Blood Sugar – The Basics

So I’m sure you understand by now that diabetes is a collection of different diseases that all result in high blood sugar. There are the two main types of diabetes – conveniently called Type 1 and Type 2. Type 1 occurs when you have damage to your pancreas making it unable to produce enough insulin to keep your blood sugar down. Type 2 occurs when your pancreas is fine but you just eat too much carbohydrate for your body to keep the sugar down even with lots of insulin circulating around. Of course, in reality there is a lot of overlap between these two but still, the distinction is useful.

The normal levels and those diagnostic of diabetes vary somewhat depending on whom you ask and what year you ask them, but the numbers I’ll give here are a pretty standard sort of guide.

Take a look at this chart:

Fasting Blood Glucose

If you get up in the morning and measure your blood glucose that’s called your ‘fasting blood glucose’. This is the most important measure of your blood glucose to indicate if you have diabetes or not. It’s really simple, just take the measurement and compare it to the chart above.

If a healthy person measures their fasting blood glucose they’ll get a reading of between 70 and 90 mg/dl (US measurements) or between 3.9 and 5.0 mmol/l (the standard everywhere else). That’s called ‘normal’.

At some arbitrary point, there is a threshold above which you are diagnosed as having diabetes. It’s typically either 130 or 140 mg/dl (7.2 or 7.8 mm/l). If you have a reading above this, it’s called ‘diabetes’. And then anything between ‘normal’ and ‘diabetes’ can be called ‘pre-diabetes’ – in other words, you haven’t crossed the threshold to be diagnosed as diabetic yet, but if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, it’s only a matter of time.

Really, you can see that anything higher than normal is a problem. ‘Pre-diabetes’ and ‘Diabetes’ are just labels on a continuum. People diagnosed with ‘Pre-diabetes’ are predisposed to the exact same complications as those diagnosed with ‘Diabetes’ – loss of vision, loss of limb, heart disease. The only difference is that those complications are somewhat less likely. The higher your blood sugar, the more dangerous.

It’s a bit like driving recklessly. If you drive recklessly you are more likely to have an accident. The more reckless your driving is the more likely you’ll be in an accident, but the consequences are just the same… bad!

If you take responsibility for your blood glucose and take the right steps, you will steadily see those readings come down. I have never yet seen a case of Type 2 diabetes that can’t be reversed with correct diet, the right supplements and the right exercise.

Post-Prandial Blood Glucose

After you eat (what’s called ‘post-prandial’), it’s normal that your blood glucose will go up. It’ll go up more the more carbs you eat and a bit with protein too. Eating fat has virtually no effect. The important thing is that it doesn’t go too high or stay high for too long.

Most diabetes specialists will say it shouldn’t be over 140 (7.8) two hours after you have eaten. Ideally, it’ll be fully back into the normal range of under 90 at that time. How much your blood sugar goes up and how long it stays up depends on what you eat and how bad your diabetes is. Said another way, it depends on what you eat and how strong your sugar regulation system is.

With diabetes, your sugar regulation system is exhausted so its ability to normalize your blood glucose after a meal is weak.

So there are two reasons you don’t want your post-prandial sugar readings to be too high. One is because high glucose is one of the causes of the complications of diabetes. The other is that every time you do it, it makes your sugar regulation system weaker, which of course makes your diabetes worse.

You can easily improve your post-prandial blood glucose by simply avoiding the foods that make it bad and eating the foods that don’t push your blood sugar up.

What’s the problem with measuring my blood sugar?

Now you understand that your fasting blood sugar is a great and easy measure of how you are going with reversing your diabetes. And you know your post-prandial blood sugar is a great and easy way to learn what are the right and wrong foods to fix your diabetes. Fantastic. What’s the problem?

The problem is that many people fall into the mentality that good food choices are a penalty for bad numbers. You know, when your numbers go up you have to ‘punish’ yourself by being more careful with your diet and when your numbers go down, you can ‘cheat’ to reward yourself. It’s easy to fall into the habit of feeling you deserve a treat for having good number. Don’t fall for it!

Instead, use blood sugar measurement as a positive reinforcement of success. “Eating the right way and doing some exercise really is reversing my diabetes!” You are going to keep eating healthy to get healthy and stay that way for life anyway.

There is no reading you’ll reach where you can stop living right and go back to the ways you lived that caused the diabetes. Sure, you’ll have to be quite strict for the first few weeks or months and you can relax more as your sugar-regulation systems get strong again. But you can never go back to the total neglect that caused your diabetes in the first place. It’ll just come back again. But don’t worry, changing your habits takes some work but once they are changed, you have a new set of habits only this time they are ones keeping you well!

You can be sure I enjoy my food!

There is a second problem with measuring blood sugar and that has to do with medications taken to lower it. Many people, including doctors, believe that diabetes is the consequence of high blood sugar and that all the complications of diabetes are from the high blood sugar too. This isn’t really true. In fact, the high blood sugar is a result of excess carbs in your diet and insufficient exercise –let’s call it ‘wrong living’. Wrong living doesn’t only cause high blood sugar, it has a whole slew of bad health consequences of its own. So if you lower your blood sugar using medication of any kind, and make your readings ‘good’, you can be fooled into thinking that your ‘wrong living’ is just fine. After all, you readings are now ‘normal’ aren’t they?

The truth is that the only way to get a ‘normal’ reading is to have it in the normal range without any medication. And the only way to get truly healthy is to live right. When the medication is in your system, you can’t really get a true reading at all and you are lulled into the false belief that your wrong living is OK.

Measuring Your Blood Sugar

If you are gonna conquer this disease, you need to get serious about measuring your blood sugar. You need to measure it when you rise in the morning and plot it in a chart. You need to measure it after each meal so you can see what effect each kind of food has so you can learn what is right for you, what is OK sometimes, and what is always wrong.

To do this, you need a good blood glucose meter. Accurate, compact, fast and easy. For those of you in the US, I have secured you a special deal to get you started. Click through to a special deal on a glucose meter. The deal will change from time to time but essentially you’ll get a free glucose meter for the price of a set of strips – it’s a very good deal. I’m sorry this isn’t available outside of the US. You’ll just have to go to local retailer and pay normal retail prices.

You can record your daily fasting sugar readings in this Easy Diabetes Exercise Record Sheet. And here is the US version (with US units) Easy Diabetes Exercise Record Sheet - US Version. If you don’t have Excel and can’t read the Record Sheet, you can upload it and use it with your Microsoft Live account. It’s free if you don’t have one already.

What if you are on medication? How can you get a true reading? Of course you can’t. However, you can certainly get your readings into a good range while on the medication, then reduce your medication as you find you are able. You do need to be careful because if you are living right, the medication is likely to cause you to have hypos. That just means you need less medication. I highly recommend working with your health professional on this. Just remember that they may not know you can actually reverse Type 2 diabetes. You can show them how it is done!

Look out for your family

Now diabetes runs in families. Some of it is a genetic predisposition – that is, it takes less of the wrong lifestyle to cause diabetes in you than in someone without the genetic predisposition. It’s important to realise though that just about anyone can get Type 2 diabetes if they just eat enough carbs and do no exercise. It’s just that it’ll happen sooner for some than for others.

But then the most of the rest of the risk comes from lifestyle and who do you learn your lifestyle from? More from your family than from anywhere else. This is the main reason diabetes runs in families.

So one of the best things you can do is to test the fasting blood glucose of your family members. Of course, the first ones to test are those that you live with. But don’t forget the rest of your family either. It might sound like a funny thing to do – go visit your parents or your sister or brother or your son or daughter first thing in the morning, pull out your glucose meter and test everyone in their home – but this is one of the kindest acts you can do.

If you do find a high fasting reading of 100 (5.6) or more, send them to the Optimal Health web site and I’ll show them how to reverse it.

Take Action

One thing you can be sure of: if you keep doing what you’ve been doing, your diabetes is gonna get worse. And I won’t stand by and let that happen. Get your special deal on a glucose meter right now. Download the Easy Diabetes Exercise Record Sheet and start recording your readings. If you haven’t started it yet, I highly recommend the Diabetes Reversal Program.

So which weight-loss diet do I recommend? Actually, I don’t recommend you go on a weight loss diet at all. First there is the problem with “weight loss” and then there is the problem of a “diet”.

The Problem with Weight Loss

Weight gain is a symptom of a problem and not the cause. If you want to cure any disease, do you think it I best to treat the symptoms or to correct the cause of the disease? Of course you want to correct the cause. Weight gain is the result of eating too much of the wrong food with too little exercise for years and years. Living this way makes you nutrient-depleted, inflamed, weak and fat. As a result, being overweight takes some 10-12 years off your life and reduces the quality of that life you do get to have. It’s a serious problem.

But if all you do is lose the fat, you are still nutrient-depleted, inflamed and weak. In fact, some studies have shown that losing weight commonly does not make people live longer at all. It may come as a surprise but it has still not been conclusively shown that losing weight makes you live longer.

You see, you can be fat and unhealthy and you can also be skinny and unhealthy. The key problem here is the “unhealthy”.

Don’t Think About Losing Weight, Focus on Gaining Health

What you want really want to be healthier, right? So wouldn’t it make sense to focus on getting more health rather than losing weight? Especially when the science is having trouble proving that losing weight actually makes you healthier.

It’s all about living a healthful lifestyle. Then if it’s healthful for you to lose weight, that is what your body will do. There is no need to force it to do something it does not want or is not ready for.

Being Fat Doesn’t Cause Diabetes

Say a person is overweight and has Type 2. They go to a cosmetic surgeon and have their excess fat removed by liposuction. Does that mean they no longer have diabetes? In fact, No. It makes no difference – if it did, it might be a convenient treatment for diabetes but it makes no difference whatsoever. Clearly, the fat itself does not cause diabetes. Type 2 and weight gain are both the result of the same cause – carbohydrate excess and physical inactivity.

The solution? Focus on gaining health rather than losing weight. If the weight is unhealthy, it will come off in its own time.

The Problem with “Diets”

A “diet” is something that you go on … and then go off again. If you are going to truly and permanently reverse your diabetes and restore your good health, you cannot go on a temporary diet and then return to what you are doing. What you need to do is to make a permanent lifestyle change which involves changing what you are eating and changing what you are doing.

So I’ll never ask you to go on a diet. Ever. And I’ll never recommend you go on some vegetarianism in disguise. It’s just not necessary to reverse diabetes. I won’t give you some eating strategy that is weird or depends on some fake-food meal replacement and I won’t leave you with carbohydrate cravings you can’t endure. What you need is a thorough education on what foods cause diabetes, what foods heal diabetes and how to choose the right ones.

Why Low-Fat Is the Worst Diet for Diabetes

Today almost everyone believes that it is important to eat low-fat. It’s the wrong way to eat for most people but it is a disaster for people with diabetes – type 1 or type 2. Why? Let me explain.

Food is made up of 3 macronutrients – protein, carbohydrate and fat – and lots of micronutrients like vitamins, minerals, antioxidants etc. It is the balance of the macronutrients that has the biggest effect on your blood glucose and insulin requirements. It is also the macronutrients that make up the bulk of the mass of your food (hence the name ‘macronutrient’).

The three macronutrients have different effects on your blood glucose depending on the proportion of each in any given meal. Each time you eat a meal, the food is absorbed into your blood stream leading to an increase in blood sugar which your body needs to deal with. Of course when you have diabetes, your body does not deal with it well so the less rise in blood glucose a meal causes the better.

Here are the rules:

• Increasing the proportion of fat in a meal decreases the rise in blood glucose.
• Increasing the proportion of carbs in a meal strongly increases the rise in blood glucose.
• Increasing the proportion of protein in a meal has little effect on the rise in blood glucose.

So you can see that it’s the fat and carbs that have the most effect on your blood glucose. To reduce your blood glucose you need to eat more fat and less carbs. But most diabetics are advised they should eat a low-fat diet. Well you’ve gotta eat something so when you eat low-fat, you are eating proportionately more protein and carbs. In other words, recommending a low-fat diet is the same as recommending a high-carb diet. This is madness! Type 2 is a carbohydrate-excess disease so why in the world would you recommend someone eat more carbohydrates?

It makes no sense at all and yet this is what most people are doing. Is it any wonder they can’t reverse their diabetes? Is it any wonder we have a diabetes epidemic on our hands?

Don’t Forget the Micronutrients

But it’s not just the excess carbs. One of the other key reasons that the modern diet so predisposes us to getting diabetes is the lack of micronutrients. Just because they come in small amounts doesn’t mean that micronutrients aren’t important. It is essential that we get an abundance of vitamins, minerals, antioxidants and essential fatty acids.

Being deficient in these micronutrients decreases the vigour and vitality of all your organs including your pancreas, liver, muscles and fat cells. It reduces your body’s capacity to handle sugar even if it was not in excess and it reduces your body’s capacity to heal.

And if that’s not enough of a problem, the stress of diabetes in your body increases the demand for and further depletes the exact same nutrients that were deficient in the first place.

The main micronutrients that are found to be depleted in diabetics are chromium, pycnogenol, alpha-lipoic acid, vitamin D, magnesium, acetyl-L-carnitine, b vitamins, omega 3, zinc and fibre. I’ll talk about each of these in more detail in a different article.

To restore the essential micronutrients, you need to switch to eating nutrient-dense foods so you can get as much of them as you can from your diet. Then you need to take supplements to help restore normal levels and accelerate your healing.

Which ones? It’s all covered in the Diabetes Reversal Report.

As you know there are two types of diabetes: Type 1 and Type 2. The only thing that Type 1 and Type 2 have in common is they both cause high blood sugar and the complications that go with that. But the underlying cause is completely different. Obviously if the underlying cause is different, then the cure too will be different because the cure needs to address the cause not the symptoms.

When you are talking about the symptoms of diabetes or the treatment of those symptoms, it makes sense to talk about “diabetes” because those symptoms all arise from the high blood sugar which is common to both types.

But when you are talking about a cure, it makes no sense at all to talk about “the cure for diabetes” because diabetes has actually got 2 completely different causes. It only makes sense to talk about the “cure for Type 1 diabetes” or the “cure for Type 2 diabetes”.  So for the rest of this post, I will talk about Type 1 or Type 2 and not “diabetes”.

Type 1 a.k.a. “Juvenile Diabetes”

Type 1 diabetes results when the cells in your pancreas (called your ‘beta’ or ‘islet’ cells) get destroyed usually because your immune system has attacked them for reasons that are as yet poorly understood. The islet cells are the ones that make the hormone insulin. Insulin affects fat, muscle and liver tissues (especially) to tell them to take in and store sugar from the blood. In liver and muscle that sugar is stored as glycogen, in your fat cells, it’s stored as fat.

So without the islet cells producing insulin, the sugar stays in the blood starving the muscles and you get muscle wasting and fat loss. In other words, untreated, a person with Type 1 diabetes gets scrawny and left further untreated they will die. When I was a student twenty years ago, Type 1 diabetes was still commonly called ‘juvenile diabetes’ as it is almost always diagnosed in children or young adults – not the elderly.

The treatment is to inject the insulin that should have been made by your islet cells. It’s a life-saving treatment. It’s not a cure, because the person needs insulin injections for life.

If you want to donate to research into diabetes, donate it to finding a cure for Type 1 diabetes. It is a worthy cause.

So there is not cure for Type 1 although it can be very well regulated with minimal insulin (sometimes even none – see below) if you make the right lifestyle choices. But then, Type 1 only accounts for 5-10% of all cases of diabetes.

Type 2 a.k.a. “Maturity-Onset Diabetes”

Type 2 also results in high blood sugar but for a very different reason. The primary cause of Type 2 is too much carbohydrate in the diet continuously over years combined with lack of physical activity. When you eat carbohydrates (starch or sugar) they get converted to sugar in your blood. To remove the sugar from your blood, your islet cells make insulin and the sugar goes into your fat, muscle and liver cells for storage. This is normal.

The problem is when you keep eating too many carbs. Your liver and muscles can only store a little so most of this burden goes to your fat cells… that make lots of fat to store the excess sugar in the blood. Of course this makes you fat. But your fat cells can’t keep this up forever. If you keep eating too many carbs, your fat cells reach a limit where they say “NO MORE!” and ignore the pleadings of the insulin to take the sugar out of your blood. Your pancreas sees the sugar is not going away and so makes even more insulin. Over time, the fat cells simply become ‘unresponsive’ to the insulin. What can they do? They are already stuffed full so they just ignore the pleadings of your pancreas.

Left over time, this vicious cycle exhausts your islet cells. They can’t keep up making huge amounts of insulin for ever, so they burn out and stop producing insulin. This is when Type 2 becomes insulin dependent.

Some of the diabetes drugs work by hyper-stimulating the pancreas to make more insulin. What do you think will happen to your islet cells if they are already tired and then get hyper-stimulated to work even harder? That’s right, they accelerate this islet cell burn out.

When I was a student, Type 2 diabetes was called “Maturity-Onset Diabetes” because it only affected older people. Now, even 13-year-olds are being diagnosed! Why? Too many carbs – especially soft drinks and grains – and not enough exercise to burn them off.

Type 2 accounts for 90-95% of all cases of diabetes.

The “Cure” for Type 2 Diabetes

In the majority of cases, Type 2 can be fully controlled and reversed by careful control of your diet combined with exercise. You stop putting the excess carbs in and burn off those already there with exercise. It really is that simple.

Over time, given the right support, the cells of your body heal – the fat, muscle and liver cells once again respond normally to insulin and your islet cells become healthy and strong again.

So let’s just say you change your diet the right way and do some exercise and reduce your blood glucose (bg) so now your fasting reading is a healthy 85. And this is not so hard to do by the way – you can usually do it in 2-4 weeks. If you change your diet back to what it was when you had high blood sugar, what do you think will happen? Of course your bg will go straight back to where it was. So as long as you maintain the right diet, your bg will stay normal and you won’t have any symptoms or long-term complications from diabetes. Pretty good eh?

Now here is my question: does this mean you’re cured? So long as you eat the right way and do some exercise, you no longer have diabetes. Sounds like a cure to me. If you go back to eating the wrong way though it will come back; so the cure is dependent on you living the right lifestyle.

On the other hand, if you are looking for a “cure” which allows you to keep living the same unhealthy lifestyle that caused the Type 2 in the first place, I don’t think that will ever come. Whether it is a drug, a procedure, a herb, a mystic mountain berry or a nutritional supplement, there is no “cure” for Type 2 without changing your lifestyle. And this is where the myth comes from. Setting aside lifestyle changes, there is no cure for Type 2. There’s nothing you can take from a bottle that will get rid of it.

But Can You Really Cure Type 2?

If you maintain the right lifestyle over months and years to keep you bg normal and generally take the right steps to have optimal health, over time your body’s sugar regulating systems get stronger and stronger until you reach the point where you may even be able to eat a high-carb meal again without your bg shooting up through the roof. Would you want to make a habit of it? No. Because if you did, you could expect your Type 2 to come back all over again.

But as time goes by, if you keep living the Optimal Health lifestyle, Type 2 can become a thing of the past.

What about type 1?

I mentioned earlier that some people with Type 1 can live without insulin. Not all people with Type 1 are the same. You understand the main cause of Type  1 is destruction of the islet cells by your own body’s immune system. But the severity of this destruction varies from person to person.

In some people the islet cells are completely destroyed. Eating right and doing exercise will certainly help to reduce insulin requirements and so minimize the risk of complications and hypos. But when there are no islet cells in your body at all, while you may reduce your insulin needs, your chance of getting off insulin altogether is slim to not at all.

On the other hand, some people have a less severe case where some of the islet cells are still functioning. They are functioning at a level where they cannot manage the relatively high carbohydrate diets that are the norm today and get diagnosed as Type 1. For these people, following the same right lifestyle as I talked about above for Type 2 will allow them to live just fine without insulin. If this is you, you will probably have to be really careful with what you eat for the rest of your life, but still, it is so much better than injecting with insulin every day or using a pump.

You can see that someone who has a milder case of Type 1 who lives the wrong lifestyle for many years may get diagnosed later in life as their limited pancreas function get progressively eroded away due to the Type 2 vicious cycle I described earlier. I suspect this is the cause of what is now called LADA (Latent autoimmune diabetes of adults) or Type 1.5 diabetes.

What Is This ‘Right Lifestyle’ To Minimize Type 1 Or Reverse Type 2?

Type 2 can be typically be reversed in 2-4 weeks. If the Type 2 vicious cycle has been at work for some time, it may take longer for your islet cells to recover.

Here is the overview of how to do it:

1.       Measure your fasting blood glucose with your own monitor. This way you can know when you’ve got it right and don’t have diabetes anymore!

2.       Reduce your carbs. I recommend you do this strictly to start to allow your pancreas to recuperate and your insulin sensitivity to reset. Do this until your fasting glucose is normal – typically 2-4 weeks. Don’t eat too much protein.

3.       Do some exercise. Aerobic, strength – it doesn’t matter so long as you do some.

4.       Take some vitamins, minerals and herbs to support the healing process.

And yes, that is basically it. Of course which exercise, which foods contain carbs, how much protein is too much and which vitamins are all essential details you need to get right. But I have all of this stepped out in the Diabetes Reversal Report and the Easy Diabetes Exercise program. Go ahead. Take a look.

Exercise is extremely important for anyone wanting to have great health but it is of special importance for managing and even reversing diabetes.

You probably already know this. But are you doing regular exercise? What I have found is that many people with diabetes just don't know where to start.

Part of the problem is having too many options. What kind of exercise should you do? There are so many different kinds of exercise you can do. Should you do cardio like running (yeah right!) or should you do weights and look like Arnie (uh huh!) or should you be doing yoga and twisting yourself up like a pretzel (sure!)? And then, where should you do your exercise? Should you have a personal trainer, can you just go walking, should you join a gym. What a choice!

It's all very complicated – maybe you can just wait until... well until you know which exercise you should do... or until you have more time... or until you have more money. Oh heck. Let's just turn on the TV. We're all too busy for exercise anyway. Only a health nut would do exercise every day.

Well here I want to address all of these issues and give you a real solution. First, I'm gonna give you some compelling reasons why exercise is so important for you. Then I'll tell you exactly which exercise is the best one for you to do. I'll map out an exact program for you from step 1 so you know exactly what you need to do. I'll make it really efficient so you won't be wasting any time. You'll have a system that costs you no money, takes very little time, is easy to do and gets real results.

Sound like what you want?? So let's do it!

Why Do Exercise?

Exercise has been proven to improve every aspect of health. It has been shown to:

• Improve glucose regulation
• Increase energy levels
• Improve mood and dispel depression
• Improve heart function
• Improve circulation
• Increase strength and balance
• Reduce osteoporosis
• Reduce risk of falls and broken bones
• Reduce cancer
• Improve brain function
• Make you look better!

You've gotta admit, this is a mighty fine list! Tell me: which one of these is it that you don't want to have? I thought so – you want them all. Of special importance when you have diabetes is... well all of them I guess, but particularly the improved glucose regulation, heart function and circulation. As you know, most people who die from diabetes die from heart disease.

So since I don't want you to die from diabetes or get leg ulcers or lose your eyesight, it is really important that you do start and keep doing exercise. In this program, I'll make it very easy for you to do this but the first thing you absolutely must get is that doing exercise is not optional. There is no substitute. There is no pill you can take instead. You can't just hook yourself up to a machine and avoid it. No, it is critical that you do it if you are going to have a good life and be here for others. Please take a moment to let this sink in before you go on.

Got it? Exercise is not optional. Now we've just gotta make it real.

Is Exercise Good For Type I or Type II?

It's good for both. With Type I you can expect better sugar control, lowered insulin needs and generally better health. With Type II exercise is a part of the reversal of diabetes. Did I just say "reversal"!? I did. In pretty much every case (certainly every one I've seen to date) Type II is fully reversible. The main steps to achieving that are diet, exercise and nutritional supplements – in that order.

To find out how to reverse your Type II diabetes, read http://optimalhealthworks.com/natural-cures/natural-diabetes-cure/

What Is The Best Type Of Exercise?

You've probably heard it said that cardio is the best exercise for diabetes. This means spending 30-40 min 3-5 times a week on a stationary bike or walking on a treadmill. Yawn! I could think of nothing worse. I mean if you like watching paint dry, it might just be your thing, but really?

Anyway, it's a bit true. There are studies that show that doing this kind of cardio helps with diabetes. Hmm. But then there are other studies that show that strength exercises are good for diabetes and then there are heaps of anecdotal reports from people who have improved their diabetes doing yoga and more recently, even scientific studies supporting this. So what should you do?

Let's step back for a bit. There are essentially 4 different kinds of exercise:

1. Strength
2. Cardio
3. Flexibility
4. Balance and coordination

Of course, most forms of exercise combine these in some way. So which is best for diabetes? Did you guess "all of the above"? That's right. They are all good so I suggest you do a bit of all of them and do a bit more of the ones you find you actually like. (Did I just suggest you might actually like exercise? Oops. Yes, it is just possible...)

In fact, exercise is so good for improving your blood glucose that you will get far better improvements with exercise than with any drug in existence.

How Long Do You Need To Exercise?

By now though I can hear you thinking, "Hang on! I've gotta do 40 min 5 times per week of cardio and then how much strength, flexibility and balance/coordination??" Slow down! It turns out that when it comes to exercise, every bit helps – in fact, the least exercise helps the most and the most exercise helps the least. Huh?

It works like this. When you do no exercise at all, even doing one minute a day is a huge improvement. You know, what do you need to multiply zero by to get one? Doing one minute of exercise is a zillion times better than doing none at all. And then doing two minutes is twice as good as one but doing 40 minutes is not twice as good as doing 20 minutes. It's the law of diminishing returns. Up to a point, the more exercise you do the better. But you get the most benefit from the first minutes.

So having said that, how much do you really need to do? If your exercise is efficient even one minute will help but I recommend you start with 4 minutes a day. Work your way up to 8 or 12 minutes a day. You will get huge benefit from this. If you want to do more, you could do up to 30 minutes a day but it's probably not necessary.

But note that I said, "If you exercise is efficient". If it isn't, you won't get the benefit in such a short time. I'm gonna make sure you know how to make your exercise maximally efficient.

Where Is The Best Place To Do Your Exercise?

You can exercise at home, in the street, at a gym or at a sports club. If you are going to do just 4 minutes, it doesn't make much sense to me to be going to a gym or sports club. Really, it'll take you that long to get into your car and back out of the driveway.

I reckon when you start, you are best to exercise at home. I'll give you a set of exercises you can easily do at home without any expensive equipment. Many of the days you won't even need to put on your shoes which takes best part of 4 minutes in itself!

How Can You Make Sure You Do Your Exercise And Keep It Up?

The secret with exercise, more than what type or how much, is that you actually do it. It makes not one dot of a difference how much you know about exercise if you don't actually do it. Let me tell you some of the barriers that people make for themselves when it comes to exercise.

I'll start tomorrow / next week / when I have more time. Let me tell you a secret. You'll never have more time. As life goes on, most of us only ever get busier. And for those other people (!) who don’t do exercise, they get weaker and less energetic which just makes starting exercise even more unappealing. So you won't have more time next whatever. The time to start is today or ... tomorrow morning. That means the day after today, not manyana.

Which brings me to the next barrier. When should you exercise. Most people say they will exercise "tomorrow" or even "today" without making a time. Then what happens is all day long the exercise is hanging over your head. "I'll just watch this show... I'll just hang out the washing... I'll just eat dinner... Oh, I'm too tired now, I'll do it tomorrow." And then you berate yourself for failing... again. Stupid exercise!

Here's a better idea that actually works. Make a time to do your exercise and choose one that will work. Ideally, choose one that will work every day. The best time of day is first thing in the morning. That way, all day you can think to yourself, "Yep. I've done my exercise for the day!" and feel really good about it.

In fact, research shows that exercise done first thing in the morning helps in a lot of other ways too. It boosts your metabolic rate for the whole day which increases your alertness and mood. It puts a spring in your step. It dispels depression best of all exercise.

I recommend you do your exercise before breakfast. Maybe not as soon as you wake up – drink a glass of water and chill for a few minutes to fully wake up first – but definitely before you eat anything. (But be sensible if your blood sugar is poorly regulated – you don't want to have a hypo and fall on your head.)

What If I Fall Off The Wagon?

Firstly, congratulate yourself! You couldn't have fallen off the wagon if you weren't on it to start with and that is an important first step. Then... just get back on. There is no need to be upset with yourself or punish yourself in any way. Consider if maybe there is a better time of day that you can do  your exercise but other than that, just get back to it once you realise you have stopped.

How Often Should You Exercise?

Think of an animal in wild. How many days off from exercise does it have? None right? Well you could do that too, but I recommend you take a day off – say, Sunday – and commit to doing 5 days.

So Monday to Friday you are committed to exercise every day without fail. Saturday, it's good to exercise but if you don't, it's OK. And Sunday, just take it off. Of course, doing something active with your family on that day is probably a great idea.

What do you think? Does four minutes a day Monday to Friday sound like something you can do? Remember why you are doing the exercise in the first place: so you can live a happy healthy life and be here for your family. Of course you can do 4 minutes a day. Honestly, if you can't find 4 minutes a day to invest in your health, you might as well go shoot yourself now and save everyone a lot of trouble.

What If You Want To Do More Exercise?

Go for it! But don't get too carried away with a big commitment to an exercise program you can't keep up. Commit to your 4 minutes a day and then do more as you do more.

Later you may want to commit to 8, 12 or even 16 minutes a day. You might want to go and join a yoga class or do weights at the gym. That's all fine. But just keep your 4 minutes a day commitment forever. This will keep you doing a meaningful amount of exercise and keep exercise as a regular part of your life.

Special Considerations

If you are taking any medication for diabetes then you are at risk of hypoglycaemia when you do unusual activity so be careful with this. Notice that hypoglycaemia can only occur in diabetes as a result of too much medication. It's not an effect of the diabetes itself.

If you have severe eye or nerve damage, it may restrict what you can do. This doesn't mean you can't do anything. If you are breathing you can do some kind of exercise, you just have to make sure it's not too much too soon. Be aware that your balance may not be so good when you start – just hold on to something secure until you are sure of yourself.

Check your feet before and after exercise. You are particularly prone to getting ulcers in the foot or leg when you have diabetes and you want to spot that ASAP. If you see something amiss, see your health professional right away.

Disclaimer

As with any exercise program, it would be smart for you to get the go ahead from your registered health professional before you get started. Since I don't know your specific situation, I can't warrant that this program is ideal for you so if you are not sure, please check with someone who knows.

You need to be a member to access the full Easy Diabetes Exercise Program. It's completely free. Go to http://EasyDiabetesExercise.com/ to join and get your copy of the complete program.

If you are already a member, just log in to the right.

Remember there are two type of diabetes - type 1 and type 2.

Type 1 accounts for only 5-10% of cases and is where the islet cells of your pancreas get destroyed by your own immune system. It's true that the cause of this kind of diabetes is not well understood.

Type 2 makes up 90-95% of all cases in the western world and the cause of this is clear and simple: Eating excess carbohydrates and refined toxic junk food combined with a lack of physical activity.

Some experts attribute type 2 to obesity. They say if you just lost weight you would no longer have the diabetes. But really obesity and type 2 diabetes both come from the same cause. If you were to surgically remove the fat cells from a person with type 2 using liposuction, they would still have diabetes. It's not the obesity causing the type 2 and it's not the type 2 causing the obesity. In fact, it is the same cause of both: excess carbohydrate consumption (sugar and starch) and being sedentary.

Yes there are also some other contributing factors including stress and pesticide exposure and while these are important, the primary direct cause is bad diet and not enough exercise.

The high-carbohydrate foods that cause type 2 diabetes are also the same ones that are remarkably lacking in nutrients and loaded with toxins. The list of main offenders include softdrinks (including so-called energy drinks), sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, white bread and biscuits. These are all high in carbs and very low in vitamins and minerals. Combine them with trans-fats, refined vegetable oils, artificial sweetener, pesticides, hormones and grain-fed meats and you have the perfect combination for making type 2 diabetes.

Some people are certainly more susceptible than others. Say Joe and Jim both eat exactly the same high-carb diet and do the same levels of exercise and Joe becomes diabetic but Jim does not. Genetics plays a big part here. But really, if you looked more closely, you'd probably find that Jim is actually pre-diabetic meaning he doesn't meet the criteria for diabetes yet but may well do so in the future. And being pre-diabetic doesn't mean you are safe from the complications of diabetes either. In fact, people with pre-diabetes run the risk of the exact same complications as those with diabetes only less frequently. This includes heart disease, eye disease, nerve damage and kidney disease.

So don't blame genetics. That's not the cause.

The truth is that we need a massive public health campaign to let people know the facts: Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes are caused by high-carb, low-exercise lifestyle and can be reversed. This kind of public health campaign has finally happened with smoking but look at how long that took and how much of a fight the tobacco industry put out to resist this change.

Today we see children of 10 and 12 years of age getting diagnosed with type 2 – a disease that used to be called “Maturity Onset Diabetes” because it only affected older adults. It's caused by high-carb foods and amongst the worst of these are softdrinks. These are marketed to children in high-energy advertising full of fit-looking young people. Why not require a disclaimer: “Excessive consumption of softdrinks will make you fat.”?? Why not? It would be more honest if the ads were filled with slow-moving obese people. Guess it wouldn't sell so well then, eh? If we really want to stop this epidemic of diabetes and obesity, it's simple: ban advertising of high-carb junk food and require a public health disclaimer like on cigarette packaging.

Of course, part of the problem is that the business of diabetes is booming right now. But I'll save that for another day.

In the meantime, the single most important thing you can know right now is that type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes can be reversed. Type 1 can also me made much easier to manage while reducing the risk of complications.

If you have not already started my recommended program to reverse diabetes, you should get it as soon as possible. The principles are simple but with the right program, you can save yourself hundreds of hours of research working it out.

Listen to this post: Diabetes Myth #1 - We're not sure what causes Diabetes

You may also be interested in:

Natural Diabetes Cure

Diabetes Reversal Programs – What’s On Offer

This is a review of my preferred program for reversing diabetes. I explain what I like, what I don't and give you a link to buy that comes with my personal guarantee. I am so confident this program will work for you, I stand behind it with an unconditional 60-day guarantee.

What I like

• Simple program with little unnecessary fluff
• Clearly written
• Based on good science – will get results if followed
• Practical to follow

What I don’t like

• Lacks an action summary
• Complicated checkout experience
• Supplement recommendations not in line with supplement review
• The use of “Today’s special price” in the advertising copy

What I’ve done to make it even better

• Simplified checkout – if you use my link
• Richard’s Personal Guarantee – if you use my link
• Links to where you can buy what you need to make it easier to complete the program
• An action summary to make implementation easier
• Richard’s Easy Exercise Program – Even A Couch Potato Can Do It!

Advertising

The advertising copy of Diabetes Reversed is simple direct and clear. It has no unnecessary scaremongering which is very nice to see and there is genuine valuable information in the body of the advertising. He points out that using drugs to manage diabetes is fraught with adverse side-effects and limited benefit. He offers that his strategy will not only improve (reverse) your diabetes but also improve your blood lipids, body composition, digestion, immune function and detoxification.

He does explain why it is that natural remedies are not recommended by most doctors – it’s simply not how they are trained – while avoiding doctor-bashing.

He has plenty of written testimonials and two video testimonials that are very compelling from very real people who have used his program. The program can be used by type I and type II diabetics. Of course, type II are the ones that will get the cure.

There are also testimonials from two medical doctors and (I think) a chiropractor so there is health professional endorsement. Personally, I think this is meaningful.

Click Here to Read It Yourself: http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal

The Promise and Guarantee

Joe promises you will normalise your blood sugar or the report is free. In fact, he gives you a full 365-day money back guarantee. At the same time, he is open that the program won’t work for everyone. The guarantee is that if it doesn’t work for you, you can get your money back.  Even so, some 92% of people are seeing improvements – mostly within 4 weeks and often in just 1 or 2.

It’s important to realise that any program that will reverse or cure diabetes is going to require you to make changes. There is no pill to take to make you better while you keep doing the same things that caused the disease in the first place. And there never will be. The concept of a ‘cure’ in a pill for type II diabetes is a myth.

The Offer

The advertised price of $39.97 is called “Today’s special price”. It appears that the report was once priced at $19.95 and has gone up, but I don’t think the current price is really limited to today. I don’t really like that – it seems a bit deceptive.

Bundled with the main report are two Free Bonuses which are eBooks – one written by Joe Barton and the other by Jon Barron. A nice touch, but really, if you have diabetes, that’s what you need to focus on fixing in my opinion.

The Purchase Experience

Checkout was a little complicated. First I was offered BuySafe insurance for $1.20 – I couldn’t see the point.

Next if you want a hard copy of the report, it’s an additional $9.95 plus $4.95 shipping worldwide. You could print the report when you get it – at 77 pages that would cost you about $5 so I’d just print it myself.

Next you get the one-time bonus offer to get all the other 38 reports from Barton’s Publishing for a special price. Again, if you have diabetes, I reckon you should stay focused and just fixt that problem rather than getting 38 reports for conditions you probably don’t have. Besides, once you fix the cause of your diabetes, many of those problems will simply disappear anyway.

Then a discounted 30-day trial membership in a web-site. Be careful with this as you will get billed monthly if you say yes and don’t remember to cancel later. Yet another distraction from your primary goal here.

Phew, after all those options... I waited 45 sec or so... and got a blank screen. Hmm. I felt a bit nervous now! I checked my email and it was all there as expected. I was sent to a download link to get the report and the bonuses.

It was all very complicated and left me hanging in the air at the end, shaking my confidence in my decision... so what I have done is make sure you get the simplified checkout experience if you use my link: http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal

Complaints

It’s important to check for complaints. While it’s the rare author that won’t get some complaints, large numbers of complaints especially for the same reason are cause for concern. I did find a number of complaints posted but all were related to the complicated checkout experience described above. I found no complaints about the actual content of the report. This certainly matches my assessment.

To eliminate this problem, if you use the link I provide to buy the report, you will go through a very simple checkout process with the very well-respected Clickbank. Clickbank has its own 60-day returns policy. If you are unhappy with the report and cannot get your money back from Barton or Clickbank, then I will personally refund what you have paid myself – again within 60 days of purchase. See Richard’s Personal Guarantee at the end of this review. Remember, you have to use my link to get this: http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal

The Report

So that’s all very nice, but at the end of the day, it’s the content of the report that counts. Can it deliver and can you use it?

Of course I respect the copyright of this publication but I can tell you a bit about what I found.

First, it’s nicely laid out and quite readable. It’s logically arranged. You get a three-phase program: the jump-start; the re-introduction of banned foods; and eating for life. Very reasonable.

The main elements to the process in order of priority are:

1.       Measure your blood glucose so you know you are doing things right

2.       Change your diet

3.       Start exercise

4.       Take supplements

You get a good overview of diabetes, what causes it and what perpetuates it. You are recommended to work with your medical doctor – another plus.

Testing and Consulting

The report recommends a number of tests with your doctor as well as doing regular home blood sugar testing. Very smart move. You need to measure to know what really makes a difference.

Diet

The basic principle is to cut the carbohydrates that drive diabetes while eating a nutritious range of healthy real foods. Very practical. Cutting the carbs does require some maths – yes, I did say it, MATHS. But really, once you get the principles, it’s pretty easy.

The second key dietary principle is to reduce what are called AGEs by avoiding high-AGE foods and minimising food-preparation that promotes AGEs.

Then the program asks you to identify how many calories you ate over the last 2 days ... but does not tell you how to do this. But really, I don’t think this is an important part of the program anyway. It’s the grams of carbs that really count.

Meat, chicken, fish and eggs are allowed in all phases of the plan so there are no fanatical raw-food, vege Nazis here. You also get lists of foods you can eat as much of as you want.

Phase one is a strict reduction of carbs, by counting, to 20 grams a day or less. The target is to get your blood sugar under 100 mg/dl and off the drugs. It typically lasts 2-4 weeks depending on your case.

Phase one is pretty strict but remember, it’s only until you get your blood sugar under control.

Phase two is about being more relaxed about your carb intake while watching your blood sugar response. In Phase one, you have proven that you can normalise your blood sugar. In phase two, you find out what you can and can’t get away with. This way you can personalise your program and not be more strict than you need to be.

Phase three – eating for life – is the final phase. Your strictness and experimentation is over. Basically this is using what you have learned in Phase two and applying it for life.

Exercise

Exercise is emphasised as important and there is a very general outline of an exercise program. The section is very short though so you are left to work a lot of it out for yourself.

You can supplement this section with Richard’s Easy Exercise Program.

Dietary and Herbal Supplements

There is a good review of supplements shown to help with diabetes. After that though, it ends with a recommendation for a homeopathic product which has no research support and has not one ingredient in the previous review. The second recommended supplement is an herbal and mineral supplement, ‘Insulate Plus’.

I will give you links to where you can get these and also alternatives for those not in the US.

Finally the report ends with some web addresses and references for further reading if wanted.

Summary

So is it a good program? Should you buy it and commit to it? In a word, Yes. I am very impressed overall and am confident it has a good chance of helping you with no side effects except you will get healthier. If you have diabetes or pre-diabetes, I recommend you buy this report, read it and follow it. Here is the link: http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal_b

Don’t forget to post your experience at the end of this review for others to read.

Richard’s Personal Guarantee

In fact, I am so impressed with this product, I really believe you will get results if you simply follow the program. And it’s a very followable program too. However if you are not happy with the report for any reason and want a refund, then I want you to know that I stand behind this product personally. I will refund you the amount you have paid. So you just can’t lose. It works like this:

1.       You must first attempt a refund from Barton (forward me the emails you have sent)

2.       If not successful, request a refund from Clickbank (forward the reply you get from Clickbank)

3.       You must have made the purchase through my link

4.       Send me the purchase receipt

5.       I will refund you either by direct deposit to your bank account or by PayPal, at my discretion.

It couldn't be fairer than that!

Read what Joe has to say:  http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal

Or just buy now: http://optimalhealthworks.com/recommends/diabetes_reversal_b

Kindest Regards,

Richard Sawyer.

Most authorities state that anything under 100 is normal but many anti-aging and optimal health advocates say it should be under 90. I'd aim to keep it in the green zone which is easy when you eat the right food and do some exercise.

You may also be interested in:

Diabetes Reversal Programs – What’s On Offer

Natural Diabetes Cure

Type 2 Diabetes is reversible is almost every case. But you need to know the right way to do it to avoid years of trial and error maybe followed by giving up.

To make sure you get it right first time, I have reviewed all the programs I can find on reversing diabetes. There is a lot of variety. Some are good and some are bad. Some are affordable and some are expensive. Some require you to eat un-natural powders for the rest of your life and some are based on real food. Some require you to become a raw-food vegan and some don’t at all!

What I am looking for is something that works, is practical, is based on good science, you can do at home yourself, it easy, you can start right away and which is based on eating normal food. And it needs to be affordable... And I found it!

Don't forget to tell me what you get out this below the video.

If you are not subscribed to the rest of this video mini-series, you can subscribe at Get Healthy.

Download the worksheet here: Optimal Health Mindset Action Set 3 - Make It Passionate

If you are not already doing the 3-Step System For Optimal Health, find out more about it or just go ahead and subscribe.

You can also restart this program at Get Healthy.

This is the second Action Set of the Optimal Health Mindset video mini-series.

You need to be logged in to see this content. If you are not yet a subscriber, just enter your first name and email to the right.

To read the rest of this post, you need to be a member of Optimal Health Works.