I am Dr. Monique May, Board-certified Family Physician and Founder of Physician in the Kitchen™. Through my meal delivery service, best-selling book, MealMasters: Your Simple Guide to Modern Day Meal Planning, and online cooking classes, I help busy households enjoy healthy eating without impacting their hectic schedules. Can you believe we are in the final two months of this very unusual year? This past weekend we just “fell back” with the end of Daylight Savings Time and gained an extra hour (at least that’s what they tell me lol), Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and of course, Christmas and the new year are not far behind.
Today I kick off my 3-part series featuring three health highlights for the month of November. November is:
- American Diabetes Month
- National Stomach Cancer Awareness Month
- Pancreatic Cancer Awareness Month
In Part 1 I will discuss the risk factors, symptoms, and prevention of diabetes, and in Parts 2 and 3 I will discuss stomach and pancreatic cancer, respectively.
Diabetes is very common in this country, and unfortunately, the rate is steadily increasing. As of this writing, about 34 million people in this country have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, which is about 10% of the population. In addition, there are another 7 million who don’t even know that they have it. Please keep in mind that this article is only about type 2 diabetes and not type 1. Type 1 diabetes, which is caused by the pancreas failing to make insulin, is typically diagnosed in childhood and can be life-threatening if not diagnosed and treated promptly. Type 2 diabetes is more commonly diagnosed in adults, but due to the increase in overweight and obesity we are seeing in children and adolescents, it can be diagnosed in children as well. Type 2 diabetes results from insulin resistance, which means that the affected person actually makes insulin, but their organs, such as muscle, adipose or fat tissue, and the liver, don’t respond to the insulin like they should. This causes the blood sugar levels to go up.
Common symptoms of diabetes are:
- Excessive thirst
- Frequent urination
- Blurry vision
- Weight gain or weight loss
- Wounds or sores that are slow to heal
- Frequent yeast infections in women
- Numbness or tingling in the hands and feet
Risk factors for diabetes type 2 are:
- Being over age 45
- Being overweight or obese
- Physical inactivity/sedentary lifestyle
- Having a first-degree family member (parents, sibling, or child) who has diabetes
- Being African American, Asian American, Native American, or Hispanic
- Having high blood pressure or high cholesterol
- Being diagnosed with gestational diabetes
- Giving birth to a baby weighing more than 9 pounds
- For women: having polycystic ovarian syndrome
So how can you decrease your chances of becoming diabetic? Obviously, you can not change your family history or your race. You can’t change your age or the fact that you gave birth to a nine-pound baby. But you should definitely control what you can control.
Prevention tips:
- If you are overweight or obese and you are not exercising, then start. Go to the doctor, get checked out, and make sure that the type of activity you want to engage in is safe for you to do. Just start somewhere, and get moving. Try to get some form of physical activity most days out of the week.
- Control what you are eating. What you eat and drink plays a pivotal role in controlling your blood sugar. For example, I once had a patient, who for all the world, looked like he was diabetic. He had a lot of the symptoms mentioned previously: frequent urination, excessive thirst, blurry vision. Not surprisingly, when we checked his sugar it was elevated. I asked him what he was eating and he confessed that he was drinking anywhere from three to four 2-liter bottles of soda PER DAY! Remember: those liquid calories count just as much as those you get from the solid ones. I advised him to stop drinking soda so we could see what effect that would have on his sugars. At that point, his sugars were so high that I was considering placing him on insulin to quickly get his sugars under control. Just to clarify: we sometimes have to prescribe insulin for type 2 diabetics if the sugars are so high that pills alone won’t get them under control. In that case, we may prescribe insulin in addition to an oral agent, at least temporarily. This patient was definitely in that category, and I think that scared him into making some changes, and FAST. Sure enough, when he returned about a week or two later, after cutting out the soda, his diabetes went away! Because he was able to make that one change (which for him was probably huge given how much he had been drinking per day) he was able to “cure” his diabetes.
- Avoid processed foods (such as cakes, white bread, white rice, and breakfast cereal, sausage, and bacon).
- Avoid sugary foods and drinks.
- Eat more vegetables, fruits, whole grains, seeds, and nuts.
Your body is the finest piece of engineering in the world, so give it the best fuel in order for it to reach its peak performance. Think about your car: if you constantly put lower octane fuel in the gas tank than is recommended (for example, 87 instead of 93), it can cause some serious internal damage, just like your body. Your car will be sluggish and under-perform, just like your body! I encourage you to treat your body at least as well, if not better than, your car and fill your tank with the best options available to you. Remember, #healthiswealth, so #investoneplateatatime.
Be sure to check back in the coming weeks for Parts 2 (stomach cancer) and 3 (pancreatic cancer).
See You In The Kitchen!!
For more information, be sure to visit me at DrMoniqueMay.com, and join the #MealMastersCommunity at www.Facebook.com/groups/mealmasters today.
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