Diabetes: Use the cooling cucumber to manage weight and keep blood sugar levels controlled

From timesnownews.com

New Delhi: When you are planning a diet for diabetic people – for your own self or for a family member, there are certain specific things you need to keep in mind. There are certain strict dos and don'ts of a diabetic diet and they should be strictly adhered to ensure that the blood sugar levels are not messed with. Raw vegetables can be added to meals to ensure weight loss and controlled blood sugar.
A spike in blood sugar can be very dangerous for a diabetic person and may also be fatal. It is important to keep a strict check on what they eat. Cucumbers – known for their cooling properties, the presence of water in them and for great effects for the skin should be included in your diet for diabetes to keep blood sugar under control.

                                                      Photo Credit: Getty Images

How does cucumber help in sugar control?

A study published in the Journal of Plant foods and Human Nutrition said that type 2 diabetes patients could use cucumbers to lower their blood sugar levels and maintain them at the optimum level. Cucumbers are high in fibre – which helps in lowering down the rate of carbohydrate breakdown in the body and control blood sugar. They are also low in calories and help in weight loss and weight management.

How can you add cucumber to your diet?

Cucumbers are a versatile vegetable and can be eaten in various ways. You can eat it raw in salads or just snack on it while working or watching a movie. You can add it to sandwiches and burgers. Another great way to consume cucumber is in dairy products like dahi, which also help in keeping diabetes under control. In winters, you can also make cucumber soup to enjoy a col evening snuggled up in a blanket with warm soup.

Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purpose only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a dietician before starting any fitness programme or making any changes to your diet.

https://www.timesnownews.com/health/article/diabetes-use-the-cooling-cucumber-to-manage-weight-and-keep-blood-sugar-levels-controlled/371481

Exercises and Workouts - Three Ways Exercise Benefits Your Mental Health

By Beverleigh H Piepers

If you are planning on becoming healthier and improve your overall well-being, it should come as no surprise to know exercise is one of the most critical factors for your success.
However, what many people do not realize is exercise also boosts brain health. It is going to do so much more for you than help ensure you can keep your weight in a healthy range and protect your heart. It will also keep your mind sound as well.
So, how can exercise improve your psychological well-being? Let us look at some of the ways it helps you achieve this...

1. Reduced Stress. Like many other risk factors that may contribute to Type 2 diabetes or heart disease, we are now exposed to far more stressors than earlier generations have been. Stress is naturally something that can get you down, leading to burnout, feelings of depression, and anxiety. If not controlled, it could also lead to weight gain because you are not keeping your cortisol levels in check which can promote fat storage around the abdominal region.
Lowering your stress level is easy when you exercise. You will get the release of positive "feel-good" endorphins, which will help give you a boost and ensure you are feeling calmer and more in control of your situation.

2. Greater Self-Confidence. When you exercise regularly, you can also notice improvements in your self-confidence levels as well. You will see what you can achieve with a little time and effort, and this can help you move one step forward on your pathway to success. When you are gaining confidence in your abilities to exercise, you will also gain confidence in other areas of your life. To achieve this, it is vital to employ an exercise program that helps ensure you are progressively challenging your body so you can see continual improvement taking place as well.

3. Improved Memory. Exercise will also help to boost your mental health and enhance your memory abilities: this is one factor many people do not realize. When you exercise, your hippocampus begins to grow, and this is the area associated with improved memory.
If you are finding yourself a little forgetful lately, adding a little more exercise to your plan may be just the thing you need to resolve this.
Hopefully, now you can see how many benefits exercise will bring to the table. It 's well worth putting some extra time and attention to carving out a spot for training in your week. Your health depends on it.

Although managing Type 2 diabetes can be very challenging, it is not a condition you must just live with. Make simple changes to your daily routine - include exercise to help lower both your blood sugar levels and your weight.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Exercises-and-Workouts---Three-Ways-Exercise-Benefits-Your-Mental-Health&id=10080043

Bret Michaels on living with diabetes: ‘It’s supposed to be a curse. It ends up being a blessing in some strange way’

From sports.yahoo.com

It’s not every day that a rock musician — let alone Bret Michaels, best known as the bandana-clad frontman of the 80s rock band Poison — talks about finding “balance.” But for Michaels, who has type 1 diabetes, finding that balance can be a matter of life and death.

“Diabetes is a very complicated disease,” Michaels tells Yahoo Lifestyle. “When you’re diabetic, there’s this everyday balance. The pancreas is no longer secreting the amount of insulin you need to cover the food intake, your carb intake. This is an incurable disease. You treat it with medication and with doing the right thing to stay healthy.”

The 55-year-old singer has been coping with the disease for most of his life. At six years old, Michaels blood sugar levels were running “incredibly high,” although no one knew it at the time. His parents, worried about their son’s health, took him to the emergency room where he was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. “At that point, I was severely going into ketoacidosis, which... your body at that point is starting to shut down,” he says.

Michaels, who has been getting daily insulin shots since then, remembers being the only kid in his Pennsylvania school who had diabetes. “I remember having low blood sugar and passing out,” Michaels recalls. Some parents at Michaels’ school mistakenly believed at the time that diabetes was contagious and didn’t allow their kids around him. “I just wanted to be a normal kid,” he says.

But the disease constantly challenged Michaels. “My challenge was brought on early because I had no choice,” he says. “And in some great way it really helped me step up to the plate.”

As Michaels puts it, “I’m not gonna lie, it’s tough,” when it comes to living with diabetes, but he credits his parents with teaching him the best lesson: to not have self-pity. Instead, he decided to motivate himself and “work twice or three times as hard to get there.”

He also says music has been incredibly helpful in terms of him processing his feelings and the health challenges he’s had to face. “To me, music was absolutely one million percent therapeutic,” Michaels shares. “For some other people, [they] would want to talk through their problems. I would put it into music and it helped me to deal with what I was going through in life.”

He recalls being on stage with Poison at New York City’s Madison Square Garden in 1987 and his blood sugar “just dropped right out from under me,” sending him into “insulin shock.” Michaels collapsed on stage and was rushed to the hospital. With many people speculating about what caused the collapse — including drugs — Michaels realized he needed to share publicly that he has type 1 diabetes. “Every time I get punched in the face, it motivates me to work harder rather than give up,” he says.

Along with not giving up, Michaels is also passionate about giving back — a trait for which he credits his parents. “For me, charity and being philanthropic came at a very early age,” he says. “My mom and dad helped put together the first youth diabetic camp, which still exists to this day in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.”

When Michaels won “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2010, he donated his winnings to the American Diabetes Association and the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (JDRF). He also founded Life Rocks Foundation — a charity that helps kids with diabetes, including sending them to camps dedicated to helping young people with diabetes. “It’s something I really love doing,” he says.

Though coping with diabetes has never been easy for Michaels, he’s still able to find a silver lining. “It’s supposed to be a curse,” he says. “It ends up being a blessing in some strange way.”

He adds, “I’ve been beat up, but I’ve never felt defeated.”

https://sports.yahoo.com/bret-michaels-living-diabetes-supposed-130000695.html

Walnuts, Almonds Help the Hearts of Those With Type 2 Diabetes

From usnews.com/news/health

TUESDAY, Feb. 19, 2019 (HealthDay News) -- If you have type 2 diabetes and you want to do your heart a favour, a new study suggests you should let your diet get a little nutty.

Folks with type 2 diabetes who ate five or more servings of certain kinds of nuts weekly dropped their odds of heart disease by about 20 percent, compared to people who ate less than a serving a month. A serving in the study was defined as one ounce.

Noshing five or more weekly servings of nuts also appears to lower the risk of premature death from heart disease or any other cause by about one-third for people with type 2 diabetes.

Not all nuts are created equal, however. Nuts grown on trees seemed to provide more heart-health benefits than peanuts, which grow underground.

Tree nuts include walnuts, almonds, cashews, Brazil nuts, pistachios, pecans, macadamias, hazelnuts and pine nuts.

"Our findings suggest that nut consumption, especially tree nuts, is beneficial for the prevention of cardiovascular disease [heart disease and stroke] and premature deaths among individuals with diabetes," said study author Gang Liu. He's a research associate in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, in Boston.

                                                                          (HealthDay)

The study was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health.

What is it about nuts that makes them so heart-healthy for people with diabetes?

Liu said that nuts seem to help control blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. Eating nuts also appears to help dampen inflammation and improve blood vessel health.

The current study focused on people with type 2 diabetes, and Liu said there isn't yet enough research to know if nuts would provide the same benefit to people with type 1 diabetes.

However, when asked if people without diabetes might see heart benefits from nuts, he said, "Based on our findings and existing evidence, I would say that nuts are beneficial for people with and without diabetes."

Heart specialist Dr. Terrence Sacchi agreed that nuts can be beneficial. "This observational study provides more evidence that certain types of nuts perhaps have some effect on diabetes and heart disease," Sacchi said. He's the chief of cardiology at NewYork-Presbyterian Brooklyn Methodist Hospital in New York City.

But Sacchi added a few caveats. "Nuts are good in moderation, but you can't be eating 18 handfuls of nuts. A serving is a handful. Nuts contain a lot of fat; it's good fat, but gaining weight would counteract any benefit," he explained.

Sacchi also pointed out that it's important to limit the salt in nuts, because excess salt can increase your heart disease and stroke risk. He said the best type of nuts are raw, unsalted nuts.

The study included diet and health information from more than 16,000 people before and after they were diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. The study covered about two decades. Because it was an observational study, it cannot prove cause and effect.

https://www.usnews.com/news/health-news/articles/2019-02-19/walnuts-almonds-help-the-hearts-of-those-with-type-2-diabetes

Type 2 Diabetes - Four Reasons Why Adding Exercise to Your Daily Routine Can Improve Your Diabetes

By Beverleigh H Piepers

We know adding exercise into our day-to-day life can make a huge difference in our overall health, but how can it impact our blood sugar levels? It has been found regular exercise can help us better control blood sugar and thus better manage Type 2 diabetes.
Exercising can help support Type 2 diabetes for more than one reason. You can walk if that is all you are able to do but it is important because exercising gets the blood flowing. If you can't walk, move your hands, fingers, toes, ankles, arms, and legs while you are sitting. By moving you are helping to make everything flow better in your body.

Including Exercise in Your Daily Routine Helps to...

1. Improve Blood Sugar. Yes, believe it or not, exercise can help improve your blood sugar levels. It can help to not only regulate blood sugar, but exercise can also help improve insulin sensitivity which is an important part of preventing or reversing Type 2 diabetes.

2. Support a Healthy Weight. A huge part of supporting healthy blood sugar readings is maintaining a healthy weight. Exercise is a great way to keep your weight in check, and it doesn't take much! You don't have to spend hours at the gym, or even go to the gym. A simple brisk walk each day can do the trick.

3. Reduce Stress. Whether you have Type 2 diabetes or not, managing your stress levels is key to supporting your overall health. Exercise can reduce stress levels as it releases endorphins which are those feel-good hormones you get after a workout. Make it a habit to move your body daily whether through yoga, a walk, or going to one of your favourite exercise classes.

4. Improve Sleep. While you may not think sleep has anything to do with blood sugar regulation, it does! When you do not sleep well, your hormone and blood sugar levels suffer. You may also crave unhealthy foods which can lead to eating more sugar than you should. Exercise can improve your sleep habits, so strive to exercise at least a little each day to help you sleep better each night and feel alert the next day!

If you do not exercise, or just haven't been lately because you don't want to spend money or hours at the gym, know you don't have to! You can exercise in the comfort of your home by pressing play on an at-home workout video or online fitness class, or you can get out for a walk. It does not matter how you move your body, just get out and move! The more you move, the better you will feel and chances are you will also start to make healthier eating choices which can greatly improve the outcome with your blood sugar and Type 2 diabetes. By moving you are helping to make everything flow better in your body which is better than taking pills to artificially make things flow.

Although managing Type 2 diabetes can be very challenging, it is not a condition you must just live with. Make simple changes to your daily routine - include exercise to help lower both your blood sugar levels and your weight.

http://ezinearticles.com/?Type-2-Diabetes---Four-Reasons-Why-Adding-Exercise-to-Your-Daily-Routine-Can-Improve-Your-Diabetes&id=10078717

Type 2 diabetes: The best lunch to stop you from snacking and prevent blood sugar spikes

From express.co.uk

TYPE 2 diabetes can be controlled by eating the right kind of diet, but this can be difficult when balancing a busy schedule and eating on the go. There is one simple and tasty lunch which can fill you up and stop you from snacking on unhealthy foods while preventing blood sugar spikes.

Type 2 diabetes is a condition in which the level of sugar in a person’s blood is too high. The condition can be dangerous, as if not controlled it can lead to problems with the heart, eyes, nerves, kidneys and feet. People with type 2 diabetes are advised to eat a healthy, balanced diet that is low in sugar, salt, fat and calories in order to keep blood sugar under control. But this can be difficult for people who are balancing a busy schedule and struggling to find the time to prepare healthy meals.

There are many shops and eateries that provide convenience food, enabling people in a rush to eat on the go, but many of these foods are high in calories, fat, sugar and salt.
So what’s the best option for a healthy and convenient lunch that won’t pile on the pounds and cause blood sugar rises?
Diabetes UK recommends making your own soup. While this does require some preparation time, it is quick to make and is also cheap and easy.
Soup can be stored in the fridge for three days or in the freezer for up to three months, so you can make big batches at a time and simply reheat them when you want to eat them.

The great thing about soup is it can be really filling, preventing you from needing to snack between meals.

             Type 2 diabetes can be controlled by eating the right diet (Image: Getty Images)

“Soup is one of the most filling foods you can eat. Research has shown that soup can keep you fuller for longer than eating the same ingredients separately,” said Diabetes UK.
“This makes soup a particularly good food if you have diabetes and trying to avoid snacking between meals.”
Homemade soup is recommended over ready-made soup, as the ready-made varieties can be high in salt. If you make your own, you can control exactly what you put in it.
“Soup can be made with almost any ingredient and is perfect for using up leftovers and odds and ends of meat, fish or vegetables,” said Diabetes UK.
“It can be thick and creamy or a warming hearty broth. It can even be served chilled on a summer’s day, such as gazpacho, which doesn’t even need cooking.”

                    Soup can be filling, preventing you from snacking (Image: Getty Images)

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1088111/type-2-diabetes-diet-food-lunch-soup-blood-sugar

Type 2 diabetes: One food you should always limit on your plate to control blood sugar

From express.co.uk

TYPE 2 diabetes can lead to serious health complications if left untreated. To prevent the condition developing or to control blood sugar there’s one food you should always look to limit.

Type 2 diabetes is a common condition in the UK, often caused by lack of exercise and poor diet. The condition causes a person’s blood sugar levels to become too high and can lead to complications such as heart disease and stroke. A healthy diet is one way to manage your blood sugar level. As part of this there are certain foods you should limit eating, such as white rice.

Some carbs are essential in everyone’s diet, as they provide energy and nutrients for a healthy lifestyle.
White rice is rich in carbohydrates, but having too much can raise blood sugar levels.
A study in the British Medical Journal found people who eat high levels of white rice may have an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes.
If you have prediabetes you should take extra care about your rice intake.

Those who have already been diagnosed with diabetes can still enjoy rice, as long as it’s in moderation.

What rice should you eat?

The type of rice you eat is important though and you should always aim to eat rice with a moderate glycemic index (GI) score.

                  Type 2 diabetes: There's one food you should always look to limit (Image: GETTY)
Health experts at Healthline recommend eating the following three types of rice:

• Basmati
• Brown rice
• Wild rice

On the site it explains: “Brown rice, wild rice, and long-grain white rice includes more fibre, nutrients and vitamins than short-grain white rice.
“Short-grain white rice has a high GI, which means it’s 70 or higher, so you should avoid it if possible. It contains little nutritional value when compared to other forms of rice and starches.

“Basmati, brown and wild rice have GI scores in the moderate range. They have a GI of 56 to 69. These are generally OK to eat in moderation. Cooking times can alter GI score, so be careful not to overcook your rice.”

Other foods you should limit

Another high-carb food you should consider limiting in your diet to control blood sugar levels is white bread.
Studies have demonstrated how eating bread, bagels another refined-flour foods has been shown to significantly increase blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes.
One study in particular, titled ‘Carbohydrate-induced memory impairment in adults with type 2 diabetes’ found a meal containing a high-carb bagel raised blood sugar in people with type 2 diabetes but also decreased brain function.
But in another study (‘Effect of fibre bread on the management of diabetes mellitus’) replacing white bread with high-fibre bread was found to significantly reduce blood sugar levels in people with diabetes.

https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/health/1087130/type-2-diabetes-diet-foods-to-limit-carbohydrates-white-rice

Report: Size of waist, not weight, may be better indicator of diabetes risk

From local12.com/health

CINCINNATI (WKRC) - There is new research that might shift your focus off losing weight.
For years, we've been told that losing weight may be a good way to improve health, and for some things, that may be true. But a report in Diabetes Care found when it comes to diabetes risk, weight matters less than waist size, especially for women. It turns out waist size, often influenced by activity levels and the kind of foods you eat, is a better predictor of type 2 diabetes than how much you weigh.

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Researchers followed more than 136,000 women for nearly 15 years. They found diabetes risk went up by 59 percent when women had a waist size between 31 and 35 inches. This is compared to those with smaller waistlines. Waist sizes greater than 35 inches had three times the risk for diabetes in women.

The good news is you can often improve waist size by sitting less and moving more. Previous studies have found men get health benefits from a waist size of 36 inches or below.

https://local12.com/health/health-updates/report-size-of-waist-not-weight-may-be-better-indicator-of-diabetes-risk

Diabetes does not appear to affect children's test scores

From reuters.com

(Reuters Health) - Kids living with type 1 diabetes are no different from their peers in their reading and math test scores, a Danish study suggests.
The less common form of diabetes, known as type 1, develops in childhood or young adulthood when the pancreas fails to produce the hormone insulin, which is needed for the body to convert blood sugar into energy.

Complications of type 1 diabetes - like dangerously high blood sugar, or dangerously low levels of sugar in the brain - have both been associated with cognitive problems. But not all studies have tied type 1 diabetes to worse academic performance, researchers note in JAMA.
For the current study, they examined average reading and math scores for more than 631,000 public school children in grades 2 through 8 in Denmark over five years. They found no meaningful differences in average test scores between the 2,031 kids with type 1 diabetes and the rest of the students in the study.

“Being a parent myself to a child with type 1 diabetes, I know there is a lot to worry about in diabetes,” said lead study author Niels Skipper of Aarhus University. “The take-home message here is that school performance should not be one of them, and that children with diabetes have the same opportunities for learning and education as their peers,” Skipper said by email.
Children in the study took standardized tests in reading and math that were scored from 0 to 100.
Students with type 1 diabetes had been living with the condition for an average of 4.5 years and roughly two-thirds of them used insulin pumps.

Overall average test scores for kids with diabetes were 56.56, compared with 56.11 for children without diabetes. On math tests, average scores were 56.06 for students with diabetes and 55.68 for those without the condition. Average reading scores were 56.81 with diabetes and 56.32 without it. These differences were all too small to rule out the possibility that they were due to chance.
Test scores were below average, however, for diabetic students who had dangerously high blood sugar. In contrast, the students with diabetes without severely elevated blood sugar had average scores that were slightly above average.
This suggests that poor blood sugar control, and not just the diabetes diagnosis itself, are what may explain the potential for cognitive problems to develop with the disease, said Dr. Andrew Budson, chief of cognitive and behavioural neurology at the Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System and a researcher at Boston University School of Medicine.

Dangerously high blood sugar can increase the risk of strokes, and these episodes may in turn cause cognitive problems in people with diabetes, Budson, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.
The inference “is that an increase in strokes is the only reason that individuals with diabetes end up with problems with thinking and memory in middle or late life,” Budson said.
“Now individuals with diabetes of any age know exactly what they need to do to keep their memory as strong as possible: they need to keep their blood sugar under good control because that will reduce their risk of strokes,” Budson advised.

The study wasn’t designed to determine whether or how diabetes might directly cause cognitive problems, and it also wasn’t designed to assess risk factors for stroke, a rare event in children.
One limitation of the study is that students had not been living with diabetes for that long when they took their standardized tests, and it’s possible that academic performance might get worse over time, the study authors note.
It’s also possible that results in Denmark, where there’s high awareness of how to manage diabetes and government-funded healthcare, may not reflect what would happen elsewhere.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-kids-diabetes/diabetes-does-not-appear-to-affect-childrens-test-scores-idUSKCN1PW2V7

What dried fruits and nuts should you eat if you are diabetic?

From timesnownews.com/health

Dried fruits and nuts are a good choice for a snack when you are on a weight loss diet or have blood sugar. They may also help in controlling blood sugar.

New Delhi: While you can be extremely careful with your meals if you are diabetic, snacks are a different story altogether. Most healthy snacks like fruits can mess with your blood sugar levels since they are high in glycemic index. In that case, you need to make sure that what you snack on when you are diabetic, it is both healthy and safe.
Dried fruits and nuts are a good choice for a snack when you are on a weight loss diet or have blood sugar. They may also help in controlling blood sugar. Here are the dried fruits and nuts you should eat on diabetes.

                                                           Photo Credit: Getty Images

Walnuts

According to a study published in the journal – Diabetes, Obesity and Metabolism, walnuts promote a feeling of fullness and keep cravings away. This can help in avoiding weight gain Another study published in the Journal of Nutrition found that women who ate walnuts had a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. Another link between diabetes and walnuts is that walnuts help in reducing inflammation, which is linked to diseases like diabetes and Alzheimer's.

Almonds

The next best nut for diabetes are almonds which help in keeping blood sugar under control and also keep heart problems at bay. Almonds also contain magnesium and many diabetic people have a magnesium deficiency. Magnesium is an important mineral for bone and teeth strength, and therefore almonds are a great nut to include in the diet for diabetics.

Pistachios

Pistachios are rich in fibre and hence aid weight loss – which is extremely important for diabetic people. A study published in The Review of Diabetic Studies showed that people who ate pistachios showed a fall in their blood sugar levels compared to people who did not. Pistachios can be eaten as a snack or added to a drink, or a salad.

Disclaimer: Tips and suggestions mentioned in the article are for general information purpose only and should not be construed as professional medical advice. Always consult your doctor or a dietician before starting any fitness programme or making any changes to your diet.

https://www.timesnownews.com/health/article/what-dried-fruits-and-nuts-almonds-walnuts-pistachios-should-you-eat-if-you-are-diabetic/360921