Health

Common Sense Health: Challenge Yourself to Better Glycemic Health

by W. Gifford-Jones, MD and Diana Gifford-Jones Views: 103

Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American philosopher and poet, wrote, “All life is an experiment.” So this week, to conclude our six-part series on the devastating and relentless pandemic of type 2 diabetes, we conclude with a challenge to readers to undertake an experiment.

The premise of the experiment is that achieving the “perfect” diet and carving time for physically active lifestyles is not always feasible. The evidence is overwhelming that for too many people, losing excessive weight is not easy. In fact, society has become not only complacent about obesity, but accepting and even promotional of it.

For “skinny fat people” too – the ones who may not present as overweight, but whose bodies harbour visceral fat around internal organs – there is cause for concern. That fat is like a ticking time bomb strapped to key organs, enabling the forward march of type 2 diabetes and other debilitating conditions like non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

But what if readers of this column were to undertake a personal challenge to attempt the same reversal of disease that controlled trials have achieved with as simple an approach as the use of a brown seaweed supplement to control glycemic stress?

You can explore any similar natural ingredients that have been shown to help manage blood glucose swings naturally. These include white kidney beans, cinnamon extract, and coffee bean extract. But none have shown the outstanding level of performance in the lab as brown seaweed.

A Canadian company, using Canadian sourced ingredients, is making a uniquely Canadian contribution to good health offering an alternative to consumers who want to halt and reverse the development of diabetes. Found in natural health food stores, Certified Natural’s Glycemic Control contains a concentrated form of brown seaweed called InSea2.

The controlled experimental results described last week involved two remarkable six-month trials. One involved pre-diabetic subjects; the other involved individuals diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. In both studies, participants took 250 mg of InSea2 30 minutes before each of three meals a day.

Results showed, for example, a 48% decrease in post-meal blood sugar surge by slowing down the digestion of carbohydrates. This means less insulin is needed to manage blood sugar, effectively reducing demand on the pancreas. Similarly, the research showed a 39% reduction in glycemic stress resulting from sugar digestion.

Albert Einstein famously said, “No amount of experimentation can ever prove me right; a single experiment can prove me wrong.” Thus, in all things, there is a measure of artfulness in determining what combination of factors will be sufficient to convince you of a truth.

But there is nothing like personal experience to determine the formula that will work for you. So if you are pre-diabetic or have type 2 diabetes, why not try to replicate the results of these remarkable studies? There are no dead bodies from people trying natural supplements, and while 250 mg of brown seaweed before each meal may not meet Einstein’s test of proof, you can watch for your own results. Maybe like the study participants, you will see improvements in your ability to manage blood sugar levels, and that will be proof enough.

Just as Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essays championed individualism in opposition to what he saw as negative societal trends, so this Gifford-Jones article is an invitation to individual readers to take up a personal challenge.

Give it six months of committed effort, and then let us know your results.

The last of a six-part series. Sign-up at www.docgiff.com. For comments, contact-us@docgiff.com. Follow us on Instagram @docgiff and @diana_gifford_jones

Image provided by Dr. Diana Gifford-Jones from Pixabay

Author: W. Gifford-Jones, MD and Diana Gifford-Jones

Dr. Ken Walker (who writes under the pseudonym of Dr. W. Gifford-Jones, MD) is a graduate of the University of Toronto and the Harvard Medical School. He trained in general surgery at Strong Memorial Hospital, University of Rochester, Montreal General Hospital, McGill University and in Gynecology at Harvard. His storied medical career began as a general practitioner, ship’s surgeon, and hotel doctor. For more than 40 years, he specialized in gynecology, devoting his practice to the formative issues of women’s health. In 1975, he launched his weekly medical column that has been published by national and local Canadian and U.S. newspapers. Today, the readership remains over seven million.

His advice contains a solid dose of common sense and he never sits on the fence with controversial issues. He is the author of nine books including, “The Healthy Barmaid”, his autobiography “You’re Going To Do What?”, “What I Learned as a Medical Journalist”, and “90+ How I Got There!”

Many years ago, he was successful in a fight to legalize heroin to help ease the pain of terminal cancer patients. His foundation at that time donated $500,000 to establish the Gifford-Jones Professorship in Pain Control and Palliative Care at the University of Toronto Medical School. At 93 years of age he rappelled from the top of Toronto’s City Hall (30 stories) to raise funds for children with a life-threatening disease through the Make-a-Wish Foundation.  His hobby is trap shooting.

He is married to Susan and has four children and twelve grandchildren.

Diana MacKay writes in collaboration with her father under the pen name, Diana Gifford-Jones.  The daughter of W. Gifford-Jones, MD, Diana has extensive global experience in health and healthcare policy.  Diana is Special Advisor with The Aga Khan University, which operates 2 quaternary care hospitals and numerous secondary hospitals, medical centres, pharmacies, and laboratories in South Asia and Africa.  She worked for ten years in the Human Development sectors at the World Bank, including health policy and economics, nutrition, and population health.

For over a decade at The Conference Board of Canada, she managed four health-related executive networks, including the Roundtable on Socio-Economic Determinants of Health, the Centre for Chronic Disease Prevention and Management, the Canadian Centre for Environmental Health, and the Centre for Health System Design and Management. Her master’s degree in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government included coursework at Harvard Medical School.  She is also a graduate of Wellesley College.  She has extensive experience with Canadian universities, including at Carleton University, where she was the Executive Director of the Global Academy.

She lived and worked in Japan for four years and speaks Japanese fluently. Diana has the designation as a certified Chartered Director from The Directors College, a joint venture of The Conference Board of Canada and McMaster University.  She has recently published a book on the natural health philosophy of W. Gifford-Jones, called No Nonsense Health – Naturally!

The weekly column by W. Gifford-Jones, MD has been published without interruption for 45 years.  The same no-nonsense tradition now continues in a father-daughter collaboration.

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