Chances are, you or someone you know has diabetes, a condition in which the body is unable to regulate blood sugar on its own. According to the American Diabetes Association, there are 20.8 million children and adults in the U.S. or 7 percent of the population, who have diabetes. While an estimated 14.6 million have been diagnosed with diabetes, unfortunately, 6.2 million people (or nearly one-third) are unaware that they have the disease.
Diabetes is a disease in which the body does not produce or properly use insulin, which is a hormone that is needed to convert sugar, starches and other food into energy needed for daily life. Although both genetics and environmental factors such as obesity and lack of exercise appear to play a role, the actual cause of diabetes remains a mystery.
In most cases, diabetes does not strike until adulthood. People who get little exercise and are overweight are at an increased risk of developing what is known as Type 2 diabetes (Type 1 diabetes is detected on childbirth). The good news is that due to science research and developments in treatment, it is easier than ever to live with it.
Since with diabetes, the body is unable to produce or properly use insulin, sugar and fat remain in the blood, causing fatigue, frequent urination, excessive thirst and irritability. The disease can drastically affect a person’s day-to-day life, as he or she might experience difficulties in concentrating, which can affect work performance, or may suffer from anxiety and/or depression. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to organ and nerve damage and increase a person’s risk of heart disease, stroke and blindness.
The key to managing diabetes is keeping your blood sugar levels stable. You can do this by eating a healthy diet, exercising regularly and keeping your weight in check, but, in order to succeed, you may also need insulin injections. Studies show that patients who keep their blood sugar levels close to normal may experience fewer diabetes-related complications and lead healthier lives. But experts indicate that the sooner you get your blood sugar under control, the better you will be.
Thus, you should work with your doctor to create a treatment plan that is right for you. If you need insulin, tell your doctor how often you exercise and eat and what your usual diet contains or what times you eat. Also mention which medications and vitamins you take, if any. This will help your doctor determine what type of insulin is best for you and what your dosage should be. Keep in mind that your insulin dosage will likely be adjusted many times until the best level for your case is reached, but you will soon be on the road to feeling like yourself again if you follow doctors’ advice and keep your diet healthy, you exercise regularly and you maintain a constant sleeping pattern.
Jonathon Hardcastle
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/a-brief-overview-of-diabetes-59393.html
Have you seen those “fat free” foods in supermarkets? Have you possibly delighted in them guiltlessly thinking that they are healthy for you? There’s a good chance that you have because we usually follow what the media and the world around us says. In this day in age, along with other health fads, many people believe that fat makes you fat. This is true, to an extent. What we fail to notice is that not all fats are bad.
If I had to guess, since the words fat (as in what’s in food) and fat (as in excess body tissue, or adipose tissue) are the same word it makes sense that when you eat fat, you get fat. However, this is not the case. Now don’t get me wrong, there is a difference between good fats and bad fats. If you eat the bad fats they can make you fat, and also contribute to several diseases. Your body uses the good fats in several ways to repair itself, grow, and work more efficiently.
Some of the benefits of eating these healthy fats include:
-Healthy fats are essential for absorption of fat-soluble vitamins
-Healthy fats have an anti-inflammatory effect – they can help relieve many of the pains that we experience around our joints
-Healthy fats are essential for lubrication of our joints
-Healthy fats improve insulin sensitivity. Insulin is the hormone our bodies use to transport nutrients throughout the body. Insulin sensitivity is essentially a measure of how efficient our bodies use insulin. Insulin resistance is the opposite of insulin sensitivity and is one of the early stages of diabetes.
-Healthy fats can increase the strength of our immune system
-Healthy fats play a major role in the production of energy from foods we consume
-Healthy fats are required for our body to efficiently use oxygen
-Healthy fats can improve skin texture
-Healthy fats can increase your metabolism
-Healthy fats can help you burn more fat (the kind that is attached to your body)
Dr. Udo Erasmus, author of one of the most popular books ever about fat, “Fats the Heal, Fats that Kill”, writes in his book, “At levels above 12 to 15% of total calories, healthy fats increase the rate of metabolic reactions in the body and the increased rate burns off more fat into carbon dioxide, water, and energy (heat), resulting in fat burn off and loss of excess weight.”
In this article we will discuss what exactly these healthy fats are, where to get them from, easy ways to add them into your diet, and the optimal amount of fat that you should consume. I will also explain why the belief that “fats make you fat” has developed because fats can make you fat if you eat too many of them.
The Bad Fats
-Trans Fats
Trans fats are made by bubbling hydrogen through unsaturated fats in order to make them solid and have a longer shelf life. In addition, it was once thought that trans fats were a healthier alternative to saturated fats. However, this is far from the truth. In a statement made by the Bush Administration they warn us to keep consumption of trans fats “as low as possible” and also state that “the food industry has an important role in decreasing trans fatty acid content of the food supply.”
Some of the top Harvard nutritionists state that replacing trans fats with a safer alternative would “prevent approximately 30,000 premature coronary deaths per year.”
In fact, Denmark has already taken an initiative and banned the sale of trans fats to not allow more than 2% of the food to contain trans fats.
Now that you know that trans fats are bad, how do you avoid them? In America, the FDA has required food manufacturers to list the number of trans fats a food contains. This has helped consumers make wiser choices, but according to FDA regulation, “if the serving contains less than 0.5 gram, the content, when declared, shall be expressed as zero.” This rule allows food manufacturers to list very small serving sizes and as long as the amount of trans fats is less than 0.5 grams in that particular serving, they are allowed to list it as 0 grams of trans fats.
The ultimate way to tell if a food contains trans fats or not is if the ingredients list contains the phrase “partially hydrogenated” or “shortening”. Trans fats are mostly contained in foods such as candies, cookies, snack foods, chips, shortenings, and many restaurants.
-Saturated Fats
Saturated fats are widely recognized as being bad fats. You probably know or believe this to be true, and it is to an extent. There is actually quite a controversy between many dieticians and nutritionists about saturated fats concerning the optimal amount that we should consume or if we should even consume them at all. The reason for most of the bad rap that saturated fat has been given is due to the fact that the liver uses it to produce cholesterol. It has been noted to raise the good (HDL) cholesterol as well as the bad (LDL) cholesterol. The FDA’s general guideline for saturated fat is to limit it to about 10% of total calories per day. This would convert to about 20 grams per day for diet containing about 2,000 calories per day.
Saturated fat is mostly found in foods that are derived from animals. The exception would be coconut, palm, and palm kernel oils, which also contain saturated fat.
The Healthy Fats
-Monounsaturated Fats
Monounsaturated fat is believed to help lower the bad cholesterol (LDL) and raise the good (HDL) cholesterol. As listed in the beginning of this article, they also provide many healthy benefits.
Monounsaturated fats are mostly found in vegetable oils. Some examples would include olive oil and canola oil.
-Polyunsaturated Fats
Polyunsaturated fats contain the family of fats known as Essential Fatty Acids, or EFAs. As you can tell by their name, these fats are essential to the body because the body cannot produce them on its own. The main EFAs are the Omega-3 fatty acid and the Omega-6 fatty acid. They provide many of the benefits listed at the beginning of this article as well. Good sources of these fatty acids are fish, mustard seeds, pumpkin seeds, walnut oil, leafy green vegetables, sunflower, soybean, avocados, and perhaps one of the best sources is flax seed (make sure to grind them or buy them in an oil form – the stomach has trouble digesting the whole seeds).
-Why Fat Supposedly Makes You Fat
(Note: You can calculate your TDEE at http://www.weight-loss-resources.com/calculators/dailycalories.html)
There is a simple law known as the Law of Thermodynamics. In addition to this, our bodies burn a certain number of calories per day (this number changes everyday and is influenced by many factors). This burning of calories everyday is known as total daily energy expenditure or TDEE. If the amount of calories we eat in a certain day is below our TDEE, we lose weight (this weight is not necessarily fat all the time). If the amount of calories we eat is equal to our TDEE, our weight stays the same. If the amount of calories we eat is greater than our TDEE, we gain weight (as stated before, this weight is not necessarily fat all the time – it could be muscle). Many people skip this important fundamental and look at the type of food they are eating or several other factors before they investigate how many calories they are eating per day and how to adjust their amount of calories consumed to achieve their goals.
Fat holds 9 calories per gram, while carbohydrates and protein hold only 4 calories per gram. This means that eating fat (any type of fat, even the good kind) will result in a greater number of calories consumed. Therefore, it’s more likely that you’re going to go over your TDEE and gain weight, especially if much of your diet comes from fattening foods. In addition to this, fat is very similar chemically to the fat that your body stores. This makes it easy for your body to store consumed fat as fat (adipose tissue), but you must take into consideration that storing fat (consumed) as fat (adipose tissue) is not the only thing your body does with fat (consumed).
-The Optimal Levels of Fat
You’re going to want to eat part of your calories from fat to get their many benefits, but not go too high. Like anything else in the world of nutrition and fitness, there are many opinions on what the optimal levels of fat in the diet are. For instance, advocates of low-fat diets opt for absolutely no fat and believe that fat is what makes us fat. However, there is a flaw in this belief as they are also cutting out the good, numerously beneficial fats. Then there are high fat diets, such as diets suggesting low carbs (they usually say you can eat all the fat and protein you want). Although, it is generally accepted to consume between 15% – 25% of your calories from fat while severely limiting the amount of trans fats and watching the amount of saturated fat that you consume.
-Some Easy Ways to Add Fat Into Your Diet
Now you may be wondering how you’re going to add some of these healthy fats into your diet. There are actually some really easy ways to do so. If you eat salads, you can add about a tablespoon of olive or canola oil. In my experience, you usually cannot even taste these added oils. If you buy some flax seed and grind it, you can add it to almost any food. Once again, these flax seeds are mostly tasteless. Really, adding these healthy nutrients into your diet isn’t that big of a burden.
Nathan Latvaitis
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/fattening-foods-not-so-fattening-after-all-89747.html
About Levitra
Levitra belongs to a class of drugs called “PDE5 inhibitors.” It works by increasing the blood flow to the penis to improve erectile function. The active ingredient Vardenafil in Levitra works specifically on the chain of events that occurs in the penis during arousal, when two large chambers in a man’s penis fill with blood.
Levitra is not a magic pill or an aphrodisiac. It won’t make you want to have sex all the time. Neither will it give you an instant erection; sexual excitement is requisite for it to work. Once a man has completed sexual activity, blood flow to his penis should decrease and his erection should go away
In clinical studies, most men were able to successfully begin sexual activity before this time. In addition, they could get and keep an erection that lasted long enough for successful intercourse. Moreover, Levitra has shown to improve erectile function, even in men who have had other health factors, like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
Levitra is to be taken about an hour before sex with or without food. It helps increase blood flow to the penis, so it may help men with ED get and keep an erection that lasts long enough to have successful sex. Likewise, it has provided first-time success and reliable improvement of erection quality for many men, including those with high cholesterol, high blood pressure, or diabetes.
Men taking Levitra testify to having harder erections and greater success at maintaining their erections long enough to have successful sex. In fact, a lot of men who took the drug were successful the first time they tried it.
Levitra is generally effective and well tolerated for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. Its side effects like headache, flushing, and/or stuffy or runny nose are generally mild and do not last very long.
Who can take Levitra?
Levitra is a proven, effective treatment that works for most men and has been taken with medications used to treat other common medical conditions. So why not see your doctor and find out for yourself? Levitra:
- Works for many men with a broad range of conditions, including high cholesterol
- Works for most men, including those taking one or more types of blood pressure medication (ask your doctor about drug interactions)
- Works for many men with type 1 or type 2 diabetes, across all levels of ED severity
- May work when other oral treatments do not
Comes in the strength of
Levitra is available in 2.5mg, 5mg, 10mg, and 20mg tablets. The starting dose of Levitra is 10mg no more than once a day based on your doctor’s prescription.
In patients taking alpha blockers, or certain medications like ritonavir, indinavir, saquinavir, atazanavir, ketoconazole, itraconazole, erythromycin and clarithromycin a lower dose of Levitra may be recommended for the treatment of erectile dysfunction (impotence), as well as the time between Levitra doses may need to be extended.
Levitra is for both, the man who needs a little help once in a while and the man who needs more frequent help.
Katie
http://www.articlesbase.com/men’s-health-articles/vardenafil-comes-in-lower-doses-as-compared-to-sildenafil-702138.html
You will need to adopt a special diabetes diet once you are diagnosed with this condition. Basically, this is just one of the changes that you must make, to improve your health.
A diabetes diet is based on the food pyramid designed for diabetics. The food pyramid is a great foundation for you to use to begin learning how to eat correctly to keep your blood sugar level in the right range. A diabetic has to watch their carbohydrate intake, too, because these turn to sugars in the body. Eating the same types of foods at the same time each day can keep your blood glucose levels more stable.
If you have diabetes, you need to learn about the benefits of adding soluble fibers to your diet. These can be found in many different vegetables and fruits. The reason why they work so well for diabetics is that they slow down glucose absorption in the intestine. This decreased absorption can help keep your blood glucose level from getting too elevated, which can cause a hyperglycemic reaction.
The kidney bean is one wonderful source of soluble fiber. In fact, this bean has the highest level of soluble fiber found in a food when it is cooked, which makes it ideal for a diabetic. Insoluble fibers can also greatly help diabetics keep their blood glucose levels controlled as well. Insoluble fibers, like bran and whole grains, can help keep your intestinal tract clean and this helps prevent glucose staying in your intestine to be absorbed later, which can cause your blood glucose to be uncontrollable.
Several tips regarding your diet are recommended by The American Dietetic Association to help you maintain a healthy glucose level. Starches are one food group that is highly recommended. Six servings of cereal, bread, and starchy vegetables are recommended per day. Black beans, corn, and garbanzo beans are a starch that can be implemented into your diet as well. It is recommended that you implement the five-a-day plan by the ADA. This plan consists of eating at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily and, of course, you should eat sugar sparingly.
It is important that you visit a dietician when you are diagnosed with diabetes so that you can learn exactly what your body requires to work well and to keep your blood glucose levels stable. The dietician can also help you to determine the effect that your weight, activity level, and other factors have on your blood glucose levels. This is important to determine so that you can keep your blood sugar controlled and prevent further diabetes related complications. To locate a dietician in your area, you can call the American Association of Diabetes Educators at 1-800-342-2382. They will be able to help you locate someone who can help you learn more about how to eat when you have a condition like diabetes.
You may find it difficult to have to adjust to a diabetes diet. However, the sooner you make the changes, the better it is for your health
Khim Lim
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/diabetes-diet-an-overview-77454.html
Diabetes is a condition that millions of people manage on a daily basis. People with diabetes must be mindful of the foods and beverages they consume. Whether or not you have had natural diabetes all of your life or have been recently diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, it is crucial that you engage in healthy food choices.
The majority of your food selections should be based on a whole foods approach. Whole foods are natural and organic foods. These foods are created with the highest standards and are tailored for people with conditions such as diabetes, gluten intolerance, and other conditions. Seek out whole food and organic supermarkets in your area.
What food choices should people with diabetes make to manage their diabetes glucose levels? First, think back to nature such as vegetables and fruits. Nature has provided a wealth of vegetables to keep your palate enticed. For example, have a spinach salad with broccoli and carrots at dinner.
To control your blood sugar levels you have to monitor your carbohydrate consumption. Breads and pastas can spike your blood sugar, but this can be minimized if you consume whole grain breads and pastas. These are easy to find at a whole foods organic market.
For your entree keep the focus on fish, chicken and turkey. You can consume lean cuts of beef and pork in moderation. Make sure to remove the fatty skin and use healthy liquid oils, such as olive oil, when you cook foods. In addition, stick to non-fat dairy products. You can consume skim milk, non fat cheese, and non fat yogurt.
If you have diabetes you may feel that you have to miss out on the sweet taste of foods. This is not so. You can add cinnamon in moderation to foods to give them a sweet taste. Cinnamon may actually have a positive effect on your blood glucose levels, especially for people with Type 2 diabetes. Therefore, cinnamon is a great way to get the sweet fix you desire.
Lastly, don’t forget about what you drink! Beverages can be a roadblock to lowering blood sugar levels. Diabetes treatment should include drinking plenty of water and an occasional diet drink that has zero calories.
There are some foods that you should avoid like the plague. Avoid processed foods such as candy, chips, sodas, fruit punch, and cookies. These contain an excessive amount of sugar and carbohydrates that will have your blood glucose level soaring. Watch out for foods labeled as sugar free as well. This labeling is misleading and they can often raise your blood sugar levels as much as common sugar foods.
Remember that consuming healthy foods is not a free for all. If you eat too much of any type of food you will gain weight. Gaining weight is especially disastrous for people with diabetes. Stick to healthy portions and monitor your caloric intake.
Diabetics may have to spend more time analyzing what they eat and drink, but it is a manageable process. The number of whole food organic supermarkets is on the rise which is a major benefit for people with diabetes. Take advantage of their services to help you control your blood sugar levels and enjoy food at the same time.
Julia Hanf
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/choose-the-right-foods-to-lower-your-blood-sugar-level-127748.html
