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Copyright © 2016 SuccessVantage Pte Ltd

All rights reserved.

Published by Reed Wilson.

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Chapter One ...................................................................................................................... 4

The Holistic Approach to Diabetes Prevention ...................................................................... 4

Chapter Two ...................................................................................................................... 7

Your Diabetes Management Scorecard ................................................................................. 7

Chapter Three .................................................................................................................... 9

When to Pay Special Attention to Blood Sugar Levels .......................................................... 9

Chapter Four .................................................................................................................... 12

Nutrition and Diabetes......................................................................................................... 12

Chapter Five .................................................................................................................... 17

The Critical Importance of Healthy Insulin Levels ............................................................... 17

Chapter Six ...................................................................................................................... 24

Weight Management for Diabetes Prevention ................................................................... 24

Chapter Seven ................................................................................................................. 27

Controlling an Unhealthy Sweet Tooth................................................................................ 27

Chapter Eight ................................................................................................................... 36

Antioxidants to Fight Diabetes ............................................................................................ 36

Chapter Nine.................................................................................................................... 39

The Holistic Diabetes Diet .................................................................................................... 39

Chapter Ten ..................................................................................................................... 49

Is Your Food Supply Toxic?................................................................................................... 49

Chapter Eleven ................................................................................................................ 51

Six Great Foods for Combating Diabetes with Low Blood Sugar ......................................... 51

Chapter Twelve ................................................................................................................ 54

Holistically Healthy Green Drinks ........................................................................................ 54

Chapter Thirteen .............................................................................................................. 57

Holistic Weight Management for Combating Diabetes ....................................................... 57

Chapter Fourteen ............................................................................................................. 64

Stay Healthy While at Work ................................................................................................. 64

Chapter Fifteen ................................................................................................................ 68

Aromatherapy to Enhance Holistic Health .......................................................................... 68

Chapter Sixteen ............................................................................................................... 70

Health Maintenance When You Travel ................................................................................ 70

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Chapter One

The Holistic Approach to Diabetes Prevention Diabetes is a condition that impacts almost 30 million people in the United States. More

than 85 million other Americans are believed to be pre-diabetic, which means they are at

great risk of developing this potentially deadly disease. That’s why it is so critical that people

understand the nature of diabetes, what causes it, and how to prevent it. You also deserve

to know about what sorts of alternative healthcare options are available to guard against

the disease by reducing its onset and severity with early intervention strategies. The first

step is to define what the disease is and why it occurs.

What is Diabetes?

Diabetes is a chronic condition that deprives the body of its natural ability to produce

adequate amounts of insulin. Insulin is essential to the processing of sugars, specifically in

the bloodstream. When that insulin is not available, the body cannot transform sugar or

glucose into the energy needed to perform so many vital functions.

When discussing this conversion of sugars, that includes all sorts of different foods that can

be broken down into glucose, a process that takes place in the pancreas. Cells in a healthy

pancreas create insulin in just the right amounts to keep the bloodstream supplied with the

appropriate levels of glucose.

When diabetes interferes with that insulin production, though, the glucose isn’t turned into

useful energy, and excess amounts of glucose accumulate in the blood. This robs the body of

one of its primary sources of energy and also tends to weaken the immune system, making

the body even more vulnerable to disease.

There are two distinct types of diabetes, known as Type 1 and Type 2, and with Type 1 the

body doesn’t produce any insulin at all. With Type 2 there is insulin production, but it is not

adequate to meet the needs of the body. In both types of diabetes, insufficient insulin raises

blood sugar levels to cause a condition known as hyperglycemia, where there is too much

glucose in the blood. That can then contribute to all sorts of problems such as nerve

damage, complications during pregnancy, cardiovascular disease, eyesight problems or

blindness, kidney disease or failure, risk of stroke, and necessary amputations.

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Diabetes Signs and Symptoms

Type 1 diabetes, which typically occurs in young people, usually exhibits initial symptoms

including excessive thirst, frequent urination, dramatic weight loss, unusual fatigue, blurred

vision, and genital irritation. Oftentimes these symptoms are detected when the body’s

health is already compromised, usually due to illness or injury. The condition can accelerate

into what is known as ketoacidosis, which comes from a lack of carbohydrates and can

trigger nausea, vomiting, and dehydration. Left untreated, this can induce a coma, or even

cause death.

Type 2 diabetes often happens as a person gets older, and it is even possible to have Type 2

diabetes for many years without realizing it. Eventually excess glucose builds-up in the

bloodstream and symptoms will sometimes include almost velvet-like patches of dark skin

that appear in the armpits or on the neck. Unless Type 2 diabetes is properly addressed, it

can cause heart disease, kidney failure, nerve damage, and blindness.

Alternative Treatment Options

Because diabetes can adversely affect major organs and be such a threat to one’s health,

alternative healthcare providers offer holistic ways to help treat this dangerous condition.

Ultimately, preventing or controlling diabetes in the early stages is all about monitoring

blood sugar levels, because when those levels rise it becomes a more serious, high-risk

condition.

When you carefully control blood sugar through holistic lifestyle decisions, you can help

avoid getting the disease or becoming pre-diabetic. If you already have diabetes, a holistic

lifestyle approach can help you minimize the damage done to your body, thanks to more

healthy and effective blood sugar control. These lifestyle decisions are aimed at reducing

the dangerous levels of high blood sugar through diet, weight management, and exercise.

A Healthy Diet

People often think of dieting as only a radical

way to lose weight faster, but a smart, healthy

diet is actually the cornerstone of good health,

as well as a fundamental principle of the

holistic approach to preventing diabetes or

minimizing its symptoms. Since blood sugars

need to be moderated, eat a diet that is low in

sugary foods as well as unhealthy saturated

fats – but high in fiber. You should also drink

plenty of fresh, clean water every day and

maintain a healthy caloric intake.

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By eating the same amount of calories each day and eating at the same times, your body

can process nutrients better, and it will be easier for your healthcare provider or doctor to

know exactly how much glucose is in your diet. If you are already taking insulin for diabetes,

this kind of diet also makes it much simpler for your doctor to prescribe just the right

amount of insulin.

Since carbohydrates contain glucose, eating them makes your blood sugar levels naturally

rise, usually peaking about an hour or two after each meal. That’s why knowing how many

carbs you are consuming is so helpful in monitoring and controlling blood sugar.

High-carb foods include bread, pasta, grains, potatoes, corn, beans, fruits and fruit juices,

milk, yogurt, and sweets. Green, leafy vegetables are, on the other hand, extremely low in

carbohydrates. The more you can build a healthy diet around low-carbohydrate foods, the

easier it will be to limit glucose in the bloodstream and keep your blood sugar at healthier

levels.

Exercise and Weight Management

Exercise is always recommended for good health, and if you want

to avoid the problems associated with diabetes it is crucial. One

reason for that is that when you exercise, you burn up fuel, and it

just so happens that the body's fuel is glucose and other sugars

that are in the blood. The more you exercise and move those

sugars out of the bloodstream, the more you reduce the risk of

diabetes or minimize the symptoms of this dreaded disease.

The best regimen is three hours or more of cardio exercise per

week, including both aerobic and resistance exercises. But even

three hours of walking a week will go a long way toward helping

you combat diabetes and reduce those risky, high levels of

unwanted glucose in the bloodstream that put so much stress and

strain on major organs.

Before adopting any exercise program, of course, always consult

your healthcare provider – and that’s especially important if you

are already a diabetic and are taking insulin supplements. But the

main thing to understand is that the more you can exercise in a

healthy way, the easier it will be to manage your blood sugar, and

also keep off those unwanted pounds.

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Chapter Two

Your Diabetes Management Scorecard Here is a little quiz that will help you easily evaluate how well you are managing diabetes

prevention through your lifestyle.

Answer Code: 0-Never

1-Rarely

2-Sometimes

3-Often

4-All the time

For Yes or No questions, No is 0 & Yes is 4

Diabetes Quiz

1) How often do you eat breakfast?

2) How often do you eat legumes, as well as strawberries, blueberries, and other berries?

3) Did you lose 10 pounds in the last six months?

4) Do you get at least 20 minutes of exercise 4 times a week?

5) Do you experience any diabetic symptoms?

6) Is your Hemoglobin A1c <6?

7) Does your daily diet include at least 50 grams of fiber?

8) Do you consume complex carbohydrates?

9) Do you eat small snacks that have protein in them frequently during the day?

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10) Do you limit your intake of sodas and juices?

11) Do you eat a diet with more fish and chicken, versus red meat?

12) Is your fasting blood sugar level under 125?

13) Do you avoid using tobacco products?

14) Do you do stress-reduction techniques/exercises?

15) Do you take any supplements to help control blood sugar levels?

Results

0-14 Poor Diabetes Management

15-29 Fair Diabetes Management

30-44 Good Diabetes Management

45-60 Excellent Diabetes Management

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Chapter Three

When to Pay Special Attention to Blood Sugar Levels It is also helpful to know that there are certain times or events that can have a particularly

significant impact on your blood sugar levels. To be proactive about your health, it’s good to

familiarize yourself with these so that you can be extra vigilant. Just as you might wash your

hands more often during flu season, or make sure you are getting sufficient sleep while

working extra hard during the day because of a big project at work, the same kind of

proactive planning helps you ensure that your blood sugar levels are managed effectively.

After Meals

So what are some of these special circumstances? At the

top of the list is that critical hour or two right after you

eat a meal, when the body is digesting your food and

breaking carbs down into sugars. Even people who are

not at all impacted by diabetes often feel different after

meals, with responses such as tiredness or mild

headaches. That’s usually brought about by the sudden

influx of carbohydrates that enter the body and trigger a

quick surge in blood sugar or altered insulin levels.

If you are pre-diabetic or diabetic, monitoring your blood sugar after eating should be a

habit you always follow. Even foods that are not normally thought of as having sugars in

them – broccoli, carrots, salad dressing or ordinary oatmeal – may have enough carbs to

cause a blood sugar rise. Others that are famously known to contain carbs or sugars like fruit

juices, desserts, or sodas, can dramatically increase the level of sugar in your blood. When

those sugar or glucose levels in the blood jump 75 or 100 points during the post-meal hour

or two, that could spell real trouble for you.

A good gauge to remember is that of the European Diabetic Association, which advises

blood sugar levels that are slightly stricter than those recommended in the USA by the

American Diabetes Association. The European Diabetic Association says that after meals

your blood sugar should stay at a level that is no more than 165, or preferably lower.

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If You Are Sick

Now let’s look at other times when it is especially

important to monitor your blood sugar levels. One

that everyone will experience is whenever you

happen to be sick, deprived of your normal amount

of restful sleep, or when you are undergoing an

unusually stressful phase of your life. All of these

will affect your body’s physiological balance, and for

that reason can have a detrimental impact on your

blood sugar.

Are you feeling under the weather or coming down

with something, or are you in the process of getting

back on your feet after an illness? If so, keep a closer

eye on what you eat and how much exercise you get

– and be sure to closely monitor your blood sugar. If

you are a diabetic who is undergoing treatment by a

doctor, or are already taking extra insulin, make

sure your doctor knows what’s going on, so that

they can participate in helping you monitor your

blood sugar, at least until the situation is back to

normal and you are healthy again.

Changes in Diet or Exercise

Another time when the body may react in an unusual way and build up too much blood

sugar is if you are embarking on a new diet, or made a change in your exercise program or

level of physical activity. Maybe you are traveling and eating on the road, not getting those

good home-cooked meals. It could be you discovered a new diet in a book and want to

experiment with it, or you made a resolution to yourself on your birthday to lose a few extra

pounds.

Perhaps you joined a gym or took a job that demands more physical labor, you started

cycling or took up tennis. Anything that means a big shift in exercise or diet can change your

body chemistry and affect your blood sugar levels, and those are excellent times to be extra

vigilant when it comes to monitoring them.

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If You Take Supplements or Medications

Naturally, your body is going to respond differently if you start to take a dietary, vitamin,

mineral, or herbal supplement, or if you begin taking medication – particularly prescription

drugs. Whenever switching over to a supplement or medication, monitor your blood sugar

levels closely for the first month. If you later stop taking those same drugs or supplements,

do another round of close monitoring for a month, just in case the change has an adverse

impact that could potentially increase your overall blood sugar levels.

Do you take a regular pharmaceutical drug under the advice of a doctor? If the doctor

adjusts the dosage up or down, that’s another time when you need to keep an eye on those

critical blood sugar levels. While it may seem like a hassle to monitor your blood sugar extra

closely during these particularly vulnerable times, it’s better to err on the side of caution to

be safe.

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Chapter Four

Nutrition and Diabetes The holistic approach to diabetes also takes into account the most recent research on the

subject, which has given healthcare providers new insight into how to monitor and control

blood sugar and insulin levels. No longer do researchers simply focus only on how much

glucose or sugar you eat or what your glucose levels are (which are measured using a

convenient tool called the Glycemic Index).

While these levels are very important - which is why diet and exercise, and control of how

much sugary foods and drinks you consume is so crucial - today it is also understood how

much or how little insulin the body produces is really the key to controlling diabetes, and

managing weight to prevent obesity. In other words, focusing on glucose in the bloodstream

is necessary, but the insulin hormones produced in the body are even more influential in

terms of our health and vulnerability to diabetes.

The hormone insulin, for example, determines how much fat or muscle is developed in the

body. When a person is very active and is constantly burning up the carbs in their system -

are the main high-energy fuel that is used up when we exercise - the insulin helps convert

the glucose in the bloodstream into muscle.

If, on the other hand, glucose accumulates in the blood because it isn’t being burned up as

calories and fuel for activity, then that means insulin converts it into fat. That fat gets stored

in the body. Store too much of that fat, and all sorts of health problems associated with

being overweight can occur – including the devastating effects of diabetes.

The Holistic Approach

The word “holistic” essentially means “whole” or “comprehensive.” It comes from the

ancient Greek word “holos”, which means whole, and the holistic healthcare approach

doesn’t just focus on symptoms and how to treat them. It goes deeper to treat the root

causes of those unwanted symptoms. Holistic approaches are also not limited to just one

treatment path, but will combine multiple paths in order to achieve sustainable, well-

rounded outcomes for a longer, healthier, symptom-free life.

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With that in mind, there are a few areas of concentration regarding healthcare management

of diabetes, pre-diabetes, or avoidance of any diabetic threats to your health. We have

already talked a little about diet and exercise. We have also touched on the importance of a

regulated lifestyle, where you eat the same basic number of calories at the same

approximate times each day.

Why that matters is that your body can get used to routine. Your endocrine system and

pancreas will know how much insulin to produce and secrete into the bloodstream, and

they do so in such a steady way that you don’t have those big spikes in insulin levels that can

lead to the proverbial “sugar crash.”

Pay attention to what you put into your body. Stay active and get enough exercise, drink

plenty of water and avoid the sugary high-calorie sodas. When you are hungry – hopefully

from healthy exercise – eat a delicious, nutritious, intelligently-balanced diet that is rich in

beneficial vitamins and minerals. That’s the holistic way, and the key to success when it

comes to dealing with the threat of obesity and diabetes in a complete, comprehensive way.

Sugars Are Only Part of the Equation

For many years, experts and researchers in the healthcare community devoted most of their

attention to how much sugar was in each particular item of food, or how high it rated on the

glycemic index. Lately they have new information, though, that explains that it is not just

which foods we eat, but how we combine them, prepare them, and how much of them we

eat and at what frequency during the day that impacts insulin levels.

They also understand that since insulin is the real agent of influence in the body when it

comes to processing sugars, it is important to figure out what dietary components affect

insulin levels. If you can control levels of insulin with a healthier diet, that will automatically

help to combat diabetes. Research within recent years also reveals that while carbohydrate

and glucose intake is definitely a factor in diabetes prevention, it isn’t the whole story.

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Healthcare experts now know that only around 25% of the effect on insulin production

levels can be attributed to carbohydrates and other sugars.

Knowing that enables you to take a more holistic

view of diabetes prevention, one that also

addresses the other 75% of the principle causes

of insulin levels in the bloodstream. One way of

thinking about it is that if you understand that

sugars are only about one quarter of the issue,

that means that there are many more other

areas where you can improve your health to

avoid diabetic symptoms and problems. Looking

at that extra three quarters of the problem or extra 75% of the equation can empower you

with lots more proactive opportunities to fight diabetes, and lead a healthier lifestyle.

Holistic Analysis of What Foods Really Contain

What are some of those other areas of emphasis? Holistic insights include things such as the

value of fiber content and amino acids in our food, and whether or not the food is fresh and

wholesome or has been overly processed and filled with unhealthy chemical additives and

preservatives.

There are also other considerations that the holistic approach takes a closer look at to

become more precise about targeting blood sugar and insulin levels.

An individual may be on a healthy vegetarian diet, for instance, but are they

drinking so much fruit juice containing added fructose that their sugar intake is

sky-high?

Are they inadvertently getting extra servings of carbs through foods like oatmeal

or by eating something as seemingly healthy as rice cakes?

Are they getting sufficient calcium and healthy Omega 3 oils in their diet, for

stronger bones and reduced inflammation?

If you eat seafood in order to get those healthy oils in your body, are you also

careful not to eat the kinds of fish that contain dangerous levels of heavy metals

like mercury?

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Do you choose veggies that are grown organically, free of pesticides?

Are you eating meat and making the healthier choice when it comes to choosing

between free-range or grass-fed, versus factory-farmed animals that are loaded-

up with dangerous levels of growth hormones?

If you are careful to get your amino acids, which kinds are you eating, and in

what amounts? Red meat, for instance, are rich in branch-chain amino acids,

and those are great kinds of amino acids that help build strong bodies. But what

else is in that red meat, besides amino acids? Is it also saturated with fat, growth

hormones injected into animals, or shocking amounts of antibiotics that are

routinely given to livestock grown on big corporate agribusiness farms?

A holistic approach will uncover and avoid the hidden or more obscure ingredients that can

harm you and look for other more natural, and healthy sources of those same beneficial

amino acids and other essentials the body needs.

When you eat whole-grain bread, that’s much better than stuffing yourself with vitamin-,

nutrient-, and fiber-depleted processed white bread from a big factory somewhere. But do

you still check to make sure you aren’t getting an overload of sodium? Bakeries sometimes

use lots of salt when they make even whole-grain breads, and people are often shocked at

how much salt they get in a few slices of otherwise healthy bread. That salt intake can alter

your body’s chemistry and ultimately have an impact on your health that can contribute to

diabetes.

There are also good carbs and bad carbs. The good ones are complex, and your body uses its

insulin gradually to break them down into useful fuel. The bad carbs are the simple sugars.

They hit your stomach and trigger a huge spike that literally shocks your system and can

leave your bloodstream swimming in high levels of unwanted glucose. Your body reacts by

pushing those excess carbs into cells where they will be stored – perhaps for years – as

unhealthy fat that weighs you down and interferes with your ability to lead a healthy

lifestyle.

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Start the Day the Right Way

People often eat a quick and easy breakfast that

includes juices,, coffee, and breakfast foods like

pop-tarts, sweet rolls, and cold cereals - all of

which are filled with sugars and all sorts of

unwanted chemicals. Starting the day with a

heavy load of sugars, starches, and processed

foods is a terrible idea because it really throws

the body out of whack, and can cause a terrific

surge in insulin levels. From there it is an uphill

battle, and because that kind of breakfast

contains little real nutrition you’ll get hungry

sooner and start eating more to stave off the

hunger.

That increases the chances of eating other foods

that are not wholesome, like vending machine

snacks that you can grab on the run, and such a

lifestyle just increases your risk of diabetes and

obesity. Generally speaking it is best to eat a

good, healthy breakfast that will jump-start your

day with the substantial energy and nutrition the

body needs. Then if you eat small, frequent,

healthy snacks throughout the day you can

maintain steady blood sugar and insulin levels.

Eating a light lunch and moderate meal at the

end of the day instead of large meals that will weigh you down will round-out a healthy,

energetic eating schedule.

These are the kinds of things that holistic healthcare professionals examine to find ways to

help you get healthier and stay healthy, with increased levels of nutrition-fueled energy and

a stronger immune system to feel better, look better, and live better.

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Chapter Five

The Critical Importance of Healthy Insulin Levels The holistic way of preventing, managing, and treating diabetes is focused on not just

exclusively looking at blood sugar. It takes a broader approach that aims to control and

balance the level of insulin in your system. That’s because ultimately diabetes is not simply a

blood sugar condition, but is more specifically a condition related to hormones, namely

insulin secretions.

As we know, the standard treatment for diabetes has, for decades, been insulin injections.

That should tell us just how vital it is to control insulin and insulin-producing behaviors.

Those behaviors or habits include dietary considerations, exercise levels, and other

elements of your lifestyle that can impact health and determine whether or not you have

diabetic symptoms.

Cardiovascular Exercise

Exercise is a huge part of what influences

insulin levels in the body. That holds true

whether you are pre-diabetic, already dealing

with diabetic issues, or you have a family

history of diabetes. Everyone can gain

significant benefits in their effort to avoid,

eliminate, or manage diabetes symptoms if

they get sufficient exercise. That means

working out in a way that gets the heart rate up

in order to hit the aerobic level, which is where

the insulin in your body will be utilized to turn

glucose into useful energy. When you exercise

with intensity your body demands more fuel to

keep going – and that stimulates the conversion

of blood sugars into burnable calories to help eliminate excess sugars, preventing them from

being turned into stored fat.

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How do you know if you are pushing yourself to that aerobic level? Aerobic exercise is the

kind that uses air or oxygen to burn glucose and convert it into fuel for the body. Normally

the resting heart rate of an adult will be between 60 and 100 heartbeats, or pulse beats, per

minute, depending on how fit they are. To get that rate up to the zone where aerobic

intensity occurs, you have to increase it rather dramatically – while being careful that you

don’t overexert yourself

That’s where a formula recommended by the Mayo Clinic and other health experts comes in

really handy when it comes to hitting the desired cardio zone. Here’s how it works.

An easy way to calculate and estimate your cardio heart rate is to take your age and

subtract it from 220. That will give you the approximate number of beats per minute that

you may achieve during exercise. But you don’t want to sustain that high rate during your

entire workout, because it is only the peak or top rate you should hit. Instead you should

aim for around 75% of your maximum rate as the target rate for doing aerobic or cardio

exercise.

Here’s an example. If you are 50 years old, subtract 50 from 220 to estimate your maximum

rate. You’ll get a rate of 170. Now take 75% of that number. Since 75% of 170 is about 127,

that is your cardio rate, or the rate you want to maintain while doing those intense aerobic

exercises. But do keep in mind that all of this depends on your overall health and any unique

health conditions you may have. For that reason you should never start an exercise program

or set a cardio rate without first consulting your physician and getting their

recommendation.

Why Proper Nutrition Matters So Much

The body, and everything that occurs in it, are

directly tied to what we put into it, and the holistic

approach to dealing with diabetes is rooted in this

important premise. Put into your body problematic,

troublesome substances like processed food and

toxic chemical additives every time you get hungry,

and you are simply inviting disaster. But the opposite

happens if you feed your body’s cravings with potent

antioxidants, easier-to-process forms of healthy

protein, the right kinds of pure and natural oils,

mineral and nutrient-rich leafy greens, fresh

vegetables, and strength-giving legumes and whole

grains. Give your body what it requires, in other words, and it will give you back a more

vibrant and healthy life.

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Then, with all of those good and wholesome ingredients supplied to produce a powerful

immune system and ample energy, you can exercise with vigor in order to engage the

systems of the body at the aerobic level.

The great thing about aerobic exercise is that even hours after your workout is finished, the

body continues to maintain a higher rate of metabolism or conversation of glucose into

natural fuel. That will automatically balance out your hormones, burn up those calories, and

keep pulling potentially harmful blood sugars out of your bloodstream and converting them

into energy and muscle fiber, instead of creating unwanted lethargy, stored fat, and disease.

Eat synthetic chemical additives in processed, factory-prepared foods and your body will

detect that not as real food and nutrition, but as strange foreign substances and perceive

them as a threat. Your immune system will work overtime to defend against it, and your

endocrine system will be totally stressed and strained, flooding your body with unhealthy

levels of hormones, such as insulin, that will create all the unwanted symptoms we associate

with diseases like diabetes.

Detoxify your diet and you will automatically help to detoxify your body. Good food, fresh

clean water, and all the building blocks of a healthy mind and body will be in every meal and

every snack that you eat throughout each day. You’ll grow stronger with each meal, not

weaker or more obese and diabetic. When you do that, you allow your body to function as it

should – and that includes normalized insulin levels that are the hallmark of a person who

does not have to live in constant stress and fear of the devastating effects of diabetes.

The All-Important Insulin Balance

The endocrine system is the body’s critical

chemistry laboratory – where life-giving

chemicals such as insulin are produced and then

released into the body and the brain. When it

comes to diabetes, insulin is the most important

of these chemicals, because it is vital to convert

those foods that contain energy into fuel by

breaking them down into glucose. While

traditional medicine looks at diabetes and

primarily sees a disease related to blood sugar,

the holistic view is more panoramic and also

considers the role of insulin.

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What triggers insulin production from the endocrine system in the first place? That insulin

produced in the pancreas – and its release into the bloodstream – is stimulated by the

introduction of sugars, in whatever form we ingest them. You want to monitor, regulate,

and keep your insulin levels balanced in order to avoid the ill effects of diabetes – and that

means regulating whatever is happening inside the body that causes insulin levels to spike.

Similarly, you have to monitor what goes into the body and what you do with it in terms of

exercise to ensure that there is sufficient insulin so that you do not have to artificially

support the pancreas and endocrine system with insulin injections. That could mean limiting

anything from sugary sodas and too much alcohol to processed foods, tobacco products

(and the hundreds of additives in those) or pharmaceutical medicines - that are so often

overprescribed by medical practitioners, who take too narrow and dogmatic a view of how

to approach healthcare.

Other Hormonal Considerations

So it all comes back to how what we do, what we eat, what we drink, how active we are,

and how we deal with stress in our lives, so that our endocrine system is healthy and is not

being overly taxed by chronic and inordinate demands on it. Taking the holistic view opens

up a whole new perspective that encompasses more than just blood sugar levels, but also

reveals the key impact of hormones on the potential for diabetes.

There are, for instance, other hormones in the body that can influence insulin levels. Think

of insulin as the active agent that converts raw materials like dietary sugars into pure fuel, in

the form of burned calories. What if other active agents are also thrown into the blend?

That will change the effectiveness of that insulin, because it is not in a vacuum or isolated

environment.

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The insulin is just one of many other hormones that are interacting within the laboratory of

the body. There are hormones that do, indeed, have a significant kind of impact on insulin,

because they can affect the insulin receptors and the delicate balance of the endocrine

system. When those critical signals managed by receptors are not transmitted or received in

a clear way, insulin production can be accelerated in unwanted ways, or can be hampered

and restricted.

Two hormones that have the potential to trigger insulin imbalances are testosterone and

estrogen. Research confirms, for example, that the majority of men who suffer from

diabetes also have lowered levels of testosterone – and that is regardless of their age.

Women who have diabetes often have imbalances in these two powerful hormones – their

estrogen levels are much too low, whereas the amount of testosterone in their bodies is

exceptionally high. By considering the implications of these kinds of imbalances, it becomes

evident that hormones play a major role in diabetes. The more these hormone levels are

maladjusted, the greater the risk of diabetes. Adjust them to normal, healthy levels, and you

can fend off the symptoms.

The Impact of Stress and Stress Hormones

Then there are the kinds of hormones that produce a “fight or flight” reaction, and anyone

who has ever felt an adrenaline rush due to fear or excitement knows how potent these can

be. The body’s chemistry lab is extraordinary, and produces hormones that can numb pain,

cause accelerated heart rate, enable unusual feats of strength, or produce a natural high

and feelings of happiness and well-being.

Chemical hormones such as epinephrine or cortisol can be secreted into the blood by an

imbalance in the endocrine system, inducing tremendous amounts of stress. So it is easy to

see how that can directly affect your chances of contracting diabetes. Consider, if you will,

that the synthetic version of epinephrine that is sold in drugstores as a cold, flu, or allergy

medication is so strong that it is now legally controlled.

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Whereas you used to be able to stroll into a pharmacy and buy those rather tame

medications off the shelf, anything containing epinephrine is now kept behind the counter

where you have to sign for it, and show your identification card in order to buy it. But drug

traffickers now take these simple cold medications, extract the epinephrine chemicals from

them, and then turn them into dangerous and illegal methamphetamines.

Now, just imagine how much stress the naturally-occurring and more pure version of that

same drug, epinephrine, will do to your body if your hormonal system is out of whack and

producing too much of it. If this kind of chemical is so potentially stress-inducing that

governments regulate it, that just underscores the fact that you need to regulate its

production within your own body.

Keep it at appropriate levels that support your vigor and immune system, and it'll be a good

thing that can keep you healthy. You need to take the holistic steps necessary to keep it

from flooding your bloodstream due to some sort of hormonal imbalance to avoid the

vicious cycle of bad health and diabetic symptoms.

Stress Kills

There is a saying that “stress kills,” and despite medical and pharmacological intervention, if

your own body is producing these kinds of stress hormones, the negative effects of diabetes

are going to be more prevalent and have an adverse impact on your overall health that is far

greater. But there are things beyond excess blood sugar that will stress-out your body.

Excess weight puts an incredible amount of added pressure on the body. When you cannot

seem to shed the pounds, that’s going to add to your emotional and psychological stress.

Sleep plays a part as well. If you don’t get enough sleep you already know how stressful that

can be, and the average person simply does not get enough.

When people want to lose weight, they often reach for a weight loss pill or shift to some

radical new diet – which stresses the body and alters blood sugar levels even more. If you

cannot sleep, there are dozens of pharmaceutical sleep aids that promise to help with that.

You go to your doctor and complain of stress and anxiety and they want to prescribe

psychoactive drugs.

Soon you are trapped in a never-ending cycle of dependence on the very things that are

causing the hormonal and blood sugar imbalances in the first place. That’s no way to live,

and is definitely not an effective strategy for avoiding the complications of diabetes.

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What is the solution? Take a step back. Reevaluate what is going on from a holistic point of

view, get back to the basics of a healthy and stress-free life, and figure out ways to regulate

the natural processes of the body, because those are designed to keep you healthy and

restore your health if you are not feeling well, or are already suffering from symptoms of

diabetes.

That comes down to eating a healthy yet satisfying diet, getting an energy-boosting dose of

exercise each day, avoiding bad habits, and paying closer attention to what you put into

your body in order to keep that fine-tuned machinery working beautifully.

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Chapter Six

Weight Management for Diabetes Prevention Managing your weight is one of the most important aspects of a healthy lifestyle, because

carrying too much of it can lead to all kinds of conditions, including heart disease, stroke,

and – of particular interest to you since you are reading this book – diabetes. Weighing too

little, especially when the weight loss happens suddenly, can also be just as bad. But the

holistic approach is one of natural and sensible moderation that does not put extra stress

and strain on your body, your bodily organs, or your endocrine system.

The goal of the holistic weight management strategy is twofold. On the one hand you want

to make sure you eat a satisfying, healthy, nutritious diet that gives you all the vitamins,

minerals, and healthy sources of energy that you require to lead an active and illness-free

lifestyle. Secondly, this kind of weight management will include both diet as well as exercise,

and will help you accomplish the goal of losing any unwanted weight and that may be

adding to the risk of diabetes and other diseases.

Understanding Body Fat Storage

When your body doesn’t know what to do with excess sugars in your blood, insulin swings

into action and has two choices. It can transform those sugars into energy that you’ll turn

into muscle fiber, provided it is used during exercise. Or it will convert those sugars into a

form of fat that is suitable for long-term storage.

Many animals in the wilderness do this, for

instance, in order to save up fat that they can

later burn when food supplies are scarce and

the weather is cold. During times of scarcity,

their bodies take that stored fat, repurpose it

into burnable calories, and use it as an

emergency stash of survival energy. Most

people, fortunately, don’t have to worry

about that kind of survival in the wilderness,

but the risk is that if you eat foods high in

sugars or fats then the excess will still get

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stashed away. The only difference is that they won’t be used. They’ll just cause you to gain

extra weight that you do not need. Keep doing that repeatedly, month after month and year

after year, and you may find yourself with a life-threatening case of diabetes.

Recent research does show, however, that the cells in the body that store fat don’t just sit

there, inactive. They can actually release fat that they are holding back into the bloodstream

where it then has the opportunity to be eliminated or burned as calories – helping you to

lose unnecessary pounds. But you have to do your part to get that process going. You have

to eat wisely, get plenty of exercise, and get the right balance of vitamins, minerals, and

nutrients to support your body’s health.

Eating healthy Omega 3 oils is believed to help, for instance, as long as you don’t overdo it

and ingest too many fats and oils. Those contain vitamin D, too, and are excellent fighters of

inflammation – which can contribute to diabetes. Definitely eliminate the trans-fats and

other horribly unhealthy oils and fats from your diet, and cut down on the amount of animal

products you eat that may be too heavy in fats. Those include everything from fried chicken

and bacon to cheeses and whole milk.

But don’t fall for the generalization that fats and oils are all bad for you, because that’s

absolutely false. The body requires a certain amount of oil and fat, and if you don’t get that

small amount you cannot maintain your health and probably won’t survive. So seek your

healthy dose of that from substances like olive oil and healthy fish oil.

Watching Your Diet But Eating Great Food

When you carry around too much weight, you increase your risk of diabetes and set up

yourself for other serious problems. But when you lose that weight you automatically help

to reduce the threat of diabetes and to mitigate symptoms that may already be bothering

you. The holistic approach aims at that positive outcome, and a cornerstone of such an

approach is paying a great deal more attention to exactly what is in the foods that you eat.

The majority of people in this day and age

don’t make their meals and between-meal

snacks from scratch. They don’t usually eat

fresh, natural, nutritious fruits and vegetables

that have not been processed or treated with

chemicals and pesticides. When you aren’t

involved in preparing your own food, you

don’t necessarily know what is in it. That’s

why it is such a smart habit to always read the

food and nutrition labels that detail the

ingredients in packaged foods and beverages.

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Remember that in the list of ingredients, they are ordered based on how much of them is in

each serving. So the first two ingredients named on the list, for example, represent the two

main ingredients in that particular food or drink. If the first or second ingredient is some

form of sugar or glucose or corn syrup, then the food or drink is mostly made up of those

things – which are going to elevate your blood sugar.

There are also lots of additives put into food just to make it taste better, mask its taste, or

keep it from going bad on the shelf of the supermarket. Those have nothing to do with

nutritional value, they are just there to help market and sell the products. If you see words

that are too long and complicated and scientific-sounding, beware. They may be unwanted

chemical additives. The best practice is to avoid eating anything that has ingredients in it

that you don’t understand, because chances are there is a healthier alternative.

Watch out for hidden carbs, too. Many people don’t realize, for instance, how much sugar

there is in a glass of natural orange juice – but it is a very high percentage. That doesn’t

mean orange juice is bad for you, but it just means you have to be aware of what sugars and

carbs are present in your diet so that you don’t accidentally lose track and overdo it.

Sometimes it may be a good idea to dilute fresh fruit juices like orange, apple, pear, or

pineapple juice with some water. That way you still enjoy the flavor of the juice, but you

don’t drink as many of the sugars in those juices – which can be quite concentrated.

Healthy dietary pillars like eggs and oatmeal can have lots of carbs, too, as can whole-grains

such as brown rice or whole wheat. Cheeses can load you up with protein, but can also

overwhelm your system with added carbs. Track your carb intake, so that eating small

amounts of carbohydrates that may be disguised in some foods doesn’t accumulate into a

very large daily consumption of total carbs. Just keep an eye out for camouflaged carbs that

can sneak into your diet, and if you aren’t sure about a particular food or ingredient, then

always consult your doctor or a nutritionist.

Eating well, avoiding packaged and processed foods, eating organic foods when possible,

and drinking lots of clean, fresh water is the foundation of a healthy, holistic diet. Combine

that with regular exercise and you will be well ahead of the game in terms of diabetes

prevention through healthy weight management.

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Chapter Seven

Controlling an Unhealthy Sweet Tooth Whether you call it an addiction, a craving, or just a sweet tooth, a constant yearning for

sweets can be really hard to overcome. But having it means that you will be in a continual

battle against the urge to eat something that has sugar in it – in one form or another. In fact,

most of the traditional or common and popular sweets or desserts don’t just have one sugar

ingredient; they deliver multiple sugars to your bloodstream for a terrific jolt that is really

going to increase the demand for insulin. They also oftentimes contain lots of other

additives and chemicals that are bad for you, and can make it harder for your body to fight

diabetes.

Multiple Unhealthy Ingredients in a Single Serving

Take carbonated sugary sodas, for instance. They usually contain loads of sugars. But they

also typically contain all sorts of other artificial ingredients that will upset your body’s

chemistry. Some contain artificial food colorings. All of them are carbonated, and most of

them are fizzed-up with phosphoric acid – which is definitely not something your body

needs.

The acidity in sodas is so strong, for example, that you can pour Coke or Pepsi over a

corroded car battery terminal to clean off the rust and corrosion. If you drop a bone into a

bottle of soda and leave it long enough the bone will disintegrate. Put a tarnished penny

into a glass of this kind of acidic soda and the acids will polish it. Now just imagine what

those additional ingredients do to the delicate insides of your body, while also causing an

unhealthy blood sugar spike.

These sodas also have jolts of caffeine most of the time that can disrupt your sleep – which

therefore disrupts your endocrine system and leads to other problems related to sleep

deprivation. Corn syrup, which is incredible high in sugars, is a main ingredient in many

sodas, and they may also contain chemicals such as propylene glycol. That chemical

suspends the fatty acids that are in the drink, which is why soda companies use it. But

propylene glycol is also a chemical used in various industries like the automotive industry,

for example, where it is a key ingredient in engine and radiator antifreeze.

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Those are not exactly the kinds of ingredients your body needs to help it fight diabetes, so

it’s not just the sugars that you have to worry about. A slice of cake, a cookie or pie will

likely contain hard-to-digest oils like trans fats, palm oil, or cottonseed oil that can add to

the amount of oils and fats you ingest.

Then there are all the preservatives that keep those baked goods tasting fresh for months

after they are baked. There can also be extraordinary amounts of salt in these foods, but

you may not realize it because the salty taste is hidden behind layer upon layer of simple

sugars that do a great deal of damage to your defenses against diabetes. You ingest them

and put a strain on your digestive system, endocrine system, immune system, making you

more susceptible to diabetes.

Quit Sweets and You Multiply the Health Benefits

These are harsh facts for some people to learn. But they help to illuminate just how

widespread the problem of bad diet is in today’s society – and why diabetes and conditions

like obesity are so common. Our food supply, which mostly comes through big processing

plants and factories, is filled with chemicals and unhealthy additives that you may not even

be aware of, but which you eat all the time. Knowing more about these topics will help

motivate you to cut down or eliminate sugars from your diet.

Kick one habit and you simultaneously get rid of so many other unwanted items that are

hidden in the bad foods we eat. That’s a good thing, and it takes advantage of the multiplier

effect by multiplying the benefits you derive by just taking one bold, wise step toward

cutting back on sweets. Quitting sugar is often easier said than done, but there are holistic

insights that can help make it less of a challenge. Once you know how the human urge for

sweets works, it will be simple to take steps to rid yourself of it and unplug that constant

craving – in a way that you will be better equipped to sustain for the long haul. Let’s have a

closer and more holistic look at the psychology and chemistry behind sugar cravings.

Sugar and the Pleasure Principle

The reason sugar cravings are so hard to eliminate

is that they are very deeply connected with the

pleasure centers of the brain. When you taste

something sweet and get pleasure from that, it's

thanks to electrical impulses within those pleasure

centers, and your endocrine system is alerted,

flooding the brain with “feel-good” hormones.

These hormones, which include pleasure-based

chemicals such as dopamine and natural opiates,

can have a sublime and intoxicating effect on you.

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Humans love pleasure, and if they can acquire it by just chomping down on a cookie, adding

a little sugar to a coffee drink, or grabbing a candy bar during a busy day, then sugar

addiction becomes very easy.

The allure of sweets is legendary. How many times have you heard or read a story that

describes the lengths that a bear will go to in order to eat some honey? Those animals will

endure hundreds of bee stings to get that taste. Children are also notoriously mischievous

when it comes to raiding the cookie jar or stealing a slice of pie. Why else do parents let

them eat sweets found in their Halloween baskets, their Christmas stockings, or go to the

trouble to bake them birthday cakes? If a kid is having a bad day, an ice cream cone can turn

that around instantly. Sweets are cause for celebration, and it is a natural inclination to

crave them – which is why it can be so hard to resist them.

Comfort Food Connections

There is also a powerful connection between childhood cravings and adult cravings, which is

why some foods in our diet are referred to as “comfort foods.” If you got a sweet treat to

cheer you up when you were a little child, eating a sweet as an adult not only tastes good,

but it also triggers nice, happy memories of childhood. That’s powerful, and it is why most

people already have a sweet tooth by the time they reach adulthood. If you are down in the

dumps it may make you feel better – at least temporarily – if you grab a spoon and a

container of ice cream.

In the frontier days of the United States, for example, as settlers from Europe began to

carve out new homesteads in the rough wilderness, apple cultivation became very popular.

That’s because growing and harvesting apples in a climate like that of North America is

relatively easy – especially compared to farming, harvesting, and processing sugarcane.

Producing sugarcane can be brutal, but planting apple trees is easy. But apples contain

relatively high levels of natural fructose or sugar. So those early settlers who craved

something sweet and comforting in the wild frontier found that they could grow apples

everywhere, and use those as a sugar substitute. They could make sweet cider, jams and

jellies, and apple tarts and pies.

When there was a sugar shortage in America in the 20th century, farmers figured out that

beets are a great source of sweetness, and that launched a huge sugar beet industry. Today

beet sugars are used all over the world, in all kinds of foods.

The point is that even under difficult circumstances, humans tend to figure out ways to find

something pleasantly sweet to eat, not for nutrition but just for pure pleasure. Whether

that comes from sorghum molasses, cane sugar, sugar beets, or fruits like apples, dates, and

figs, the principle is the same. People love sweets, and are hard-wired to include them in

their diets, even when they may not be a healthy and nutritious component.

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So when you attempt to kick the sugar habit, keep in mind that you are up against some

deeply-engrained human instincts, and a powerful neurological and physiological wiring

system in the brain – specifically the part of the brain that seeks instant gratification. You

could say that craving sweets is embedded in our DNA. But since too much blood sugar and

elevated insulin levels can cause potentially deadly diabetes, we have to figure out how to

derive that sweet pleasure in healthier ways. That’s possible, and millions of people who are

pre-diabetic were able to dial back that threat just by kicking the sugar habit, and replacing

it with something better.

The Sugar and Stress Relationship

You’ve probably heard the term “emotional eating”, which refers to people who eat not

because they are actually hungry or in need of nutrition, but because eating food cheers

them up. That explains why in many cultures around the world people who are distressed

eat comfort foods such as sweets. If you attend a funeral, memorial service, or a traditional

wake that is observed after a loved one dies, there will probably be lots of cakes, pies,

cookies, and other sweets served to those in attendance. That is because sweets give us

pleasure through the taste buds, stimulating secretion of feel-good hormones in the brain.

The immediate outcome is that just by eating desserts we can feel a little better, almost

magically (at least until the sugar crash hits). It’s medicine in a way, and it pacifies us or

relieves pain by giving us a much-needed shot of pleasure. Thus, as the famous song says “a

spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

The only problem is that the spoonful of sugar also makes the blood sugar levels go up, and

can lead to diabetes. So you need tactics to control emotional eating. Whenever you are

stressed out or down in the dumps, you are going to be more inclined toward emotional

eating. You may crave things like sugary snacks that don’t do anything to improve your

diabetic health. They just feel good, at least for a short amount of time.

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You may be angry or upset with a friend, for instance, and that may have triggered the

release of adrenaline or cortisol in your endocrine system – and those chemicals make you

feel tense, angry, and edgy. Eating something loaded with sugar takes that edge off so you

feel like smiling again.

The problem with that, of course, it that it also means that another hormone is released –

namely, insulin. Your blood sugar spikes, and so does your body’s craving for insulin to

process all that added sugar that just got unloaded into your system.

Ultimately, your emotional eating or eating of unnecessary sweets has an adverse impact

and backfires by opening the door for you to store more fats, gain more unwanted weight,

and worsen diabetic or pre-diabetic symptoms. Your dependency upon sweets will

eventually turn into a dependency upon pharmaceuticals, too, such as insulin injections. You

will constantly have to monitor your blood sugar and make extra visits to the doctor that

cost time and money.

How to Unplug the Cravings

One of the interesting things about sweets is that they are not all the same. Some are mild,

others have medium sweetness, and then there are some that are so sweet that they can

almost be too sweet to enjoy. Pure white sugar is extremely sweet. But a ripe banana, which

is a whole lot better for you and also contains wonderful nutrients like potassium, is also

very sweet. The key is to switch over from those intensely unhealthy sweets, and develop a

new taste for the ones that are not so toxic.

The taste of sweetness is a matter of individual perception, because as we established

earlier it is not just about food—it’s about pleasure. In many ways the taste happens in the

mind, not just the tongue. Each of us experiences varying degrees of pleasure. The trick to

controlling your cravings is to gradually dial-down the intensity of that sweet taste on the

tongue, without sacrificing the enjoyment that is experienced in the mind or emotions.

The Mayo Clinic recommends a two-week plan to reduce or eliminate sugar cravings,

starting with foods that don’t contain more than 5 grams of sugar or any artificial

sweeteners, which are just another kind of toxic processed ingredient you don’t need in

your diet. Boost the number of fruits you eat during that period of time, whether those are

fresh, dried, or frozen, and enjoy them with some low-fat yogurt, or in a smoothie with an

extra dose of protein.

Inspire and motivate yourself by remembering that a single sugary soft drink contains

around 10 or 12 teaspoons of sugar, and that artificial sweeteners just increase cravings

because they can be 1,000s of times sweeter than ordinary sugar. After two weeks you will

notice that fruits are really sweet on their own, and that you don’t need those straight

sugars, sugary drinks or desserts in order to get the same taste.

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This works. Just as you can get hooked on sugars because of how they take control of your

endocrine system and the neurological pathways that connect eating sweets with

experiencing more primal pleasures, you can use the same phenomenon to reverse that

cycle. You can cleanse your body of those high levels of harmful sugars and the cravings that

go with them.

Once you go through that kind of detoxification process, and drink lots of clean, fresh water,

you can literally wash the sugar out and make those taste bud cravings – and the

neurological or hormone-based cravings – calm down and subside. It’s kind of like weaning

yourself off of caffeine or kicking the nicotine habit, except it’s actually much easier.

Why is it easier? With those other substances you pretty much have to stop them

completely. That’s especially true with tobacco. If you smoke, even a little bit, the addiction

comes roaring back. So you are forced to quit “cold turkey”, and never use tobacco again.

But giving up sugar is a more lenient process because you can find good substitutes for

nasty processed sugar. You can still have your pleasure, without the risk of diabetes.

When it is time to kick the sweet tooth, you just kick the habit of eating too much sugar and

the wrong kinds of sweets. But you don’t have to give up the pleasure of eating things that

taste deliciously and satisfyingly sweet. The key is to stop eating all sugar for a period of

about 20-30 days, until the cravings subside. Once that happens, the addictive nature of

that habit will change because those intense connections between your over-stimulated

taste buds and the receptors in your brain that trigger releases of powerful chemicals – like

dopamine – will be unplugged.

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Then you can reset them, deriving your pleasure from eating sweets that are not nearly as

bad for you as sugar. Many people who stop eating sugar long enough to get that urge out

of their system report that fresh fruits can taste incredibly sweet. They no longer need to

add extra sugar in order to enhance the sweetness of a fruit smoothie or a pie made from

fruit. People accustomed to adding sugar to recipes for cornbread realize that without it, the

natural sweetness of the corn comes through in a satisfying way. Those who used to add

sugar to pasta sauce no longer need to, and people who used to grab a candy bar found it

was just as satisfying, easy and much healthier to grab an energy bar made with natural fruit

sweeteners instead.

Vitamins, and Minerals that Help Curb Sugar Cravings

Since the root of the problem is deep down in the chemistry of your body, there are natural

minerals and vitamins that can also help make it easier for you to transition away from

unhealthy sugars to a more holistic diet and lifestyle.

These include L-glutamine, an amino acid that many people believe can reduce sugar

cravings, while boosting the immune system and helping your body generate more muscle

fiber instead of stored fat. B-vitamins are another great anti-sugar supplement. They are

important for the healthy functioning of the body and the brain, and they assist with the

breakdown of carbs so that your body can use them as fuel.

Similarly, the mineral zinc, which is found in many whole grains, also helps the body turn

blood sugar into energy and curb sugar cravings. Meanwhile, L-DOPA is another naturally-

occurring chemical that is related to the amino acid L-tyrosine, and L-DOPA can be taken to

help maintain healthy dopamine levels. So getting enough L-DOPA can help ensure you have

plenty of “feel good” hormones in your body.

Eat lots of green, leafy vegetables like kale to simultaneously boost your magnesium levels,

which also aid in the processing of blood sugar and acceleration of metabolism. Almonds

and cashews also help with this. When your metabolic rate rises you burn more carbs as

energy, you torch the fat that will otherwise accumulate in your body, and you feel much

more energetic all throughout the day.

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Overcoming Emotional Eating

But what about those emotional eating binges and

cravings that are driven not by hunger or taste, but

by psychological triggers? Many people have a love-

hate relationship with food because they love to eat,

but hate to gain unwanted weight, or they love

sweets, but hate how those blood sugar spikes leave

them feeling afterward. These mental and emotional

battles can usually be traced directly to a type of

stress. The emotional eating is just a symptom

brought on by stress. So if you relieve yourself of the

unhealthy levels of stress in your life, the need to eat

things that are ultimately going to make you feel

worse will automatically and naturally go away.

What are some of the holistic ways to identify sources of stress and unplug them from your

life to stop that cycle of emotional eating?

As easy and simple as it may sounds, getting a little extra sleep is one of the most effective

strategies. That works so well because when we do not get enough restful, deep sleep the

mind does not have sufficient opportunity to relax and unwind. The body doesn’t have the

time it needs to heal, repair and rejuvenate. The hormones that help us to rest and sleep

don’t get a chance to do their job, whereas hormones like cortisol – which many healthcare

professionals refer to as the stress hormone – are going to be at higher levels.

You’re going to go to bed stressed, sleep too lightly to really rest and recuperate from your

day’s activities, then you’re going to wake up stressed, and the pattern repeats itself.

Instead of feeling good thanks to beneficial hormones, your bloodstream will be saturated

with stress hormones. The more frequently you experience insulin spikes, the more stressed

you’ll be. The more stress you have, the more cortisol will be released.

These hormonal cycles will literally age you faster than normal, and will accelerate the

symptoms of diseases like diabetes. But control your diet and your stress and you will regain

control of your life and health. Get a good night’s sleep and cut down on those cortisol

spikes that stress you out so badly.

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Techniques for Getting More Rest

You don’t have to overhaul your entire life just to get a good night’s sleep, though, and you

don’t need to take sleeping pills that only mask the symptoms of stress. All you need to do is

get to bed a little earlier so that you can sleep a little more. Instead of planning on using the

snooze alarm to squeeze in an extra 20 minutes of sleep, skip the snooze button and just get

to sleep 20 or 30 minutes sooner each night.

That may mean turning off the TV or computer gadgets a little earlier, but oftentimes the

only reason you are still plugged into them late at night is because your day was not nearly

as focused and productive. When you are too tired and stressed you cannot get things done

as efficiently, so you work later into the night. Get a better night’s rest and you’ll be more

effective, so that you don’t have to bring so much work home with you, which will allow you

to unwind at night.

When you sleep better the cortisol levels subside, and so does your stress. Naturally, your

stress-triggered need to eat subsides. You feel calmer and will make more deliberate and

intelligent choices, especially when it’s time to eat or have something to drink. You’ll no

longer be driven by emotional cravings for unhealthy foods and drinks. You’ll be able to sit

and really enjoy everything you eat without having to worry about gaining weight or spiking

your blood sugar.

As you move away from the harsh processed sugars, and begin to derive just as much

pleasure from eating naturally sweet fruits and more complex sugars that come from

healthy carbs, your whole outlook will change. Your health will improve, you’ll have more

energy, and you’ll no longer have mood swings related to hormonal and blood sugar

imbalances.

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Chapter Eight

Antioxidants to Fight Diabetes The process of converting blood sugar into useful energy or metabolizing nutrients in order

to give our body a constant and steady supply of fuel is, in some ways, like running an

engine. In an automobile, for instance, the engine combines fuel and oxygen with a spark.

That sets off a series of small, intentional, controlled explosions inside the engine. Those

explosions produce enough compressed power to move the pistons up and down, and that

energy is ultimately transferred through the gears of the car and eventually to the wheels –

causing them to turn so that the vehicle moves.

Similarly, inside the body at a cellular level there is also combustion going on, as the

electrical signals spark across synaptic pathways within the neurological system and the

glucose in the body is converted into caloric energy. When those calories are burned, it

supplies us with the power to flex our muscles and be active. Then we get hungry and

thirsty, need more nutrition, water, and oxygen, and that keeps the system going – kind of

like how we keep supplying our vehicle with the fuel it needs to keep it going.

Role of Free Radicals

But our physiological processes are similar to a combustion engine in another important

way. All of that cellular action produces, at a very significant atomic level, oxidation. When

you breathe in, your lungs fill with oxygen, it passes into the blood, it then carries that

oxygen throughout your body, and that oxygen acts as part of the vital fuel that is burned

when you need energy.

Within this atomic-level process atoms known as “free radicals” – which are highly reactive

– help to make this whole complicated conversion of nutrients into caloric energy possible.

When you do aerobic exercise, for example, the accelerated combustion of cellular energy

triggers the quick release of lots of these free radical atoms.

The reason that this scientific process is important to understand when you are trying to

combat diabetes is that if your body has an excess number of free radicals in it, that can

contribute to diabetes, heart disease, and similar degenerative illnesses.

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Free radicals aren’t bad, as many people mistakenly assume. They are a natural part of the

body’s chemical reactions to keep us alive and healthy. But too much of a good thing can be

bad for us, and when you have too many free radicals bouncing around inside the cells of

your body it is a threat to your health. Excess supplies of free radicals produce harmful

oxidation that can damage the walls of your cells as well as weaken cells from the inside.

This is known as oxidative stress, and it can interfere with the efficient metabolism of blood

sugars.

How to Control Excess Accumulation of Free Radicals

To control the amount of free radicals, or body-stressing oxidants that can become a very

serious threat to your health, you need enzymes called antioxidants. As their name

suggests, they help to eliminate unwanted, excessive oxidants in the body and it's cellular

structures. Get a healthy amount of antioxidants in a holistic diet and you no longer have to

worry about the risk that oxidants or free radicals pose. The amount of these oxidants your

body needs will be maintained, but you will no longer accumulate more than you need.

As with the whole approach to holistic healthcare and diabetes treatment, it comes back to

balance. Your body will have exactly the right balance or oxidants – not too many and not

too few – so that your physiological processes will work as they should, like a finely-tuned

energy production machine.

Where do you get these valuable antioxidants – sometimes referred to as Phase 2

Antioxidants – so that you can make sure they are included in your diet? Luckily, they are

everywhere. Green tea is loaded with antioxidants, and so are blueberries. If you aren’t fond

of the taste of green tea, consider hiding it inside a tasty smoothie made with berries and

bananas. When blueberries aren’t in season, you can buy them dehydrated or frozen. The

frozen ones are great for smoothies, and the dried ones are handy as a midday snack.

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Researchers also tout the valuable and easily available antioxidant benefits of vegetables

like Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and broccoli. Another source that is often recommended

by holistic doctors is wild-caught fish that is high in Omega-3 fatty oils, which also help

reduce the inflammation associated with heart disease. Another way is to eat strawberries –

which provide that sweet taste everyone craves, plus natural fiber and vitamins.

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Chapter Nine

The Holistic Diabetes Diet Diet is the cornerstone of the holistic approach to diabetes prevention, or management of

already-present diabetic symptoms. You cannot underestimate the importance of diet to

your overall health, and if you are worried about diabetes then be aware that it is, in many

ways, the key to healing yourself and overcoming that challenge. That’s why this chapter is

devoted to showing you some simple insight and ways to develop a diet that will not only

help you combat diabetes, but will also give you sustainable energy and a longer, happier,

more productive life.

BREAKFAST

The foundation of any diet is that first meal of the day - breakfast. The introduction to this

section is much longer and more comprehensive than the sections on lunch, dinner, and

snacks, and that is because breakfast – although viewed by many people as less important

and even a meal you can skip – is, in fact, the most important meal of all. You should never

skip breakfast, because by doing so you will miss out on one of the best and simplest

strategies in the holistic approach to combating diabetes.

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Why is breakfast so important? After sleeping overnight, the body needs to wake up in a

healthy, vibrant way. The metabolism needs to get going again, after the hours of sleep that

has let the organs of the body rest and rejuvenate. If you don’t give your metabolism an

energetic kick-start, then it will be lethargic and that will mean that you begin your day not

burning calories to create useful energy, but by accumulating unused blood sugar. That

extra blood sugar will likely wind up as stored fat.

Eating a nutritious breakfast has the opposite effect. You start each day by burning lots of

calories, and that gives you a powerful supply of energy that can sustain you for longer.

With that kind of healthy foundation, you won’t get as hungry later in the day. Because you

are loading up on nutrition early, the body already has the bulk of what it needs.

Instead of continuing to eat more heavy meals or being hungry throughout the day, you

instead satisfy many of the body’s needs and cravings before the day gets underway. That

means that you have the whole rest of the day to actively burn the calories that you get

from that wholesome, well-rounded breakfast. Doing so gives you all that extra time to

allow whatever blood sugars are in your system to be converted into beneficial energy and

muscle fiber.

When people skip breakfast, or eat a breakfast that contains very little substantial nutrition,

and instead consists mostly of empty calories made from simple carbs and sugars, they get

an immediate spike in their blood sugar. But they don’t get really useful energy, so when

they try to exercise they feel weak and get hungry very quickly. They begin the day already

trying to catch-up, and meanwhile those blood sugars are accumulating and being stored

away as fat.

Oftentimes, especially for people who don’t get adequate nutrition from a holistic diet of

healthy legumes, whole grains, fresh fruits, and lots of vegetables, the hunger pangs

continue to persist throughout the day. Then they wind up feeling really depleted by the

evening, and may be more inclined to eat the biggest meal of the day at night, close to when

they go to bed.

When you do that the body is forced to try to muster lots of energy to help you digest all of

that food, just as you are getting ready to go to sleep – the time when your digestive system

should be completely rested and rather inactive.

The result is that your body has to continue to work throughout the night, and that creates

interrupted sleep patterns. You don’t sleep well, you don’t digest your food properly, and

you don’t want to wake up in the morning because you still feel tired, heavy, and bloated.

As the day begins, you are also more inclined to skip breakfast – since you had a huge meal

the night before.

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You start on an empty stomach, without any energy reserves, and your whole day goes

downhill from there until you repeat the same unhealthy pattern. Every day your body

suffers from a roller coaster ride of blood sugar spikes, followed by insulin surges, feelings of

tiredness and even headaches. Meanwhile the body, not knowing how to process those

sugars, just keeps storing them away as fat. Without the energy you need to stay active and

exercise, you just keep gaining weight and heading toward a life plagued by more symptoms

of diabetes.

The good news is that there is a different way

to live. Research confirms that when you get

most of your nutrients and calories at the start

of the day, and then eat about half that many

calories at lunch and again at dinner, you avoid

weight gain and have healthier levels of blood

sugar and insulin. If your diet normally consists

of 1800 calories, for example, then eating 300

calories at breakfast, 400 at lunch, and 1100 in

the evening for dinner will work against you,

creating lots of unnecessary problems and

health issues. But if you flip that equation and

consume a breakfast that contains 900-1100 calories, follow that with a light lunch of about

400-500 calories, and then top off your day with a small dinner that has 300-400 calories,

you will feel better and do a much better job of avoiding diabetic complications and weight

gain.

One recommended component of a healthy breakfast is protein, because when your body

starts the day with that – from foods like eggs, chick peas, beans, and other legumes – you

can exercise with intensity, and be able to use it and the amino acids needed to build strong,

lean muscle. So go easy on the carbs at breakfast, instead opting for more protein-rich

foods.

It’s also healthy to get a good morning dose of healthy oils from olive oil, almonds or

almond butter, fish, or a high-quality Omega-3 supplement. The result will be balanced

blood sugar and insulin levels, plus plenty of energy to get you through the day – without

the nagging hunger pangs.

You should also get your daily exercise session in after breakfast, if possible, when you’ll

have a chance to start revving up your metabolism, and burn more calories. Scientific

studies show that when you do intense cardio activity, your metabolism is accelerated and

can stay in that boosted state for hours after your exercise session ends. That means that if

you get that kind of exercise earlier in the day, your metabolism will be stay elevated –

burning up blood sugar and creating muscle and energy – for a sustained period of time.

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Exercising like that late in the day, on the other hand, can wake the body (and your

metabolism) up, just when you really need to be winding things down and letting those

functions relax. So keep in mind that exercise is always good, but if you do it late in the day,

it may make it harder for your body to get to sleep and for you to get the kind of rest you

need.

3 Breakfast Meal Plans

#1 Hearty Egg White Omelet

Make your omelet with sliced/diced fresh tomatoes, fresh basil, and sliced mushrooms. Salt to taste using low-sodium soy sauce.

Serve with a slice of whole wheat bread – toasted and brushed with olive oil for flavor.

Half of a fresh grapefruit, apple, or peach.

1/2 cup of skim milk or cup of hot tea with lemon and sweetened with Stevia (a sweetener that is safe for diabetics).

#2 Yummy Oat Breakfast

1/2 cup of hot oatmeal with skim milk, blueberries, and sweetened with Stevia.

1/4 cup of raw unsalted almonds or walnuts.

1/4 cup cantaloupe or strawberries in ½ cup low-fat cottage cheese or low-fat Greek yogurt.

1/2 cup of skim milk or cup of hot tea with lemon and sweetened with Stevia.

#3 Scrambled Eggs & Healthy Sausage

Scramble egg whites, and season with low-sodium salt and fresh-ground black pepper or hot sauce.

Fry turkey sausage patties or soy-based vegetarian sausage patties in 1 tablespoon of olive oil.

Serve the eggs and faux sausage with a whole wheat English muffin or whole wheat toast.

Half of a sliced fresh pear or apple.

1/2 cup of skim milk or cup of hot tea with lemon and sweetened with Stevia.

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LUNCH

If breakfast is the launching pad for a healthy day, lunch represents the booster rocket that

keeps you going once that initial dose of energy begins to wear off, and the hunger pangs

start to nag at you. Rather than thinking of lunch as a large square meal in the traditional

sense, consider it more of a really robust snack. That will help you understand that it’s not a

time to overeat, but it is an opportunity to recharge your batteries with a solid meal that is

rich in vitamins, minerals, and the right balance of protein, carbs, and healthy fats or oils.

You are probably on the move and on the go when lunchtime rolls around, anyway, and

most people don’t have time to prepare a big meal and then sit down and linger through

several courses. Instead, lunch is about curbing your appetite while also giving you the

energy needed to sustain your workday – while avoiding that terrible post-meal blood sugar

crash that so many people suffer. When you eat too many of the wrong foods at lunch, just

as a matter of quick convenience, you wind up paying for it in the middle of the afternoon

when the blood sugar spike leaves you feeling drained, out of focus, and in desperate need

of nap.

To counteract that after-lunch drowsiness, many people grab an energy drink or diet soda to

get a caffeine jolt that will help them over the hump. But that’s a terrible idea because those

drinks are loaded with artificial sweeteners or processed sugars, which are horrible for your

health. Just as bad is that they are full of chemical additives that do your body absolutely no

good because they are not natural or nutritious, and are only designed to trick the body or

preserve the beverage for a longer shelf life.

Skip all of those drinks and remove them from your diet entirely, and instead stick to a

holistic program. Oftentimes drinking 16 ounces of fresh, clean water will wake you up

better, because it gives your body what it needs to process digestion. Add some fresh lemon

or lime to make it taste better, and that also helps balances your electrolytes.

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If you need caffeine to make it through the afternoon, have a cup of tea, sweetened with a

small amount of Stevia. That particular sweetener is made from a plant and doesn’t cause

blood sugar spikes. Or drink it without sweetener, and add lemon.

The same goes for coffee. If you want to drink it, train your taste buds to take it without

sweeteners, if you can – but go ahead and add some soy milk or skim milk for taste. You’ll

be happier and healthier in the long run. But if that’s too austere, avoid white sugar, raw

sugar, and artificial sweeteners made from strange chemicals like aspartame. Even agave

and honey can trigger high blood sugar. Stick to a sweetener like Stevia.

3 Lunchtime Meal Plans

#1 Bean Soup and Celery

Low-Sodium 3-bean soup or lentil soup.

Celery sticks and low-fat Greek yogurt as the dip.

Small whole wheat pita bread drizzled in olive oil, or a slice of whole wheat bread with unsweetened almond butter.

1/2 a banana or mango – or 1/4 of each mixed.

#2 Pan Fried Tilapia

3 ounces pan-fried tilapia, fried with 2-3 teaspoons of olive oil and flavored with fresh lemon juice and a pinch of salt.

1-1/2 cups salad (lettuce, sliced peppers, tomatoes, shredded carrots, and shredded low-fat cheese) with 2 teaspoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar dressing.

1/2 cup fat-free plain yogurt with 1/3 cup blueberries and 2 tablespoons pecans.

#3 Mediterranean Lunch

1/2 Cup cooked couscous with chopped raw almonds.

Small whole wheat pita bread with hummus.

Cucumber, arugula, and baby romaine salad with 2 teaspoons olive oil and 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar dressing.

A sliced half of an apple or peach.

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DINNER

Dinner, also called supper in some parts of the world, is oftentimes served as a traditional

family meal that is very heavy, with lots of rich starches like potatoes, breads and fatty cuts

of meat, followed by sugary desserts. Eat that kind of dinner each night and the post-meal

digestion will be complicated by the fact that you aren’t active, and are instead probably

just sitting in front of the TV. Then you’ll feel bloated and unfocused and will head off to

bed, where that big late meal will make it hard to get to sleep or have a decent night’s rest,

because your body is still struggling to digest it, while your blood sugar levels are making it

impossible to relax and wind-down.

One of the reasons that dinner has evolved into the big meal of the day in many families is

that sitting down at the table together is such an important part of our social and cultural

interaction. We want an opportunity to spend time eating, while catching up on the news of

the day when it is possible to get the whole family together in one place. That’s fine, but you

don’t have to make the dinner the biggest calorie load of the day in order to still enjoy it,

take your time eating it and engaging in conversation. You can start with a light first course

like a salad, for instance, then take your time eating the rest of the meal.

It is also interesting to note that although people want to have a big dinner in order to

spend time together, they often revert to eating fast food for their evening meal. They pick

up burgers and fries at a fast food joint or order a pizza, and then load up on lots of

unhealthy heavy calories, too much salt, way more starches and sugars than they need, and

an abundance of processed food chemicals and additives they do not need.

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Preparing a healthy and wholesome evening meal does not have to be very time consuming,

and since the holistic approach to a diabetic diet involves eating a smaller dinner, there is

not as much food to cook. Let your evening meal consist of lots of vegetables, which are one

of the easiest foods to prepare. Then add a whole grain or legume dish, such as beans,

lentils or whole wheat bread. Instead of a fatty meat, you can substitute lean cuts of meat,

like skinless chicken, baked or grilled, or high-quality seafood – which is perhaps the best

option since many fish dishes contain essential Omega 3 oils.

3 Dinner Meal Plans

#1 Fresh Grilled Salmon or Tuna and Veggies

Grill tuna or salmon, brush with olive oil and season with low-sodium salt and serve with sliced lemon.

Mixed steamed vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower, squash, or whatever you enjoy. Season with celery salt.

Wild rice or brown rice.

Whole wheat dinner rolls.

Fresh ripe mango and raspberries with Greek yogurt.

#2 Baked Chicken and Rice Pilaf

Bake skinless chicken breasts with your favorite seasonings such as rosemary, oregano, thyme, or lemon slices.

Serve with brown rice pilaf – seasoned with turmeric powder for color and anti-inflammatory benefits – and dressed with raw slivered almonds, fresh parsley, and lemon or orange slices.

Steamed Brussels sprouts or baked sweet potato.

Steamed ripe pears with blueberry-yogurt sauce on top, sweetened with Stevia.

#3 Veggie Cheeseburger Burger

Veggie burger on a whole wheat bun with shredded and melted low-fat cheese, fresh tomato, and romaine lettuce.

Low-sodium mixed vegetable soup or butternut squash soup.

Pita, sweet potato, or kale chips.

Fresh fruit salad with crushed raw walnuts or almonds.

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SNACKS

As far as snacks go, it is probably most important to pay attention to what to avoid. That’s

because the majority of snacks sold and consumed these days are not healthy, but are made

in factories where they are loaded with salt, preservatives, chemical additives, and sugars.

You are much better off sticking to simple snacks that are raw and uncooked – like fresh

fruits and vegetables.

Those pack a healthy punch in terms of delivering lots of nutrients, vitamins and minerals.

But they don’t have all the counterproductive empty calories and toxic processing additives

like artificial flavors. Remember that oftentimes the simpler the food, the more complex the

sugars that it has in it – and complex sugars take longer to break down in the body, so they

don’t generate such a drastic a blood sugar spike.

Fresh fruits, for instance, naturally and organically have sugars in them, but those are

processed in a much slower and less impactful way by your body. Plus eating them gives you

much-needed fiber. Greek yogurt with berries is not going to spike your blood sugar like a

candy bar will. It also has the added benefit of giving you lots of nutritious protein with

calcium, not just empty calories that don’t give you anything good or even curb your

appetite.

Some Recommended Healthy Snack Foods:

Fresh avocado

Chick peas

Hummus

Shrimp cocktail

Unsalted popcorn seasoned with

olive oil

Low-sugar granola bars

Raw nuts

Baby carrots and celery sticks.

Pita chips

Kale Chips

Low-fat Greek yogurt or cottage

cheese

Bananas, apples, pears, and

berries like strawberries or

blueberries

Broccoli or cauliflower for

dipping in yogurt or hummus

Whole wheat bread with almond

butter

When it’s time to snack, have foods like the ones in this list handy. Otherwise, chances are

you will be tempted to eat something that isn’t good for you, and which will just cause an

uncomfortable blood sugar spike. You should snack between meals to keep your

metabolism running high. If you eat small healthy snacks, that will make it easier to avoid

overeating at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

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Another thing to remember is that oftentimes hunger pangs are not really hunger signals,

but are a sign that you are actually dehydrated and need to drink more water. Thirst can

often express itself as a hunger. So when you start to feel a little hungry, use that as a

reminder to drink more water. After you drink a big glass of water your hunger will subside,

and your body will not be at risk of dehydration.

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Chapter Ten

Is Your Food Supply Toxic? Eating is probably the biggest thing you do – next to

breathing – that has an immediate impact on your

health. Think about that for a moment. If you were

breathing smog-polluted air all day, that would

definitely increase your chances of getting sick. There

are lots of tragic statistics, for instance, about coal

miners who breathed coal dust for years and then

developed horrible respiratory diseases.

Everyone knows that people who chew or smoke tobacco as a habit have a dramatically

increased chance of contracting cancer of the throat or lungs. Nobody has to tell you that if

you drink contaminated water it is going to give you intestinal problems, and you are well

aware that if you breathe air contaminated by environmental dangers like asbestos you are

risking your life.

But what about our food? If you walk through a supermarket and spend an hour or two just

reading the ingredient labels on packages, you’ll probably encounter many words you can’t

pronounce or decipher. Even though they comply with government regulations, food

companies still manage to load much of what is sold as grocery products with unhealthy

chemicals and additives. When you consume those additives several times a day, it is going

to take a toll on your health.

You don’t see animals eating those weird food additives, and you don’t find them growing

on farms. The additives come from test tubes in science labs, where nutrition is not usually

the goal. Mainly those factory food labs – and the chemicals they use – are there to make

foods that are not actually nutritious taste like they are real, or to enable a food product to

last on the shelf of a warehouse or grocery store for months, when the natural version of

the same food item would spoil in a matter of a few days.

For anyone worried about the impact of diabetes, this should be a grave concern. Already

your body’s defenses are compromised, and if you eat toxic ingredients then you are going

to be way more susceptible to diabetic symptoms.

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To get healthy and stay healthy, you have to eliminate these things from your diet and get

back to eating the way you are intended to, a way that supports and nourishes your body

without ever giving it harmful foreign substances or dangerous chemicals.

You should not be eating vegetables that are coated with pesticides sprayed on in order to

kill insects and other pests. After all, if it can kill a grasshopper, it can probably make you

sick – even if it doesn’t kill you.

There are studies that indicate that there are also contaminants in cans and jars, furniture

and other household items, and some kinds of wood, like particle board – which contains

certain amounts of Formaldehyde. Pressure-treated lumber can contain arsenic, and plastic

bottles are another source of chemicals that can have a long-term impact on your health.

The list goes on, and much of your exposure to chemicals, heavy metals, smog, and other

contaminants and pollutants may be unavoidable in this day and age. So what can you do to

protect yourself and stay healthy? The answer is that if you know there are toxins entering

your body – through food additives or the kinds of environmental pollutants mentioned

above – the key to better health is to detoxify your body.

Detoxification already occurs naturally, in organs like the kidneys and liver, using special

enzymes and processes. The skin, which is the largest organ in the human body, even helps

by detoxifying the body when you perspire. Deep breathing also helps to remove pollutants

through lung exhalation. So one way to help support these natural purification processes is

to take care of those vital organs.

The kidneys need lots of clean, fresh water to filter them. The liver benefits when we avoid

things like tobacco and alcohol. Deep breathing and perspiration through healthy activities

like aerobic exercise or yoga supports those detoxification processes. Engage in these kinds

of healthy, holistic activities and you’ll help protect yourself from the negative impact of

living in a potentially toxic environment.

In nature, much of this detoxification happened as plants filter the air and water. When

humans create harmful carbon dioxide, for instance, green plants use that chemical and

then generate purified oxygen for us to breathe. Similarly, we can ingest green plants that

will help purify our bodies. Those include dark leafy greens such as kale and spinach, as well

as green “superfoods” like wheat grass, barley grass, dulse (a type of seaweed) and

spirulina.

In Chapter 12 you’ll learn some convenient and tasty ways to make green smoothies with

these types of ingredients, in order to get a daily dose of healthy detoxifying foods with lots

of vitamins and minerals. But first, in Chapter 11, let’s look at some other foods that are

very good for your diet and that help fight diabetes.

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Chapter Eleven

Six Great Foods for Combating Diabetes with Low Blood Sugar There are many dietary recommendations for helping fight diabetes, and there are also

some really amazing foods that you can make the pillars of your diet, to improve your

health. These are foods that do an extra-special job of delivering nutrition, while also

helping to moderate your blood sugar levels. You will notice that many of them provide

dietary fiber, and this is important because it helps to offset carbohydrate content in the

foods you eat.

Fiber is a type of carb. But it doesn’t break down in the body, so it doesn’t make sugars or

calories. For that reason, even if a certain number of carbs are listed on a food label, it may

actually be lower in carbs in terms of your diabetic diet if it has a high fiber content. Many

people refer to this as the “net carb” effect, which means that they subtract carbs from

foods based on how much fiber is in the food, and the net impact of carbs is lowered. So if

you eat something that has 5 grams of carbs, for example, but it has 3 grams of fiber, you

are really getting about 2 grams of carbs in terms of blood sugar levels and caloric content.

That makes high-fiber foods like nuts and vegetables a very good component of the diabetic

diet.

Garlic

For centuries, the curative characteristics of garlic have been known and praised by people

all over the world. It has the added benefit of being a very popular flavor enhancer, which is

why so many people love to cook with it. So the tip here is that if you enjoy using it to make

meals more savory, go ahead and use as much as you want, because it has the potential to

help bolster your immune system.

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Greens

Leafy greens like spinach, kale, collards, and salad greens are another type of food that

everyone worried about diabetes should eat as often, and as much, as possible. These don’t

affect blood sugar levels, but they do definitely deliver powerful amounts of vitamin A and

other vitamins, plus lots of fiber and a variety of minerals and similar nutrients.

Avocado

Avocado not only has a creamy, luscious taste

and texture, but it is another food that will not

disturb your blood sugar. You can use them in

salads, combine with garlic, greens, and other

healthy ingredients to create a dip, or just eat

them as a snack with a little lemon juice for

added flavor. If you are watching your weight,

do be aware that avocados have quite a few

calories – but otherwise eat them to your

heart’s content.

Sweet Potato

If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic and used to love eating those high-starch white potatoes

that can be bad for your blood sugar levels, you’ll be happy to know that sweet potatoes do

not present the same problem. These are very low on the glycemic index, and the American

Journal of Clinical Nutrition recommends them for controlling diabetes.

You don’t want to overdo it and eat too many, because they do contain carbs. But feel free

to eat them in moderation, because their net carb impact is low. Sweet potatoes are often

called a “complete food” because they have dietary fiber, a moderate amount of complex

carbs, and a wide range of healthy vitamins and minerals. The American Diabetes

Association recommends them as a good ingredient in a diabetic meal plan. That makes

them a good energy food when you need carbs to burn, but don’t want to load up on excess

sugars that will cause an insulin imbalance.

Organic Free-Range Eggs

Free-range eggs come from chickens who are allowed to graze freely, versus being caged in

tiny pens. Buy the organic ones, and you can get lots of great value without having to worry

about food additives that are so frequently used on large factory farms, such as antibiotics.

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These eggs don’t have any carbs at all, so they

have absolutely no potential for adverse impact

on your blood sugar. But they are a rich source

of healthy protein and contain those desirable

Omega 3 fatty acids. You’ll get lots of vitamins,

too, like A, D, and multiple types of B vitamins

from them, and they have considerably less

saturated fat than non-organic eggs. They may

cost a little more, but are nonetheless a very

affordable food, and the extra you pay for

organic ones pays you back by keeping you

healthier.

If you are trying to eliminate cholesterol from your diet because of a heart condition or high

cholesterol, you can still benefit from high-quality eggs. Just buy the egg whites taken from

organic eggs. They have all the benefits, without the cholesterol levels that is mostly found

in the yolk of the egg.

Nuts and Seeds

Chia seeds, walnuts, and almonds are all good

choices for a diabetic diet because they deliver

fiber and protein, plus valuable, healthy oils.

But they have little or no impact on your blood

sugar levels. Chia seeds have an added

benefit, because when you eat them – in a

salad or a smoothie, for example – they

expand in volume. That means they help fill

you up, which is helpful if are trying to control

hunger pangs to manage your weight.

Almonds and walnuts are recommended as

good for the heart, too, so while you eat them

as part of a diabetes diet, you also help to

protect yourself from heart disease.

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Chapter Twelve

Holistically Healthy Green Drinks For people trying to eat well and combat diabetes, the American Diabetes Association

describes “superfoods” as those that are very low in carbs or sugars. In other words, these

are very low on the glycemic index – but high in nutrients, essential vitamins and minerals.

While you can take high-quality dietary supplements to get your daily dose of vitamins and

minerals, you can also get those from a diet of healthy foods. One of the easiest ways –

which requires no cooking and very little time or effort to prepare – is to create your own

superfood smoothies.

You may also be able to buy these kinds of superfood blends locally, but be sure to get ones

that are free of additives, such as added sugars, and are just made from real fruits and

vegetables, not processed ingredients.

Here are some of the best ingredients to use:

Green, leafy vegetables.

Low-fat yogurt.

High-quality protein powder such as whey powder.

Nuts and all-natural nut butters like almond butter.

Berries such as strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries.

Citrus fruits.

Here are three superfood smoothie recipes you can try:

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Banana Delight

One cup of water (add more for thinner smoothie)

One small banana

1/2 cup of cooked/ peeled sweet potato

Tablespoon of Greek yogurt

Tablespoon of almond butter

A big pinch of cinnamon

Blend and serve

Green Goddess

1 cup of water (less for thicker smoothie)

1 cup of low-fat plain yogurt

1 banana

1 cup of spinach

A few sprigs of parsley

1 teaspoon of chia seeds or spirulina

Blend and serve.

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Fruit Medley

1 cup of water

1/2 cup of low-fat yogurt

1/2 cup of banana

1/4 cup of blueberries

1/4 cup of strawberries

1/4 cup of raspberries

1/4 cup of fresh mango or pineapple

One scoop of protein powder

Blend and serve.

Those are just some ideas for how to make smoothies that are good for you. Once you are

familiar with foods like those in the healthy superfood list, you can easily mix and match and

experiment to find out what blends you enjoy the most. That way you can make hundreds

of different kinds of yummy smoothies using these kinds of ingredients. You can also

substitute liquids like egg whites and skim milk or unsweetened almond milk, and play

around with spices and flavorings that range from garlic and cayenne pepper to nutmeg or

Stevia.

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Chapter Thirteen

Holistic Weight Management for Combating Diabetes Everyone who wants to be healthier needs to pay closer attention to their body weight.

That’s because if you are too thin your body can lack stamina and be too weak to support

your health and your immune system. If you are overweight your body has to work harder

just to maintain itself, which taxes it by putting unwanted stress on every organ and system

of the body.

Eating a well-balanced holistic diet as described in this book, and getting enough good

exercise and sleep, will ensure that you have sufficient body mass and muscle to be healthy.

But for most people, the issue when it comes to weight is not being underweight. The

majority of people, particularly those who are vulnerable to diabetes, struggle with carrying

too much weight or even being obese – which is a modern epidemic. One of the main

causes of diabetes is obesity, and as higher blood sugar levels contribute to more fat being

stored in the cells of the body, the condition only worsens and can become so severe that it

is life-threatening.

Historic Levels of Obesity

In the distant past, people who had to grow or hunt all of their food were lucky to get

enough nutrition to merely survive all year ‘round. Over time, as civilizations developed,

humans found ways to grow more food than they even needed, and to transport it all the

way around the world to others. In most modern cities, for instance, the residents just take

it for granted that the shelves of grocery stores and supermarkets will always be stocked

with foods and beverages of all kinds, from all over the planet. But in the past that wasn’t

the case. Every day life may have been less convenient and more difficult due to having less

access to food. But on the upside, very few people were overweight because the more

prevalent problem was food scarcity.

Today, however, obesity is such a threat that the United States government recently

declared that it is not only a national health crisis, but is also a threat to the nation’s

security. That’s because the officials who oversee the military realized that so many

Americans are obese that it is increasingly difficult to find people to serve in the military

who have decent enough physical fitness to perform their duties. That’s a remarkable fact,

and just goes to show how easy it is to become overweight and at greater risk of diabetes.

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That makes it extremely important for everyone to understand that being overweight has

become one of the biggest threats to health and wellness, and one of the leading

contributors to potentially deadly diseases, like diabetes. So on an individual level, obesity

needs to be viewed as a threat to one’s personal safety and well-being. Each pound of

unwanted weight that you gain contributes directly to poor health – with the potential to

take years off of your life, or even kill you.

Once you realize the potential danger, then it becomes much easier to be constantly aware

of the issue and take positive, healthy, proactive steps to address weight management so

that being overweight never becomes a problem for you. If you are already overweight,

then that kind of awareness and willingness to take holistic steps to lose weight is your key

to success in defeating diseases like diabetes. You can improve your health, lose those

unwanted pounds, and live a happier and longer life, just by paying attention to eating the

right foods, in the right amounts, and taking other health-conscious lifestyle steps.

That is what we’ll talk about in this chapter, with smart tips on how to track your caloric

intake and watch your weight, so that you can manage it effectively for a reliable holistic

approach that helps you avoid the adverse effects of diabetes and similar diseases tied to

being overweight.

Calories and Weight Loss

How many calories you need to ingest in order to maintain a healthy weight and avoid

putting on extra pounds will depend upon your unique physiology, to some extent. You

should consult your physician or a nutritionist to get a precise personalized answer to that

question of how many calories are right for you.

Having said that, there are some general recommendations that are handy to know. Many

experts recommend that the average male should consume around 2,000 calories per day,

and that the average female should eat around 1,800 calories.

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But let’s take a step back and think about that. Chances are you are not average, because

everyone is unique and different. Some are taller, some are more active, others aren’t as tall

or active, and that all goes into the calculation. Age is another huge factor, because

teenagers, for instance, need way more calories than people who are middle-aged.

Let’s approach it a different way, then, by figuring out approximately how many calories you

need to lose in order to lose a pound of unwanted weight.

According to the Mayo Clinic, 3,500 calories is equal to approximately one pound of body

weight. Using that as a benchmark, it’s easy to see that if you reduce your caloric intake by

3,500 calories, you’ll lose a pound. Of course if your average number of calories per day is

around 2,000, you don’t want to take a drastic approach. That will make you too hungry,

and will also be too much of an unexpected change for your body to get adjusted to, which

usually means you’ll lose a lot, but suddenly put it right back on again.

Knowing that, however, we can do some simple calculations to figure out that by cutting

250 calories per day out of your diet, you will cut 3,500 calories every two weeks – or twice

that many each month. Doing so, as long as your remain active doing appropriate exercise

and also eat a healthy, holistic diet, will reduce your caloric intake by 7,000 calories a month

and 84,000 calories a year. Divide that number of calories by 3,500 – the number that

equals a pound of body weight you don’t want to keep carrying around – and you find that

you can effectively lose nearly 25 pounds a year by following this simple plan.

If you want to accelerate your weight loss you can reduce the size of your food portions,

high-calorie dishes and ingredients, and increase your calorie-burning exercise regimen. By

eliminating 500 calories per day, for instance, you can lose up to a pound a week or around

50 pounds in a single year.

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Just remember that for every 3,500 calories that you don’t eat, you avoid about a pound of

weight. Cut on back your portions at each meal, eat healthier, drink more water, and those

eliminated calories from your diet will quickly add up to significant weight loss.

Semi-Fasting Strategies

Cutting out those unnecessary calories and reducing unwanted weight (that you are able to

not just lose, but keep), establishes a strong, sustainable foundation for weight

management. To further strengthen your defenses against diabetes, you may want to also

try to do what nutritionists and physicians refer to as intermittent fasting. This will require a

little more discipline and can be a more challenging technique for you to try. But the results

you get will be amazing, and that should give you the impetus and powerful motivation you

need to incorporate intermittent fasting into your lifestyle.

Here is how it works, and why it is so much easier than traditional fasting. With

conventional fasting, you don’t eat – usually for a period of 18 to 24 hours or even more.

Some people also fast from liquids, not just foods, for this long period of time. So someone

who does that kind of fasting might eat a meal on Saturday night and then not eat – and

perhaps not drink either – until Sunday night or Monday morning.

It’s easy to see how that kind of dieting can be tough, because it takes so much self-control.

But it can also be a really dramatic change for your body, to go from eating normally to

suddenly not eating at all. While it can help you lose weight, you may also be so hungry by

the time you break your fast that you eat more than you usually do, and gain back whatever

weight you managed to lose.

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Intermittent fasting is more moderate, and simpler to accomplish. Instead of total fasting

for many hours, you typically eat significantly less – but still consume some calories. So the

fasting isn’t as extreme. Say, for instance, that you normally consume 1800 calories a day in

a balanced holistic diet. You could switch it up on your intermittent fasting day and only

consume 600 calories – which means you reduce by 1200 calories. Do that three times a

month and you reduce by more than 3500 calories – effectively cutting out enough calories

to lose a whole pound of weight.

But there’s more. Because your stomach tends to shrink when you fast, the day after you do

your 600-calorie fast you may be surprised to find that you aren’t really as hungry as

normal. You can also drink a lot more water on that day, to fill your stomach even more

without adding any calories. So the day after your fast, you can try to limit your caloric

intake to just 1200 calories.

That should not be too difficult, and it will trim an extra 600 calories from what you

normally eat. That way, in just two short days, you can manage to lose 1800 extra calories.

Follow that simple regimen every weekend, and you’ll lose more than a pound’s worth of

calories every two weeks – or two pounds of unwanted weight every single month.

The 16/8 Way to Fast

There is also a way to combine complete fasting, the traditional way, with eating of your

regular diet, for a kind of hybrid approach to intermittent fasting. With this approach, which

also helps you cut down on your weight, balance out your insulin levels, and amp-up your

metabolism, you fast completely, but only for 16 hours at a time. Then you eat your daily

allowance of calories within an 8-hour period of time, with a big emphasis on protein and

fewer carbs – plus lots of clean, fresh water and green leafy vegetables.

Most people schedule this kind of diet so that during the main part of their fast, they are

asleep. That makes it easier since you aren’t distracted by hunger pangs, and it lets your

body get great rest because it is not also busy digesting food. You might start your 16 hours

of fasting at eight p.m., for instance, and be sure that you get eight hours of sleep that night.

You won’t eat anything until 16 hours later, at noon the next day. But you can wake up and

drink water or coffee – as long as you don’t add sugar which would contribute unwanted

calories. That should be a pretty easy fast to adhere to, and then at noon you start eating

and consume your normal daily ration of calories.

If you normal caloric intake is 2000 calories, for example, you’ll eat that many within the

next 8 hours – so that you stop eating by 8 p.m. Do that for two days in a row, or you can do

it every day if you find that you like that kind of schedule. Since you aren’t getting breakfast

at the normal time, though, be sure to eat a powerful breakfast-style meal when you break

your fast, so that your body gets that kick-start from good protein.

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While this kind of fast may seem unconventional, research shows that it can have a

significant positive impact and help you lose weight while also developing more lean

muscle, a stronger immune system, and good resistance to diabetes. Just remember that

you need to keep getting plenty of exercise and enough sleep.

Calorie-Burning Workouts

Torching fat to tone-up and slim down is easier when you get more out of your exercise

sessions. Most people do not have a lot of extra hours in the day to devote to exercise, so it

always helps to have a workout agenda that maximizes every minute and wastes none of

your time.

You can get a fantastic workout in a very short period by doing high-intensity bursts of

exercise with brief rest times in-between. This forces your body to burn more calories in

order to convert them into useful energy, and it also keeps your heart rate in the cardio

zone.

A good way to think of these kinds of workouts is to consider how you would run with

greater intensity, versus just walking at a normal pace. Almost everyone walks, jogs, or runs

as part of their exercise routine. But we know that fast walking is more intense than a slow

stroll, and that breaking into a sprint is much more intense than just jogging. High intensity

bursts are the goal, and you can usually find ways to do them in most types of exercise.

If you like to cycle or go to spin classes, for example, the high-intensity version of this

workout would be to cycle or spin as fast as you possibly can, until you cannot go any more,

and then rest for about a minute before doing that again. If you like to kick box a punching

bag, instead of dancing around it and throwing a few punches or kicks, you will kick and hit

it as many times and as hard as possible, until you give out and can’t lift your arms and legs.

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If it’s pushups, you do as many as you possibly can, as fast as you can. When it comes to

lifting weights, choose lighter weights for a higher number of reps – but do the reps very

quickly. What if you like to use the rowing machine? In that case row faster, but of course

you will row for fewer minutes at a time because you will tire out sooner. Then rest a short

time and go at it again.

Doing this kind of high-intensity exercises can really boost your metabolism, and research

shows that your metabolism may, in fact, remain very high for hours after your exercise

session has ended. But the other great thing about high-intensity workouts, which have

become increasingly popular with fitness buffs and professional trainers who teach fitness,

is that they don’t take much time.

You can achieve as much in a 10-minute workout as you might achieve from doing normally-

paced exercises for a half hour. So if you want a very economical way to raise your

metabolism and burn calories while getting fit, experiment with doing short sessions of

high-intensity workouts.

Find an exercise regimen that you enjoy, so you’ll stay motivated, and one that you can

schedule – which may mean doing shorter sessions that are more intense. Be sure to work

all major muscle groups each week, which can usually be accomplished by alternating days.

On Monday and Wednesday, for instance, you might do upper body exercises while on

Tuesday and Thursday you work your legs and hips, and get the lower body moving more.

You can also do one day of intensity workouts, followed by a day of low-intensity exercise

such as swimming or yoga, and alternate in that way.

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Chapter Fourteen

Stay Healthy While at Work Lots of times, despite doing really well at home, it is easy to slip up and not stay on a healthy

diet when you’re at work. That can happen whether you work in an office, on a job site

somewhere, or have to travel for work and live out of a suitcase. But everyone has to work,

and that can present certain challenges because you aren’t in familiar and comfortable

surroundings of home, with a fridge full of healthy food and the resources to cook for

yourself, or eat a healthy snack from your pantry. So it is important to take proactive steps

to avoid putting your health become at risk.

Eat a Great Breakfast

As always, the first step is to make sure that you eat a nutritious breakfast. If at all possible,

eat breakfast at home before you have to head off to work. Better still, eat your breakfast

early enough in the morning that you can also squeeze in a 15 or 20 minute high-intensity

workout before you start your commute. That will do three valuable things for you. First of

all it will give you solid nutrition to keep your blood sugar under control and ensure that

when you are at work you are mentally alert, focused, and physically energized.

What if you just cannot eat before you leave home? In that case, if you catch a breakfast

meal on the run it will probably not be as healthy, just because so many restaurants serve

items that are calorie and carb-heavy. You may even wind up eating out of a vending

machine, which is one of the worst possible scenarios.

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To overcome those challenges is easy, however, because all you have to do is pack a

breakfast and take it with you. If you do not have time to make a full breakfast before work

in the morning, you can still pack one because you can make some of it the night before.

You can take almonds or walnuts, which will give you those great natural oils that are good

for you – as well as solid protein.

Eat a banana with almond butter, or a rice cake with almond or cashew butter. You can take

a hard boiled organic egg to work – another great protein food that is easy to make the day

before. Whole grain bread is another good breakfast food, as is oatmeal and yogurt with

berries. None of those take much time at all. So you can easily carry a breakfast, for

instance, that has whole grain bread with raw nut butter, organic eggs, nuts, and fresh

fruits.

Another option – which works even if you are pressed for time – is to drink your breakfast.

Make a protein-rich smoothie by blending ingredients like egg whites, berries, yogurt,

almond butter, and protein powder. You can whip that up in a blender in a matter of

minutes and be out the door with a big drink that will give you all the nutrition, vitamins,

and minerals you need to ensure a healthy start to your work day.

Pack a Smart Lunch

You need to also eat wisely at lunch. Otherwise

that good breakfast will be undermined by a lousy

lunch that can spike your blood sugar and wreck

the rest of your work day. This is where prior

planning really pays off, because you can make

lunches days ahead of time. There are lots of

healthy foods that you can freeze, and then all you

have to do in order to add them to your lunches is

to thaw them out the day before and warm them

up before you eat them. Those include cooked

sweet potatoes and all sorts of steamed veggies.

You can bake a chicken or roast a turkey and eat

that for several lunches, or make a big batch of 2-bean soup and thaw some of that out and

heat it up any time you need a quick lunch entrée.

You can also use lunchtime as your meal of the day for bulking-up on green leafy vegetables,

because a salad is such an easy and satisfying lunch menu item. You can make a great salad

in just a minute or two by buying organic salad green mixes that come already cut, washed,

and bagged. If you have some baked chicken, some croutons made from whole grain bread

that went stale, or some cooked beans or chickpeas you have the fixings for a fantastic

salad.

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You can also make a green salad, and instead of adding beans or chicken, you can go in the

other direction, add Greek yogurt and almost any kind of berries or other fresh fruits.

Sprinkle lots of slivered raw almonds or walnut pieces on that – or add pumpkin or

sunflower seeds – and you have a fast but substantial healthy lunch.

You can also use various veggies, legumes, and whole grains from dinners you make during

the week. Take the leftovers or make extra portions, and then put them together into a

veggie broth and you can boil up a wonderfully tasty and nutritious soup. Add some whole-

grain crackers on the side, a fresh piece of fruit, or a protein smoothie and you’ve got a well-

rounded meal that will give you an energy boost without creating a blood sugar surge.

SafeCatch brand tuna is a great lunchtime option for making sandwiches or adding to salads,

because it is arguably the healthiest type of packaged and precooked tuna on the market.

The company specializes in tuna that is wild caught, but extremely low in heavy metals.

Many kinds of tuna contain toxic impurities like mercury, but SafeCatch has the lowest

levels of any commercial tuna now being sold anywhere in the world. There is also care

taken not to include unhealthy preservatives or extra salt. Nothing else is in the packaged

tuna except for tuna – which is conveniently portioned as small tuna steaks.

A 2-ounce serving has 14 grams of protein, zero saturated fat, and only a moderate amount

of sodium. The tuna can be purchased in cans or foil pouches, so it has a stable shelf life and

is the kind of protein food you can store in your pantry, a desk drawer at work, or in your

suitcase. You’ll always have a good lunch option at your fingertips. Just add some whole

grain bread and some green leafy vegetables like arugula or romaine lettuce and you have

all you need to make a healthy, nutritious, tasty sandwich or hearty salad.

Other good lunch components include hummus, avocado, smoked salmon, lean cuts of

turkey, rice cakes made from brown rice, almond butter, and sardines. There are also

nutritionists who recommend that whenever you are at work you keep some go-to items on

hand that are known for their ability to be insulin desensitizers. These help you keep your

insulin levels under control and stable, and include the juice of a fresh lemon, green tea with

all its great antioxidants, cinnamon – which you can sprinkle in oatmeal or on whole wheat

toast – and apple cider vinegar, which can be added to a salad with some olive oil to make it

more palatable for using like a salad dressing.

Stay Hydrated the Healthy Way

Don’t forget that drinking water is a vital part of diabetes management, and you should

always have a bottle of water handy while you are at work. Many people make the mistake

of accidentally dehydrating themselves at work, because instead of drinking water, they

drink coffee or those highly-processed, unhealthy energy drinks. But those can speed up

dehydration, and as we discussed earlier dehydration often presents itself as thirst that

actually feels like hunger.

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When you get dehydrated it is easy to start eating more, when you actually need to be

drinking more. Being dehydrated can directly contribute to unwanted weight gain when

you’re at work, just because you let yourself get thirsty and then deal with those thirst

pangs – which feel like hunger pangs – by packing in calories. Your blood sugar levels

increase, and soon you are sitting at your desk storing unwanted fat.

Here’s something to always keep in mind. The human stomach holds about one quart, until

it is stretched. So if you drink lots of water, you can easily keep your stomach full – and curb

your hunger while also doing a great job of staying hydrated. That will ensure that you do a

better job of managing diabetes even while you are at work. It is also good for your kidneys,

your digestive system, and for your skin – so drink lots of water.

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Chapter Fifteen

Aromatherapy to Enhance Holistic Health You may be familiar with the alternative healthcare modality known as aromatherapy,

which uses the fragrant essences of various plants or flowers in a therapeutic way. Botanists

also point out that the plants themselves sometimes use the same essences to perform

their own self-administered healthcare. They use their own essential oils for controlling

disease, healing damaged parts of the plant, limiting the spread of bacterial infection

control, and attracting or repelling various birds, animals, and insects.

Around the 11th century, early practitioners of aromatherapy realized that they could

remove the essential oils from plants or flowers, without damaging those oils, if they used

steam. They began to distill the essences from plants, and then bottle the essential oils.

Aromatherapy over the ages became common in Asia, and then spread to Europe through

France and England before eventually becoming popularized in the USA.

A wider range of health benefits have been attributed to aromatherapy, and many of them

are believed to assist in providing support for a holistic lifestyle of diabetes avoidance.

Those benefits include reduction of anxiety, improved sleep, a stronger immune system,

enhanced digestion, and increased energy levels.

While aromatherapy isn’t a substitute for foundational approaches to treating diabetes such

as diet and exercise, it can definitely help to relieve stress and help one relax, which always

promotes good health. There are also some essential oils used in aromatherapy that are

believed to help reduce blood sugar production or to give relief to organs affected by

imbalanced sugar or insulin levels – such as the pancreas.

The best way to apply aromatherapy to your health regimen is by consulting a qualified

aromatherapist, who will have extensive knowledge of how to combine various essential oils

and how each different aroma can stimulate a particular kind of emotional, psychological, or

physiological response. They will oftentimes use the essential oils derived from lemon,

peppermint, eucalyptus, cinnamon, and oregano for immune system support. Citrus oils like

the essence of lemon and orange – as well as ginger, chamomile, and sage - may be used to

aid with digestion.

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For energy boosting some of the most often prescribed essential oils for aromatherapy

include clove, cardamom, rosemary, and jasmine. Meanwhile chamomile, jasmine, lavender,

rose, sandalwood, and sweet marjoram are relied on to help create relaxation and improved

sleep.

There are studies that indicate that the lemon balm essential oils used in aromatherapy can

be helpful for managing diabetes, and that clove oils can inhibit oxidation – in much the

same way that powerful antioxidants do – to relieve the body of that kind of stress in organs

like the pancreas. The Middle Eastern plant known as satureja-khuzestanica is considered

helpful in reducing blood sugar levels, and there are also forms of aromatherapy that can

help reduce inflammation.

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Chapter Sixteen

Health Maintenance When You Travel Everyone likes to travel and see new places, catch up with friends and relatives, or expand

their business connections into new markets. But if you are accustomed to being home and

maintaining a balanced holistic lifestyle, travel can throw your routine out of balance. You’re

away from your local store where you might be used to getting fresh organic produce, and

you may be crossing time zones and be affected by jet lag.

Or you may wind up having to eat in restaurants where you don’t have as much control over

the ingredients that go into your meals. Since you aren’t near your local gym and don’t have

your own exercise equipment with you, that’s another challenge. But there are tips and

techniques to help you keep up with a smart holistic regimen and stay healthy while you

travel, and that’s what you’ll learn next.

Pack Right to Eat Well

You can make travel much more convenient by just packing some of the items you are

accustomed to having at home that support your health. These include dietary essentials

such as high-quality vitamin and mineral supplements, powdered superfoods like spirulina

or chia seeds, and some vitamin and mineral-rich protein powder, such as a really good low-

sugar, high-protein whey powder.

While there are now many restrictions regarding carrying of liquids and gels onto an

airplane, you can usually carry powders without raising any red flags when you pass through

security. Or you can pack your protein powder and spirulina in your checked luggage.

Whenever you fly you should also bring a lunch or snack food on board the plane. That may

be something as simple as fresh fruits, some almonds, and celery sticks. Or you can make a

delicious avocado, lettuce, and tomato sandwich or pack some smoked wild-caught salmon

and whole wheat crackers that are made with olive oil instead of saturated fats. That way

you don’t have to be concerned about the nutritional quality of the snacks or meals served

by airlines, and you don’t have to worry about going hungry, even if your flight experiences

an unexpected delay.

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Some travelers also pack a small juice blender in their suitcase. If you have one of those you

already know how easy it is to make a healthy beverage or smoothie by just blending it up,

and toting along your gadget can make travel so much more convenient. If you don’t have a

small blender, you can usually buy one large enough and powerful enough to blend up a

quart-size smoothie for an affordable price.

Then no matter where you are, you can make a trip to the grocery store or nearest produce

stand and have plenty of ingredients to make healthy smoothies. Pack it in your checked

luggage, or keep one in the trunk of your car, and you’ll find it much easier to get your

nutrition while on the road.

When it comes to air travel, airplanes have very little humidity inside of them and at high

altitudes it is easy to quickly become dehydrated, so whenever you fly you have to drink a

lot of extra water. Instead of ordering coffee or alcohol on a flight, ask for water with a slice

of fresh lemon. That will hydrate you, balance your electrolytes, and give you a shot of fresh

citrus to help as an insulin desensitizer.

No matter how you travel – by land, sea, or air – the key is to avoid those unwanted sugars,

get plenty of sleep, and work in some cardio exercise. We’ve talked about eating well and

staying hydrated, so now let’s have a look at two of these important aspects of diabetes

management while traveling - sleep and exercise.

Get Enough Sleep

Are you crossing time zones where you may

suffer from jet lag? That can make you feel

really terrible, and symptoms can disrupt

your sleep for days. You also won’t be able

to eat or exercise on your normal schedule if

you get severely jet-lagged, because you

may not feel well. But most people do not

plan their trips carefully enough to minimize

these adverse effects. There are things you

can do, though, to help control jet lag and

the toll it can take on your body.

The reason that jet lag upsets the body is because you cross times zones, and if you fly from

New York to Paris, for example, you lose about six hours en route. That means you arrive on

six hours less sleep – and it can take days to recover. But if you were to make up that six

hours, you would not be nearly as vulnerable to jet lag. The best method is to start adjusting

your sleep schedule about four or five days prior to departure.

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The way to do that is to intentionally reset your internal body clock before you leave home

by going to bed earlier and rising earlier than usual, until your body is actually on the same

schedule as it would be if you lived in the country you are traveling to visit.

Say, for example, that you are leaving on Friday and your normal bedtime is 11 p.m. – and

you usually awaken at 7 a.m. In that case, start on the Monday before you depart by going

to bed at 10 at night and getting up at six. You automatically set your body clock back an

hour. Then on Tuesday go to bed at 9:30 and get up at 5:30 in the morning. On Wednesday

get to bed at 9 p.m. and rise at 5 a.m. On Thursday go to bed at 8:30 p.m., get up at 4 a.m.

On Friday, go to bed at 8:00 and wake up at 3:30 a.m.

You will have set your body clock back a full three hours, so that you are on almost the same

time schedule as if you lived in Europe. Then try to take a flight that leaves in the evening so

that you can go to sleep, get about six hours of sleep on the plane, and arrive when it is

morning in Europe.

Don’t nap that day. If you get tired, take a walk or drink some green tea. But stay awake

until at least nine or 10 at night. Then you can sleep eight or nine hours and wake up at

dawn, feeling refreshed and almost caught up on your sleep.

Even if you aren’t dealing with jet lag, however, getting good sleep on the road can be

problematic. To help sleep better don’t drink any caffeine after mid-afternoon, and turn off

your computer and other gadgets an hour before you go to bed – because interaction with

digital devices can act as a stimulant. Instead read a book or magazine and have cup of hot

chamomile tea to calm you down.

It’s also a smart idea to not eat anything after the sun goes down, so that you have fully

digested your dinner before you wind down and go to sleep. One last tip is to also wear

earplugs and a sleep mask, so that noise and light in hotels, on airplanes, on trains, or in

other places where you stay doesn’t interrupt your good night of sleep.

Wake up and have a high-protein breakfast with a moderate dose of carbohydrates, and

you’ll be getting a healthy jump-start on your day, even if you are traveling.

Maintain an Exercise Program

The other ingredient to a healthy travel routine is exercise, and you should make sure that

each morning, either before or after your breakfast, you get at least 15 or 20 minutes of

high-intensity cardio. If you are staying in a hotel they may have a workout facility or

swimming pool you can use. Or you can go for a jog or a run, no matter where you are, as

long as you pack some comfortable workout clothing and a pair of running shoes.

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There are also items you can use to create an impromptu gym – even if you have to leave

your exercise equipment behind. Buy some resistance bands, which are kind of like giant

rubber bands, and have a trainer teach you how to use them. With those – which pack so

small you can probably carry a whole set of them stuffed inside your running shoes in the

suitcase – you can do dozens of different exercises.

You can also fill a milk jug with water and use that the way you would use a barbell or kettle

ball. Water weighs more than two pounds per quart, so a half gallon jug of water is more

than four pounds of weight. If there is a swimming pool you can use inflatable barbells,

which you exercise with underneath the water. Because the water in the swimming pool is

so heavy it also works like weights to create resistance, and you can get a really intense

cardio workout in the pool using inflatable weights.

In the absence of a swimming pool, or any other way to create impromptu gym equipment,

you can still get a tremendous workout. Just revert to the old-fashioned kind of exercises

like those that military recruits do each morning. They don’t go to a fancy gym, but they

workout very hard by doing such things as pushups, crunches, mule kicks, lunges, and

jumping jacks. If you don’t know how to do these kind of calisthenics you can easily learn by

just spending an hour or so with a personal trainer or doing a quick online search for

bodyweight workouts.

For many of the simpler types of calisthenics you can even learn by watching videos made

my professional trainers on the Internet. Just remember to push yourself so that you

exercise in intense bursts that burn lots of energy. Then take short rests and do another

intense burst. You will only need 15 or 20 minutes, which is easy to schedule even if you are

on the road, and you’ll be amazed at what a great workout you can get.

Ordering in Restaurants or Fast-Food Joints

Many times you’ll find yourself in an airport or a city where the only food options are fast-

food eateries, food courts, restaurants, or even places that only serve typical pub or bar

snacks. That’s when it can get really complicated for some people who are trying hard to eat

well, not risk high blood sugar or an overload of toxic food additives.

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But the good news is that in almost any situation you can find something worthwhile to eat

that won’t mess up your diet, as long as you choose carefully. In most fast food places, and

even bars that serve food, you will likely find salads and soups on the menu. The soups may

have extra salt in them, but as long as you track your sodium intake, and don’t get more

than your daily allowance, then you should be okay. A hearty bean soup – especially one

with loads of veggies in it – is a good option.

Most places will also offer steamed veggies as a side order, and if they don’t you can always

ask the server if you can just have an order of steamed vegetables. Usually eateries can

easily accommodate you, and the veggies will either be freshly purchased from a farmer’s

market where restaurants shop, or they will arrive at the restaurant frozen. Eating frozen

veggies isn’t ideal, because they may have less vitamins and minerals, but they also typically

have no additives so it is still a healthy choice.

You can also order whole wheat bread to go with your meal. If veggie burgers are on the

menu, that’s a good choice – as long as you avoid cheeses and high-calories sauces – and

beware of any fried foods because they are typically going to be rather unhealthy.

Even in an airport you can always eat a very healthy snack or meal by just sticking with fresh

fruits and salads. Just avoid the prepackaged salad dressings and just flavor your salad with

olive oil, and maybe some juice from fresh lemon wedges. Almost everywhere you go you’ll

find fruits like apples and bananas, and you can also order eggs nearly anywhere.

As long as you don’t also order the less healthy sides like bacon, and just stick to the eggs,

that can be a great way to eat a lot of healthy protein – especially if they have low-calorie

egg-white omelets. Another option that you will find everywhere is oatmeal, which you can

have with some skim milk and fruit.

Once you get into the mindset of the holistic lifestyle, you’ll discover just how many options

there are and how easy it actually is to stick to a great diet, exercise schedule, and everyday

routine that makes it faster and easier to combat diabetes.

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