Today is World Diabetes Day

Today, November 14th 2011, is World Diabetes Day. November 14th was the birthday of Sir Frederick Banting, the Nobel Laureate who, in 1922, discovered insulin. If you have diabetes, I believe you would find the following articles interesting:

Paleolithic diet much better for diabetics than conventional ‘diabetes diet’

Vitamin D has potential to combat Type 2 diabetes

Conflicts of interest rife in those setting diabetes and cholesterol guidelines

Do you remember Energen Rolls? - Supposedly an aid to slimming...

I remember Energen Rolls. Were they from the 60s? or the 70s? - I'm not sure.- They were claimed to help with 'slimming' and were intended to be eaten in place of bread. They were roughly spherical, if I remember correctly, and 'slimmers' cut them in half and spread each half with butter - or more likely, a 'low-calorie' butter substitute 'low-fat' spread - and with other fillings such as what would normally go into a sandwich.

And again, if I remember correctly, they were made of cellulose! - more akin to wood than to what we think of as food! But they had been processed to be light and airy and easy to eat. - Energen Rolls were not really food for people, even if the people were 'slimmers'. Not being termites, people could not digest cellulose and so could not obtain calories or indeed any nutrition from these early junk foods.

But to lose excess weight, you don't need to play tricks on your body and to fool your stomach into thinking it's had a satisfying meal when it's really only had pretend food. The easiest, safest, fastest way to lose excess weight is to eat real food - the sort of food our paleolithic ancestors ate millions of years ago. That is the sort of food on which our bodies evolved and so it the food best suited to our species. - Leave the cellulose for the termites!

I don't know which species to suggest you leave the low-fat spread to! - It is a laboratory-invented concoction on which no species evolved. - Likewise artificial colorings and flavourings and other non-food additives. - Steer clear of them; they are up to no good, you may be sure! - Go for fresh foods, home-cooked and unsalted, not factory-produced processed junk.

Drug-pushing: irresponsible suggestion that tamoxifen and raloxifene be prescribed to prevent breast cancer

BBC News reports "an international panel of cancer experts" recommending that women at high risk of developing breast cancer should be prescribed tamoxifen and raloxifene, despite the risk of serious adverse side-effects from such drugs. 'Cancer experts' who recommend toxic cancer drugs for people who do not have cancer would, I guess, be 'experts' who have cosy relationships with the drug manufacturers and that their foolish recommendation stems from conflict of interest. I say that because I feel that anyone truly concerned about women at high risk of breast cancer would be seeking to protect them from running any unnecessary risks from taking toxic drugs, and would be advising them to safeguard their health by eating good, natural food free of additives, high in nutrition, low in salt/sodium and low in sugar - something like a paleo diet. There is a well-founded opinion that cancers feed on sugar, so it would clearly be best to avoid sugar as far as possible. (Note : it is often the taking of prescribed drugs that predisposes some women to weight gain and breast disease in the first place, i.e. prescribed steroids and HRT, tricyclic antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and many more.)

Why the Stone Age Diet is Good for You: - Guest Post by Susan White

Why the Stone Age Diet is Good for You

There’s a certain irony in the fact that even though we’re far more advanced than our ancestors of yore, the quality of our life, especially when it comes to health, is not much better than what Paleolithic man used to lead. They did not have as many diseases as we do today, illnesses that are caused partly because of our sedentary and hedonistic lifestyles. Diabetes, cardiac disease, alcoholism, gout, asthma, some forms of cancer, allergies, depression, and other psychological disorders are caused partly because we eat the wrong kind of food, we use convenient ways to travel, and we lead easy and comfortable lives.

Exercise is a perpetual absentee in such lives; compound this with the fact that food is always present and in large and unhealthy quantities, and you have the perfect recipe for disease. One way to effect a change in your lifestyle and prevent diseases that are caused by affluence is to go back to the way of life that our ancestors followed, not by choice, but through necessity. They ate healthier food because it was the only food available – fruits and vegetables that were available locally, animals that they killed in the wild, and roots and other plant parts that were edible. Their diet was free of artificial substances and additives because they had not invented ways of processing and refining food and so gained every bit of nutrition from the food they ate.

If you were to follow the Stone Age diet today, you would probably have to give up foods that are cultivated and manufactured – grains, legumes, oils, dairy products, juices, coffee, tea, alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, sugar, salt, and processed meat. What you can include in your diet are unprocessed meat, eggs, seafood, vegetables (exclude some root vegetables that cannot be eaten raw), fruits, nuts, herbs, and naturally occurring sweeteners like honey and maple sugar.

The advantages of the Paleolithic diet include:

· Fewer carbohydrates in your meals and so rapid and effective weight loss.

· Zero additives and preservatives which boost your natural health quotient.

· No sugar and salt which again helps you lose weight and avoid various diseases including hypertension and diabetes.

· Lower incidence of food allergies and less exposure to toxins in food.

An added benefit of this diet is that some people who follow it also tend to adopt the Paleolithic way of life – they eschew modern conveniences and prefer to work out outdoors; sprinting, climbing and other activities that help them to stay fit add to their overall health and keep them free of disease. Besides which, a study conducted at the Department of Medicine, Lund University, Sweden, has found that the Stone Age diet is good for people with or prone to contract diabetes.

On the downside, there are critics who say that the Stone Age diet is a fad diet and is not suitable for the long term. However, they fail to take into consideration the fact that every diet requires self control for it to be effective. If you’re willing to effect the change, then the change provides improvement in all aspects of your life.

By-line:

This article is contributed by Susan White, who regularly writes on the subject of surgical technician schools. She invites your questions, comments at her email address: susan.white33@gmail.com