the power of the exercise/diet fix, along with pressure from the pharmaceutical industry, which benefits more from treating the disease than seeing it cured. According to experts at Stanford University, theU.S. spent $12.5 billion on diabetes prescriptions in 2007, reports O’Connell. That’s a lot of bread invested in not telling us to stop eating bread. It doesn’t help that the American
Diabetes Association’s guidelines give short shrift to the lifestyle cure.O’Connell discovers that the ADA is just one of severalmajormedical organizations influenced by financial entanglements with Big Pharma and poorly served by general bureaucratic paralysis.Hewrites: “If a nondrug alternativeworks better than the drug therapy, shouldn’t the nondrug 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 indoctri- nated 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
It puts a human face on a crisis that touches people fromall income groups, regions and backgrounds.
“Along with a low-carb eating plan, a gym membership is the most potent antidote to type 2 diabetes,”writes O’Connell.
brave set its sightsmuch 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 formillions of others.
O’Connell’s unsparing accounts of his father lying in a hospital bed ravaged with the disease are heartbreaking.
beating diabetes with exercise
In Sugar Nation, author Jeff O’Connell makes an irrefutable case that lifestyle changes are critical in combating a diagno- sis of prediabetes or diabetes. While manipulating dietary choices is the logical place to begin in diabetes management, he stresses the importance of exercise as an essential element in combating the disease. “Along with a low-carb eating plan, a gym membership is the most potent antidote to type 2 diabetes,” writes O’Connell. He speakswith expertswho identify high-intensity interval
exercise (HIIT) as the preferredworkout regimen to affect insulin sensitivity. HIIT is a style of trainingwhere you “alternate bursts of intense cardio exercise, like sprinting,with amore relaxed pace.”While HIIT training demands greater exertion, it’s also a workout that can be completed in shorter time than traditional cardioworkouts. James Timmons, PhD, a university researcher who studied HIIT’s influence on diabetics, told the writer: “The intense
We live in an environment that pro-
motes 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 per- ceived as painful. He writes: “Once you decide that your heart, kidneys and limbs areworthmore than hamburger buns, French fries, and glazed doughnuts, you’ll do more than avoid complica- tions. 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.
contractions that fatiguemuscle really break down carbohydrate stores inmuscle as well. Themuscles then becomemuch more responsive to insulin as they attempt to replenish these stores.” As O’Connell sums up: “… the latest studies suggest that the blood sugar benefits of high-intensity training don’t just meet those of longer, steady-pace cardio sessions—they exceed them.” Research has also found that exercise can deliver enormous
benefits to diabetics evenwhen sufferers fail to reach their weight-loss goals. “In the Diabetes Prevention Program, those subjectswho didn’t hit their targetweight loss, yet did hit their target for exercise, still had a 44 percent reduction in diabetes risk relative to a placebo group.” Whatever type ofworkout programyou engage in, do it as regu-
larly as youwould take amedication for diabetes. It’s that powerful. “The research is unequivocal,”writes O’Connell. “For example,
amajor Finnish study on diabetes prevention found that regular exercise reduced diabetes incidence in subjects by nearly 70 percent compared with subjects who didn’t exercise.”
GET ACTIVE! 17
Page 1 |
Page 2 |
Page 3 |
Page 4 |
Page 5 |
Page 6 |
Page 7 |
Page 8 |
Page 9 |
Page 10 |
Page 11 |
Page 12 |
Page 13 |
Page 14 |
Page 15 |
Page 16 |
Page 17 |
Page 18 |
Page 19 |
Page 20 |
Page 21 |
Page 22 |
Page 23 |
Page 24 |
Page 25 |
Page 26 |
Page 27 |
Page 28 |
Page 29 |
Page 30 |
Page 31 |
Page 32 |
Page 33 |
Page 34 |
Page 35 |
Page 36 |
Page 37 |
Page 38 |
Page 39 |
Page 40 |
Page 41 |
Page 42 |
Page 43 |
Page 44