By COLE KAZDIN and THEA TRACHTENBERG
Sept. 15, 2008
ABCNews.com

Cheryl Kain Credits the Exercise With Controlling Her Type 2 Diabetes

Cheryl Kain says she has battled her weight and mood her entire life.
Can a visit to the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health transform your life?

“Weight’s been on my mind since I came out of the womb,” Kain said. “You lose the weight and then you gain that and more.”

To drop pounds, she tried a variety of options, including ditching carbs, trimming fat and eliminating specific foods from her daily intake.

“I’d tried everything,” she said.

But her weight worries reached a poignant point when she was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes 2½ years ago.

“My body was in a state of emergency all the time,” Kain said.

So she turned to Dr. Mark Pettus, who runs the health for life program at the Kripalu center in Stockbridge, Mass., where people like Kain come to transform their health.

“If someone were to hand me a blank piece of paper and say, ‘Mark, you know, put down something on that paper that would have an impact more than anything on potential to reduce disease risk, to improve health and vitality,’ it would be yoga,” Pettus said.

“Yoga’s one of the few things that enlivens almost every system in the body,” said Garrett Sarley, chief of the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health.

Medical studies show the poses, along with meditation and specific yoga breathing techniques, reduce stress responses, which significantly influences health.

Yoga has been shown to help insomnia and relieve chronic pain conditions. In Kripalu’s program, Kain began to cultivate a yoga practice, and she studied nutrition and food preparations. She practiced meditating and went on 4-mile hikes.

To continue reading:

http://abcnews.go.com/GMA/OnCall/story?id=5805800&page=1

By Lara Rondinelli RD, LDN, CDE
From: Healthy Calenda Diabetic Cooking, The American Diabetic Association
dLife

If you were like most Americans, you were cheering for Michael Phelps during the Olympic games. He has amazing athletic ability and endless energy, and it was reported that he eats between 10,000-12,000 calories per day during a competition! It was reported that a typical breakfast for him includes: 3 fried egg sandwiches with cheese, lettuce, tomatoes, fried onions, and mayonnaise; a 5-egg omelet; a bowl of grits; 3 slices of French toast with powdered sugar; 3 chocolate chip pancakes; and 2 cups of coffee. This is the breakfast of a champion — but definitely not a champion breakfast for the average person with diabetes.

Unfortunately, too many people skip breakfast or make unhealthy choices. Breakfast kick-starts your metabolism and gives you energy to begin the day. Often, people skip breakfast because they don’t have time, are trying to lose weight, or have gotten into the habit of not eating breakfast so are not hungry in the morning.

Skipping breakfast can lead to overeating later in the day because you end up ravenous. If you are skipping breakfast because you are in a rush, you need to make the time to eat and it will be well worth the 15 minutes of your day. For those of you that say you are not hungry in the morning, try making yourself eat breakfast around the same time every day for two weeks. Yes, this means eating even if you aren’t hungry. After two weeks, you’ll start getting used to eating at that time and your body will begin expecting breakfast.

There are many unhealthy breakfast choices loaded with carbohydrates and bad fats such as: pancakes, sausage and egg biscuits, muffins, scones, and bagels. Choose your breakfast foods wisely and your days will get off to a great start. You may even find that your blood glucose levels are easier to control, especially if you have been overeating later in the day.

Here are some good breakfast choices with various (approximate) carbohydrate counts:

Four 15-gram Carbohydrate Breakfasts

    * 1 slice whole-wheat toast, veggie omelet
    * 1/2 cup cottage cheese, 1 cup strawberries with 2 tablespoons slivered almonds
    * 1 egg, 2 turkey sausage links, 3/4 cup blueberries
    * 1/2 cup low-carb yogurt, 3/4 cup raspberries

Click here for dLife breakfast recipes sorted from lowest-carb to highest!

Five 30-gram Carbohydrate Breakfasts

    * 1 cup oatmeal with 2 tablespoons walnuts, 1/2 cup milk
    * 1 cup low-carb yogurt (15 grams carb), 1 cup strawberries
    * 1 whole-wheat English Muffin with 2 teaspoons peanut butter, 2 teaspoons sugar-free jelly, and 1/2 cup cottage cheese
    * 1 whole-wheat English Muffin with 1 egg and 1 slice Canadian bacon
    * 1 cup Special K® Protein Plus Cereal and 1 cup milk

Five 45-gram Carbohydrate Breakfasts

    * 1 cup Kashi Go Lean® Crunch, 1 cup skim milk
    * Egg sandwich (2 slices whole-wheat bread, 1 slice cheese, and 1 slice Canadian bacon), 1 cup cantaloupe cubes
    * 2 whole-wheat waffles, 2 tablespoons sugar-free syrup, 1 cup milk
    * Smoothie made with 1 cup milk, 1 cup strawberries, 1/2 cup blueberries, 6 ounces low-carb yogurt
    * 1 bottle low-carb yogurt smoothie (15 grams carbohydrate), 1 slice whole-wheat toast, 1 small apple

Try this healthy and tasty omelet that starts off your day with 1 serving of vegetables.

Veggie Omelet

Serving Size: 1 omelet
Yield: 4 servings

Cooking spray
1/2 cup shredded zucchini
1/2 small red bell pepper, finely diced
1/2 cup sliced mushrooms
2 cups egg substitute (or 8 whole eggs)
1 1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
1/4 teaspoon ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 cup shredded, reduced-fat cheddar cheese

1. Add cooking spray to a large non-stick skillet over medium-high heat. Add zucchini, bell pepper, and mushrooms to pan and sauté for 5-6 minutes or until vegetables are soft.
2. Add cooking spray to a small non-stick pan (omelet pan) over medium heat. Pour 1/2 cup egg substitute in hot pan. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and red pepper flakes.
3. Once eggs set up and are still a little runny in the center, spread 1/4 cup of vegetable mixture on one side of eggs. Sprinkle the vegetable mixture with 2 tablespoons cheese.
4. Fold the other half of the eggs over the vegetables and gently flip the omelet using a wide spatula.
5. Repeat process for remaining three omelets.

Nutritional Info: 108 calories, 3 grams total fat, 2 grams saturated fat, 10mg cholesterol, 642mg sodium, 4g total carbohydrate, 1 grams dietary fiber, 16g protein.

*Eliminating the salt in this recipe will reduce sodium to 342 mg sodium per serving.
http://www.dlife.com/dLife/do/ShowContent/inspiration_expert_advice/expert_columns/rondinelli_sept08.html

Reuters on MSNBC.Com/Health
July 16, 2008

Obese women 70 percent more likely to develop deadly disease, study finds

LONDON - Obese women who carry most of their extra weight around the stomach are 70 percent more likely to develop pancreatic cancer, an international team of researchers reported.

The findings suggest are some of the first evidence that the link between obesity and pancreatic cancer is as strong in women as in men, Juhua Luo of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and colleagues reported in the British Journal of Cancer.

“We found that the risk of developing pancreatic cancer was significantly raised in obese postmenopausal women who carry most of their excess weight around the stomach,” she said in a statement.

“Obesity is a growing and largely preventable problem, so it’s important that women are aware of this major increase in risk.”

Pancreatic cancer is the fifth leading cause of cancer death worldwide. It accounts for only about 2 percent of the cancers diagnosed each year but the first-year survival rate is less than 5 percent, according to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Stronger link for obese men, too
Until now, smoking and chronic pancreatitis were the most well-established risk factors for the disease in men and women, with much of the evidence also pointing to a stronger obesity link for men.

As part of a large study known as the Women’s Health Initiative, Luo and colleagues followed more than 138,000 menopausal women in the United States for more than seven years to investigate the links between obesity and pancreatic cancer.

They found that 251 women developed the disease, and of these, 78 had the highest waist-to-hip ratios. After factoring in other risk factors, this was 70 percent more than the 34 women with the lowest excess stomach weight who got pancreatic cancer.

The findings also suggest that excess weight around the stomach may better predict the disease than the traditional Body Mass Index, or BMI, measurement for obesity, the researchers said.

They also suggested that obesity could increase the risk of pancreatic cancer by affecting insulin levels, and that diabetes may also play a role. Obesity is one of the main risk factors for diabetes.

“We know that carrying a high proportion of abdominal fat is associated with increased levels of insulin, so we think this may cause the link between obesity and pancreatic cancer,” the researchers said.

Several studies have shown that obesity raises the risk of several types of cancer including breast and colon as well as heart disease and other conditions.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25703096/

By Pat Hagan
The Daily Mail UK
14th July 2008

A tiny sensor implanted in the eye could banish the agony of daily blood tests for millions of people with diabetes. The sensor - smaller than a grain of rice - contains a special chemical that gives off a fluorescent light when it comes into contact with glucose. If blood glucose levels are high, the fluorescent light shines more powerfully.
This type of light, called near infra-red, cannot be seen by the human eye but can be easily picked up by a handheld device that converts the measurements into glucose readings. Diabetics would simply have to hold the device up to their eye for a few seconds to get a glucose reading.

Diabetes affects at least two million people in Britain, but experts suspect another one million people have the disease without realising it.

The condition develops when the pancreas either stops producing insulin altogether or its output drops sharply. Insulin is needed to help muscle cells absorb glucose from food and use it as fuel for energy.

Without the right levels of insulin, glucose levels can build up - a condition called hyperglycaemia. This can cause long-term irreversible damage to the kidneys, eyes, nerves, heart and major arteries.

Diabetics can also suffer episodes of hypoglycaemia when blood sugar levels drop too low. This can occur if there is too much insulin compared to the amount of glucose circulating in the blood. While type two diabetes, which tends to affect people from middle-age onwards, can often be controlled through diet, those with type one diabetes often end up needing daily insulin jabs for the rest of their lives. Insulin-dependent diabetics have to take blood samples up to four times a day to make sure their glucose levels are stable. Although most get used to this routine, many complain that the constant need for finger-prick tests is a major burden.

In recent years, attention has turned to whether glucose levels can be accurately measured through something called interstitial fluid - a liquid that bathes and surrounds most of the body’s cells. The advantage of using interstitial fluid is it can be found in accessible parts of the body, such as the skin and the eyes. A device called GlucoWatch, which measures sugar levels in fluid in the skin, was launched in the UK a few years ago, but it was hampered by batteries that took three hours to charge and patients’ complaints of skin irritation.

Now scientists hope the eye sensor, which is being pioneered by a German company called EyeSense, will be more successful. 

The sensor is made from a water-based gel and contains lectin, a protein which binds to sugar, and another chemical called fluorophore. A doctor applies a few anaesthetic drops to the corner of the eye and uses a needle to implant the sensor inside the eye just below the surface. The procedure takes just three minutes. As glucose levels in the eye increase, they seep into the implant and ’stick’ to the lectin inside. This displaces the fluorophore that is also inside. When the molecules in this chemical are displaced, they give off a fluorescent light. Every few hours, the patient holds up a matchbox-sized gadget - called a fluorophotometer - which instantly converts the light reading into blood glucose levels.
Each implant lasts about a year, after which it can be replaced with a new one. Five volunteers have so far had the sensor implanted, and test results show the light readings accurately reflect blood glucose levels. In a statement, EyeSense said: ‘The biggest advantage is the patient can measure glucose levels as often as he or she wants simply by placing the small photometer in front of the eye. It takes no longer than 20 seconds.’
Jemma Edwards, from Diabetes UK, said the eye implant could be an option for some people with diabetes if further studies prove it is effective and safe. But she warned: ‘This technology is at a very early stage and has been tested on only five people. ‘It is also a very invasive way of monitoring blood glucose levels. Some people may be uncomfortable about having a device in their eye.’
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1035038/Eye-implant-end-daily-burden-diabetic-blood-tests.html