Diabetes comes in two basic varieties. Type 1 or “insulin dependent” occurs when the pancreas is unable to produce insulin. This is often referred to as “juvenile onset” diabetes and it is thought to have an autoimmune component. Type 2 diabetes accounts for 90 to 95% of cases, and it occurs when the body’s cells become insensitive to insulin. This is referred to as insulin resistance. The end result is elevated blood sugar. It affects 23.6 million Americans, or 8% of the population. Another 57 million have prediabetes (a fasting blood sugar of 100 to 124mg/dl). Unbelievably, over 40% of the US population has diabetes or prediabetes!!!!
The underlying factors causing diabetes include:
- Eating a diet high in refined sugars
- Genetic predisposition
- Obesity
- Old age
- Nutrition depletion
- Hormonal imbalances
To treat diabetes, or for that matter, prediabetes, one must address the root cause. This means that lifestyle changes must be made!
1. Losing weight is number one on this list. Americans are the heaviest people on the planet, with an estimated 66% of adults in the US being overweight or obese. Excess fat can result in insulin receptors developing an inability to respond to insulin and therefore leads to insulin resistance.
2. Exercise, of course benefits all of us for countless reasons, and with overwhelming evidence make us less likely to develop diabetes. Research has shown that as little as 30 minutes of daily exercise can dramatically increase blood sugar control. This effect is further magnified by engaging in more vigorous endurance type exercises which creates prolonged increased demand for stored sugars as well as blood sugar, which in turn makes the entire blood sugar regulating system function more efficiently. Therefore, engaging in hiking, distance walking or jogging, or cycling promotes healthy blood sugar metabolism, and typically has dramatic effect on the blood sugar of a diabetic individual.
3. Hormone imbalances involving the thyroid and adrenal glands can often contribute to diabetes. Other hormones that help improve blood sugar regulation include natural testosterone, progesterone and growth hormone.
4. Last, nutritional deficiencies in diabetics include magnesium and iodine. Supplementation with these after blood testing to verify deficiency may result in dramatic improvement in blood sugar levels. Other “raw materials” often necessary to overcome this illness include chromium, zinc, vanadium, B vitamins, and cinnamon.
First order of business: clean up the diet and lose weight! This alone will prevent or manage diabetes more than any other factor.
- Specifically, stop consuming so-called “high glycemic” foods.
- These are foods that cause the blood sugar to rapidly elevate and therefore cause the release of large/excessive amounts of insulin.
- This “flooding” of the bloodstream with sugar and then insulin is what eventually causes cells to become insensitive or resistant to insulin.
- At the same time, these are the foods that result in weight gain.
Yet many of us don’t even realize that we are eating a high glycemic diet since we “don’t eat sweets”. Consider the following diet:
Breakfast: a bowl of cereal or toast or a muffin. Lunch: a sandwich and a few tortilla chips or some fruit, and a bottle of lightly sweetened tea. Snack: maybe a soda or a candy bar, or some dried fruit or an “energy bar” with maybe 20 to 25 grams of sugars (which is fairly typical). Dinner: meat, steamed veggies and potatoes or white rice. Snack: small bowl of ice cream or a few crackers. Essentially EVERY one of these meals or snacks resulted in a rapid blood sugar elevation and a surge in insulin release, and over years…or a lifetime, dramatically increases your chances for developing diabetes!!
The Dr Will Bar was born of a desire to combine nutrient-dense ingredients into a low glycemic food, fit for consumption any time, mealtime or snack time or workout time! One that was perfect as a breakfast, as a snack, or before and during training/exercising. One that would taste so good and natural that I would never tire of it, which I had never experienced in a bar! One that my kids would eat…and even like!
During the growth of our “fan base”, more and more diabetic people have reported to us that the bars seem to stabilize blood sugar levels. And not only type 2 but even type 1 diabetics have thus far reported consistent stabilizing effects with the Dr Will Bar. This is extremely unusual for a nutritional bar. How does the Dr Will Bar stabilize blood sugar? By providing a high concentration of essential fatty acids (grossly lacking in the American diet), along with fiber and protein, to prevent the body from absorbing the sugars quickly enough to cause a surge.
Diabetes: an American epidemic, and getting worse. The Dr Will Bar: one small step in the process of lifestyle changes to prevent and treat this disease!!