60 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar

by Dennis Pollock

  52

  Belly Fat

  In my mid-teens I was one skinny kid. It used to bother me to be so thin, but nothing I did seemed to help me gain weight. My finicky appetite didn’t help matters. Finally, around the age of 16 I got desperate. I started eating a fourth meal in the evenings, made up of things I liked that were high in calories. I would indulge in huge bowls of ice cream or sometimes eat two or three slices of bread covered liberally with peanut butter. Lo and behold, I started gaining weight. My body shape wasn’t very impressive, however. I was still pretty scrawny in my arms and legs, but I had developed a nice plump belly. Realizing that this wasn’t working, I began to lift weights and started looking a little better.

  I didn’t realize it at the time, but the tendency to accumulate fat around the belly is a strong indicator of potential problems with diabetes in later life. Slim-legged people with big stomachs are a walking diabetic time bomb. Obesity itself is a huge risk factor in developing diabetes, but when the fat goes straight to the stomach, it is the worst of all scenarios. Dr. Gerald Bernstein, director of the diabetes-management program at the Gerald J. Friedman Diabetes Institute at Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City observes,

  When those fat cells go in and around your belly, not down in your buttocks or your hips, but when it’s around the belly…that fat in and of itself works to block the action of insulin, which is necessary to lower the blood sugar.14

  Beyond that, fat cells are terribly inefficient at processing insulin to start with; muscle does a far better job. The more fat you accumulate, the more insulin-resistant you tend to become. In your youth you may be able to get away with being overweight and still have normal blood-sugar levels. But as you age and your metabolism slows down, all that fat will catch up with you. The bottom line is this: people who struggle with high blood sugar cannot afford to be overweight. If you are serious about getting your blood sugar under control you must take the necessary steps to get to a proper weight. If when you turn sideways and look at yourself in the mirror you discover a blob of flesh hanging out over your waist, you must deal with this.

  That’s the bad news; here’s the good news: Our bodies are remarkably responsive to diet and exercise. And here’s better news: we’re not talking about turning you into some obsessed, sweaty gym freak, or putting you on concentration-camp rations. The first thing to know (and rejoice in) is that doing stomach crunches and sit-ups won’t get rid of your belly fat anyway, so you can breathe easy. It is a myth that if you target an area of your body for strenuous exercise (spot exercise), you will get rid of all the fat buildup around that area. You will not. Thus, the answer to a large stomach is not sit-ups. They can be useful in toning, but they are not compulsory.

  The beautiful thing about push-ups is that you don’t have to go to a gym, and you don’t need fancy equipment or weights of any kind. All you need is your body and a convenient floor—something most of us should be able to come up with!

  What is it then? First and foremost, it is getting to the right weight for your height. This is something that should happen pretty naturally when you get serious about a low-carb diet. It is possible to eat low-carb and still be overweight, but it is not easy and it is not normal.

  Second, anaerobic exercise (lifting weights, doing push-ups, and so forth) will build muscle, and every pound of your flesh that is converted to muscle is one less pound that will sit around as useless fat. You don’t have to look like a weight lifter to be sure, but being relatively toned is a worthy goal. The great news is that you can achieve this with very little effort. Three or four sets of push-ups per day for three days out of the week will do wonders in this area. Add to this by investing in a pair of dumbbells, and you should have all you need to turn things around.

  In years gone by aerobic exercise was more highly recommended by the experts for diabetics than anaerobic. But today opinions have changed, and nearly everyone is recognizing that a toned, lean body is a tremendous asset in the war against high blood sugar. Don’t give up on your walking, jogging, or swimming, but make sure to pump a little iron or do those push-ups!

  Exercise by itself, however, is not likely to get rid of all your belly fat. You are almost certainly going to have to drop some pounds as well. Lose enough weight and you’ll lose that fat. There is absolutely no way a large stomach can maintain itself if you stop feeding it all those extra calories. And once the fat goes, you’ll be amazed at how your insulin resistance will be diminished. Some experts estimate that as much as 90 percent of type 2 diabetes (particularly in America) is related to obesity and belly fat.

  So…get your weight and your belly under control, and watch your blood-sugar numbers improve dramatically!

  53

  Two or Three Witnesses

  As you search for answers to your problems with high blood sugar, it shouldn’t take long to figure out the steps you’ll need to take. Reducing carbs, exercise, and getting to the proper weight are agreed upon by all but the flakes and nuts. No, the problem isn’t really figuring out what to do; it lies in making the tough choices and sticking with them day after day, month after month, and year after year.

  What this means is that anything we can do that will help us with motivation is of tremendous value. And there are some things you can do. One of the best things is to do exactly what you are doing right now—read some good books that inform you and inspire you to take the necessary steps to get your blood sugar under control. But don’t just depend only on this book you are now reading. There are some great books available that can be potent weapons in your battle against blood-sugar problems.

  One of the Bible’s principles says, “By the mouth of two or three witnesses let every word be established.” Anything God seems to feel is worth saying, He says it more than once. This is why there are four Gospels—Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John—in the New Testament, not just one. God is so determined that you learn of His Son Jesus Christ that He says it four times over. There is something in the human psyche that needs to hear things repeated and restated in various forms for us to really get it. The business world knows this well. This is why you see commercials played over and over again, and sometimes you see the same commercial several times during a one-hour program. Companies know that if you don’t get it the first or the tenth time, you may well by the twentieth or thirtieth.

  So what does this have to do with diabetes? We can use this principle for our good by exposing our minds to the facts we so greatly need to hear and heed again and again. Because there aren’t many videos on the subject of blood sugar or 30-second ads telling you to watch those carbs, what this comes down to is reading some great books about diabetes, insulin resistance, a low-carb diet, and the like. Add some Internet research and reading, and as you read and embrace the facts, a little something called motivation will magically appear in your life. You will find yourself not just knowing the right things to do, but actually wanting to do the right things. Here is where the battle is won.

  Allow me to recommend some of the books I consider top-notch in the area of diabetes and the control of blood sugar:

  • Protein Power by Michael and Mary Dan Eades.15 This book is well written, insightful, and provides all kinds of great information and studies to utterly debunk the low-fat, high-carb diet that the “experts” have been pushing for years, to the destruction of so many Americans. You’ve got to read this book.

  • Dr. Atkins’ New Diet Revolution by Robert C. Atkins.16 This book has been a huge bestseller. Although its primary purpose is to help people lose weight, it is of tremendous value to people like you who need some good information about blood sugar, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinism, and the dangers of high-carb diets.

  • Beat Diabetes! by Margaret Blackstone.17 The author of this book is not a doctor but rather a woman who ended up with severe diabetes. She was determined to “beat diabetes” by lifestyle change rather than taking shots, and she managed to do it. She got pretty fanatical about doing all the
right things, and her life serves as a tremendous inspiration to all.

  • Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution by Richard Bernstein.18 As mentioned in chapter 51, Dr. Bernstein is one of the world’s foremost authorities on diabetes, and it is worth reading anything he has to say. Some of this book relates to type 1 diabetes, which the type 2’s may not find relevant, but there is a lot of great information here. The book is worth the price just to read his own personal story in the first chapter—titled “My First Fifty Years as a Diabetic.” Dr. Bernstein should have died decades ago, but instead found a way to dramatically increase his years and the quality of his health through tight, precise control of his blood sugar.

  • Overcoming Runaway Blood Sugar by Dennis Pollock.19 If the name sounds familiar, that is because it is mine. This was my first blood-sugar book, and it sold so many copies it amazed both me and my publisher. Like the one you are reading, it is geared to providing the basic facts you need in a language ordinary folks can appreciate.

  I don’t agree with every point made by each of these authors (other than me); nor do they agree with each other on everything. But they do agree on the basics you need to know and embrace if you are to see those numbers on your glucose monitor come down to a reasonable range.

  One word of caution: A major weakness with some books on diabetes is that they are far too mild in the diets they recommend. If you were a firefighter attempting to put out a blazing forest fire, you couldn’t just stand at the edge and hurl teaspoons of water at the flames. Huge fires call for drastic intervention, and some of the information you will come across doesn’t go nearly far enough. Some will suggest that if you turn in your white bread for whole-wheat bread and your candy bars for bananas, all will be well. Most of us are going to have to go a lot further than that. I have looked at some of the diabetic meals in the backs of some of these books and magazines, and they sometimes total enough carbs to choke the proverbial (diabetic) horse.

  The list in this chapter is certainly not exhaustive. But these books would make a great start in your quest for information and inspiration. And yes, choose the books you read wisely. But by all means read. By the mouth of many witnesses let a lifetime of good health, smart choices, and iron resolve be established in you.

  54

  Fat—Not the Monster You’ve Been Told

  For decades most voices in the medical and nutrition worlds have been warning you about the terrible dangers of fat. Cheeseburgers are a heart attack on a bun. Steaks are a heart attack without the bun. Fat is evil, carbs are good. Wise, healthy, hip folks eat carbs; ignorant, overweight, uneducated slobs eat fat. Fat will kill you in your forties; carbs, lots of carbs, and nearly nothing but carbs will keep you alive into your nineties. Never tire of eating your bagels, crackers, rice, bread, and Cap’n Crunch cereal. Eat them morning, noon, and night. As for fatty foods, maybe you can treat yourself to a small steak once a year, perhaps on your birthday.

  There is but one little, bitty problem with this advice. There are virtually no studies or research that bears this out. When Robert Atkins first became prominent in advocating a low-carb diet that allowed significant fat, most doctors and nutritionists were either horrified or scornful. Everyone “knew” that the high-carb, low-fat diet was best. But to the world’s astonishment unexpected things happened to those brave souls who adopted his diet. First, they lost weight, significantly more weight than they had been able to on the traditional low-fat diet. When the evidence of this became so preponderant that it could no longer be denied, they argued, “Okay, maybe you can lose weight on this diet, but it will kill you. It will drive your cholesterol into the stratosphere, and you’ll soon keel over of a massive heart attack.”

  But a strange thing, indeed an unbelievable thing, began to happen to these low-carb, don’t-worry-about-the-fat dieters. Their blood profiles actually improved. Their good-cholesterol-to-bad-cholesterol ratio improved, their triglycerides took a nosedive, and their blood-sugar levels improved dramatically. Slowly, ever so slowly, some in the medical field began to modify their views and allow that perhaps low-carb, higher-fat eating might not be the bogeyman it was initially thought.

  Nina Teicholz has written a great article about fat. She begins,

  Suppose you were forced to live on a diet of red meat and whole milk. A diet that, all told, was at least 60 percent fat—about half of it saturated. If your first thoughts are of statins and stents, you may want to consider the curious case of the Masai, a nomadic tribe in Kenya and Tanzania.20

  Teicholz goes on to tell the story. In the 1960s, a Vanderbilt University scientist, George Mann, MD, found that Masai men consumed this very diet (supplemented with blood from the cattle they herded). Yet these nomads, who were also very lean, had some of the lowest levels of cholesterol ever measured and were virtually free of heart disease.

  Scientists, confused by the finding, argued that the tribe must have certain genetic protections against developing high cholesterol. But when British researchers monitored a group of Masai men who moved to Nairobi and began consuming a more modern diet, they discovered that the men’s cholesterol subsequently skyrocketed.

  On a personal note, some years ago I was having lunch with a Kenyan man, when we somehow got onto the subject of the Masai people. He told me he knew a doctor who had told him how amazed he was when he went to do an autopsy on someone from the Masai tribe (who eat meat and milk almost exclusively). This doctor told him the veins and arteries of the Masai were always clean and youthful, not clogged or hardened like those of other Kenyans who had eaten a more traditional diet. The Masai, the Inuit Eskimos, and other groups that almost exclusively eat meat live with virtually no diabetes and heart disease. This is a paradox that the low-fat, high-carb promoters have never been able to explain.

  There are three major elements to the food we eat: carbohydrates, fat, and protein. There are not ten, or fifteen, or twenty—there are three. What this means is, if you drop one of these, you will almost surely increase the other two. If you do without carbs you will end up eating more fat and protein. If you do without fat, you will end up eating more carbs and protein. And if you are told that carbs are the healthiest thing going, and that fat is an evil monster that will immediately clog and harden your arteries, you will surely end up precisely where America is today—obese, with high cholesterol, and with record numbers of people experiencing heart problems and diabetes.

  The greatest enemy to our health in these matters turns out not to be fat, but excess insulin. The result of a high-carb diet will always be that we fill our bloodstreams with high levels of insulin. A little insulin is a very good thing, but massive amounts of insulin circulating through our bodies and bloodstream day and night year after year is a very, very bad thing.

  Is there research to support the idea that fat isn’t the bad guy we once thought? There is indeed. Allison Boomer writes,

  For the past 40 years, well-meaning specialists have told Americans that eating saturated fat is bad for heart health. It now appears that conventional wisdom is on shaky ground. Last month’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published a landmark study from the Harvard School of Public Health and the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute that has turned current fat recommendations upside down. The verdict from the study is that “there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk for heart disease.” Equally important, we are learning that restricting fat intake is not without serious health consequences, such as escalating rates of obesity and diabetes. The report evaluates dietary data from a total of 347,747 subjects from eight countries in 21 studies, over 25 years.21

  In The Harvard School of Public Health newsletter we read,

  “Low-fat,” “reduced fat,” or “fat-free” processed foods are not necessarily “healthy,” nor is it automatically healthier to follow a low-fat diet. One problem with a generic lower-fat diet is that it prompts most people to stop eating fats that are g
ood for the heart along with those that are bad for it. And low-fat diets are often higher in refined carbohydrates and starches from foods like white rice, white bread, potatoes, and sugary drinks. Similarly, when food manufacturers take out fat, they often replace it with carbohydrates from sugar, refined grains, or starch. Our bodies digest these refined carbohydrates and starches very quickly, causing blood sugar and insulin levels to spike and then dip, which in turn leads to hunger, overeating, and weight gain. Over time, eating lots of “fast carbs” can raise the risk of heart disease and diabetes as much as—or more than—eating too much saturated fat.22

  The truth is this: you’re going to have to eat something. If you’re scared to death of fat, you’ll end up eating too many carbs, which is the absolute worst thing a diabetic or prediabetic can do. Nor is it healthy to live on pure protein. The good news is that study after study has shown that fat is not the monster you’ve been told it is. Indeed, most people who go from low-fat, high-carb eating to a low-carb diet that ups the proteins and fats nearly always show significantly improved blood profiles and dramatically reduced blood-sugar levels.

  55

  Thoughts on Calories