cup of jojo

Woke up exhausted this morning…power protein breakfast helped to get me going. Whole wheat english muffin with natural peanut butter and a drizzle of honey; hard-boiled egg; coffee with cinnamon. Goal was to prevent a big blood sugar spike that would cause me to really crash in a couple hours…higher protein & lower carb is the obvious answer, but did you know cinnamon also helps keep blood sugar down? True story.

Since this topic seemed to spark some interest, here’s a great article that summarizes more of the research on diet soda and some theories as to WHY it is linked with (no one is saying CAUSES) overweight, obesity, and diabetes. For example:

…This study found that people who consume diet soda daily have a 67% higher risk of type 2 diabetes compared with those who didn’t consume diet soda, possibly due to artificial sweeteners’ effect on insulin resistance and glucose metabolism.³ Artificial sweeteners are 200 to 13,000 times as sweet as sugar, and this enhanced sweetness is mildly addictive.² Sweet taste triggers the dopamine signal, the same pathway triggered by drugs of abuse such as cocaine.² If artificially sweetened sodas increase cravings, a person may need more sweets to feel satisfied, leading to excessive calorie consumption and weight gain.⁴

Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius poised to accept the recommendation that 9 preventive care services for women’s health be offered at ZERO extra cost to the patient under the Affordable Care Act: that means no co-pays or deductibles, ladies. Here’s what we’re looking at:

•  ALL FDA approved birth control (including morning after pill)
• annual “well-woman” visits
• screening of pregnant women for gestational diabetes
• screening for sexually transmitted diseases, including HIV
• early detection of reproductive cancers
• more support for breast-feeding mothers
• counseling and screening for possible domestic violence

If you were wondering how the Affordable Care Act will directly impact you, that’s a pretty good list. Unfortunately we probably won’t see all this roll out until 2013 due to all the push-back to the ACA—you can bet insurance companies are going to try and fight it.

from the article:

Diet soft drink users, as a group, experienced 70 percent greater increases in waist circumference compared with non-users. Frequent users, who said they consumed two or more diet sodas a day, experienced waist circumference increases that were 500 percent greater than those of non-users.

Abdominal fat is a major risk factor for diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and other chronic conditions. “These results suggest that, amidst the national drive to reduce consumption of sugar-sweetened drinks, policies that would promote the consumption of diet soft drinks may have unintended deleterious effects,” the authors wrote.