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The trend of a low-carb or even no-carb diet has been increasing in popularity over the past decade. But have we been accidentally stereotyping our favorite foods? What if we could enjoy our slices of bread and pasta after all?
Many are enticed by the promise of quick weight loss that seems to come with cutting out carbs. However, this can be tricky to stick to long-term. On average, 50% of calories consumed in the adult American diet are from carbohydrates. And the idea of cutting out carbs completely would include the fundamentals of a healthy diet like fruits, vegetables, legumes, and whole grains.
So why do all carbs seem to get a bad reputation?
Dr. David Ludwig, professor of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health and the co-director of the New Balance Foundation Obesity Prevention Center Boston Children’s Hospital, sought to better understand and explain the varying types of carbs and how they can affect your health.
Bread and pasta are often demonized, however, it is much more complex than that! “When you eat a whole-kernel, minimally processed grain … they take a while to digest. Blood sugar rises relatively more gently. You produce less insulin calorie for calorie,” Ludwig explains.
“Slow” carbs like whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and legumes, take a while to digest and are often rich in nutrients like fiber, zinc, magnesium and Vitamin E. However, when you eat white bread or another carbohydrate made from refined starch, it can raise your blood sugars sending a signal to your brain to store fat and leave you hungry.
Currently, Americans are likely to lack whole grain consumption and actually exceed the recommended amount of refined grains. Fiber-rich foods, like whole grain bread, leave you feeling full for longer with their fiber, fat, and protein. You don’t have to cut out all carbs, just the highly processed or refined.
To learn more: You Don’t Have To Go No-Carb: Instead, Think Slow Carb – NPR
A new study suggests a concerning correlation between mental health problems and diabetes. The study, conducted by Universities of Helsinki and Tampere and Helsinki University Hospital, investigated the relationship between diabetes the the risk of death due to mental health problems.
People with diabetes have an increased risk of cardiovascular events, cancer and kidney disease. However, this is not the only concerning health risk that is associated with diabetes.
One study published in the Journal of Medicine and Life in 2016, for instance, discovered that the occurrence of depression in people with diabetes is two to three times higher than in other individuals.
Many people with diabetes have spoken out about their mental health problems associated with the disease. The study suggests that these mental health issues put those with diabetes at a greater risk of death due to suicide, alcohol and accidents. Interestingly, those who required self-injecting insulin were at an even greater risk!
The pressure of monitoring and balancing glucose levels, “combined with the anxiety of developing serious complications like heart or kidney disease may also take their toll on psychological well-being.”
All of these findings speak to the fact that mental health assessment and support should play a greater role in disease management. These problems can be managed, but only if they are communicated first.
See our Psycho-social Resourse Page for mental health screening tools
To learn more: Higher risk of alcohol- and suicide-related death in diabetes – Medical News Today
This month we want to help our communities lower their risk of heart disease. People with diabetes are at an increased risk of developing heart disease and twice as likely to die from heart attack or stroke. However, a recent survey suggest only about half of those living with diabetes are aware of the elevated risk.
“That’s why the ADA and the AHA, along with industry leaders, have teamed up to form the “Know Diabetes By Heart” initiative. These powerhouse organizations want to raise awareness and understanding of the link between people with type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease and empower people to reduce their risk for heart disease.”
And we want to help by sharing the incredible resources they have put together for health care professionals. Please enjoy the resources below:
All can be found at KnowDiabetesByHeart
Please refer people with Type 2 diabetes to https://knowdiabetesbyheart.org/ for resources including a quiz to test their knowledge of the link between diabetes and heart disease.
Thank you for helping get the word out!
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An international study has found a strong link between exercise and depression.
Commonly, exercise has been thought to prevent depression, but a study of the genetics of 300,000 people has now confirmed that a lack of exercise can lead to depression.
Past studies have shown a link between lack of exercise and depression, however this is the first study to say that lack of exercise may cause depression. And it is often assumed that depression is a barrier to exercise.
“However, this new work by a team at Massachusetts General Hospital, US, shows a causal link between exercising and avoiding depression, and also shows that the opposite is not true – being depressed does not cause people to exercise less.”
The study used data from self-reported activity and accelerometers (motion detecting devices). The self-reported activities were somewhat inaccurate, however the accelerators collected helpful data to support their hypothesis.
“With accelerometer data, the researchers found that replacing sedentary behavior with just 15 minutes of vigorous physical activity, like running, or an hour of moderate activity, like fast walking, reduces depression risk by 26%.”
Researchers hope to utilize this data in promoting the role physical health can take on mental health. From a biological perspective, physical activity is linked to releasing “feel-good” hormones and can help with a person’s mood and can also help with other illness linked to depression like inflammation. Of course from a psychological perspective being “active” can help combat common depression symptoms like feels of isolation and void of meaning.
Depression affects more than 300 million people around the globe. Mental health is just as important as physical health and exercising is a way to improve both!
Please enjoy our Exercise Resource
To learn more: “Exercise does help prevent depression, research shows” – COSMOS The Science of Everything
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[yikes-mailchimp form=”1″]The benefits of fiber have been supported by over a 100 years of research. A large new study reveals that eating more fiber can lower your risk of developing serious illness over time.
“When compared with those who consume very little fiber, people at the high end of the fiber-eating spectrum saw their risk for dying from heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and/or colon cancer plummet by 16 to 24 percent, investigators reported.”
Exciting enough, the more fiber a person consumed, the risk of developing those illness continued to decrease. The range of illness that higher intake of fiber seemed to impact surprised scientists.
The results come from 185 observational studies and 58 clinical trails performed over four decades.
Researchers say that American’s on average, eat less than 15 grams of fiber per day. However increasing intake to 25-29 gms per day is just “adequate.” The more fiber a person incorporates in their diet, the greater the decrease in overall risk of an early death.
Every additional 15-gram bump in daily whole grain intake was found to curtail an individual’s overall risk of early death — as well as their risk of early death from heart disease — by between 2 and 19 percent.
Researchers also found that increasing fiber intake had no risky health effects and that it is never too late to start embracing fiber every day!
“When considering all the trials of increasing fiber intakes, those participants that did reduced both their body weight and the total cholesterol in their blood, two important predictors of disease.”
Although none of these discoveries are surprising, scientists hope this will lead to changes in dietary recommendation. “This is just one more piece of evidence that supports and further solidifies the recommendations registered dietitian nutritionists have been making for years,” said Sandon.
It is never to late to start eating healthy and fiber may be a great starting point for many!
Here are some common foods and their fiber content:
To learn more: “More Proof High-Fiber Diets Help Prevent Cancers, Heart Disease” – Health Day
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Announced at the annual meeting of the Science for Neuroscience, research finds even in healthy adults, sleep deprivation can have an effect on anxiety levels and even alter brain activity.
A recent study by Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center has determined that a lack of sleep may induce increased levels of anxiety. Also, people who are diagnosed with anxiety typically have difficulty sleeping. This study shows that there is an inverse relationship between anxiety and poor sleep.
The anxiety levels of 18 healthy individuals were examined for the sake of this study. Anxiety tests were conducted for each subject after a full night of sleep and a sleepless night. Those who experience sleep deprivation demonstrated anxiety levels 30% higher than the group of individuals who had a full night sleep. The brain activity of the sleep-deprived individuals changed as well. Subjects seemed to become more emotional in response to videos played in the lab. The prefrontal cortex, the area that reduces anxiety levels, was less active as well according to MRI scans.
The result of the study concluded that lack of sleep can be more than just a symptom of anxiety, but in some cases, a direct cause!
The new ADA Standards encourage health care professionals to evaluate sleep habits at each visit and help with problem solving to improve sleep quality.
For more information on this topic, visit: A lack of sleep can induce anxiety – Science News, Magazine of the Society for Science & the Public
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It’s that time of year where people are flooding into gyms to start working on their new years resolutions. However, researchers have found that most people tend to give up on their resolutions by February. How can you bridge the divide between intention and doing?
Here are some tips to help turn 2019 resolutions into long-lasting habits and to get past the February funk:
For more information on this topic, check out the article “How to make exercise a habit that sticks.”
Contributed by: Sofia Sepulveda
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[yikes-mailchimp form=”1″]Florence Nightingale believed that letting sunlight into hospitals had health benefits for patients. Looks like she may be right!
Research conducted by the University of Oregon, compared sun exposure in multiple different rooms for 90 days. Turns out grandma was right, letting sunshine in can help keep you healthy, or at least kill harmful bacteria.
“Rooms exposed to daylight have fewer germs. In fact, the study showed that the lit rooms had about half the viable bacteria (those that are able to grow), compared with dark rooms. Rooms that were exposed only to UV light had just slightly less viable bacteria than ones exposed to daylight.”
This study gives us new insight on the correlation between daylight and bacterial count indoors. Considering we spend so much time inside, this could have big impacts on how we design our homes and commercial spaces to help optimize the health of our community.
Now we are able to say “daylighting” a room has an impact on air quality, even killing certain microbiomes that are tied to respiratory disease. This might have future implications for the design of hospitals and health care clinics. Take home message; If you can, let the light in!
To learn more: Grandma Was Right: Sunshine Helps Kill Germs Indoors – NPR
Happy Veterans Day and we will never forget!
Our Diabetes Detective Team scans the diabetes news to discover the most relevant info that Diabetes Educators need in their daily practice. We post one daily Blog Byte from Monday to Friday. And of course, Tuesday is our Question of the Week. It’s Informative and FREE! Sign up below!
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