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Hugh, glad to hear you are dealing with this straight-on. Like you said about your earlier years about having low blood sugar, I have low blood sugar (hypoglycemia). My mother has it (age 82) and so does my 25 year-old son. The interesting thing is the best way to deal with it is to eat like a diabetic. Slow digesting foods like oatmeal and vegetables and some protein at every meal. Another thing that's interesting is to eat a little bit between meals - something like peanuts or almonds. At age 52 it has helped me get along a lot better at work like not being as moody, hungry or as hard to live with. They say it all goes back to our ancestors. They ate food off the ground, in the ground, on bushes, on trees and ate what they killed. The bottom line was they were constantly foraging for food and that's why we all do better with lots of little meals all through the day of fruit, nuts, etc. The doctors say big whopping meals is flat out bad for our system and that we are something like 3X more likely to have a heart attack after a big whopping meal. Here again, we have our ancestors to blame. When we eat/drink quick digesting foods (like soft drinks) the body suddenly ramps up the insulin production to enable those foods to be utilized. We can't instantaneously utilize the 800 calories in a Big Gulp drink, so the body parks the extra 500 calories it doesn't need in body fat. Two hours later we are hungry as heck (because ramped-up excess insulin is riding around in the bloodstream and our blood sugar levels are down in the pits) and have to get a sugar fix, but the body does not draw on the "parked" 500 calories from the Big Gulp drink. It is looking for a new food input to come down sliding down the pipe. It is a mad up-down blood sugar cycle and all the reading I've seen indicates it is tough on our circulatory system. It also leads to type 2 diabetes because apparently the body's cells get used to having lots of insulin around from these up-down surges and consequently, the cells get "insulin resistant" which, I guess, means they are maybe "burned-out" on from all the big insulin hits we've given from a lifetime of quick digesting foods. The good news is the body apparently re-sets itself when we lose weight. I have two uncles that were type 2 diabetics in their late 50's and got their blood sugar back to normal by losing 30 pounds. They kept the weight off and one lived to 83 (cancer) and his brother is still trucking along quite well at 85. There's another culprit that researchers say is contributing to the diabetes as well as to heart trouble: hydrogenated fats. It appears the man-made fats like margarine, crisco and all the stuff in crackers, cookies and many prepared foods is just flat-
out bad news on our system. Going back to the early man example, apparently our liver just has no clue as how to properly process the man-made hydrogenated fats. The scientists tell us butter and other animal fats are ok because the body knows what to do with them. Last thing, everything points to extra virgin olive oil being the cat's meow regarding something extra good for your health. So when out at a restaurant with your bride, don't eat the crackers and go for the olive oil and vinegar dressing for your salad!!
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