How sweet it is...

I've always been a “coke-aholic.” I drank regular Coke or Pepsi maybe three cans a day for as long as I can remember. But somewhere during the early 1980s, probably because I had gained a few pounds, I decided to change to diet sodas. Then after returning to college in the 1990s I learned that the chemicals in the diet sodas were bad for me. So, I thought that I was probably better off drinking regular sodas and avoiding the killer chemicals. I returned to drinking regular sodas not realizing that they did not use real sugar but now used a new processed version of sugar—high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). HFCS is like sugar on “steroids”, so to speak. At this point I had returned to college and was eating a “poor man's diet” of carbs, carbs, and more carbs because they are cheap! Somewhere along the line I learned about HFCS and at that point had to “choose my poison” because I needed my fix of sweet carbonation. So, I decided to go back to diet sodas.

A couple years later after finishing a bachelor's then a master's degree, I left school and returned to full-time work. Unlike my old career (respiratory therapist) where I almost never sat down and was constantly running all over the hospital, in my new career I was always sitting down—in front of a computer. The six years at school I spent sitting in a classroom or in front of a computer most of the time as well. I guess it shouldn't be surprising that I would become insulin resistant.

When I learned that I had insulin resistance, the first thing I did was toss out all the sugar and the sugar sweetened items in my pantry and fridge. I decided to limit my diet sodas and I changed to Diet Rite hoping that Splenda was not as toxic as aspartame. I started using stevia to sweeten my coffee, tea, and desserts.

Nowadays, my preference for sweeteners is limited to stevia and raw coconut nectar. I won't lie, I do still have diet sodas as well but when cooking—I use the term loosely here because I don't currently do much—I use only stevia or a small amount of raw coconut nectar.

Next time, my favorite very quick dessert...

The “root” of the matter...

This post is in answer to a question that I received in a comment to a previous post. I was asked why underground vegetables should be avoided. So, here's my answer...

An underground vegetable is a root and this is where the plant stores its energy as carbohydrates. These are also included under “starches.” If you are insulin resistant and want to prevent it from continuing on to diabetes you should avoid all root vegetables as well as other high carbohydrate foods. If and when you get your insulin resistance under control you might be able to eat them occasionally and in small amounts but never alone.

If you are trying to control your insulin resistance or you just want to lose weight, you will need to restrict the number of carbohydrates that you eat per day. There are differences of opinion on what the limit should be. For controlling insulin resistance I would say no more than 80 carbs per day maybe even less. Of course, there are “good” carbs and there are “bad” carbs. The “bad” carbs are really only bad if you have insulin resistance or diabetes or if you are trying to lose weight and those are the only carbs that you will eat!

People with these conditions are generally told by their nutritionist, or they've read it in a diet book, or only occasionally are they told by their doctors (doctors are notoriously uninformed about good nutrition), that they should stay away from starchy vegetables.

I did a little bit of Googling research and found some interesting facts about carbohydrate content of root vegetables. I will just say that potatoes, sweet potatoes, and yams followed by parsnips seem to be the biggest winners in the area of carbohydrate content. Check out the article “Carbohydrate Counts of Root Vegetables” at About.com for the specifics on these and a few other root vegetables.

Until next time...

Mint Green Smoothie...

I thought that today I would share my all-time favorite green smoothie. There are a lot of websites that have many different recipes for green (and all other color) smoothies. I'm not going to create a huge long list of recipes of any kind. I will occasionally share a recipe that I've come up with or maybe I will review recipes that I've found on the healthy food websites that I frequent.

When I first found out that I had insulin resistance I was not lucky enough to have yet discovered green smoothies. It was only about a year ago that I got my Vita-Mix and it was then that I got turned on to green smoothies. If you don't like vegetables this is a great way to eat them. 

I have a lot of mint growing in my front yard and I needed some way to take advantage of this prolific plant. Since I do green smoothies at least five days a week, I thought I would try adding some of my mint for a little variety. It turned out to a big success and is now my current favorite.

Place in a high speed blender:

• 1/2 cup water
• 1/2 apple
• 1/2 pear
• 1 stalk celery
• 2 stalks baby bokchoy
• several large handfuls of spinach
• a handful of mint
• Blend
• Add ice and blend some more

You can use a regular blender but you will need to cut everything into small pieces and it many be necessary to use a smaller quantity of the ingredients.

Enjoy!

A One Page Diet...

I liked the diet that my HCP gave me because it is all on one page. There are just a few rules to follow and I didn't have to read a 300 page book before I could start. No induction phase, maintenance phase, etc. Just a set of rules to remember. I was able to take the one page sheet of paper, head to the grocery store, and get started on my new way of eating that night. I won't say that it was super easy. I was into eating processed foods—they are quick and easy. So, I spent a long time at the grocery store reading the labels to make sure that they weren't sneaking in some sugar or grains. Needless to say, sugar and wheat were in just about every processed food out there. That was about nine years ago. Today, it is a bit easier. A lot of foods are labeled gluten free.

I can't really remember what I did end up eating—just what I didn't eat. A lot of time has passed since then and I've spent that time reading every book on life-style diseases that I can get my hands on and find time to read. I do remember that I tossed out all the foods from my pantry that contained any type of sugar. Wheat flour, bread, and any other baked goods went straight to the trash can. I had been eating a lot of white rice. That and potatoes were no longer in my pantry. I really wasn't happy about giving up pizza or desserts. It was at that time that I became an “apple expert” because that became my dessert. I would slice up half an apple and smear it with chunky peanut butter—had to be chunky! Peanuts are not listed as one of the recommended nuts (in fact, they are not even nuts) but after I lost my 20+ pounds I did add peanut butter to my diet.

I would try one of each type of apple at the store or farmers' market. I liked the crispy, sweet-tart ones the best. Honeycrisp, Pink Lady, and Fuji are my all time favorites. I discovered that it is important to find out if the apples had been stored over the winter or if they were from a current season crop. The way apples from a previous season are stored will also affect the quality. I've thrown away quite a few mushy apples. Yuck!

'Til next time...

The Diet that Worked for Me

At the time I was diagnosed with insulin resistance I really wasn't interested in “diets”. I didn't know much about the different ones. The only change to my diet occurred about nine years prior to my diagnosis of insulin resistance and reactive hypoglycemia. It was when I was tested for food allergies and I found out that there were many foods that I should avoid. And for a year I did. But this is a topic for a later discussion.

The following is a brief outline of the diet that my HCP gave me. This diet emphasizes the importance of eating healthy foods long term and organic when possible. I've taken the liberty to adjust it a bit.

    PROTEIN. 4 – 6 ounces at each meal. This would be lean cuts of poultry, fish, red meat, and eggs.

    CARBOHYDRATES. Eat as many vegetables as you wish. Focus on colorful ones that grow above ground. Avoid soy, and high glycemic ones such as potatoes, winter squash, cooked carrots, and others that grow underground.

    GRAINS. Avoid all gluten grains such as wheat and barley unless you've been tested and know that you do not have celiac disease and are not sensitive to gluten. Eat quinoa instead.

    FRUITS. Avoid most fruits for a while. Have either berries or a half apple or pear per day.

    NUTS & SEEDS. Raw or dry roasted are best—almonds, walnuts, pecans, filberts, sunflower, and pumpkin seeds are recommended.

    FATS. The best fats are extra virgin olive oil, raw virgin coconut oil, and butter—not margarine!  Avoid most vegetable oils as they start going rancid as soon as they are processed.

    SWEETENERS. Avoid most sweeteners while following this diet. Avoid processed sugar forever! If you must use a sweetener, use stevia or a small amount of coconut syrup or raw agave.
   
    DAIRY. Use no dairy during this diet. Try nut or coconut milk. Or if you must have milk, use organic.

When I started this diet I had been going to the gym, doing the circuit and 30 minutes on the treadmill, without losing any weight. But when I started eating the diet outlined above, I lost 20 pounds in about three weeks. It all came off of my middle. I no longer had that apple shape that people with insulin resistance get. It was so obvious that everybody at the gym noticed!

The thing I like about this diet is that it is simple. You don't count calories and you don't count carbs. You just eat reasonable amounts of the foods described above. If you are insulin resistant (and you probably are or will be soon if you have an apple shape), try this diet and see if you don't have the same results as I did.

Write me and let me know how it works for you...

"Orange Sugar Water"

My “drunken spells” sent me looking for a Health Care Practitioner (HCP) who would treat my problem naturally and holistically.  I was lucky to find a Physician's Assistant (PA) who diagnoses and treats the patient as a whole organism and not in the reductionist manner as do many doctors.  The first thing he suggested when I told him my strange (to me) symptoms, was a glucose tolerance test (GTT).  My first thought was that I had just had one about a year earlier and it was, according to the nurse who gave me the results, essentially normal.

On my next visit, early in the morning and without breakfast, I showed up at his office for my GTT.  I have to say that there are definitely more unpleasant tests but this one isn't the most fun either.  They drew blood first to get my fasting blood sugar, which was normal.  I was then given an approximately 8 oz bottle of “orange sugar water” containing 75 grams of glucose that had to be downed within 5 minutes.  This was the unpleasant part. I have a fairly strong stomach but this left me feeling a bit queasy.  I endured and my stomach held strong through the rest of the test.  I had blood drawn each hour for the next four hours.  The first blood sugar result at one hour was close to 300.  By the last blood draw I was experiencing my “drunken spells” and had to lay down.  My blood sugar had dropped down to the 30s.  You don't really feel it when your blood sugar is high but when it drops to the 30s you most certainly will!

This time it was quite obvious that my glucose tolerance test was not normal.  My HCP discussed the results with me and told me that I had reactive hypoglycemia, insulin resistance, and if I didn't change my diet I would soon be diabetic.  I would later go to a lab to have an insulin test to see just how much insulin I was producing.  I immediately began the diet that he suggested and I also began reading as much as I could find on these conditions and how to treat them naturally. That was about nine years ago. Next time I will talk about the diet that worked for me.

Til then...

Cholesterol Busting Smoothie!

Today I am digressing briefly from my story to give you my recipe for a smoothie that I use to help control my cholesterol. 

Until next time...

"Drunken spells"

My school days are over and I'm out looking for a job. It takes a year but I finally get on with the state government. I'm no longer walking (running) the halls of a hospital. Now I'm sitting in front of a computer in an 8 x 8 cubicle. I have the opportunity to advance in my profession and to start putting money away for retirement. I get a decent paycheck and good benefits but I'm still sitting in front of a computer. With this kind of job you really have to make yourself get out and get some exercise and I was never very good at forced exercise. I have belonged to four different gyms over the past ten years and not really enjoyed any of them. Of all of them I liked the local YMCA the best and I have promised myself that I will be joining it again when I retire (nine months, Yay!), if not before.

I began to realize that I was tired a lot and then I noticed that I had major fatigue after lunch. Often, in the evening as soon as I finished dinner, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I felt like I was “drunk.” Many times I would have to stumble to bed and “pass out” for about a half hour before I could function again. It occurred to me that I wasn't just really tired but that there must be something wrong. So, I got busy and found a natural health care provider and made an appointment.

Until next time when I visit my HCP...

Poor Choices...

I've always loved sweets. As I young girl, I remember eating pie for breakfast. I was often able to get away with this as my mother worked nights. When staying with my grandparents down south, my favorite breakfast was pancakes with white Karo syrup or toast with butter and sorghum syrup. I don't want to make this sound like all my meals were bad because being from the south we had lots of fresh vegetable meals and we only occasionally had meat. This is just to show that from an early age if I had my choice I would go for the sweets.

My food choices didn't get much better as I got older, either. Being on a strict budget limited my food choices. I occasionally found healthy recipes to prepare but with working full-time I often went for the quick and easy. Spaghetti and hotdogs and beans were staples at our dinner table. I never thought about food being good or bad. I guess my thinking was that if it was sold at the grocery store, it must be good for you. I was really in for a wake-up call!

My girls were grown, I was middle-aged, and I was ready for a career change. I was feeling the stress of working in a hospital as a respiratory therapist giving hands-on healthcare, so I decided to go back to school full-time. My choice of geography would eventually lead me to my current work as an epidemiologist.

Working in a hospital I seldom sat down and when I did I would often get a stat call. Now I was sitting down all the time—in class, in front of a computer, and occasionally late at night in front of the TV. I was at school 10-12 hours a day—usually 6 or 7 days a week. My meals needed to be quick and cheap. So I stopped on the way to school and got a bagel, no cream cheese, and finished my breakfast off with a “poor man's mocha”--coffee with a package of instant hot chocolate and lots of cream. The closest on-campus eatery offered a variety of quick foods. Most of them were a bit pricey but they did offer pizza or breadsticks, which were reasonably priced. The breadsticks were the cheapest and you would get sauce and cheese with them. The pizza had the thick chewy crust and you could get it with pepperoni or a supreme with a few veggies. As I recall the pizza cost about a dollar less than what I now recognize was a reasonably healthy sandwich and the breadsticks were about half the price of the sandwich. Occasionally, I would walk across campus and get a burrito from the Mexican fast food place. Since I often stayed late in the computer lab, I would have some chips and a soda to keep me going until I got home. As I recall, my grown daughters were living with me part of the time that I was in school, so at least then I would sometimes get a nutritious home-cooked meal for dinner.

I lived this way for about 6 years while I got my BA and MS. My lifestyle was setting me up for some serious health issues. I didn't know this at the time but my pancreas was being overworked, my cells were getting weary, and my arteries were starting to thicken. I would soon be getting my “wake-up call.”

'Til next time...

Beware the bagel...

So folks, you know that I'm not a trained medical doctor--you read my disclaimer, right?, I don't even play one on TV. I do have two children (girls, both grown) so I have been and still am “Dr. Mom” when necessary. But I'm thinking of myself more as an interpreter or translator. I'm taking the information that I've acquired over the years from reading many, many books, watching many videos, talking a LOT to my HCP, and with what seems to me to be just plain common sense, using it to help tell my story. That said, where does all that sugar (glucose) in my blood come from?

It comes from many foods but mostly carbohydrates (carbs). Carbs can either have a lot of sugar or just a little. Fruits such as bananas will have a high sugar content, berries are generally lower in sugar. Vegetables such as leafy greens like spinach and other “above the ground” vegetables like peppers have much less sugar. Carbs are often labeled as “good” or “bad”. Generally, good carbs are not processed, have fiber, are low in sugar, and will enter the blood stream slowly. Processed carbs are the bad ones, such as anything made with white flour or refined sugar. There are also carbs like fruits that are high in sugar or root vegetables, like potatoes, these are not processed but still convert quickly to sugar in the body. I don't like labeling these as “bad” but they should be eaten with caution.

Next time I'll talk about how I wound up with insulin resistance.

Until then...

How it all began...

It was about ten years ago when I noticed that I was having what I call “drunk spells” except that I don't drink—okay, I would have a nice frozen margarita if I was sitting in a beach bar somewhere in the tropics. These “drunk spells” would happen as soon as I finished eating my evening meal. Sometimes it was so bad that I would stumble to my bed and pass out for about a half hour. I also noticed that shortly after lunch sitting in front of my computer at work I would be so tired I could barely hold my head up. This was not as bad as my evening “drunk spells” and would soon pass.

I prefer the natural health route so I found a Physician's Assistant (PA) who does natural as well as allopathic (conventional western medicine) to be my health care provider (HCP). The first thing he did was to give me a glucose tolerance test (GTT), which is used to test blood sugar levels. The GTT is used to diagnosis hyperglycemia (high blood sugar, diabetes) as well as hypoglycemia (low blood sugar).

I didn't think much about it because I had been tested the year before at an allopathic medical clinic and was told that although one of the values was slightly low, overall the results were normal. When I got the results from my current test I was surprised to find out how bad it was. My fasting blood sugar was normal but the first blood sugar value after drinking the orange flavored glucose drink was close to 300 and the last value, four hours later was in the 40s. I did not have any symptoms when my blood sugar was high but when it dropped down to the 30s or 40s, that was when I had my “drunk spells.” The PA told me that I have reactive hypoglycemia where the blood sugar shoots way up and then drops down very low. This is similar to pre-diabetes or insulin resistance where the cells are being bombarded with all the insulin that is being released to help the glucose enter the cells that the cells start to wear out with trying to keep up and become resistant. This leaves excess glucose in the blood. The pancreas that produces the insulin will work hard for a while putting out a lot of insulin but it will also become weary and eventually just slow down or stop producing insulin. This is when it becomes diabetes. Before this point the pancreas and the cells will continue to do their jobs but the pancreas will do a better job and will produce more insulin than the cells can take up. This is what leads to reactive hypoglycemia. And this is what was happening when I was having my “drunk spells.” I was told that I was lucky that I was having these symptoms because most people don't have symptoms. They just go in for a check-up, the doctor does a fasting blood sugar (one blood draw before having any food), then a GTT, and without any warning they are being told that they have diabetes.

Although I'm adding links to other websites or blogs in my posts, it does not mean that I advocate for everything that may be on that site. I will strive to provide the best information that will support my story as I tell it. When reading a linked website, know that if given a choice between allopathic and natural methods, my first choice will almost always be the natural one.

Until next time...

Welcome to my blog

Writing a blog is something I've thought about doing for a long time.  I've verbally subjected friends, acquaintances, and defenseless strangers to my thoughts and opinions on the many different health conditions that are considered to be "lifestyle diseases"--obesity, diabetes, and heart disease to name a few.  I'm not an expert on these but I am experienced with some of them.  I think experience helps to make one an expert. Reading, researching, and experimenting does as well.  

My experience with lifestyle diseases began about ten years ago when I first learned that I have insulin resistance (IR).  I was overweight (caused by or causing the IR),  had high blood pressure, and was well on the way to having heart disease.  I had worked in healthcare for years and saw how these conditions were treated by allopathic medicine.  Elderly people with a dozen different pills.  Each pill after the first to treat the effects of the previous one.  When I found out about my IR I was no longer working in healthcare but I remembered those old people and swore that I would not end up like that if I could help it! That was when I started studying about natural healthcare.


My vision for this blog is to relate what I've learned so far.  It has been a journey to health and I am still traveling along but I can see my destination not too far away.  


I'm glad you found me and hope that you will return soon to read about my experiences and what I've learned so far on my journey to a happy healthy heart!