..are you pre diabetic with high blood sugar treatment using diet and natural remedies...

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-Chapter 5-
High Blood Sugar
Mainstream Medicines
Fatal Flaw

PeterSmithUK.com © 2014 (updated 21st June 14)

 

Even Slightly Elevated Fasting Blood Sugar Is Harmful

Mainstream medicine has a fatal flaw it accepts as normal and healthy levels of blood sugar that are too high despite research having shown even slightly elevated blood sugar can fatally damage your health in the long run.
 
In functional medicine we believe mainstream medicines approach to blood sugar is flawed in 2 ways:
 
Firstly it only routinely screens people for high fasting blood sugar (usually measured first thing in the morning before you be anything) and the levels for fasting blood sugar are set too high at levels still capable of causing fatal harm (see below).
 
Secondly to make matters even worse it doesn’t routinely screen people for high post-meal blood sugar spikes throughout the day that can be every bit as damaging as high fasting blood trigger and secondly we believe 
 
{{THE FOLLOWING GREYED OUT TEXT IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT AND NOT FINISHED the 
 
Literally millions of people around the world have harmful high fasting blood sugar levels in the morning and are not being adequately warned of the serious danger to their health, and they are not even checked for equally damaging spikes in blood sugar after meals. The central suggestion in this book is that you take matters into your own hands test your own blood sugar to see exactly what your blood sugar levels are and then treat any problems with dietary therapy and natural remedies. Self-testing will enable you work out your own personal carbohydrate allowance and balance you meals so that they don’t produce unhealthy blood sugar responses.
 

Are You Pre-Diabetic or
Do You Have Hidden High Blood Sugar?

High Blood Sugar Can Remain Hidden for Years Damaging Your Health and Shortening Your Life

 
You can typically work out if you have reactive hypoglycaemia just by observing your energy levels and appetite throughout the day, but hyper or high blood sugar can go undetected for years without you being aware you have it and it progressively and seriously damages your health.
 

High Fasting Blood Sugar

Not Taken Seriously Enough
 
Mainstream medicine considers a fasting (overnight) glucose of less than 100 mg/dL (5.55 mmol/L) to be normal and acceptable, between 100 and 125 mg/dL to indicate pre-diabetes and above 125 mg/dL (6.93 mmol/L) to indicate full diabetes.
 
In functional medicine however we believe when fasting blood sugar is between 85 and 100 mg/dL (mmol/L) this is still a cause for concern that should be corrected; we believe ideally for optimum health we want our fasting blood glucose to be between 70 and 80. The difference between mainstream and functional medicine in this regard is partly a difference in philosophy, in functional medicine for example we don’t recommend taking the minimum amount of a vitamin the average person needs simply to prevent deficiency we recommend taking higher amounts to achieve maximum optimal health and wellness; similarly we aim to get our patient’s blood sugar into the lower optimal range that to the best of our current knowledge minimises damage from blood sugar and therefore maintains optimal lifelong wellness. Aiming for lower blood sugar levels is not just a hypothetical difference in philosophy however for there is real evidence that when fasting blood sugar levels are above 85 mg/dL it significantly damages our health. One study followed almost 2000 men over a 22 year period and showed that men with a fasting blood sugar level over 85 mg/dL had a 40% increase in their risk of death from cardiovascular disease[i].   (Bjomholt JV et. al. Fasting blood glucose: an under estimated risk factor for cardiovascular death. Results from a 22 year follow-up of healthy non-diabetic men. Diabetes Care 1999; 22:45-49). Another study showed that people with a fasting blood sugar level above 95 mg/dL () have three times the risk of developing future diabetes compared to people with a fasting blood sugar of less than 90 ()[ii].
 
If you think this problem probably doesn’t apply to you think again, for a large scale studies involving tens of thousands of people found that more than 85 % of people eating a standard Western diet with more calories and carbohydrates than they need have fasting blood sugar levels of 85 mg/dL or greater i.e high enough to progressively harm their bodies[iii] [iv]. This means that millions of people are not being warned that their fasting blood sugar is already at a level that is progressively harming their health and advised of the need to lower it.
 
It is also worth noting that the body stats to make insulin whenever blood sugar levels go above 85…
 
So I believe the conventional accepted levels for fasting blood sugar should be lowered from 100 mg/dL () to less than 85 mg/dL () and the optimal health reference range should be between 70 and 80 mg/dL (don’t worry too much about understanding these numbers now, we’ll go over them in more detail in the section on how to test your own blood sugar).
 

High After-Meal Blood Sugar

A Routinely Overlooked Killer You’ll Have to Screen Yourself for

 

After Meal Spikes in Blood Sugar:
Mainstream Medicines Overlooked Problem

To make matters worse mainstream medicine will only occasionally test your fasting (morning) blood sugar but testing fasting morning blood sugar does not reveal damaging after-meal spikes in blood sugar, which are every bit if not more damaging than elevated fasting blood sugar; again to set a higher health standard and get the full picture to determine if you’re producing after-meal spikes in blood sugar you’ll have to test yourself. }}
 
Measuring fasting glucose levels just gives you a snapshot of your blood sugar levels at one point in the day and it does not give you the full picture of how your body is managing your blood sugar throughout the day and most importantly how your body manages your blood sugar following a typical meal.
Mainstream medical practice relies heavily on fasting morning glucose levels to detect the presence of diabetes and pre-diabetes, it does not have the time or resources test everyone’s individual blood sugar levels at multiple points throughout the day, this is something you’ll have to do for yourself. Unfortunately this limited approach fails to reveal the high levels of blood sugar that can occur after we eat that are potentially even more damaging than elevated fasting blood sugar. If you’ve been exposed to a lifestyle with long periods of being too sedentary and a diet that has more calories and carbohydrates than you know is good for you then you probably are producing unhealthy high post-meal glucose levels but you’ll have to determine this for yourself because your doctor probably won’t.
 
Big surges in blood sugar following meals can have multiple negative health consequences, they can damage our hearts, kidneys, peripheral nerves, the delicate blood vessels in our brains and eyes, accelerates the ageing of cells throughout our body increase our risk of mortality. (Glucose Tolerance and Mortality: Lancet. 1999 August 21; 354 (9179): 617-21) (Nakagami. Hyperglycaemia and Mortality from all causes and from cardiovascular disease. Diabetologia. 2004 March; 47 (3): 385-94).
 
It was found that in people considered to have normal fasting blood sugar levels and a normal glucose tolerance test the risk of having a heart attack increases by 58% for each 21 mg/dL increase in after meal blood sugar and the risk of dying from cardiovascular disease increases by 26%. (Gerstein et al. Relationship of glucose and insulin levels to the risk of myocardial infarction: a case-control study. Journal of Am Coll Cardiol. 1999 March: 33 (3): 612-9.) (Lin et al. Postprandial glucose improves the risk prediction of cardiovascular death beyond the metabolic syndrome in the non-diabetic population. Diabetes Care. 2009 September; 32 (9): 1721-6
 
As surplus glucose in the blood is metabolised it increases our cells exposure to damaging oxygen free radicals, unfortunately the very cells in our pancreas that manufacture insulin contain relatively small amounts of natural antioxidant enzymes (SOD and glutathione peroxidase) needed to protect cells from oxygen free radicals (Grankvist K at al. Biochem J 199:393-398, 1981) and prolonged elevated blood sugar (above 140 mg/dL or 7.77 mmol/l) damages these specific cells. [Determinants Of Glucose Toxicity And Its Reversibility In The Pancreatic Islet Beta Cell Line, HIT-T 15, Catherine Gleason at al, American Journal of physiology-endocrinology and metabolism 1 November 2000 volume 279 no. E997-E1002]. [Prolonged Exposure Of Human Pancreatic Islets To High Glucose Concentrations In Vitro Impairs The Beta Cell Function, Eizirik at al Journal of clinical investigation October 1992; 90 (4): 1263-1268].  I have always thought it a seemingly odd and seemingly paradoxical flaw that the very cells that manufacture insulin to lower high blood glucose are themselves specifically vulnerable to destruction from high blood sugar. If anyone can shed any further light on why the insulin producing cells should be specifically vulnerable to damage from high glucose please write to me.
 
Researchers have shown supplementing the antioxidants SOD and NAC cysteine can protect the beta cells from becoming degraded by elevated blood glucose to some extent [Beneficial Effects of Antioxidants in Diabetes Possible Protection of Pancreatic Beta Cells against Glucose Toxicity. Hideaki Kaneto at al. Diabetes 48:2398-2406, 1999].[Glucose Toxicity in Beta Cells: Type II Diabetes, Good Radicals Gone Bad, and Glutathione Connection. Paul Robertson, et al. Diabetes. 2003; 52 (3)].and I would recommend supplementing these 2 antioxidants until such times as you are able to bring your blood glucose levels back down to normal.
Above I discussed how high fasting blood can be damaging but the after meal rises in blood sugar can be sudden dramatic spikes which can be so high that they cause as much if not more damage than elevated fasting blood sugar.
 
Following a meal if your blood sugar doesn’t just spike but stays above 140 mg/dL for a significant period of time, perhaps most of the day between meals it’s can damage nerve cells, the retina at the back of the eye, increases the risk of cardiovascular disease (heart disease) as well as damaging the insulin cells in our pancreas; if your post-meal blood sugar rises above 160 mg/dL it increases your risk of developing cancer (Prospective Study of Hypoglycaemia and Cancer Risk Stattin et al. Diabetes Care March 2007).
 
Although scientific and medical studies have to draw cut of points like 140 means increases the risk of this or 160 causes that damage in reality the damage from high blood sugar is progressive, the fact that our pancreas starts to make insulin when blood sugar goes above about 83 mg/dl indicates the body wants to keep blood sugar below this level, you could argue the body might want to do this for some other reason like conservation of energy but when you combine this observation with the study showing when long term fasting blood glucose is above 85 it can cause a 40% increase risk in mortality from heart attacks it does seen anything above 85 begins to cause damage and the extent of the damage will be progressive according to how high and how long blood sugar is elevated.
 
I’m sorry if this part of the text upsets and distresses you, the point is to point out the fatal flaws in mainstream medical understanding of this problem and our diet/lifestyle and to motivate you. None-inherited dysglycemia is a preventable and reversible problem and it’s appalling that this epidemic is being allowed to develop when we know radical dietary change could prevent and reverse it. In the mean time you can take action for yourself starting today because prolonged elevated blood sugar is profoundly damaging to health and the longer you live with the greater your risk of suffering serious health problem which are likely to actually shorten your life expectancy. If you follow all the guidelines described in this book you should be able to correct elevated blood sugar within a matter of months. At the centre of my methods is investing in a simple blood sugar meter which will enable you to diagnose if you have a problem with your blood sugar, how bad it is and monitor your progress as you treat it so that you can continue the treatment until your dysglycemia is completely eliminated.
 
With a blood glucose metre you can work out exactly how much carbohydrate you can consume without producing an unhealthy blood sugar response, you could also see for you self the effects of different methods of food preparation on your blood sugar, for example how mashed potatoes produce a much quicker rise in blood sugar compared to the same potatoes in the form of a chilled potato salad; I’ll discuss how things like cooking, fat and fibre affect how quickly a meal releases glucose into the blood in the section on advanced glycaemic index.
 
{{THE FOLLOWING GREYED OUT TEXT IS UNDER DEVELOPMENT AND NOT FINISHED 
 
Rather than accepting the low standard for healthy blood sugar set by mainstream medicine you can choose to aim for higher standards and lower fasting blood sugar; you can test your own blood sugar and adopt the techniques to maintain your blood sugar at optimal, safer and healthier lower levels of between 70 and 85 mg/dL (3.88-4.7 mmol/L).
 
If your fasting blood glucose is above 125 () we all agree you have diabetes, however in functional medicine we believe your blood sugar should be treated long before your fasting blood sugar gets to this point, and if your 2 hours after-eating blood glucose is remains above 120 () it also means you have poor blood sugar control, you’re probably insulin resistant an need to address this to stay avoid degenerative damage form hyper-glycaemia. 
 
At the other end of the spectrum If your fasting blood glucose is below 70 you have hypoglycaemia and are probably overproducing insulin.
 
The Benefits of Self-Testing
Relying on fasting glucose levels to determine diabetic and prediabetic status is insufficient to determine whether or not high blood sugar is harming our health; because
 
THIS IS A REPEAT OF In summary your mainstream doctor will probably only ever test your glucose levels occasionally and if you’re already presenting symptoms that indicate you may be prediabetic or diabetic, obviously if you’re serious about your health you want to know if your blood sugar is already high before you present symptoms of dysglycemia.
 
They will also most likely only measure your fasting blood glucose thing in the morning and say you have an acceptable fasting blood glucose as long as the level is less than 100 mg/dL and yet to truly prevent glucose causing long-term damage to your body you should maintain your fasting glucose levels below 85 and ideally between 70 and 80.
 
Moreover a morning fasting glucose test will not inform you whether or not your body is producing damaging spikes in blood sugar after you’ve eaten; through self-testing you can determine this for yourself. 
 
By performing the same simple blood tests that diabetics use you can see if your body is preventing the meals you’re eating from causing damaging after meal spikes in blood sugar. If it isn’t and your blood sugar goes to high you can:-
 
1/ improve the balance of your meals so that they produce less of a blood sugar response, you can also
2/ regenerate the health of your body so that it is better able maintain healthy blood sugar levels, i.e. you can improve the balance between the type of meals you eat versus your body’s ability to handle them.
 
This two pronged therapeutic approach will enable you to treat both high blood sugar caused by inadequate insulin effects and bouts of low blood sugar caused by excessive insulin effects.
 
By testing your own blood sugar following a meal you will also be able to determine how specific meals affect your individual blood sugar and not just rely upon the same general guidelines that are given to everybody about how much carbohydrate to eat. By observing your blood glucose levels after you’ve eaten you can determine precisely how much of a particular carbohydrate food you can eat before it produces an unacceptable elevation in your blood sugar, you will be able to see for yourself that overcooked or mashed potatoes have a high glycaemic index and produce an unhealthy spiking your blood sugar whereas the same amount of potatoes that have been ‘just’ cooked then chilled for a potato salad form what is called resistant starch that has a much lower GI and effect on your blood sugar.
 
The idea is not that you will test your blood sugar after every meal for the rest of your life, but rather that you will use this testing technique firstly to determine your blood sugar status and then if there’s a problem periodically re-test yourself to monitor your progress determine when you have completed enough treatment and secondly you can conduct after meal blood sugar testing to tailor make your meals/diet to avoid spikes in blood glucose to maintain your health and longevity.}}
 
Blood Sugar Main Menu 
  • Hypoglycaemia (Low Blood Sugar)
  • Low Blood Sugar and Mental Health Problems
  • High Blood Sugar Seriously Damages the Body
  • Advanced Glycation End Products High Blood Sugars Toxic Effect
  • Mainstream Medicine’s Fatal Flaw Undiagnosed High Blood Sugar
  • Types of High Blood Sugar: pre-diabetes, insulin resistance, Type II diabetes etc
  • How to Test Your Own Blood Sugar Responses
  • Natural Treatments and Remedies To Correct Blood Sugar Problems
 
[i] (Kato et al Fasting Plasma Glucose and Incidence of Diabetes-Implications for the Threshold of Impaired Fasting Glucose Journal of Atheroscler Throm. 2009; 16 (6): 857-61).
[ii] Tirosh et. Al. Normal fasting plasma glucose levels and Type II diabetes in young men. New England Journal of Medicine. 2002 October 6; 353 (14): 1454-62
[iii] (Nicholas et. al. Normal Fasting Plasma Glucose and Risk of Type II Diabetes Diagnosis. American Journal of medicine. 2008 June; 121 (6): 519-24).
[iv] (Kato et al Fasting Plasma Glucose and Incidence of Diabetes-Implications for the Threshold of Impaired Fasting Glucose Journal of Atheroscler Throm. 2009; 16 (6): 857-61.).
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Hi my name is Peter Smith I specialise in treating and coaching people how to live well with mental health problems, digestive health problems/IBS, sleep problems and type II diabetes using natural therapies.
I used these techniques to overcome and live well with my own bipolar disorder and IBS. I've been in practice as a natural medicine practitioner since 1988.
 

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