researchers estimated that pollution contributed to 3.2 million new diabetes cases globally in 2016, which represents about 14% of all new diabetes cases globally that year. They also estimated that 8.2 million years of healthy life were lost in 2016 due to pollution-linked diabetes, representing about 14% of all years of healthy life lost due to diabetes from any cause.
In the U.S., the study attributed 150,000 new cases of diabetes per year to air pollution and 350,000 years of healthy life lost annually.