Action:

• Increase uptake of glucose from the blood (taken with meal or after meal)
• Reducing glucose production by liver
• Mild appetite suppressant

Side effects:

• Nausea
• Diarrhoea
• Upset stomach
• Metallic taste in mouth

Action:

• Stimulate pancreas to release insulin and lower blood glucose levels

Side effects:

• Weight gain
• Skin rashes
• Gastric upsets
• Jaundice

Action:

• Slow down digestion of carbohydrates (taken just before meal)

Side effects:

• Flatulence
• Bloating
• Diarrhoea

Action:

• Increase effect of insulin (taken any time; slow onset, may take 1 to 2 months)

Side effects:

• Weight gain
• Fluid retention

Action:

• Stimulate pancreas to release insulin (taken before meal)

Side effects:

• Blurred vision
• Gastrointestinal upset
• Constipation
• Diarrhoea
• Nausea

Action:

• Slows stomach emptying (injectable 1 hour before morning or evening meals; may be used with metformin, sulfonylurea, TZDs)
• Slow down release of glucose from the liver
• Increase insulin release

Side effects:

• Nausea
• Vomiting
• Diarrhoea
• Dizziness
• Headache
• Feeling jittery
• Acid stomach

Action:

• Slows down release of glucose from liver (taken orally any time; may be prescribed with sulfohylureas)
• Increase insulin released

Side effects:

• Respiratory tract infection
• Stuffy or runny nose
• Sore throat
• Headache

Always use your medications as directed.  If you miss a dose or accidentally take two doses, monitor your blood sugar level closely.  These medications are rarely prescribed for pregnant women with gestational diabetes.  Insulin treatment is recommended when these medications cease to be effective.

How Do Sugar Cravings Develop?

I have found from experience that individuals who eat haphazardly, eat very fast and eat a narrower range of uninteresting foods tend to develop food addictions. Sugar cravings are almost a form of compensation for an uninteresting palate.

Chronic dieters are particularly susceptible to erratic and uncontrollable sugar cravings. Do you put yourself on punishing diets and eat like a bird in the attempt to get to your goal weight by tomorrow? You may want to take a cold hard look at yourself to ascertain what it is that you are subjecting yourself to that is causing these addictions.

I postulate that it could be due to a lack of balance. Balance is key in the taste sensations we get from our foods. There should be a mix of sour, sweet, hot, cold, bitter, salty, spicy taste sensations in our palate. These myriad of tastes sensations, food textures and mouth feels contribute to the enjoyment of food. If we enjoy each meal slowly, feel fully satisfied and stop just before we are full, we are less likely to develop sugar addictions.

Why Do I Have Sugar Cravings?

Cravings can be linked to a drop in blood sugar levels. If your last meal was more than 6 hours ago, it is reasonable to expect hunger pangs to initial sugar cravings. After all, your body needs sugar to produce energy quickly. Particularly the brain – the only form of fuel the brain uses is sugar, not fat or protein. Consequently, it is natural for you to crave sugar when famished!

Food cravings can also arise from hormonal changes. Many women report that they crave sugar when they are pre-menstrual. Our emotional state is also largely responsible for our sugar cravings. Some people, when angry or under stress, find themselves polishing off an entire block of chocolate, half a cake and a whole pack of sweet biscuits. If you are one of those people, try to keep those emotions in check by taking time out to calm down before reaching for the bag of jelly beans. Some breathing exercises to relax could be useful!

How To Stop Sugar Cravings

Are you in the habit of eating something sweet after dinner? Do you like a bowl of ice cream after dinner? If you break this habit, you are on the perfect path to stop your sugar cravings for good.

Stop sugar cravings in-between meals

To prevent cravings, simply have a snack between your 3 main meals. Reach for some fruits, nuts or yoghurt.

Brush Your Teeth

Brushing your teeth at the end of the meal can readily stop sugar cravings. The toothpaste leaves a fresh minty flavour in your mouth and this makes you less likely to reach for something sweet.

Have Some Water

Often thirst is mistaken for hunger. We confuse the body’s messages. Tune in to your body’s cues and get a big glass of water instead of starting on that bar of chocolate.

Do Something Different

Are you bored after spending hours at your desk? Get up and go for a walk instead of giving in to the urge to eat something sweet. Craving something sweet could just be a habit. The best way to stop the craving is to stop the habit altogether. Distract yourself another way, call a friend, go for a walk, take a long hot bath, listen to some music and start grooving or do some yoga.

If you can just delay satisfying your immediate food cravings, you can drastically reduce the amount of times you actually give in to them. They are called “moments” of weakness for that reason. If you can extend the “moment”, the weakness may well pass, too. This is a very powerful method to stop sugar cravings.

Do anything but eat something sweet and break the habit. You might actually like yourself more for being stronger than your cravings!

Clear Your Pantry

Another way to stop sugar cravings is to clear your pantry. Eliminate or store sweet foods in opaque jars so that they are “Out of sight and out of mind.”

Control the Quantities

If having coffee with friends or dining out, share the piece of cake or dessert. That way you cut down on half the sugar intake and get to enjoy exactly what you want. You are less likely to feel deprived and resentful of missing out on the sweet.

Stop sugar cravings at home by giving yourself a bit of chocolate and keep the rest of the bar in a hard to reach place, like the rear of the top kitchen shelf. Then walk out of the kitchen and settle down somewhere else before you start eating.

When Shopping

Never shop when you are dangerously hungry. You will reach for the sweet treats unconsciously when you blood sugar levels are low. Eat something like a piece of fruit and a yoghurt before you commence shopping. Take a list with you and buy only what is on the list, nothing more!

Hypnosis to Stop Sugar Cravings

You might also want to give hypnosis a go as another complementary tool in your quest to stop sugar cravings. I have purchased a number of hypnosis mp3 recordings from the following site myself, and found them to be surprisingly effective. They are very reasonably priced and come with a risk-free 90-day money back guarantee – more than enough time to see if this works for you:

• Stop Sugar Cravings Hypnosis

You might also like to try the more general Perfect Health hypnosis session:

• Perfect Health Hypnosis

Sugar addiction is like any other addiction, only it is socially acceptable and therefore harder to incriminate.

100 Days of Empowerment – Stop Sugar Cravings and Beyond

When you are completely stuck, it usually helps to attack a problem from a completely different angle. Have a look at the following video – it’s quite fun and so true!

A friend sent this to me last year, and I signed up for the program myself. Having been through the entire 100 days program, I can whole-heartedly recommend it. Yeah sure, I do not need to stop sugar cravings in my life, but I am still human with plenty of other issues. And I can tell you, this program is full of positive, empowering messages that truly propel you each day to live a life you love! Create your own breakthroughs, go for your dreams – and walk down a different street!
In fact, the program was so good that my entire family (husband and two kids) shared the journey, too, and had their own breakthroughs.

UPDATE (28-June): The 100 Day Challenge used to be available only around the start of the year, but now you don’t have to wait. What would you like your life to look 100 days from now? Stop those cravings for good and replace them with pride. Check it out here: The 100 Day Challenge.

 
Do you find this article useful? What are your breakdowns and breakthroughs in dealing with your sugar cravings? What’s your plan of attack? I’d love to hear from you, and I will keep updating this post with the latest tips on how to stop sugar cravings!

Low glycaemic index diets are more effective than other conventional weight loss diets possibly because low glycaemic index diets keep you feeling fuller for longer. That way the tendency to snack between meals is less.

Another explanation for this phenomenon is that eating low GI foods elicit less insulin production from your pancreas. With less circulating insulin, less sugar storage and fat production takes place. In essence, what you are doing is powerfully shifting the hormonal balance within your body toward less storage of fat. This results in the reduction in the percentage of body fat, thus facilitating weight loss!

Take the simple rice for instance; did you know that their glycaemic indexes vary considerably? Who would have guessed that the carbohydrate from your unsuspecting Jasmine rice (GI – 109) hits your blood stream faster than your table sugar (GI – 100)!

Check out the table below:

Glycaemic index of various types of rice

For further information, click one of the following links: Glycaemic Index and also How To Stop Your Sugar Cravings.

Research by the Australian Bureau of Statistics reveals that since the late 1980’s life expectancy has increased by 6 years for men and 4 years for women, with men living until 79 while women until 83.7 years. This is good news indeed!  Unfortunately this does not mean we are healthier than previous generations!  Quite on the contrary, we are actually just sick for longer.  That was the message during the Australian Lifestyle Medicine Association Conference held in Sydney last month.
They say Australia is the lucky country.  However, the fact remains that despite a decade of unprecedented wealth, limitless choices, advanced healthcare, we are not as “well” as we should be.  We are staring down the barrel of a chronic disease crisis of unprecedented proportion.  Obesity, heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and cancer are leading causes of preventable death.
To date, the health impact of overweight and obesity are yet to be experienced in this country.  Our current health infrastructure is ill-equipped to handle the fast rising “tsunami”.  So what should we do about this burgeoning problem?  The answer is not to have more doctors to meet the needs of a rapidly ailing population.  Instead, we have to take responsibility for our health.  The onus is on each of us to make sure we keep as healthy as possible by making life-enhancing lifestyle changes.
Did you know that during World War II, health improved in the general population in England?  This was because the English were forced to a basic daily diet of wholemeal bread, potatoes and home-grown vegetables.  Eggs, milk, butter, salt, sugar and meat were strictly rationed.  Food restrictions actually brought on unexpected health improvement!
During the Australian Lifestyle Medicine Conference, Professor Garry Egger echoed the same view when he spoke about the inverse relationship between the state of the economy and population health. He showed a graph depicting predictable improved state of health with each economic crisis over the last century.  It is ironic that improved economic conditions is consistent with bad health outcomes.  This is a clear sign that we are victims of excesses or “the good life”.
What do you think?  What active steps are you taking to improve your state of health?

NB: Professor Egger is also the Director, Centre for Health Promotion and Research, Sydney, and author of ‘Health, ‘ill-th’ and economic growth: Medicine, environment and economics at the cross-roads’, a soon-to-be published paper in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Not all fatness indicates disease risk. Not all leanness indicates lack of disease risk. So what is the one factor that is a potent indicator of disease risk? It is an inflammatory process called metaflammation, para-flammation or smouldering inflammation. This condition appears to be inextricably linked with individual lifestyle behaviours like:

1. poor diet
2. inactivity
3. excessive exercise (modern endurance events)
4. inadequate sleep (due to deprivation, insomnia or sleep disorders like sleep apnoea)
5. mental states like anxiety or depression
6. environmental stressors
7. excessive alcohol
8. smoking

Markers of inflammation are expressed through a range of immune mediators such as cytokines, chemokines, adipokines, myokines and transcription factors. Recently, C-reactive protein has gained more attention than NFkB, TNF alpha and Il-6 but overall, these are common markers used to identify unhealthy inducers of metaflammation. It seems, the lifestyle-related inducers listed above are associated with oxidative stress, insulin resistance and eventual development of disease states.
Regularly consuming high glycaemic foods or large quantities of highly processed carbohydrate foods leads to inflammation and aging of cells. As Professor Jennie Brand Miller, world leading authority on the glycaemic index puts it very simply, “High GI foods lead to high inflammatory markers due to oxidative stress. What happens is that the high glucose load overwhelms the power-house (mitochondria) in the cell causing lots of free radicals to be generated. This leads to death of the mitochondria and eventual cell death.” In essence, aspire to eat like traditional natives and regularly choose low GI foods.
Regular moderate level physical activity, approximately ½ to 1 hour per day most days of the week is anti-inflammatory. Getting 8 hours of good quality sleep daily is also vital. It appears that the “stress-like’’ effects of sleep deprivation and the accompanying hormonal changes are associated with obesity.
In an advanced society like ours, mental states associated with stress, anxiety and depression seem to generate acute inflammatory responses accompanied by elevated levels of cytokines. Smoking also elicits a parallel reaction. Both of which are linked to degenerative diseases.
In a nutshell, the maintenance of a disease-free state lies squarely in our hands. Health is about consistently choosing pro-life behaviours through good nutrition, exercise, good quality sleep, relaxation and powerfully choosing joy-filled states. What are your views? Please post you comments below.

Foods containing pungent flavour are often rich in sulphur content. These foods not only are great mould deterrents, they also play vital roles in DNA repairs. Cruciferous vegetables like broccoli, garlic and onions are sulphur rich and powerful inducers of protective enzymes like superoxide dismutase and glutathione peroxidase. They are also high in indoles and can inhibit colorectal, bladder, lung, mouth, throat, stomach and breast cancers.

Cruciferous vegetable are particularly rich in isothiocynates.  Isothiocyanates have amazing anti-aging properties; this is because they are potent inhibitors of enzymes that promote glycation.  Glycation occurs when oxidation of sugars coating the surface of proteins like collagen result in the formation of Advanced Glycated Endproducts – AGEs. As the name implies, AGEs literally cause premature aging with the formation of saggy, wrinkly skin.  Note that any external signs of aging are accompanied by the aging of  internal organs as well.  The external and internal are never mutually exclusive. 

This aging process is even more pronounced in diabetics as AGEs form more quickly with elevated blood sugar levels.  It is not uncommon for a diabetic diagnosed at the age of 30 to have a physiological age of 75 by the time they reach the chronological age of 60.  It is a well-known fact that accelerated aging comes with poorly controlled blood sugar levels.  Hence, to reduce age-related cell damage, diabetics should tuck into large quantities of these vegetables to decelerate the glycation process and its accompanying premature aging.
In conclusion, these vegetables protect you from DNA damage, stimulate cancer cell death (cell apoptosis) and keep you looking and feeling young. Why would you not eat heaps more of them daily?

Diabetes is a chronic disease.  This means it is progressive and people who have it generally have it for life.  Initially, when a person is pre-diabetic, lifestyle changes involving appropriate diet and exercise are enough to keep blood glucose levels in the healthy range.  But as the disease progress, medication will be prescribed to keep sugar levels down.  In time, even this will fail to achieve normal blood sugar levels and insulin injections (up to 6 a day) will be prescribed.

In this article,  I will discuss the 5 classes of tablets commonly prescribed for diabetics and their side effects. I hope after reading this article, you will have a better understanding of what options are available to you, how appropriate your medication is for you and the alternatives you could choose from if your current medication is inappropriate.

Essentially the 5 classes of diabetic tablets can be categorised as follow:
1. Biguanides
2. Sulphonylureas
3. Thiazolidinediones
4. Meglitinides
5. Alpha glucosidase inhibitor

Most newly diagnosed diabetics are prescribed biguanides. Biguanides are also called metformin. Metformin acts by reducing the release of sugar from your liver, slowing down absorption of sugar from you intestine and making your body more sensitive to the hormone insulin. Metformin tablets are taken with meals and may present side effects like nausea, diarrhoea and metallic taste in the mouth. You will not gain weight with this medication but may lose some weight which is a real bonus! Long term usage of metformin can cause vitamin B12 deficiency so you will need to remind your doctor to test you B12 levels regularly to make sure that you are not deficient. If you are, you will need supplements or B12 injections on a regular basis.

The second class of drugs is the sulphonylureas. Sulphonylureas are taken before meals and can cause hypoglycaemia or low blood sugar levels making you feel faint so you must have lollies or sweet drinks available for when you experience a ‘hypo’. These drugs can cause weight gain. Not such a good thing as most diabetics are also overweight. Diabetics with poorer sugar control are often prescribed sulphonylureas in combination with the biguanides (expect to take more and more drugs if you sugar control is poor).

Thiazolidinediones act by lowering your blood sugar and increasing the effect of insulin on your muscles and fat cells. They increase your body’s sensitivity to insulin. These drugs can be taken any time of the day and may cause small weight gain but they seem to have the added bonus of redistributing fat from you tummy to your thighs! Good for trimming your waist!

Meglitinides act by stimulating the pancreas to release more insulin. They are taken just before meals and are quick acting. Possible side effects are hypoglycaemia, gastric upset and abnormal liver function tests. Regularly stimulating the pancreas to release more insulin can place a ‘strain’ on the beta-cells cause negative health outcomes. Meglitinides are great for individuals with erratic eating patterns like shift working nurses and factory workers.

Arcabose (alpha glucosidase inhibitor) are taken before meals and act by slowing down carbohydrate digestion and absorption. The side effects like bloating, diarrhoea and flatulence are quite unpleasant. However, with all these unpleasant side effects, weight loss is natural. A good bonus!

I hope this article demystifies the commonly prescribed drugs for your health condition. If you are experiencing any unpleasant side effects, it might be wise to change your medication. Please do not hesitate to ask if you have any questions or wish to post a comment below.

Australians are among the fattest people in the world. This has caused a host of chronic diseases to develop. A cluster of some of the above-mentioned conditions is commonly called metabolic syndrome. It is often said that obesity is harder to cure than cancer! For over 10 years, it has been known that obesity is directly associated with inflammation.

More and more experts are seeing body weight or fat as potential ‘markers’ of other health problems, like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Low grade form of inflammation commonly called metaflammation seems to result from certain lifestyle behaviours. Some of these behaviours are responsible for making us fat.

Certain food choices and lack of activity are now known to contribute notoriously to ‘metaflammation’. According to studies, merely changing or reducing weight without adopting all aspects of lifestyle changes aimed at reducing inflammation are doomed to fail in the long run. To achieve better overall health outcomes, all aspects of lifestyle that contribute to reducing inflammation should be adopted.
Sleep is a factor that is largely neglected in our modern society. We now know that less than 7 hours sleep a day has been shown to raise inflammatory makers. This is related to psychological stress which has been known to cause pro-inflammatory responses. Chronic stress causes a chronic rise in stress-related hormones like cortisol and the concurrent reduction in the ‘feel-good’ hormones – endorphins. Chronic stress and depression are directly associated with metaflammation. Metaflammation leads to numerous disease states as a result of insulin resistance! In other words, science has shown that you can sleep yourself and relax yourself slim! Wow, how awesome is that? If you did nothing else but get good quality sleep and adopt deep relaxation, you could be a few kilograms lighter than you are now! How is that for good news?

Hence the winning formula for keeping trim involves a complete lifestyle overhaul combining:
1. Good sleep
2. Stress management (so you have little or no stress in your life)
3. Plenty of exercise – take every opportunity to move!
4. Good solid ‘anti-inflammatory’ diet filled with back-to-basics ‘earth foods’
5. No smoking

All of these health-enhancing factors have not changed since the time of Hippocrates. How remarkable is that? These 5 simple factors make up the entire prevention armoury. They say the more things change the more they stay the same, this must be one of those things!