Normal Blood Sugars in Pregnancy

I have until now avoided discussing the issue of what normal blood sugars should be in pregnancy because it looked like gynecologists were being more aggressive with blood sugar control during pregnancy then other doctors.

Blood sugar control is particularly important in pregnancy because a fetus that is exposed to continually high blood sugars will experience significant changes in the way that

Flawed Logic: Eating "Eggs" or "Meat" is Associated with but Does Not CAUSE Cancer

Today the morning news carried this headline: Eggs may Increase Risk Of Lethal Prostate Cancer In Healthy Men. The article starts out by saying that "we already know red and processed meat may increase risk of advanced prostate cancer" and then claims that eggs are just as dangerous.

The actual study is found here:

Egg, red meat, and poultry intake and risk of lethal prostate cancer in the

The Blood Sugar 101 FaceBook Page is Where You'll Find Tidbits Too Minor for A Blog Post

Yes, I know FB is the greatest time suck ever invented, and that their entire reason for existing is to steal your personal information. But enough of you asked me to set up a page that I did, and it's getting a respectable number of fans.

I'm posting snippets and links there that don't deserve a whole blog post but which are worthy of your attention.

You can post questions there, too, for

The world is full of people who want to have diabetes

No. I'm not about to rant on about people eating terrible foods that ruin their blood sugar. My topic is something else entirely.

For the past few weeks, for some reason, my email box has been full of letters from people who are desperately hoping that they have diabetes. They don't. In fact, most of them have blood sugar numbers you and I would kill for. When I explain this, they come back

Six New Diabetes Gene Varients Identified in South Asian Populations

A new study, published in Nature Genetics, emphasizes the diversity of the many physiological breakdowns doctors lump together under the title "Type 2 Diabetes."

You can read a good summary of the study here:

Six New Genetic Variants Linked to Type 2 Diabetes Discovered in South Asians

View the abstract of the actual study here:

Genome-wide association study in individuals of South Asian

Hurricane Preparedness with Diabetes

I'm still hoping the weatherfolk are crying wolf on this one, because the current predictions are that my little town is in the center of the hurricane track and that we can expect week-long power outages. If you don't hear from me after Sunday, you'll know why.

But there's still time to take steps to prepare yourself for the worst, diabetes-style. Here are the basics.

1. Make sure you have

Let's Put our Heads Together: Suggest Diabetes-Friendly Foods for Indian and South Asian Vegetarians

Cutting carbs is quite easy for people eating meat-based western diets, and very effective for cutting carbs. But periodically I hear from people with diabetes diagnoses who for religious or cultural reasons can't eat the kinds of food we westerners do.

My usual suggestions are to eat more cheese, eggs (if allowed), nuts, yogurt, certain dals, papadums, green vegetables, lower carb fruits, and

Does the High Fat Diet Cause Diabetes? No, But The Onslaught of Bad Research Is Making Me Burn Out.

I've received a torrent of mail about the study recently published in NATURE which claims that eating a "high fat diet" damages beta cells and causes diabetes.

You can read a summary here:

Science Daily: How a High Fat Diet Causes Diabetes

I don't have access to the full article, but I have read (and commented on) dozens of other articles that purport to show that "high fat diets" cause

Even with my novels I can't seem to avoid health advocacy.

I've been a bit quiet over the past week as the publication date for my second Avon historical romance is coming up, which mean that I have to put a lot of effort into writing blog posts for various romance blogs in the hope that doing so will motivate readers to buy my book.

You can read a good interview with me wearing my novelist hat--and comment to win a free copy of my first novel, Lord

Healthy Whole Grains, Just as Healthy as Pepsi--One Reader Reports

As readers of this blog know, there's nothing I like better than data, and there's no data I like better than the blood sugar meter test results that tell an individual what foods they can eat without raising their blood sugar over the level that causes complications (which is roughly 140 mg/dl or 7.7 mmol/L).

So I was intrigued when a Richard Smith, a friend of the blog, sent me the following

Jimmy Moore Podcast Interview with Jenny Ruhl July 7th,

I just found out that Jimmy Moore is posting the conversation we had last month tomorrow on his Living La Vida Low Carb show. You'll find the podcast here:

http://www.thelivinlowcarbshow.com/shownotes/

If you have any questions after you hear it, feel free to post them here.

Idiotically Dangerous Diet "Reverses Diabetes" but So Does Moderate Carb Restriction Without Calorie Restriction

All last night and this morning my email inbox has been filling up with notes pointing me to this story:

Crash Course Diet Reverses Type 2 Diabetes in a week.

It is yet another example of the tragically flawed pseudo-science that damages the health of people with diabetes.

There's no mystery here, nor is the effect reported a result of "reducing fat in the pancreas" as the doctor who came up

Avandia is sufficient to explain the excess deaths in ACCORD--the study being used to argue that normal blood sugars are dangerous.

If your doctor is telling you that research has "proved" that lowering blood sugars below an A1c of 6.5% is "dangerous" print out this letter, which was just published in the New England Journal of Medicine, and demand that your doctor read it:

Intensive Glucose Lowering and Cardiovascular Outcomes N Engl J Med 2011; 364:2263-2264 June 9, 2011

If you can't get the full letter to display here

News You Missed. WHI: Low Fat Diet Dramatically Worsens Diabetic Blood Sugars

Over the past month the media have been busy doing what they do best--reporting bady designed animal research as if it were human research. As a result we read "A high-fat diet during pregnancy may program a woman's baby for future diabetes, even if she herself is not obese or diabetic." This headline multiplied through the web appearing on dozens of newspaper sites.

Only by reading the full

ADA: Eat Cupcakes for The Cure or Why You Should Hang up on ADA Telemarketers

When this email hit my in basket I thought it was one of my many correspondents indulging in a joke. But it was June 1, not April 1, and, sadly, the email turned out to be real.

It was sent by "Austin-based competitive food eater Hungry Todd Rungy" and it announced that in support of the American Diabetes Associations "Tour de Cure" Mr. Rangy would "attempt to break the world cupcake speed

Insight into Why A1c Correlates So Strongly with Heart Attack

The evidence has been accumulating throughout the past decade that the A1c test is a much better predictor of heart attack than any test of cholesterol levels. You can find summaries of the major studies that have established this finding HERE.

Now scientists have discovered a mechanism that may explain why this is the case. The study is Glycation of LDL by Methylglyoxal Increases Arterial

When To Test Blood Sugar After Meals

For some reason the past week brought me a bunch of emails all asking the same question: Are we supposed to test our blood sugar one hour after we start or end a meal?

As is true with everything involving diabetes the answer is not simple due to variations in individual blood sugar responses.

The reason we test one hour after a meals is to learn how high our blood sugar goes in response to the

Research: Low carb diet helps heart pump and reverses kidney disease. Mediterranean Diet Fail?

There have been several studies in the news over the past few weeks that reinforce the healthfulness of the low carb diet and cast doubt on the utility of the so-called Mediterranean diet doctors prefer because it is full of all those supposedly "healthy whole grains" and pasta.

1. A mouse study confirmed that a ketogenic low carb diet (less than 70-100 grams of carbs a day) can reverse

The Book, Blood Sugar 101, Is Now Available on Kindle and Nook

It took me a while, but I finally figured out how to convert my book, Blood Sugar 101: What They Don't Tell You About Diabetes to Kindle format without losing the charts, graphs, and layout.



Several of you have asked me for an e-book version, which is why I'm providing one. If this version proves popular, I'll do the work needed to convert the book to the other e-platforms. Unfortunately, the

Jenny's Books Available as Part of Brenda Novak's Auction for Diabetes Research

Every year Brenda Novak, a well known bestselling romance author, runs an huge auction to raise funds for the Diabetes Research Institute, and the whole romance writing community pitches in offering signed books, lunches with bestselling authors, and many more items. So far the auction has raised over a million dollars for diabetes research.

The Diabetes Research Institute (DRI) is one of the

April Research Roundup

Here are the studies that caught my eye over the past month.

Metastudies fail to identify who sponsored the studies they are based on, allowing studies funded by drugmakers to appear to be unbiased research. If you've wondered why you are seeing so many metastudies--studies that pool data from many smaller studies--being published, this may be the explanation. As reported by researchers who

Encouraging Statistics

Sometimes the continual flow of bad advice given to people with diabetes can seem overwhelming. All of us have know the neighbor whose doctor put her on the low fat diet that made her give up on diets or the friend on insulin who has been told to test once a week, fasting.

We all run into dozens of people who have no idea that they could go a long way to normalize their blood sugars simply by

Research Round Up

Here are some more items I've collected over the past few months that don't justify a separate post but are still of interest. Click on the link to see the study.

Users of DPP-4 Inhibitors (i.e. Januvia and Onglyza) report far more infections than metformin users, especially respiratory infections which were twelve times more likely. This is not surprising, DPP-4 plays a significant role in the

Research Gives Fascinating insight into What Is Happening in Neuropathy

I just encountered a study that might explain the pattern in which neuropathy develops and gives us insight into how long it will take to reverse it.

Although the neuropathy investigated here was caused by HIV, the pattern in which it develops is the same as that of diabetic neuropathy--feet first, followed by hands after the neuropathy reaches the knee level. More importantly, the mechanism