Read The South Beach Diet Supercharged: Faster Weight Loss and Better Health for Life for Free Online
Authors: Arthur Agatston, Joseph Signorile
rapid fall in blood sugar, which is known as reactive hypoglycemia because the reaction, or blood sugar drop (hypoglycemia), comes sooner after a meal than a normal, gradual drop would. It’s why the insulin resistance associated with prediabetes only exacerbates the already exaggerated swings in blood sugar and consequent cravings caused by bad carbohydrates. And it’s why prediabetics are almost always hungry again soon after a meal and tend to gulp down their food to bring up their sagging blood sugar.
Prediabetes typically occurs in individuals with a genetic predisposition to accumulating belly fat. In fact, you can recognize people with prediabetes on the street. They’re the ones walking around with large bellies and relatively thin arms and legs. They also tend to have high blood pressure, low levels of good HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, and high levels of triglycerides (a fat-storage molecule found in blood and fat cells).
But how does prediabetes lead to type 2 diabetes? Over time, your pancreas tends to burn out from the stress of producing extra insulin to overcome the insulin resistance of your tissues and clear sugar and fat from your blood in a timely manner. It is at this point that your sugar remains high for many hours after a meal and type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
----
IT WASN’T STRESS THAT MADE US FAT
M any overweight individuals, including many of my patients, believe that their food cravings have to do with stress rather than blood sugar swings. They’re embarrassed by their lack of willpower and assure me that it’s the fight with the boss or the spouse, the 2-hour wait in traffic, or the kids’ bad report cards that made them wolf down that giant muffin, handful of candy, or piece of coffee cake. Even some scientists have suggested that our obesity epidemic is due to the psychological stresses of living in modern times.
While I acknowledge that some people do overeat to compensate in times of stress, I take issue with those who believe it’s the cause of our obesity epidemic. I like to point out that stress didn’t begin 30 years ago, and we didn’t start getting really fat as a nation until the 1990s—after the fall of the Berlin Wall that marked the end of the Cold War and before 9/11. The US economy was booming at the time. It’s also important to note that this was a period when the character of our food supply had changed and our physical activity was rapidly declining, largely due to increased use of the personal computer and other labor-saving gadgets.
The point is, it was in the midst of peace and prosperity that America became so fat. With what we know today, it’s clear that it was not our psychological state but what we ate and how sedentary we became that was the primary cause.
----
During the prediabetes phase, most people’s fasting blood sugar is borderline, normal, or even low. For this reason, many of my patients initially believe that their risk of heart attack and stroke increases only if they become diabetic. This belief is wrong! During the prediabetes phase, when fasting blood sugar is still normal, insulin resistance is present and it takes longer to clear fats and sugar from the bloodstream. It’s that extra fat hanging around after a meal that often penetrates the walls of the blood vessels supplying the heart muscle, brain, and other organs. This is the origin of the atherosclerotic plaque that clogs these vessels and eventually leads to a heart attack or stroke. And, yes, this can and does occur during prediabetes, well before type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
Again, this is relatively recent information. Prediabetes was first described in 1988 by Gerald Reaven, MD, of Stanford, and we’re still learning about the havoc it wreaks on our blood vessels and overall health. I talk more about the origins and the health implications of prediabetes in Chapter 6 , “Bye-Bye Belly Fat.”
Creating the South Beach Diet
Armed with the conviction
Prediabetes typically occurs in individuals with a genetic predisposition to accumulating belly fat. In fact, you can recognize people with prediabetes on the street. They’re the ones walking around with large bellies and relatively thin arms and legs. They also tend to have high blood pressure, low levels of good HDL (high-density lipoprotein) cholesterol, and high levels of triglycerides (a fat-storage molecule found in blood and fat cells).
But how does prediabetes lead to type 2 diabetes? Over time, your pancreas tends to burn out from the stress of producing extra insulin to overcome the insulin resistance of your tissues and clear sugar and fat from your blood in a timely manner. It is at this point that your sugar remains high for many hours after a meal and type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
----
IT WASN’T STRESS THAT MADE US FAT
M any overweight individuals, including many of my patients, believe that their food cravings have to do with stress rather than blood sugar swings. They’re embarrassed by their lack of willpower and assure me that it’s the fight with the boss or the spouse, the 2-hour wait in traffic, or the kids’ bad report cards that made them wolf down that giant muffin, handful of candy, or piece of coffee cake. Even some scientists have suggested that our obesity epidemic is due to the psychological stresses of living in modern times.
While I acknowledge that some people do overeat to compensate in times of stress, I take issue with those who believe it’s the cause of our obesity epidemic. I like to point out that stress didn’t begin 30 years ago, and we didn’t start getting really fat as a nation until the 1990s—after the fall of the Berlin Wall that marked the end of the Cold War and before 9/11. The US economy was booming at the time. It’s also important to note that this was a period when the character of our food supply had changed and our physical activity was rapidly declining, largely due to increased use of the personal computer and other labor-saving gadgets.
The point is, it was in the midst of peace and prosperity that America became so fat. With what we know today, it’s clear that it was not our psychological state but what we ate and how sedentary we became that was the primary cause.
----
During the prediabetes phase, most people’s fasting blood sugar is borderline, normal, or even low. For this reason, many of my patients initially believe that their risk of heart attack and stroke increases only if they become diabetic. This belief is wrong! During the prediabetes phase, when fasting blood sugar is still normal, insulin resistance is present and it takes longer to clear fats and sugar from the bloodstream. It’s that extra fat hanging around after a meal that often penetrates the walls of the blood vessels supplying the heart muscle, brain, and other organs. This is the origin of the atherosclerotic plaque that clogs these vessels and eventually leads to a heart attack or stroke. And, yes, this can and does occur during prediabetes, well before type 2 diabetes is diagnosed.
Again, this is relatively recent information. Prediabetes was first described in 1988 by Gerald Reaven, MD, of Stanford, and we’re still learning about the havoc it wreaks on our blood vessels and overall health. I talk more about the origins and the health implications of prediabetes in Chapter 6 , “Bye-Bye Belly Fat.”
Creating the South Beach Diet
Armed with the conviction
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