Diabetes

This year there is virtually complete agreement among doctors that sugared drinks cause the highest rises in blood sugar that cause a fatty liver that leads to diabetes.

A study this month shows how people who eat a lot of sugar can develop a liver full of fat that can lead to diabetes. When your blood sugar rises too high, the insulin released by your pancreas converts the sugar to a type of fat called triglycerides. HDL (good) cholesterol then carries the triglycerides to your liver where they are stored to cause a fatty liver.

Researchers followed 63,257 Chinese adults aged 45–74 for an average of 10.9 years and found that eating red meat was associated with increased risk for developing diabetes. The authors suggest that it may be the iron in meat that could cause diabetes.

A just-published study shows that drinking either sugared or artificially-sweetened drinks is associated with increased risk for diabetes (Am J Clin Nutr, Jun 28, 2017). Of 64,850 post-menopausal women followed for 8.4 years, 4675 developed diabetes.

Type II diabetes means that a person is diabetic because his cells do not respond to insulin. Recent research shows type II diabetes is linked to gut bacteria that invade the inner lining of the colon, while the dominant bacteria of most non-diabetics do not try to invade the inner lining of their colon.

Diabetes can be treated and often cured with exercise that removes fat from muscles and diets that remove fat from the liver and other organs.

Many people with high blood sugar levels are told by their doctors that they do not have diabetes because their fasting blood sugar levels are below 100 mg/dl, which is considered normal. Early in the disease, diabetics often have a "normal" fasting blood sugar, but one hour after they eat, their blood sugar levels rise above 140, which signals that they are at increased risk for heart attacks, strokes, cancers, nerve damage and premature death.

No matter how much insulin the pancreas makes, eating sugar causes the liver to make excess ChREBP that prevents the liver from responding to insulin and the liver then converts extra calories to sugar as well as the fat that it normally produces.

If you store the extra fat in your buttocks and thighs, you are at low risk for being harmed by that extra fat. However, if you store the extra fat primarily in your belly, you are at high risk for becoming diabetic.

North America's epidemic of obesity, diabetes and heart attacks appears to be fueled by storing fat in the liver, muscles and around organs, rather than just in fat cells, excess calories, sugar added to foods and drinks and lack of exercise.

A breakthrough article from Johns Hopkins implies that most cases of type II diabetes could be cured by reducing the amount of fat in the liver and that some diabetics may have to rid themselves of most of the fat from the rest of their bodies before they will get enough fat out of their liver.

A review of the world's literature shows that high-intensity exercise, particularly interval training, causes greater reduction in HbA1c in diabetics than less intense exercise. HbA1c measures cell damage from high blood sugar levels. Many studies show that increasing exercise intensity controls blood sugar in diabetics more effectively than just increasing the duration of exercise.

In small studies in animals and humans, vinegar has been shown to reduce the rise in blood sugar and insulin that normally occurs after a meal. However, I cannot find any large studies to show that vinegar is an effective treatment for diabetes.

Exercising before or after eating helps to protect you from having a high rise in blood sugar after meals. Even light exercise before or after you eat can prevent a high rise in blood sugar and the damage it can cause.

Some foods raise blood sugar far more than others, and a high rise in blood sugar after meals can increase risk for diabetes, heart attacks and premature death. A study from Israel shows that some people develop surprisingly high blood sugar levels after eating foods such as bread, pizza, potato, tomatoes or bananas, while others do not develop the expected rise in blood sugar even after drinking a sugared soft drink or eating a cookie.

Sugared drinks are the primary cause of fatty liver disease, according to a report in the Journal of Hepatology (May 29, 2015). A fatty liver can lead to diabetes, which can cause heart attacks and premature death.

Research shows that the longer a patient has diabetes, the smaller his brain, particularly in the gray matter that interprets and directs muscle control, seeing and hearing, memory, emotions, speech, decision-making and self-control. Diabetics lose brain size more than twice as rapidly as non-diabetics. The longer a person has diabetes, the more likely he is to suffer dementia.

Most people who develop diabetes in later life can be controlled so that they are not at increased risk for the many complications of diabetes such as heart attacks, strokes, blindness, deafness, amputations, kidney failure, burning foot syndrome, venous insufficiency with ulceration and stasis dermatitis.

In April 2000, a study from the Air Force was widely reported in newspapers to have shown that agent orange causes diabetes. Only Gina Kolata of the New York Times wasn't fooled (NYT, April 20, 2000).

A study from Italy shows that more than 56 percent of diabetic men suffer from impotence, and almost all complain bitterly that it has destroyed something that is very important to them. The study also shows that most men who are impotent from diabetes are depressed. Impotence caused by diabetes can be prevented in almost all men whose bodies can still make insulin.

You can tell if you are at high risk for diabetes if you store fat primarily in your belly. Pinch your belly; if you can pinch an more than an inch of fat under the skin there, you are at increased risk and should get a blood test called HBA1C. Having high blood levels of triglycerides and low levels of the good HDL cholesterol that helps prevent heart attacks also increases your risk for diabetes.