MCVitamins News

Your Nutritional Education Site

1. Truth about Diet - Carbohydrates in Nutrition
2. Dieting To Lose Weight?  What are the facts surrounding diet failure?
3. The 6 Most Dangerous Additives Hiding in Your Food 
4. Diabetic Medications - are they reliable?

Truth about Diet

So, if diabetic medications, while sometimes effective at suppressing diabetic symptoms, are not the means of successfully addressing what is causing the diabetic condition, what can be done to address the diabetic condition and the complications that often arise as a result? Here we see a summary of the most recent research into the nutritional causes of the diabetic condition:

"Carbohydrates come in two basic forms: complex and simple. Simple carbohydrates (carbs) are one, two, or at most three units of sugar linked together in single molecules. Complex carbs are hundreds or thousands of sugar units linked together in single molecules. Simple sugars are easily identified by their taste: sweet. Complex carbs, such as potatoes, are pleasant to the taste buds, but not sweet."

"Most of our carbohydrates come from cereals and grains, both products of the agricultural revolution [which occurred only about 8,000 years ago]. Our bodies are not genetically designed to thrive on large amounts of these fiberless complex carbs. With the popularity of cereal- and grain-based "health diets," carbohydrate metabolism has been upset in approximately 3/4 of the population which simply cannot handle this large load of carbs. Increased insulin output from the pancreas, over the years, results in hyperinsulinism, insulin resistance and hypertension, dyslipidemia [disorder of fat in the blood serum], atherosclerosis [fat buildup in the large and medium sized arteries] and heart disease."

"Excess carbohydrates also causes generalized vascular disease. The high-carbohydrate diet which is now so popular causes the pancreas to produce large amounts of insulin, and if this happens for many years in a genetically predisposed person, the insulin receptors throughout the body become resistant to insulin. Because insulin's action is to drive glucose into the cells, this results in chronic hyperglycemia, also called "high blood sugar." A large portion of this sugar is stored as fat resulting in obesity. Excess insulin also causes hypertension and helps initiate the sequence of events in the arterial wall which leads to atherosclerosis and heart disease."

"Adult onset diabetes is known to be greatly benefited by the adoption of a low carbohydrate diet, moderate in fat, which stresses the importance of a regular intake of sufficient protein. You will not hear this advice from the American Diabetes Association, (or from most doctors) since they are still operating on the research as it was twenty years ago."

excerpted from Carbohydrates in Nutrition
by Ron Kennedy, M.D.

Dieting To Lose Weight?  What are the facts surrounding diet failure?

Frequently diabetics suffer from being over weight. They often struggle with various diets in an attempt to bring this problem under control. The results are usually a lot of effort and little long-term success. The following article will shed some light on why the usual approaches to dieting lead to failures:

"As a rule, diet books are based on two assumptions about dieting. The first is that diets do not affect the speed at which the body works - the metabolic rate. The second is that the weight lost on a diet is all or almost all fat. These are not true."

"Much of the weight lost on a diet is not fat; and any initial fast weight loss includes almost no loss of fat."

"Initial weight loss on a diet is no mystery. The loss consists principally of glycogen (a form of glucose in a water solution), as well as additional water."

"Diets slow down the metabolic rate."

"In our minds we know the difference between going on a diet and being subjected to famine or starvation. But our bodies do not know the difference. When we go on a diet we activate the mechanisms in the body that protect us and preserve us in times of famine. And what does the body need to keep it going between times of famine? Fat. The more people diet the more their bodies will protect the stores of fat."

excerpted from Dieting Makes You Fat
by Geoffrey Cannon and Hetty Einzig

The solution to bringing one's weight under control is to adopt an eating program suited to your body's needs, a dietary program that more closely matches the food that our bodies evolved with, which is a high protein, low carbohydrate diet, which is high in vegetables and salads.

As part of our program we supply our customers with diabetic-safe recipes that match these high protein and low carbohydrate requirements. Recipes that are both tasty and easy to prepare!

For more information about weight loss diets go to http://www.mcvitamins.com/Diets/weight-loss-diets.htm

The 6 Most Dangerous Additives Hiding in Your Food 

The Truth about what they are putting in your food.  The grocery store. The wine or liquor store. Fast-food restaurants.  Today, you can get in and out quickly. It's all about convenience.

The following article reveals the flaw in relying primarily on medical drugs as a means of attempting to handle the diabetic condition:

"Many medical doctors prescribe drugs known as oral hypoglycemic agents. These agents are sulfa drugs called sulfonylureas. They appear to stimulate the secretion of insulin by the pancreas as well as enhance the sensitivity of body tissues to insulin. Some common examples of this class of drugs include:"

Chlorpropamide (Diabinese) Glipizide (Glucotrol) Tolazamide (Tolinase) Tolbutamide (Orinase) Glyburide (DiaBeta, Micronase)

"As a group these drugs are not very effective. After three months of continual treatment at an adequate dosage, sulfonylureas fail to adequately control blood sugar in about 40% of cases. Furthermore, these drugs generally lose their effectiveness over time. After an initial period of success, these drugs will fail to produce a positive effect in about 30% of cases. The overall success rate of adequate control by long term use of sulfonlureas is no more than 30% at best."

"In addition to being of limited value, there is evidence to indicate that these drugs actually produce harmful long-term side effects. For example, a famous study conducted by the University Group Diabetes Program on the long-term effects of tolbutamide showed that the rate of death due to heart attack or stroke was 2½ times greater for the group that used sulfonylureas than that for the group that controlled type II diabetes by diet alone."

excerpted from Diabetes and Hypoglycemia
by Michael T. Murray, N.D.

Read more about Diabetes at www.mcvitamins.com/diabetes.htm