The Real Risks of Too Much Glucose in the Blood

Hi,

I am back after having fallen off the wagon. I am now in the process of beginning again. Blogging helps me to get my head on straight and it might help someone else who does the same stuff I do. You must know how embarrassing it is to be such a foolish person and have to admit it in public like this, but I know of no other way to turn things around, but through good old fashioned repentance and prayer. I was at my Bible study fellowship last night and I shared about where I have been and what I have been doing and got the kind of support I needed. The words "self control" came up, prayers were said on my behalf, and I also got my 30 Day Diabetes Cure book back from my friend.

Last night when I got home I started reading the book again. When I have been wandering around in my own head too long, and following the fiction that my addicted brain likes to hear, I need to clear out the cob webs with real facts. And the book is chock full of the kind of information I need. The thing that has most impressed me this morning is the list of dangerous things that having too much glucose in the blood stream over a long period of time causes in the body. (Reading in and around page 29).  I will be paraphrasing what Dr Rip and Jim Healthy have written in an effort to cement the facts into my own mind and also to share with anyone who is in need of this information, again.

I have what is called "central obesity" which is belly fat. They are saying that the solution to belly fat is fiber rich slow carbs. Carbs are labeled fast or slow by how quickly they turn to glucose in the blood stream. The glycemic index and glycemic load charts that you can find on the internet will give you a good idea of which foods to eat and which to avoid in order to reduce glucose in the blood. My doctor has told me to eat low on the index, meaning 50 or below. The higher the number, the faster you are putting sugar in your blood stream when you eat them.

When you are eating raw foods (meaning uncooked and unprocessed) you will naturally be eating lower on the scale. Raw foods still have all their fiber intact, and they are usually slower carbs, also. The one possible exception is fruit. Since fruits in general have a lot of sugar in them, a diabetic should limit them to only the ones that are very low on the index, and not very often during the day. The best way to manage them is to simply monitor your blood sugars when you eat them. If eating a particular fruit (or anything for that matter) raises your blood sugar too high, then put that item on the outside of the circle of foods you should be eating. For me, since I am getting back on track, I am not going to be buying any fruit for a while. (Please understand I am also not advocating eating raw meat -- that is just too bizarre. I am talking about raw uncooked vegetables, nuts and seeds which should make up more than fifty percent of your diet. You can do a search for "raw food diet" to see what the complete parameters are and will also find "superfoods" you can include to further heal your body.) You can check out this web site for some good information: http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/starting-a-raw-food-diet.html -- there are others, too.

Then don't let your addiction trick you into thinking that having just one fast carb now and then is OK. If you are like me this is what happens: Just one is OK. But I can't stop at just one. I have opened the gate and conveniently forgotten that it is a flood gate. Letting in one, will open up a flood of bad foods suddenly becoming OK in my mind. I call it "magical thinking." Somehow this food that is way outside the circle of good foods for me, magically becomes OK and I buy a bag of them and sit down and eat them. Perhaps you are not like that, but I know that I am.

This is what happened to me around my birthday which is Oct 8. I accepted invitations from five different people to have five different birthday meals with them on different days, and all within one week. At each meal, I took a forbidden carb of some kind and included it in my meal. By the time the end of the week arrived I was adding three and four, not one, fast carb to each meal. A little spoonful of this, became a double portion of that, and I started buying ice cream and sitting in front of the TV eating a pint and a half of it at one sitting. I also bought a big bag of bridge mix and ate eighty-five percent of it in two days before throwing the rest out. When it comes to this kind of food, I am insane, and I must finally admit that I cannot have even one.

I want to point out that this is not the only thing I had going on. I had gotten some other disturbing news and needed help from my brother, who was kind enough to assist me. But all these things combined, allowed me to kind of crawl in a cave. It does no good to stay there -- so here I am beginning again.

Reading the book again is getting me clear on why I cannot eat these things that everyone else seems to be able to eat. I am not like everyone else. They have their problems, I have mine. I have to address mine, because the fix does not happen on its own. Here is what I read about today -- these are my layman's interpretations of what is in the book. I believe them to be accurate and reasonable although they are over simplified and you may want to do your own research (or read the book) if you need more information:

FIVE DANGEROUS SITUATIONS ARE NOW OCCURRING IN THE BODY (page 29).

1. Excess glucose and insulin in the blood cause inflammation. It is as if billions of tiny shards of glass are now coursing through your arteries. And since the volume is so high, the blood pressure is high, too, pushing against and actually injuring your arteries. The body has a healing mechanism that it uses to try to heal this artery damage. What it does is begin to deposit plaque to protect the vessel walls which creates an environment where blood clots can form and cause a heart attack or even stroke. Seventy five percent of all fatalities in diabetics are caused by cardiac arrest which is the most deadly of all the diabetes complications.

2. All this inflammation generates free radical molecules which destroy healthy tissue -- including beta cells in the pancreas. Aside from inflammation being actually painful, when the free radicals reach critical mass, the body's antioxidant defense system becomes overwhelmed and the body's DNA is now in jeopardy. This means that cancer begins to develop because the DNA pattern for creating cells is weakened or damaged. If you continue to eat foods that create high levels of glucose in your blood stream, you might just as well accept the fact that you have signed and sent an engraved invitation to cancer to come on over and take up residence any where it wants to, in your body.

3. Excess glucose molecules also displace oxygen by hijacking a ride on your red blood cells. Now your extremeties are not getting the oxygen they need which means you have "poor circulation."  It is not that your blood is not circulating in these areas, it means there is not enough oxygen in the blood to keep your eyes, feet, legs, hands, and arms, in good shape. Poor circulation (meaning lack of oxygen) is the fundamental cause of serious diabetic complications from blindness and gangrene, to actual amputation of body parts.

4. Excess glucose coupled now with low levels of oxygen makes the blood thick like syrup and slow moving. The body tries to dilute this problem by sucking every bit of water it can find in any location into the blood stream and out through the kidneys. You begin frequent urination -- and soon become dehydrated. You naturally feel thirsty -- but choosing a soda to drink will actually make the problem worse by adding more sugar to the blood stream. As your body works overtime to try to flush this syrupy mess out of the blood stream it also sucks up the nutrients the body needs for healthy living and your body begins to waste away. This is why diabetes is called a "wasting disease."

5. In the end your pancreas becomes completely exhausted because it has been over producing insulin also in an effort to handle the excess glucose in the blood stream. The beta cells simply wear out and can no longer produce insulin. Type I diabetes has now occurred and you have to take insulin shots to counter the problem.

All because you won't stop eating sugars and  fast carbs. How silly. Quitting fast carbs all together, eliminating sweetened drinks, sweetened and over processed breakfast cereals, and other things made with white flour is step one. Step two is replacing them with whole raw unprocessed foods that still have their fiber intact. Eating salads and raw vegetables, raw nuts and seeds, will begin to detoxify your body and reverse the damage that all that excess glucose caused. The body is an amazing healing machine. If you begin to feed it properly, you can reverse the damage that has been done. Up to a certain point. If you are not a type I, yet, you have a pretty good chance of beating this "disease" -- and even if you are a type I, you can improve your health and reduce the insulin amounts that you are taking with an improved diet.

I must also add, at this point, that the diet prescribed by the well known diabetes associations and the standard medical community is not the healing diet that Dr Ripich recommends nor that I am advocating. You will find better and healthier information at any and with all of the following web sites or books:

http://www.thebestofrawfood.com/starting-a-raw-food-diet.html  --

http://www.amazon.com/There-Cure-Diabetes-21-Day-Program/dp/1556436912?tag=dogpile-20 --

http://30daydiabetescure.com/  for those who do not think they can transition directly to raw and need some steps in between -- this is Dr Ripich's program -- which I highly recommend. He walks you day by day and step by step into what you should be doing and tells you why in simple understandable language. I needed the hand holding -- perhaps you do, too. Check it out. It is very good!

"Decreasing your intake of fast carbs results in better insulin activity -- and insulin resistance clears up all by itself, without the need for drugs. Add a little extra physical activity and your cells become more sensitive to insulin, so your body needs less of it. A lovely by product of this is weight-loss," this is Dr Ripich's promise. I have done it -- now I need to get back on track. Remembering why sure makes it a lot easier for me to do.

If you have the discipline and have not fallen off, I applaud you. If you, like me, did fall off, and need to get back up, again, then join me now in starting again. This time with more resolve; knowing that I cannot let even one mouthful of bad food hamper my thinking, my actions, nor my health. I pray that the Lord will give me the vigilance I need. He is faithful. I have taken the stand and He will help me to keep it. You can take your stand whenever you are ready. Are you ready?

Praise the Lord.

Be back soon

--Marcia