YOUR CHANCES of developing diabetes are higher if you:Have a family history of this disorder. If you have a close relative — parent, sister or brother—with Type I diabetes, your risk of getting it is two and a half times higher than normal. In the case of Type II diabetes, your risk goes even higher — 10 to 12 times more than normal.If one identical twin has diabetes, the other twin has a 62 per cent chance of having it too. The corresponding figure for non-identical twins is only 12 per cent.In a reversal of earlier medical thinking, health researchers to-day believe that Type II (adult-onset) diabetes has a stronger genetic basis than Type I in which the loss of pancreatic cells isthought to be the result of auto-immune processes or viralinfections such as viral hepatitis, German measles, mumps orchicken pox. —Are overweight — 20 per cent heavier than your recommended weight. A growing volume of evidence suggests that it is more specifically those with abdominal obesity who are at risk for Type II diabetes. These are people who store their excess fat on their waistline rather than on their hips.Suffer from high blood pressure (hypertension)Are a long-time smokerAre a woman with a history of deliveries of large babies, usually over 3.5 kg.*62\332\2*
Archive for July, 2011
The positive aspect of the zinc link to eating disorders is that a majority of individuals with these disorders respond to a simple solution— the addition of liquid zinc to the diet. Prominent eating disorders researcher Dr. Alexander Schauss, of Tacoma, Washington, is part of a research team that has carefully studied the zinc-eating-disorder connection for years. In the following case history, Schauss illustrates why he is convinced of the value of this nutrient in the treatment of bulimia:”We were doing blinded studies, which means that neither I nor the patient were aware of whether they were receiving a placebo or liquid zinc. [One of our subjects] was a forty-seven-year-old psychotherapist with a doctoral degree in psychology who had been treating patients with eating disorders for the past fifteen years and who herself had bulimia—about five binge-purge episodes per day for the past thirty-four years. She could hardly recount a single day in the last thirty-four years when she did not engage in bulimic activity. She was referred to us by a local hospital because of a particular risk factor for chronic bulimia— the esophageal flap can tear and result in a person choking to death.”We give a small amount (about 5 or 10 milliliters [ml], which is less than a tablespoon) of liquid zinc to a person, ask them to swirl it around the mouth for a few seconds and tell us what they taste. The inability to detect any taste is evidence of a systemic zinc deficiency. [This woman] couldn’t taste anything. The protocol consisted of giving her 120 ml of the solution spaced throughout the day in 30- to 40-ml doses on an empty stomach.”A few days later the woman called back to say that she had no desire to binge or purge that day. It was the first time she could recall feeling that way in thirty-four years. This was very interesting to us. When you’ve engaged in an obsessive/compulsive behavior for thirty-four years, you have to wonder how it would be possible for it to disappear in a few days.”It has been five years now, and she has never gone back to bingeing and purging. More important, she was provided no therapy. This is very similar to the experience of hundreds of bulimics that we’ve studied. We’re quite convinced that it was the liquid zinc that was effective.”*62\233\8*
Tea and coffee. One patient suffered repeated severe attacks of migraine, resistant to all forms of treatment. He was found to be highly sensitive to tea and when this was excluded from his diet he improved.Another sufferer who used to get severe pains had been labeled neurotic but, when given tea or coffee by a tube into her stomach (so that she could not taste it), she developed the pains and her pulse doubled in rate, whilst giving water through the tube had no such effect. After stopping these offending substances she had no further attacks.The active constituents of tea and coffee include caffeine and theophylline, substances which prevent the breakdown of a high energy compound, cyclic AMP. The build-up of this substance makes the body far more sensitive to the action of the sympathetic nervous system. This type of food allergy is an increased sensitivity of stimulation after taking tea or coffee.
Alcohol. This is the commonest ‘food’ taken. It is well known for its capacity to widen blood vessels. The ‘hangover’ headache following excessive intake is well known, but many migraine sufferers are particular sensitive to alcohol, especially red wine and port. This cannot be solely due to the content of pure alcohol but may well be related to other substances (higher esters) which accumulate during long-term storage.
Other foodsAlmost every other food has been said to cause migraine, the commoner examples being citrus fruits and meat.One migraine subject always had an attack of headache some hours after eating pork, but only when tired or under emotional stress, and could eat pork with impunity if in ‘good condition’. With skin tests he was found to be sensitive to pork but also many other types of food.Here we have an illustration of the fact that it is not necessarily a single factor that induces an attack. In addition to the sufferer having the propensity to develop the attack, one single stimulus-in this case, pork-may not be enough but another-in this case, fatigue-had to be present.
Food allergy’Allergy’ is a vague term but when used in its medical sense means an altered reactivity of the body to a stimulus in the environment. Because so many disorders are said to be allergic in origin, scientists are reluctant to accept this explanation unless confirmation is obtained by immunological tests. With migraine this is not often the case, partly because the allergic substance in the food is difficult to isolate.
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