Lowering blood sugar levels in people with type 2 diabetes is really an effective plan for reducing the risk of heart disease, and even death at an early age. But elevated blood sugar levels are only a symptom, not the cause. The real problem is elevated insulin levels due to insulin resistance, often the result of a highly refined carbohydrate eating pattern and a sedentary lifestyle for many years.

At this time we cannot change our genetic makeup and there is no outright cure for insulin resistance … which often progresses onto type 2 diabetes. However, control is possible and will result in weight loss plus help prevent other health problems. The two main steps for control of insulin resistance are:

• nutrition in the form of a healthy eating plan
• physical activity or exercise

Eat in a way that balances your blood sugar levels by eating whole foods that are high in fiber … this includes colorful fruits and vegetables that are low on the glycemic index scale. Low-GI foods cause a slower rise in blood sugar levels but it’s not just the sustained energy low-GI foods give you that is important, it’s the decrease in insulin secretion that follows the slower release of sugar. When you have insulin resistance you cannot afford to have the insulin surge that follows a high-GI meal; it prevents you from losing weight.

What can you do?

• eat small meals often, eat something every four hours to keep your insulin and glucose levels normal
• include protein in your breakfast each day. Protein gives you a feeling of fullness which lasts longer than the feeling you have after eating carbohydrates and fats
• eat small protein snacks in the morning and afternoon; besides preventing hunger this also helps to prevent insulin surges
• finish eating two to three hours before bedtime
• control the glycemic load of your meals by combining protein, fats, and carbohydrates from vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and fruit at every meal and snack
• use virgin olive oil; avoid processed oils such as corn, safflower, sunflower, peanut and canola oils
• drink at least 2 liters of water, or caffeine-free tea, or sugar-free cold drinks per day
• avoid eating carbohydrates alone as they raise both your blood sugar and insulin levels; combine with protein
• decrease or completely eliminate all processed or junk foods. Processed foods include: fruit juices which are often loaded with sugars, and canned vegetables
• eliminate all foods containing white refined flour, sugar and high-fructose corn syrup
• watch out for foods containing hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated oils, eg. crackers, chips and cakes

Balance your blood sugar levels with exercise:

• exercise is critical to the improvement of insulin resistance
• it helps to reduce abdominal or central body fat and improves your sugar metabolism
• regular exercise reduces your risk of complications, and helps to reverse type 2 diabetes
• 30 minutes of walking every day, is a powerful way to reduce your blood sugars

More vigorous exercise is often needed to reverse insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes.

Lowering blood sugar levels is not a tough task and is in fact easier than most people think. Imbalance in sugar levels in a person is termed as hyperglycaemia and this is also leads to diabetes. Thus keeping the glucose level intact can thus prevent lots of diseases and can keep your body healthy. There are simple yet efficient techniques that one can follow to get this done than going for medication and over the counter drugs.

Regular exercise as a means to lower the blood sugar levels

One of the most common ways to reduce or lower the glucose levels in your body is to exercise regularly. Though people are aware of these, they tend to be lethargic and give up after a week or two. Anything takes its time to shower the benefits and exercises can provide you the best only when they are practiced regularly. Exercises do not mean strenuous ones such as weight lifting. They can be as simple as walking, jogging, aerobics. Studies have proved that walking just 30 minutes a day can help you keep your blood glucose levels in tact.

Laughter as medicine to maintain blood sugar levels

You may laugh after reading the previous line. But the irony is that, but doing that you have made an effort to reduce the blood sugar level in your body. Strange, but its true. A recent study by Japanese researchers has shown that laughter can prove to be an effective natural medicine in maintaining the blood glucose levels in a person. When you laugh, your body secretes a chemical that acts the substitute for glucose. Thus when you laugh you body tends to add more of this and keeps your glucose levels normal. Relaxation along with laughter can results in even better results.

Diabetes may attenuate gender differences in the risk for fatal cardiac events, a new analysis of the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities (ARIC) study suggests.

This “risk-equalizing effect” is important because it suggests that women with diabetes “constitute a population group at a high risk of cardiac death,” say Anna Kucharska-Newton (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, USA) and co-authors writing in the journal Acta Diabetologia.

For their study, Kucharska-Newton and team examined the influence of Type 2 diabetes on the incidence of sudden cardiac death (SCD) and fatal and non-fatal coronary heart disease. Their analysis included 13,978 participants in the ARIC study, a prospective US population-based cohort of men and women aged 45??”64 years and free of vascular disease at baseline.

The researchers divided participants according to the presence or absence of diabetes at baseline. Diabetic individuals were older, more likely to be Black, and to have heart failure and hypertension than those without diabetes.

Between recruitment in 1987??”1989 and follow-up in 2001, there were 209 SCDs, 119 non-sudden cardiac deaths (primarily fatal myocardial infarctions [MIs]), and 739 non-fatal MIs. The risk for each of the three outcomes was greater in men compared with women, in Blacks compared with Whites, and in diabetics compared with non-diabetics.

In non-diabetic participants, the incidence of all three outcomes was lower among women than men. Intriguingly, however, the gender disparity in SCD was attenuated in the presence of diabetes, such that the incidence in women approximated the incidence in men.

The researchers say they failed to find evidence supporting their initial hypothesis of a specific association of diabetes with the risk of SCD; instead, traditional cardiovascular risk factors explained the increased risk in the overall cohort and in subgroup analyses.

Commenting on the increased risk for SCD in Black individuals, they write: “The results indicate that Blacks with diabetes are at especially high risk of cardiac mortality and represent a group that can benefit from efforts aimed at prevention of SCD.”

MedWire (www.medwire-news.md) is an independent clinical news service provided by Current Medicine Group, a trading division of Springer Healthcare Limited. © Springer Healthcare Ltd; 2009

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