Sugar High Brings Heart to New Low

From my latest Examiner post...

"Diabetics have always been at a much greater risk of heart disease than non-diabetics. According to the American Heart Association, approximately three-quarters of people with diabetes die of some form of heart or blood vessel disease. The exact mechanism by which diabetics succumb to heart disease was not totally understood. A new study by US and Australian researchers sheds light on the process that can lead a diabetic to a coronary incident.

"...short-lived sugar highs can trigger changes in gene expression that lead to the formation of atherosclerotic plaques - the build-up of white blood cells on artery walls that causes the narrowing or 'furring' of arteries and reduces blood flow to the heart."

Full Story

I also posted my Mozzarella Salad recipe, so if you missed it the first time, be sure to check it out...

Recipe

Another post from last week is a quick story about a research student who figured out that high carb + disease makes you even sicker...

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On a personal note, I got hit on last weekend. I don't get hit on often so it kind of took me by surprise since I am:

1) way taller than most people

2) have been overweight since my early 20's

3) I'm 45 and have been married forever

4) Still need to lose 18 pounds

It was kind of a good news/bad news thing. It is nice to know that someone finds you attractive...but the person hitting on me was a lesbian. Now, this isn't the first time I have gotten hit on by lesbians. It happened quite a few times in college. I must say though, I seem to be attracting an entirely different type than I did in the past. In my younger, fatter days, it was the mullet-wearing, flannel-sporting, Wrangler-wearers with huge belt buckles that thought I was interesting. Last week, it was a tall, cute blonde. I am moving up in the world apparently. Low carb seems to have helped me in a very unexpected way. Even though I am quite happy with my husband and will always have a preference for boys, it's nice to know I have options.

Vitamin D and Leptin

Here is an interesting article brought to my attention by Demi at www.lowcarb.ca. Scientist have known for a while that vitamin D levels in obese people and type 2 diabetics are low. Here is a clue or two as to WHY...

"Researchers at Aberdeen University found that obese people produced 10 per cent less vitamin D than people of average weight. The study also found that excess body fat absorbs vitamin D, stopping it entering the bloodstream."

Here is also some insight in to why a lack of vitamin D can help lead to obesity...

"The study found that low levels of the vitamin in blood interfered with the function of a hormone called leptin, which tells the brain when the stomach is full."
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Remember, the Sun is your friend!

As I have done my own experimenting with vitamin D over the Summer, I have noticed improvements in my skin and mood when I get my daily dose of sunshine. While my weight hasn't changed, my body composition is still changing and I am still losing inches. I have not really noticed a difference in appetite , but I really wasn't paying attention and it fluctuates wildly anyway. These clues about the interaction of vitamin D and leptin are very interesting.

According to metabolic specialist, Dr. Ron Rosedale, author of The Rosedale Diet :

"Leptin is the way that your fat stores speak to your brain to let your brain know how much energy is available and, very importantly, what to do with it. Studies have shown that leptin plays significant, if not primary, roles in heart disease, obesity, diabetes, osteoporosis, autoimmune diseases, reproductive disorders, and perhaps the rate of aging itself."

By following standard medical advice to eat plenty of carb and stay out of the sun, we set ourselves up for a lot of diseases, like heart diases, diabetes, obesity and more. Good thing I choose to ignore people who seem hell bent on keeping me fat and sick. As more information comes out about the role of vitamin D in health and obesity, I will be sure to post it. In the mean time, I will be out in the sun, without sun screen, reading a good book. It's for my health ya know!

Are diabetics suffering for no reason?

A great article from "across the pond" asks a very important question. Are current recommendations for diabetics doing more harm than good? Dr Katharine Morrison tells her patients to follow a low carbohydrate regime to control blood sugar as well as eliminate diabetic side effects like limb ulceration, sight loss and possible kidney failure. While her patients are doing well, there is still resistance to low carb for diabetes control...

"Three factors are still hindering wider take-up of the low-carb message, Morrison believes. The first is a reluctance by the medical profession to concede possible mistakes. Secondly, drug companies and food manufacturers have a vested interest in promoting the high-carb option, she argues. A whole industry depends on medicating diabetics and providing them with specialist foods, which Morrison believes low-carb diets will eliminate.

But the third is also a significant hurdle: the low-carb regime is onerous for patients. In a recent briefing that she sent to her own health board, Ayrshire and Arran, Morrison admits that even her own patients have mixed reactions.

These range from the resistant - she quotes one type one patient who said: "I would rather die than give up my porridge in the morning" - to the indignant. "Look at these blood sugars - they are normal! Why wasn't I told about this years ago?" she says one patient told her."

(Full Article)

The Cats are Going Low Carb Too!

Not only am I overweight, but so is one of my 2 cats. Cookie, our 18 year-old, is quite trim and has never had weight issues. Xena, however, is a little furry blob.

Who? Me? Fat?

She was a cute, tiny active kitten when we got her. In fact, we named her XENA because she was such a fierce little thing, and much to Cookie's annoyance, pounced on anything that moved. Cookie was 8 years old when Xena was brought in to the household, and once she was past the kitten food stage, started eating the same food that Cookie always ate. Delicat dry cat food.

"I am Cookie and I am not amused"

I knew of people who did scheduled feedings, but it was never anything I ever considered. I have had dogs and cats over the years, and they all had free access to a bowl of crunchies, and none of them were ever overweight. Well, until Xena that is.

By the time she was 3, people were making comments about how fat our cat was. Cookie was 12 at the time, and we thought about changing their food to a diet food, but Cookie didn't look like she needed to lose weight and we didn't want to disturb her eating pattern. After all, she was just fine. Since Xena had bonded to our oldest son, we decided to buy JUST HER some diet food and put it in a bowl in our son's room. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

What actually happened is Xena would only eat the diet food at the times she accidentally got shut in our son's room. Then, when finally let out, she would wander back to Cookie's bowl and then eat her food too!

That experiment was a failure, so we just let them eat their Delicat and didn't stress about it. We had other things going on in our lives, and the cat's food wasn't very high on the priority list. Years later, things calmed down a bit, and we decided another experiment. We would put Cookie's dish on top of the dryer. Cookie had never had any trouble getting to any high spot, and in fact, used the top of the dryer and the linen shelves as a nice place to get away from her fat, but playful kitty-sister. Xena was just too obese to jump up on anything that high. It seemed to work, but Xena REALLY hated the diet food and didn't seem to be losing any weight. Then I noticed, that while Cookie could easily jump up on top of the dryer, she seemed to limp a bit after jumping down. Cookie was getting too old for the acrobatics.

Now, with Xena at 10 and Cookie at 18, I finally got a clue. Through my weight loss I learned about carbohydrates and the damage they can do. It seemed logical to me that if a HUMAN can be harmed by a diet high in carbohydrates, why wouldn't this be the same issue for a cat? After all, cats evolved eating meat even more than people. And they eat the WHOLE animal, including the brains, eye, and internal organs. Their natural diet is high in fat and high in protein. When I tried to help Xena lose weight, I was accidentally feeding her the very things that made her fat in the first place...grains and starches.

Wheat gluten, corn gluten, rice, and other starchy carbs are the main ingredients in many commercial cats foods. Last time I checked, none of these things wandered the plains of Africa just waiting for my cat's big cousins to hunt them down and eat them. There are no lions or tigers stalking wheat and corn. They go after MEAT! So why are we now feeding our felines corn, barley, rice, wheat gluten and other garbage? I thought about wet food, and had given it to them on occasion as a treat, but a label check showed many of them to be full of garbage too. A quick check online led me to FelineDiabetes.com. They listed wet foods that contained no grains. There was even a site that listed the carb content for dry cat foods.

NOW I was on to something! I ended up buying Fancy Feast brand wet food after carefully reading the labels to find the flavors that did not have fillers. (MAN! I thought reading labels for people food was a pain! The type on the cat food is SMALLER!) I put out a can one morning and the cats loved it. So far so good. I still needed a dry food to help them transition to a new way of eating, so I ended up buying a dry food that was MOSTLY meat, but still had rice in it. I have some dry food on order that has no cereals and a very low carb count.

It has only been 2 weeks and they still have a carby dry food, yet I already noticed a difference in our rolly-polly fur ball. She has gone from 22lbs down to 20lbs. Yeah Xena!! Cookie, our senior citizen, is as spry as ever and has had no trouble adjusting to the wet food. I put out 2 cans each morning, and while they do nibble a bit on the dry food later in the day, they don't eat nearly what they used to. Our erratic schedule (and the additional cost) makes purely wet feeding very impractical. But I think the cats will do fine with their morning wet food and some type low carb crunchie available the rest of the time.

Of course, they never tell you that once you get a cat used to a feeding schedule, changing it can have dire consequences. The girls now expect breakfast promptly at 6:15am. Sleeping in on weekends is not allowed. And whatever you do...DO NOT let your husband feed them at 4:00am some morning since his own snoring woke him up anyway. That happened a couple of days ago and I am still having to throw things at the door so they will stopping clawing at it trying to get me to wake up early and feed them. While happy my cats are getting healthier, I am sleep deprived and quite cranky right now. Hubby and the cats might not live long enough to continue this low carb experiment. If they weren't so cute, between the begging cats and the snoring husband, I would have killed them all ages ago.


Low Carb Dry Cat Foods available from Amazon.com

INNOVA EVO CAT KITTEN 15.4-LB BAG
Wellness Core Cat( Wellness Core Cat 5 Lb 14 Oz )
NATURE'S VARIETY RAW INSTINCT CAT 11-LB