EDmedblog

If foods containing refined sugar have an intermediate G.I. factor, does this mean that people with diabetes can eat as much sugar as they want?

Research has clearly shown that the G.I. factor of refined sugar is the same in people that have diabetes and people that don’t. Moderate consumption of sugar (which means 40 to 60 grams of refined sugars a day) does not compromise blood sugar control. In fact, excluding sugar from the diet has important psychological consequences.

Sugar is not just empty kilojoules, but a source of pleasure and reward and it helps to limit the intake of fatty foods and high G.I. carbohydrate foods.

Our advice is to spread your sugar budget over a variety of nutrient rich foods that become more palatable with the addition of sugar, e.g. yoghurt, porridge and other breakfast cereals, milk drinks, fruit desserts, jam on toast.

Bread and potatoes have high G.I. factors (70 to 80). Does this mean a person with diabetes should avoid bread and potatoes?

Potatoes and bread can play a major role in a high carbohydrate and low-fat diet, even if a secondary goal is to reduce the overall G.I. factor. Only about half the carbohydrate has to be exchanged from high G.I. to low G.I. to achieve measurable improvements in diabetes. So, there is still room for bread and potatoes. Of course, some types of bread and potatoes have a lower G.I. factor than others and these should be preferred if the goal is to lower the G.I. as much as possible.

In the overall management of diabetes, the most important message is that the diet should be low in fat and high in carbohydrate. This will help people not only to lose weight, but to keep it off and improve their overall blood glucose and lipid control.

There are so few low G.I. foods that anyone wanting to follow a low G.I. diet would have to narrow the range of foods that he or she eats. Isn’t this a bad thing?

It is a myth that you have to narrow the range of foods you eat on a low G.I. diet In fact, some people have told us the opposite. They have found that the advent of the G.I. factor has expanded the range of foods they can eat because foods containing sugar are not unduly restricted.

The rumour that all low G.I. foods are high in fibre and not very palatable also needs dispelling. It is true that legumes and All-Bran may not be everyone’s favourite foods, but pasta, oats, fruit and many favourite Mediterranean recipes using cracked wheat and lentils etc. are low G.I. and delicious. To dispel such myths finally, we have included many mouth-watering recipes using legumes and lentils in Part II.

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There are few specific exercise prescriptions for heterogeneous groups that can be scientifically supported at the moment, but those with most promise appear to be the following:

• long duration, low intensity exercise for pre-menopausal women

• any form of physical activity (high or low intensity) for younger men

• increased resistance training for seniors

• walking is a simple, low cost, moderate intensity activity easily incorporated into lifestyle

• a greater emphasis on dietary change rather than exercise in the initial stages for the obese

• emphasis on small, additive increases in daily physical activity in the obese

• non-weight-bearing exercise (e.g. Aquarobics, cycling) in the initial stages for the very overfat

• increased emphasis on SPA and ‘incidental’ activity with older people

• shorter cumulative bouts of aerobic activity for the unfit.

Hypothesised prescription parameters for some overfat groupings are tentative and are proposed here as a model for further testing. They are likely to provide a more focused approach to prescription, however, than dealing with all cases of overfatness and obesity as homogeneous.

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The apple shape has been found to be much more potentially dangerous with respect to health than the pear shape, because the fat cells around the abdomen release their fat into the bloodstream more readily than other fat cells. A ‘pot belly therefore—irrespective of total body mass—is likely to be more atherogenic (i.e. cause narrowing of the arteries), diabetogenic (i.e. cause diabetes) and possibly carcinogenic (i.e. cause cancer). In contrast, pear-shaped women have been found to have little increased illness risk (with the possible exception of a slight increase in the risk of varicose veins and arthritis). In health terms therefore, it’s not if someone is fat, but where they are fat that is important—filling up of the fat cells around the waist (as is characteristic of men) is much more dangerous than filling up of fat cells on the lower body (as is more characteristic of women).

There is another important form of fat storage which is now thought to be most important as a predictor of ill-health. Visceral fat (sometimes called ‘intra-abdominal fat’), surrounds the organs or ‘viscera’ of the body, such as the stomach, liver and kidneys etc. Visceral fat is thought to be dangerous because it ‘gives up’ its fat into the portal circulation in the bloodstream, which passes through the liver first. This has a variety of metabolic consequences such as increasing the liver’s production of fat particles and inducing resistance to the effects of the hormone insulin.

Visceral fat can only be seen using special medical imaging techniques but it is also highly correlated with total abdominal fat. In other words, someone with a ‘pot belly’ is more likely to have large visceral fat stores than someone who has a low level of total abdominal fat—although it is still possible for relatively lean people to have quite high visceral fat levels, possibly due again to genetic factors. Visceral fat has recently been explained by health researchers as being the best predictor of health risk. It’s likely that in the future measures will be developed to screen for this in health check-ups, just as screening for blood cholesterol is done now.

The health risks of fat shapes combines both BMI (body mass index) and WHR (waist-to-hip ratio) measures. As can be seen, it’s not just the big person who is at risk. A small person with large abdominal fat stores (i.e. a ‘pot belly’ is also at risk).

Myth-information . Although there are identified body fat shapes with varying health risks, there is no evidence that specific diets have special effects for any one particular body shape, hence there is no support for a ‘body shape’ diet.

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A friend of mine in Canada, Mrs. K., had seven early miscarriages during eight years of marriage. She was unimpressed by my repeated advice to try wheat germ oil and vitamin E, because her obstetrician didn’t think it was worth considering. However, when another friend, a veterinarian, told her that this was exactly the treatment he had been using successfully on horses and cows with records of miscarriage, she decided to try. Within three months she became pregnant and, after a full nine-month pregnancy, delivered a healthy boy.

The healthy functioning of the reproductive system is dependent on many factors. Both psychological and physiological causes must be considered. Nutrition is, of course, a most vital factor. Many vitamins and other nutritive substances are directly involved in a healthy sex life. But if there Was one vitamin which could be called the sex vitamin, then it would be vitamin E.

It has been established that vitamin E can prevent miscarriage and stillbirths. Vitamin E is essential for the normal production of sex hormones. It has been demonstrated in animal tests that when vitamin E is deficient, the testicles degenerate and production of hormones is diminished—both sex hormones and pituitary hormones, which stimulate sex glands.2 Vitamin E, being a natural and powerful anti-oxidant, also protects sex hormones from destruction by oxidation. Dr. Evan Shute of Canada, a pioneer in the use of vitamin E for disorders in the reproductive system, has used vitamin E extensively and successfully in the treatment of various disorders from male sterility to miscarriages and menopausal symptoms. In one study he used vitamin E in 153 pregnancies in which there were 122 threatened abortions and 87 threatened miscarriages. 60 percent of the abortions and 86 percent of the miscarriages were prevented by vitamin E treatment. Dr. Shute says that vitamin E deficiency is very common in pregnant women.

Vitamin E has also been found to relieve the symptoms of menopause, or change of life: hot flashes, dizziness, pain, etc. Doses of 150 to 300 milligrams a day are prescribed in such cases. A Hungarian doctor has found that vitamin E decreases pain in childbirth labor.

Vitamin E is, indeed, absolutely essential for the normal function of the reproductive system and a healthy sex life. The best natural source of vitamin E is wheat germ oil and wheat germ. Other good sources are cold-pressed vegetable oils, such as corn oil, soybean oil, and sunflower seed oil. Green vegetables are also good sources, particularly cauliflower, turnips, and spinach. Milk and dairy products are also good sources. You can also buy vitamin E in capsule form at health food stores or drug stores. Doses most often recommended by doctors are between 300 and 600 I.U. per day.

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Totally bald man gets full head of hair!

It happened in Stockholm. The man was totally bald for several years—I mean he had no hair whatever on the top of his head. This didn’t bother him very much, but he also suffered from hardening of the arteries and atherosclerosis, which was a greater reason for concern. The largest hospital in Sweden, Sodersjukhuset in Stockholm, tested new treatments for these diseases. Over one hundred patients participated in prolonged treatments with nicotinic acid, one of the B-vitamins, also called niacin. Our bald man was one of the patients in this test group. After three years of treatment with nicotinic acid he received a vigorous hair growth on his previously bald head and is now the proud owner of a full head of hair.

Nicotinic acid has a widening and dilating effect on blood vessels, particularly on the peripheral capillary system. It would seem that the vigorous hair growth in this case was effected by the increased blood supply through the dilated blood vessels and capillaries in the scalp.

Note: Do not confuse nicotinic acid with nicotine, which is a very dangerous poison and has no relation to nicotinic acid, a B-vitamin.

English doctor cures baldness—unintentionally!

Dr. John Kelvin reported in the British Medical Journal that he treated many patients for blood vessel disorders with the drug composition beta-pyridylkarbinol, derivative of vitamin substance pyridin-3-carbonic acid. The drug was intended to improve blood circulation in the feet and hands. The doctor noticed that some of his bald patients had new hair growth.

“I didn’t connect this new hair growth with the drug I was using until one more of my patients, who had been totally bald previously, walked into my office one morning with a beautiful and well-combed head of hair!” said the doctor.

After this incident was publicized, the English paper reported that the drug stores were stormed by a multitude of men of all ages asking for “the new tablets.”

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