Yacon Syrup For Diabetics

In case you haven't heard, there's a new sugar substitute that is receiving praise from alternative health experts and traditional doctors alike. It is called yacon syrup and it holds great promise for diabetics. Luckily, it is not something cooked up in a food laboratory like NutraSweet (aspartame) or saccharin. Rather, it is a totally natural substance extracted from a tuber plant in the Asteraceae (sunflower) family. This is the same family of plants that brings us artichokes, lettuce, chamomile tea, and interestingly enough, stevia, another excellent sugar substitute for diabetics.

Found in the high country of Peru, the yacon plant has been used by the Incas for centuries. Sweeter than sugar cane sucrose sugar, it contains fructooligosaccharides (FOS). In fact, as high as fifty percent of the tuber is this unique sugar. Here's the greatest news: fructooligosaccharides do not raise blood sugar. Instead, fructooligosaccharides actually make your cells more sensitive to insulin.

In this way, yacon syrup is almost a miracle for type 2 diabetics!

If you are working on reversing diabetes naturally, yacon syrup should most definitely be added to your arsenal of tricks. It has a delicious flavor, rivaling maple syrup. Most seem to think it has a hint of a fruity flavor too like raisons or dates. Some also say it takes a little like it has dried figs mixed in. This subtle fruity flavor can actually enhance the flavor in some uses.

It is not recommended that you bake with yacon syrup as it breaks down in extremely high temperatures (above about 160 degrees Fahrenheit). However, if you are cooking something like homemade spaghetti sauce or coconut curry on the stove top, this amount of heat should be fine.

Yacon syrup can also be used to make delicious salad dressings and other condiments like homemade ketchup. It goes great in teas and coffees as well as blended smoothie drinks. Diabetics can use it as a sugar substitute in just about anything other than baked goods without fearing a high blood glucose reading.

Remember too, that yacon syrup will actually improve your insulin resistance. However, you can't eat an unlimited amount of yacon syrup because it can give you diarrhea if you eat it in excess. Start out small and eat only one or two teaspoons and then you can increase it incrementally once that has no effect. Yacon syrup will also decrease cholesterol and serve as a prebiotic for your gut flora.

Look for yacon syrup for diabetics online at sites like amazon.com and at your local health stores and food co-ops. It will likely become more popular in the near future. It is one of the most exciting tools for  curing diabetes in a long time.

To learn exactly the whole formula for reversing diabetes naturally, click on the big red button at the top of the page and listen carefully to the video. It is long but it is important to listen to every part of it to get the gist of what they are saying. Remember too, this is a plan that is backed by legitimate scientific research as will be explained.

Diabetes Research: Always Consider the Source Of Funding

Will your New Year's resolution be
to cure your diabetes naturally?

Happy New Year! My wish for all diabetics this year is that they find a real cure for their diabetes, get off insulin and pharmaceuticals, and fully enjoy their life once again. It is possible for most diabetes if they are armed with the right information.

I was reading an article by David Mendosa which lead me to some recent research papers on the dawn phenomenon, where the blood sugar rises dramatically just before waking up. This is a very common problem for type 2 diabetics and one of the most difficult problems to resolve. I wrote about several natural ways to control the dawn phenomenon a few years back. Since then I've received multiple private messages stating that one or more of the techniques I wrote about worked. In some cases, these were the only thing the person tried that ever actually worked. So, if you have this problem, you may want to check out that old post. You should also definitely click on the big red button at the top and check out what's offered there.

This recent "scientific" review article on the dawn phenomenon basically concludes that oral medications cannot effectively control the dawn phenomenon and that basal insulin can control the dawn phenomenon. Basal insulin?? Hmmm... I wonder how the authors of the paper arrived at this conclusion. Let's dig deeper.


Taking a look at the acknowledgments at the very end of the paper, you can see that each of the four authors received one or more of the following types of monetary compensation from Sanofi, Eli Lilly & Co., Bristol-Myers Squibb, Merck. P.L., and Menarini Group (Big Pharma and the producers of basal insulin):

1. Speaker fees

2. Travel grants

3. Money for scientific advising and consulting

It also goes on to say that one of the authors sits on the scientific advisory panel for Sanof. In case you don't know, this is the company that has a near monopoly on the basal insulin market. Do you think this is a mere coincidence? Personally, I don't think so.

I actually laughed out loud when I read the following at the end of the acknowledgments:

"No other potential conflicts of interest relevant to this article were reported."

Really :-) How much more conflict could there be?!?

I'm betting the journal requires these conflicts be disclosed for legal reasons and perhaps the doctors themselves feel the need to disclose conflicts for legal reasons too.

This is a prime example why it is always important to go back to the original paper and read all of it, not just the summary and not just the conclusions, before deciding how to evaluate the statements in that paper.

FAR too often, I see statements made with reference to a scientific paper, which of course lends credibility to the statement, based on the conclusions of the paper but omitting the disclosures that are made regarding funding!

It is also far too common, in my opinion, for scientific publications these days to be funded by the pharmaceutical companies. This is in large part how they control the message because the popular press then quotes these papers, usually without actually talking about the funding source. It's just Dr. So and So said this, that, and the other. I do credit David for pointing out at least part of the funding source.

If you want to really dig down deep and get at the truth, always consider the funding source for the researchers. This is why I do like what the guys have put together at the information I link at the top of the page. It is based on research that is NOT funded by Big Pharma but by what I consider to be far more legitimate fact based science.

The Link Between Omega 3 and Type 2 Diabetes

With all the talk of insulin and prescription drugs for type 2 diabetes like metaformin, few people realize that these "standard" treatments for diabetes do nothing to actually address the underlying issues -- damaged cell membranes, malfunctioning cell receptors, and high internal cell toxicity.

The diagram to the left is a simplified illustration of a cell membrane. You may recall from high school biology class studying the double layered phospholipid cell membrane. As you can see in the diagram, "phospholipids" have a water loving head with two water repelling tails. Here's a long YouTube video on cell membranes that explains this in more detail.

I personally wish that high school biology textbooks would label these membranes a different way because I don't think most people really understand what phospholipids are. It's just one of those technical words that don't really fully register in most people's minds as to what it actually is. Instead of labeling them as "phospholipids," I wish they would label the components of these molecules instead: a phosphate head with two fat tails (fatty acids), i.e. the cell membrane is composed of mostly fat.

I bolded that statement because I think people don't realize how important fat is to the entire body, since the entire body is made up of cells and these cells all have cell membranes made of fats. Fat is not just that bulge around your waistline but also one of the most essential building blocks of life. Every cell in your body from your liver cells to your skin cells need fat to function. If you eat unhealthy fats like trans fat or canola oil (hydrogenated or not -- they are BOTH bad), these bad fats get incorporated into the cell membranes. So, instead of the cell membranes being made of heathy omega 3, bad fats get substituted in.

Why does this matter?

It has to do with cell permeability. 

Healthy normal cell membranes are "semi-permeable." This means they are permeable to the right things and not permeable to the wrong things. So, for example, healthy cell membranes are permeable to insulin so it can escort glucose into the cell after we eat. Semi-permeable also means that the toxins produced during normal metabolism inside the cell can be carried out of the cell through the semi-permeable membrane so the toxins don't build up in the cell. In other words, semi-permeable membranes retain fluidity. However, if bad fats get incorporated, cell membranes become less permeable. Some people simplify this and say they become "stiff" which is essentially true and perhaps a good way of thinking about it. More accurately though, if you eat bad fats, your cell membranes become progressively less permeable and thus progressively more insulin resistant.

This is why it is important to heal your cell membranes in order to reverse your diabetes. There are certain foods and supplements that are critical to this healing process. To learn more about the science behind this and exactly what you should and should not eat/drink, click on the red button up top. Keep listening to the video until you get to the meat of the matter. I highly recommend the information they offer as it is essentially a 1, 2, 3, etc step approach to curing diabetes using sound scientific principles. It is also NOT based on anything put out by BIG PHARMA! It is a 100% all natural approach.

The 2 Meanings of "Reversing Diabetes"

I was reading an article on another blog last night on how to reverse diabetes. As I read the article, it really struck me how different their usage of the phrase "reversing diabetes" was from the way I use the phrase. We're using the same words but we are meaning something very different. Please allow me to explain as this is not simply a semantic issue but actually gets at the heart of healing your diabetes.

When someone develops type 2 diabetes, their body is damaged, usually from years of abuse and mainly from an assault from industrial foods in the modern food supply. Most importantly, cell membranes in a type 2 diabetic are usually severely damaged to the point that they are not responding to insulin properly. The common term for this is "insulin resistance."

When cell membranes become damaged in a type 2 diabetic, the primary symptom is high blood sugar. This occurs because the cell membrane will not allow insulin to "escort" glucose molecules in the blood after eating food inside the cell. Insulin brings the glucose to the cell but the cell membrane is so badly damaged structure wise it can't work with insulin properly and the glucose is not allowed inside the cell. Glucose on the outside of the cell can not nourish the cell so even if you eat, your cells starve. The glucose that can't get inside the cells starts to build up in the blood and can reach levels that are much higher than normal. Over time, this high blood sugar causes extensive damage to almost every organ in the body because it attacks the tiny blood vessels.

When I am talking about "reversing diabetes," I am talking about healing the cell membranes and the rest of the damaged body (such as the liver) so that it can function normally again and regulate the blood sugar levels in the body. I am NOT just talking about temporarily reducing blood sugar. However, I believe that this is what many other people mean when they say "reverse diabetes." In fact, they are sometimes just talking about the temporary reduction of blood sugar when they use the term "reversing diabetes." I believe this is usually because they don't really understand the underlying mechanisms involved in type 2 diabetes.

There are foods you can eat such as cinnamon that have been scientifically proven to lower blood sugar. However, in all my research I have not found anything to indicate that cinnamon can heal your cell membranes or your liver or any other part of your body that could be contributing to type 2 diabetes.  In fact, it doesn't make any sense from a biological perspective how this could happen. Please note that I'm using cinnamon as an example because it is so widely known as being a food that can lower blood sugar and it is one of the best studied examples but there are many other foods that would also fall into the category of lowering blood sugar but not actually healing the cell membranes and other damaged parts of the body.

Lowering blood sugar, even if only temporarily, is a good thing of course but if you really want to reverse your diabetes permanently then you need to focus on HEALING the underlying problem that is causing the high blood sugar in the first place. Otherwise you just get a yo yo effect of high blood sugar being interrupted by lower blood sugar when you happen to eat a food that can lower it. Eating TOO much cinnamon can also have a toxic effect by the way.

This is why I recommend so strongly that diabetics get this diabetes information (this is the same information you'll find if you click on the red button at the top of the page) that shows you exactly how to truly reverse diabetes. It was developed by scientists and back by actual research. It does not just focused on just lowering blood sugar temporarily. It focuses on a natural method you can use to actually heal your body. This is the only way you will truly reverse your diabetes. Focusing on lowering blood sugar only will result in the yo yo effect when what you actually need is for your body to be healed so it can holistically regulate your blood sugar at all times.

How California Prop 37 Will Effect Everyone - Diabetics In Every State

This is high priority article so please help me spread the word (see below how!)

Prop 37 is of the utmost importance to ALL diabetics - NOT just those that live in California.... read on to learn why....

In fact, it is extremely important to all consumers who want to eat healthy food, prevent diseases like type 2 diabetes from developing, and provide healthy food to their families... read on to learn why...

Prop 37 is a "yes" or "no" California State ballot measure. The vote will take place in November during the presidential election! Californians will be deciding whether or not state law will REQUIRE food manufacturers to tell the consumer ON THE FOOD LABEL if the food contains GMO ingredients. It will also require a special sign for all GMO produce sold in stores.

Remember readers, it is believed by many that GMO foods cause elevated high blood sugar (i.e. type 2 diabetes) and many other health issues. GMO foods may not kill you instantly but they can certainly contribute to chronic diseases that kill you slowly, ruin your quality of life, and erase 15 years off your lifespan!

If you want to reverse diabetes naturally, you need to know if there are GMO ingredients so you can avoid eating them!

I was discussing this with a friend of mine who is diabetic the other day. She lives on the East Coast of the US and at one point during the conversation she said, "I guess it's not going to affect me."

Well, I hate to tell my friends they are wrong and I usually avoid it... but this is such an important issue, I just had to inform her that she was wrong and explain how if this law passes in California, it will indeed affect every consumer in the nation... and in fact, it may very well affect every consumer in the world -- for the good because we truly NEED to know when there is GMO in our food!

The State of California is a very large economy, the largest in the US in fact. Most of the food sold in the US is now controlled by only a few super large multi-national corporations. It's not like these corporations are going to want to just stop selling in California. They'd lose too much money! And... if they have to label food as GMO in one state, the largest state economy in the nation, it will be more cost effective for them to just do it for all states because to create a special labeling for just California and send special shipments to one state would cost too much and would be too complicated.

So, if California voters pass the GMO labeling law, it WILL affect every diabetic and every consumer in the entire nation and perhaps in the entire world.

Of course the food industry is up in arms about this and they have spent more than $25 million so far to try to defeat this proposition. Monsanto tops this list (no surprise!) and as of Aug 15th, had already spent $4,208,000. Dupont comes in at a close second spending $4,025,200. Other companies that have spent more than a million dollars to defeat Prop 37 include ConAgra Foods, Coca-Cola, Nestle, Pepsico, and Bayer. The amount of money they are spending should tell you how very important this potential new law is for EVERYONE, not just Californians.

This is VERY personal to me. I know that my poor diet was one of the main reasons I developed type 2 diabetes. How do I know? Because I've been able to REVERSE my diabetes by changing my diet and get my HbA1c back to normal! One of the most important things I do is avoid all gmo foods! I get so frustrated when I read silly reports telling diabetics to avoid foods like shrimp and coconut oil when it is really things like GMO foods, trans fat, and high fructose corn syrup (all products of the modern industrialized food process) that they should REALLY be worried about! People by and large are still unaware of how much GMO food they are really eating. It is in almost all processed food as some form of GMO corn, GMO soy, or as the supposedly "healthy" (ha) GMO canola oil!

We all need to pitch in to make sure Prop 37 passes! This is especially true for those of us who either have a chronic disease we are trying to reverse or have a beloved family member or friend who is going through this. Also, I would think that parents in particular would want to make sure that in the future all our packaged foods are labeled with whether or not they contain GMO ingredients. This is already done in every European nation. The only reason it hasn't been done here yet is how powerful the food lobby is! It is high time that the power of the consumer is heard more loudly than the lobbyists!

How can you help get Prop 37 passed if you live in another state? We can all help by spreading the word. I have written this article on my "Reverse Diabetes Naturally - How To Cure Diabetes Like I Did" blog and placed a prominent link on the sidebar so that it will be seen on every page of the site... you are welcome to link directly to my site from your blog, site, twitter account, facebook wall, newsletter, or through private emails. I will be tweeting out messages about Prop 37 as well. If you follow the link and follow me @diabetes1933 you can retweet my tweets -- let's get these messages to go viral!!!. Then of course word of mouth is also very important. One friend talking to another friend is always one of the most effective methods in any grassroots effort -- and that's exactly what we need: a grassroots effort only with a new modern spin added to the effort: social media!! Please help me by retweeting. Also, if you leave a comment with your tweeter account and tweet about this, I will try to retweet yours as well.

Another thing we can all do is talk to each other about the deception that is being spewed out right now by the food industry and the biotech companies who are spending millions to try to fool the California voters and others into thinking that GMO labeling would actually be a bad thing. For diabetics who are trying to reverse their diabetes through food and other natural means it is absolutely imperative that we KNOW exactly what is in our food so we can avoid this frankenfood which has become part of the industrialized food supply that is poisoning us and making diseases like heart disease, cancer, autoimmune diseases, and type 2 diabetes skyrocket.

Remember to visit my twitter page and retweet. I'm going to try to tweet about this as much as possible. Also, please do include a link to this information as widely as possible. We can all party with a big non-GMO feast when Prop 37 passes!

Reverse Diabetes With Greens & Save Hundreds Of Dollars While You Do It

In my article, "Diabetics - Eat Your Greens, Kale, Spinach, etc...," I explained how beneficial eating greens can be for someone in the process of reversing diabetes. Even though I have already reversed my diabetes, I still eat greens almost every day. Greens are simply one of the healthiest foods anyone can eat. However, it is particularly important for a diabetic or a former diabetic to eat their greens religiously. If you haven't read the the article I linked above, I highly encourage you to do so!

Since I started eating more greens to reverse diabetes, I have found that I crave them if I don't eat them for a day or two. I believe like many believe that cravings are simply your body telling you what it needs. For example, many women crave chocolate during their menstrual cycle. Makes sense because they are losing so much iron and chocolate is loaded with iron. Guess what else is loaded with iron, by the way? Greens! For my female readers, don't be surprised if you start craving greens around your time of the month! But I digress a bit...

Another reason I love greens is how quick and easy they are to prepare. You can throw together a healthy salad with greens as a base in just a few minutes. You can saute them in just one to two minutes. You can very easily add them to soups, stir-fries, or just about any other dish. I often add greens to my eggs. You can check out my diabetic recipes site for more ideas.

While there are other foods you need to know about if you are interested in reversing diabetes, greens like kale and spinach are certainly at the very top of the list. This year I have been growing my own greens and saving tons of money doing so. It tickles me pink every time I walk down the produce isle at the store and see organic Lacinato kale (also known as black kale or dinosaur kale) selling for more than $3 a bunch. Don't get me wrong, that's a real bargain for the nutrients and antioxidants you get out of that one bunch of kale. But.... I now get the same thing for practically free growing it myself.

While some gardening tasks such as growing vine ripe tomatoes can be a bit of a challenge and even an art form sometimes, growing greens are so simple anyone can grow them, even if you have never raised a garden before. In fact, it takes very little effort and you don't need a green thumb. You just poke some seeds into some dirt (about 1/8 an inch) and water them every day and watch them grow almost as if by magic. 2-4 weeks later, you can start harvesting! Sometimes they grow so fast I swear you can almost see it happening. Right now I have several pots of greens growing out on the patio and it has become a fun morning ritual to walk out there with my coffee and see how much they've grown overnight. Right now I have 2 types of kale, 2 varieties of spinach, and 2 salad mixes growing plus a bunch of green herbs. It takes me only a couple of minutes to water them and I harvest some almost every day, sometimes multiple times in a day.

You don't even need any yard space to grow greens. Greens like kale, spinach, and salad greens grow very easily in containers as do herbs. So even if you live in an apartment and all you have is a small balcony or a bright sunny window, you can grow greens very easily in containers. For kale, you need a pot at least 8 inches deep. For spinach, you need a pot at least 6 inches deep. Herbs and salad greens will grow in a container of just about any size. The seed packages usually tell you to plant kale 8 inches apart but you can crowd them in much closer if you want and they still grow like a charm (they just won't grow as tall if you crowd them). Spinach can easily grow to full size if planted 2 inches apart. So you see it doesn't take much space at all to grow enough greens for 1 or 2 people and that's even if you eat greens every single day - which you should if you want to reverse diabetes!

Growing your own greens can save you hundreds of dollars a year too! The other day, while helping a friend figure out how to grow her own greens, we did some math. You can get a packet of very high quality organic seeds for about $2-$3. You can buy some organic dirt for about $3 or if you look under the free section of CraigsList, you can often find organic compost/dirt for free. You can get containers for $1 a piece at one of those everything's a dollar stores or you can often get them for free if you ask at larger nurseries. I've also found some amazing pots discarded on the side of the road and some people will give them away on CraigsList. At any rate, for less than $10, and if you really penny pinch for maybe only $2, you can start raising your own greens and raise enough for the entire year for no more than $10.

That's how to reverse diabetes at a bargain.

If you were to buy one bag of organic salad greens, one bunch of organic kale, and one bag of organic baby spinach a week you'd spend between $8-$12 so let's say that's an average of $10 per week. In one year, you'd spend 56 x $10 = $560 on healthy greens. Now, given that food is medicine and that greens are one of the healthiest foods a diabetic that is trying to reverse diabetes can eat, that is still one heck of a bargain (especially compared to Big Pharma prices). However, if you plant your own, you can get all the greens you can eat for an entire year for maybe $6 - $20 maximum. Plus of course, you'll have the joy of watching them grow which somehow helps to lower stress that would be hard to explain to anyone who has never raised their own food before. It's almost as fun as collecting food from the wild, but not quite :)

Here's another reason diabetics should consider raising their own greens. The fresher the greens, the more nutrients they have. I've read if you buy a bag of organic baby spinach, it will lose about half the nutrients and antioxidants in 3 days. Now, regardless of the specifics of the study, the point is that the fresher the greens, the more they can help you reverse diabetes! The more nutrients you'll be able to pass along to your family too!

If you can't grow your own greens, then by all means buy them and try to get the freshest ones you can find. It's still an amazing bargain and the healthiest food you can buy at the store. However, I just wanted to point out to my readers how easy it is to grow greens. It's much easier than growing other vegetables. My kale seeds sprouted in 3 days! My spinach sprouted in 4-7 days. My salad greens (I got seed packages that contained mixtures) sprouted in 1-2 days. I was starting to eat baby greens in 2-3 weeks and now I just rotate new ones in. Plus, as you harvest your greens, new leaves appear on the same plant so you can just keep harvesting from the same plant until it finally goes to seed.... unlike when you buy a bunch of kale at the store!

Of course, I haven't mentioned flavor yet! The fresher the greens, the better the taste in my opinion. There's nothing better than walking out on the patio, cutting some greens, and eating them a few minutes later! Kale gets sweeter as it gets colder as does other brassica family greens like mustard greens and collard greens! In fact, they taste the best after a frost!

Again, I want to emphasize that eating greens is one of the most important things you can do to reverse diabetes. However, you really do need to know the other foods you need to eat and you need to know the foods you simply MUST avoid to reverse diabetes. Also, the details about the foods you eat matter a great deal and it isn't always obvious (there is lots of misleading information out there). What I recommend to you and to all my friends is to get this guide and make sure you read it very carefully. It is a very comprehensive reference for reversing diabetes and has all the information you will need and then some. It is also written in a very easy to understand way.

1% Drop In HbA1c Reduces Eye, Kidney, Heart, and Nerve Complications 40%

Having type 2 diabetes can be really depressing sometimes. One of the main reasons for this is that diabetics have to constantly deal with all the potential medical complications that plague diabetics. These complications iclude heart disease (cardiovascular disease), decreased kidney function (nephropathy) leading to kidney failure and dialysis, nerve damage (neuropathy) leading to ulcers and amputations, weakening eyesight (retinopathy) leading to blindness, compromised immunity system, chronic infection, and blood vessel damage (microvascular disease) that can damage every organ in the diabetic's body.

The complications listed above are caused by the higher than normal levels of blood sugar (glucose) circulating in the diabetic body. This high glucose directly damages the nerves and the smaller blood vessels that lead to these health complications. Prolonged periods of high blood sugar almost guarantee that the diabetic will have one or more of these terrible complications. In fact, the #1 cause of death in diabetics is heart attacks caused by vessel damage due to high blood sugar and this is one of the primary reasons that diabetics have on average a shorter lifespan.

These complications can directly very much lower the quality of a diabetic's life and even the knowledge that diabetics carry around that they could at any moment develop one or more of these complications is more than enough to depress them!

However, I do have some VERY GOOD NEWS!

If a diabetic reverses his or her diabetes (YES, you can!), they can avoid these complications all together! In fact, if a diabetic lowers their blood sugar just a little on average, the risk of these complications is very significantly reduced.

The United States Centers For Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) announced this very important statistic on their 2011 National Diabetes Fact Sheet.

If a diabetic lowers his or her HbA1c (the most accurate measure of your average blood sugar) just 1%, the probability they'll develop complications like the ones described above is lowered 40%! So to make this more clear, if a diabetic that has an average HbA1c of 8 can lower that to 7, he or she will have 40% less chance of getting complications due to high blood sugar. One percentage point for a forty percent drop in complications is HUGE.  Now, what if the diabetic reduced their blood sugar even more? Reducing their blood sugar 2 or more points can really have an amazing impact on the quality of their life!! If the diabetic can lower their blood sugar significantly, and better yet totally reverse their diabetes, they can live a normal lifespan. What may be even more important is they can live a higher quality life. You can review how the HbA1c test works here.

To learn how to lower your blood sugar, you should definitely get out this reverse diabetes guide. It is the most complete reference I've seen anywhere on how to reverse diabetes naturally. I've reviewed almost every resource out there and most only give you part of the formula and it's tough to reverse diabetes if you're missing steps. The guide I linked above is very comprehensive and will take you through every step you need.