|  “SUGAR NATION” The Hidden Truth Behind America's Deadliest Habit And The Simple Way To Beat It This book is an important call to action in the fight against Diabetes, which is rapidly becoming America's No. 1 health crisis.
“Sugar Nation” exposes the underlying causes of the diabetes epidemic and delivers simple solutions to stop it. Question being, will we listen?
Occasionally a book is published that should be required reading for every man, woman and child. “Sugar Nation” by Jeff O’Connell (Hyperion, 2011) not only achieves that distinction, but should also be added to medical school curricula around the country.
The book begins with an alarming premise that may sound familiar to you by now: Millions of Americans are killing themselves with type 2 diabetes and it’s threatening the physical and financial health of the entire world.
Diabetes, along with obesity, are looming as the biggest epidemics in human history. At our current rate, one of every three people born in the U.S. in the year 2000 will become diabetic.
Like other notable books on urgent public-health issues, “Sugar Nation” is a revelatory call to action that challenges conventional wisdom and entrenched elites. O’Connell’s maddening and enlightening journey into the diabetes industrial complex exposes the powerful corporate interests behind our sugar fix and its unwitting enablers in the form of physicians and medical authorities who are misinformed and/or uninformed about what’s fueling the crisis.
“Sugar Nation” is a personal story as much as it is the chronicle of a disease. A veteran health and fitness journalist, O’Connell would appear to be an unlikely candidate for a descent into insulin-resistant hell. Tall, thin and outwardly healthy, he learns that his estranged father is gravely ill with type 2 diabetes and that the condition can be inherited. After doctors confirm he is prediabetic, O’Connell begins a quest to understand the disease. He interviews dozens of doctors, researchers and diabetes victims; visits numerous clinics and conferences; and scours the latest medical literature. What he learns is that people are losing limbs, going blind and dying before their time when making simple lifestyle changes can manage diabetes, if not outright cure it.
The Business Of Disease
These simple lifestyle changes are a variation on the following theme: reducing carbohydrate intake, exercising regularly and punctuating your routine with high-intensity interval training.
O’Connell unearths plenty of evidence that lifestyle intervention should be the preferred initial treatment for diabetes. He writes: “Back in early 2002, the medical world was stunned when a combination of lifestyle changes (dietary adjustments, exercise, and the resulting weight loss) reduced diabetes incidence by 58 percent in the Diabetes Prevention Program, a major multicenter clinical research study. The superstar of type 2 diabetes drugs, metformin, reduced it by only 31 percent. Problem solved, you might think.”
Instead of altering diets and encouraging exercise, physicians reach for the prescription pad as a reflex to a diabetes diagnosis. This is the result of doctors being unaware of the power of exercise & diet, along with pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which benefits more from treating the disease than seeing it cured. According to experts at Stanford University, the U.S. spent $12.5 billion on diabetes prescriptions in 2007. That’s a lot of bread invested in not telling us to exercise and to stop eating bread.
It doesn’t help that the American Diabetes Association’s guidelines give little consideration to the lifestyle cure. O’Connell discovers that the ADA is just one of several major medical organizations influenced by financial entanglements with Big Pharma and poorly served by general bureaucratic paralysis. He writes: “If a non drug alternative works better than the drug therapy, shouldn’t the non drug alternative be the preferred treatment? At present, no organizing principle for guideline committees says to take the least invasive alternative.”
O’Connell’s frustration at the drug-first approach becomes an appeal to our national character: “We’re indoctrinated to think that it [diabetes] always wins in the end, when it should lose every single time,” he writes. “Our collective response to this lifestyle disease is to fill drug prescriptions? Shouldn’t the land of the free and the home of the brave set its sights much higher than that? We defeated the Third Reich, but we can’t beat this?”
A Human Story
O’Connell identifies a growing number of researchers and physicians who champion lifestyle changes over drug therapies. He becomes his own best case study and successfully uses the diet-and-exercise formula to control his own blood sugar and insulin response. Today, he is diabetes-free.
Sadly, it’s too late for millions of others. O’Connell’s unsparing accounts of his father lying in a hospital bed ravaged with the disease are heartbreaking. It puts a human face on a crisis that touches people from all income groups, regions and backgrounds.
We live in an environment that promotes diabetes, and while it seems that sedentary and fast-food habits are permanent fixtures of our 21st century lifestyles, O’Connell stresses that changing your ways shouldn’t be perceived as painful. He writes: “Once you decide that your heart, kidneys and limbs are worth more than hamburger buns, French fries, and glazed doughnuts, you’ll do more than avoid complications. You may find yourself in the best shape of your life. Don’t think of this as the end of your best days; those are still coming your way.”
Reading “Sugar Nation” is your first step to these better days.
 One on One with Jeff O'Connell
Q: What is Sugar Nation about?
My book explains why and how type-2 diabetes and its precursor, prediabetes, have gone from being medical footnotes a century ago to an epidemic today, one so vast that one in three adult Americans now has a serious blood sugar problem. I examine the disease as a prediabetic thin person whose father recently died from type-2 diabetes, following amputations, kidney failure, and other complications.
As a result of being thin, I challenge many of the assumptions about the disease and its prevention and treatment. I've concluded that lifestyle change is the only society-wide solution, and that major health organizations such as the American Diabetes Association A) fail to make this imperative sufficiently known and clear and B) often give the wrong lifestyle advice when they do attempt to convey the message.
Q: What is diabetes? Could you explain the difference between type-1 and type-2, and prediabetes?
Diabetes is a disease whereby the body can no longer regulate glucose metabolism properly. In type-1 diabetes, this occurs (typically during adolescence) because an autoimmune response destroys the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. With no insulin to usher glucose from the bloodstream into cells, the body can't survive very long. Hence the need to take insulin.
Type-2 diabetes results from resistance to internally produced insulin at the cellular level, caused by some combination of inactivity, poor diet, weight gain, and genetics.
The pancreas blasts out more insulin as cells grow resistant to it; eventually, the insulin-producing capacity of the pancreas "burns out," the same net effect as the autoimmune response, only protracted. Types-1 and -2 have different origins and the same end game.
Prediabetes is a transition state between healthy glucose metabolism and full-on type-2 diabetes.
Q: In your own case of prediabetes, what were the warning signs that you missed or detrimental habits you didn't know you had?
The warning signs I missed were headaches, fatigue, excessive thirst and hunger, and increased urination. The headaches and fatigue were timed or cycled with what I did or didn't eat; I just didn't realize it at the time.
Bad habits included eating junk food, a lack of cardiovascular exercise, not following a regular sleep schedule, and taking a blood pressure medication that worsens glucose metabolism.
None of these habits caused me to gain weight--but they were turning me diabetic. I just didn't realize what was going on inside my body.
Q: What is so bad about carbohydrates? What is a healthy amount to consume?
Carbohydrates per se aren't bad; the problem is the form in which we now consume them, and the quantity we consume. The sugar load that comes from snack foods and soda has been divorced from the fiber that used to surround it in whole foods; and concentrated in forms, such as soda, that allow vast quantities to hit the bloodstream very fast.
Feasting on foods like these without exercising sets the table for type-2 diabetes. Our metabolic systems and satiety sensors weren't designed to handle anywhere near that load; they become overwhelmed and damaged. Someone with prediabetes or diabetes should be wary of consuming more than 100 grams of carbs a day, in my opinion, and those carbs should come from healthy sources such as vegetables and nuts.
The more you exercise, the more tolerant your body will be of carbohydrates. If you want to consume more carbs, work out more to account for them.
Q: What are five inexpensive food options a diabetic person could buy at any grocery store?
Almonds are a healthy snack food for anyone, but they're amazing for those with poor glucose metabolism. Eggs are also great; probably the best move any diabetic can make is starting the day with eggs rather than muffins, cereal, doughnuts, croissants, home fries, and other carbohydrate-laden foods. Broccoli is another diabetic super-food, so I'd stock up on that every time. Cottage cheese is cheap, versatile, and healthy for diabetics, especially with nuts added and cinnamon sprinkled on top. Fish is great too. That would round out my top five.
THE DIABETIC'S TOP 5 FOODS
1. 1 cup Almonds [Fats: 71 Grams| Protein 30 Grams| Carbs 28 Grams]
2. 1 egg [Fats: 5 Grams| Protein 6 Grams| Carbs .6 Grams]
3. 1 cup broccoli [Fats: .3 Grams| Protein 2.6 Grams| Carbs 4.6 Grams]
4. 1 cup cottage cheese [Fats: 2.3 Grams| Protein 28 Grams| Carbs 6.1 Grams]
5. 1 fillet, fish [Fats: 12.5 Grams| Protein 39.2 Grams| Carbs 0 Grams]
Q: What do you look for on packaged food labels?
I look at total carbs, and then I subtract the fiber from that number. I also look at how many of those "net" carbs (total carbs minus fiber) come in the form of sugars, knowing that those in particular will hit my system quickly, causing problems in my insulin response.
I'm looking for carb counts in the single-digits, generally, which rules out most packaged foods. What I find is that when I "dial in" the carb aspect of my diet, the other macronutrients (protein and fat) more or less take care of themselves. For example, you'll steer away from trans fats without even realizing it once you ditch those packaged carbs.
My body receives the right fuel mix as a result.
Engineered products like protein powder are healthy for diabetics; processed junk is what's killing them.
Q: What are a few foods you would never (or almost never) eat again?
I'd never again drink a regular soft drink. That's akin to swilling poison for someone with impaired glucose tolerance. I limit dessert to special occasions.
White rice and baked potatoes have also been crossed off my shopping list. Ditto, bread. White's the worst, but all breads contain a heavy carbohydrate load for someone like me.
These deliciously disguised treats should come with a Mr. Yuk sticker.
Q: We're always hearing about controversy with high fructose corn syrup and artificial sweetners like Splenda. How have these things contributed to the diabetes conversation?
Artificial sweeteners such as Splenda enter the diabetes conversation as sugar alternatives that have limited or no blood sugar effects. They may be potentially unhealthy in other ways--that's hotly debated--but they are a better short-term choice than caloric sweeteners for diabetics and prediabetics who feel compelled to add something. (I don't.)
High fructose corn syrup is a major culprit in the diabetes epidemic because it's the most commonly used form of concentrated sugar on the market. It isn't necessarily worse than other sweeteners, as some argue; it's just ubiquitous.
Q: But it's not all about what goes into the body. What are some benefits diabetics receive from regular exercise?
The benefits of exercise for diabetics are numerous and remarkable. First, it helps with weight management and body composition, a major factor in diabetes.
Second, it dramatically improves glucose metabolism by lessening insulin resistance; it literally opens a second channel into cells, one that isn't even dependent on insulin.
Third, it improves heart health, and the majority of diabetics die from heart disease.
Fourth, it boosts mood, and depression is common among diabetics.
A body that exercises daily becomes an extremely inhospitable environment for type-2 diabetes.
Q: You mentioned that changing your diet actually made you come to appreciate and enjoy foods more. Can you speak about that and what other health benefits have you enjoyed as a result of your lifestyle changes?
I just didn't realize how good food tastes before being loaded with sauces, sugar, and salt--because that's all I knew. Ordering steamed shrimp and broccoli plain tastes so good without all the junk they heap on it in the restaurant kitchen, for example.
As for health benefits from my lifestyle changes, they have been dramatic: lower blood pressure, higher "good" cholesterol, lower "bad" cholesterol, more energy, and lower fasting blood glucose measures, for starters.
Q: It seems that between the food industry, the drug industry, and under-informed health care professionals, there is a lot working against diabetics in addition to the disease. How are we, as a nation, dealing with these issues as type-2 diabetes becomes more and more widespread?
We are dealing with it by investing enormous sums in drug development, dialysis, and other health treatments that attempt to manage the demise of those with type-2 diabetes. In other words, we are not dealing with it all, since the solution is prevention and then early detection and lifestyle change when the disease does rear its head.
The food and drug industries are in the business of making money, not surprisingly, so the solution doesn't lie there. Health care professionals and organizations such as the American Diabetes Association should be a counterweight to the influence of those industries, but too often, they're complicit instead.
Q: What is the single most important thing that a reader should take away from your book?
That type-2 diabetes will enter your body only if you lay out a welcome mat by not exercising and eating too many processed carbohydrates. You don't have to do anything extraordinary to stay diabetes-free, or to turn back the disease at its inception. Just eat nutritious foods in reasonable amounts and exercise daily--like you're supposed to be doing anyway. Your body will weigh what it's supposed to weigh, and diabetes will look elsewhere.
Contributing Source: Muscle & Body, Bodybuilding.com |
