In recent years of blood sugar news, the World Health Organization and the American Diabetes Association have refined the classification of blood sugar levels to include impaired fasting glucose (IFG, blood sugar levels slightly above normal before eating) and impaired glucose tolerance (IGT, slightly higher than normal blood sugar levels two hours after a high-sugar test meal).
Normally, the hormone insulin is secreted after a meal to take sugar from the blood to cells throughout the body. But patients with type 2 diabetes do not respond to insulin. As a result, blood sugar can rise dangerously high, which, over time, can increase a person's risk of heart disease, kidney failure, limb amputations and blindness. Now experts are claiming that individuals whose blood sugar is only slightly above normal face a much higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes later in life.
Although IGT was previously linked to type 2 diabetes later in life, little is known about the link, if any, between IFG or the combination of IFG and IGT, and the development of type 2 diabetes.
Among more than 1,300 men and women studied for up to eight years, about one third of those with IGT or IFG at the beginning of the study developed diabetes as compared with only 4.5 per cent of those who started with normal blood sugar.
Study participants who had both IGT and IFG at the outset, the chance of developing diabetes was much higher. The results was 75 per cent for women and 53 per cent for men.
The Journal of the American Medical Association (2001;285:2109-2113) stated that the authors concluded that the rate of diabetes among white persons aged 50 to 75 years is strongly related to both impaired fasting and impaired post-load glucose levels at baseline.
Information provided is courtesy of and compiled by the Academy of Anti-aging Research staffs, editors, and other reports.
Cortisol is best known as the “fight or flight” hormone. Whenever your body needs a temporary increase in energy, the adrenal glands increase their cortisol production at the expense of the production of other hormones and bodily processes not considered necessary for survival. How this happens is as follows:
A problem, however, arises when we are under constant stress. This stress may be of a psychological nature, physiological nature or lifestyle orientated. Our eat habits and fast-paced lifestyle with its associated stressors are two major contributors towards the elevated stress levels encountered in society today.
Long term stress sees the adrenal glands consistently supplying higher levels of cortisol. This means your blood sugar levels are constantly high, while your insulin production is compromised. In effect, your body becomes resistant to insulin. Thus the pancreas, in an effort to create equilibrium, struggles to keep up with the insulin demand. As a result, your blood sugar levels remain high, and the cells that need the glucose do not receive them. This forms a snowballing effect.
There is, thus, no denying the fact that an elevated and consistently higher than normal cortisol production has a resounding impact on our glucose levels as well as proper pancreatic functioning, thereby compromising the pancreas’ long-term effectiveness. The end result of such long-term stress and the associated elevated cortisol production could thus very well be contributors to the occurrence of diabetes.
Diabetes is a runaway epidemic today. We are seeing more and more people in their 30s and 40s developing Adult Onset Diabetes. This disease will shorten your life and is preventable. Returning to a diet rich in fruits and vegetables with tight control of simple and refined sugar is the key.
Traditionally, the "normal" blood fasting glucose level is 90-120. A blood fasting glucose level of over 120 mg/dl is considered diabetes. If one eats a diet high in vegetables, low in refined sugar, and proper amounts of protein, the blood sugar level will be in the range of 70-90 mg/dl. This is the anti-aging target range one should target. This article supports this hypothesis. Do not kid yourself that you are not diabetic just because your sugar is 115. The reality is that you are already a diabetic. Because it is not so defined by conventional standards does not mean that you are free from the disease.
