That's Fit

Do you have a soft-spot for pasta (and because of it)? If so, you may or may not have given the whole wheat varieties a try. Unlike regular pasta, which is made from enriched flour, whole wheat pastas does not cause blood sugar levels to spike through the roof. This is important, since a sudden jump in blood sugar leads to the increased release of insulin, leaving you hungry and lethargic shortly thereafter.

But health benefits aside, some people just can't make the switch to whole wheat pasta for one reason, and one reason alone: the taste.

Enter a solution. Or at least a possible alternative: Soba noodles. Made from buckwheat (o'tay!), soba noodles take even longer to digest than whole wheat pasta, making them an equally an even healthier option. But now for the 64 thousand dollar question: How do they taste?

One of the major problems with fast-digesting carb sources is that they drive up blood glucose levels, which in turn causes the release of insulin. These two factors, individually and especially when combined, can lead to unhealthy weight gain.

To help remedy this problem, the obvious choice is to take white pasta, white rice, candy, and other simple sugar sources out of your diet. But what about the occasional slip-up? You know, when you fall "off the wagon" for a night or two and devour a Domino's pizza? In those instances, you may want to add some Thai "yellow" curry powder to your slices.

Why? Because a single serving of this Thai flavoring was found to slow the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream after consuming carb-rich foods, say researchers from Mahidol University in Thailand. As an added bonus, this same spice was found to reduce the risk of heart failure.

Sugar may be a worthwhile option as an alternative fuel source for vehicles, but it's a very poor choice for fueling our bodies. In addition to having no nutritional value, sugar is fast-digesting and will drive up blood glucose levels, leaving you feeling tired, hungry, and, paradoxically, craving more sugar.

Aside from the more obvious steps you can take to rid your diet of sugar (such as not adding sugar to your coffee or tea and avoiding candy and other sweets altogether), check the labels of foods you typically eat. If they contain more than 10 grams of sugar, say most nutritionists, you dump them and you dump them fast (with the only exception being dairy, because its milk sugar is naturally-occurring).

Also avoid refined carbs, such as those found in white rice, white bread, and bagels, for they too cause your blood sugar levels to go on an veritable roller-coaster ride. And if you have an unbearable desire for sweets, sate your sugar craving with complex carbohydrate-rich fruits (one caveat: try to avoid eating too much watermelon. Though it is good for you, it ranks very high on the glycemic index and therefore can produce a similar effect on blood sugar). You can also try stevia, an all-natural sweetener that has been used for centuries by the Guaraní tribes of Paraguay and Brazil.

A recent Japanese study, published in the Kobe Journal Medical Sciences and most recently highlighted in Fitness Rx magazine, confirms what we've known for quite some time: eating foods high in simple, fast-digesting carbs can cause you to pack on more fat. The difference this time around, however, is that this study provides an additional explanation for why this happens.

When you drink copious amounts of regular soda and chomp on white bread, you spike your blood glucose levels (also known as blood sugar). You may be familiar with this concept from your own knowledge base or from hearing of this process from someone who has diabetes. In response, your body produces a large amount of insulin in efforts to bring your blood glucose back down from orbit by moving the glucose out of the blood and into the cells (whereas a person with diabetes may have to use synthetic insulin -- administered either by shot or pump -- to make up for what their pancreas is not able to sufficiently do on its own in this regard). After this occurs, all excess glucose is stored for later use as fat in white adipose tissue.

One thing for sure: If people are buying it, food manufacturers will keep making it. That's clearly the reason why green tea versions of foods have spread as wide as Kit Kats. Food trends aside, the main reason why you may still want to jump on board the green tea bandwagon is because the stuff is just plain healthy.

Apart from study supported reports that green tea can help regulate blood glucose levels, preliminary studies now show that green tea may also help you keep off extra pounds. It is important to note, however, that studies involving the latter were only conducted on mice thus far.

According to a brief article posted on WebMD, the preliminary studies showed the following:

• Less weight and fat gain. Among mice with an obesity gene, those that ate chow laced with green tea extract gained less weight and less fat.
• Less fat in the liver. There was less sign of "fatty liver" disease in the mice with the obesity gene that ate chow laced with green tea extract.
• Lower cholesterol and triglyceride levels in mice with the obesity gene that ate the chow laced with green tea extract, compared to other mice with the same obesity gene.

The research study was conducted at the University of Connecticut. Its complete findings can be found in the February issue of The Journal of Nutrition.

When I was 19, I started to notice a little bit of hair loss. I'll admit it, I freaked. Fortunately, the trend didn't continue, and several years later I'm still sporting a pretty decent coif. What I didn't realize at the time, and what I didn't realize until I recently came across a study from the Institute of Endocrinology in Prague, is that young men with thinning hair are at a greater risk of diabetes.

After analyzing the blood of several men, the researchers discovered that men who began losing their hair before the age of 30 were more likely to be insulin resistant -- increasing their risk of diabetes. The results of the study also suggested that as hair growth hormone decreased, insulin resistance increased.

So, if you happen to be a guy under the age of 30, and you're waking up on a pillow that looks more like a shedding cat slept on it than a human, then you may want to have a fasting blood glucose test done. Levels above 100 milligrams per deciliter signal trouble.

Here's the scene: You're standing in the aisle of the grocery store, staring at the enticing labels and packaging of the foods you are considering buying. One says "Extra Healthy" right on it, whereas the another one reads "For a Healthy Diet" or something similar. Which do you buy?

Well, there's no truly easy answer to that. Clearly the goal in this scenario is to find the healthier food, but how can we make that determination based on what a label is telling us? The key is to make sure you're checking the right label. And no, it's not the one that simply says Low-Fat or Low-Calorie. The label you should be checking is the Nutritional Label.

Some Bayer blood glucose test stripes are being recalled by the FDA due to the fact they're giving false-level readings that are too high.

Only the test strips from Bayer's Contour TS Blood Glucose Meter are being recalled, not the strips from the Ascensia Contour and the Ascensia Breeze2 systems.

It's kind of important that diabetics monitoring their daily glucose levels be informed of their exact levels or the risk of taking too much insulin becomes a problem. So far, though, the FDA has reported no injuries or deaths connected to false readings on the Contour test strips. For more info in the recall, click here.

Previously studies have shown that when African Americans and Latinos get diabetes they tend to have it more severely than Caucasians, but there was very little understanding why. Recently new studies have shed some light on the situation, although new questions are also part of the mix. According to research by the University of Michigan the following is true, even when issues like income and access to health care are equal:

• African American diabetes patients are less likely than white ones to take their diabetes medication as prescribed.
• Latino diabetes patients are more likely than white ones to suffer from emotional distress related to the diagnosis.

But these findings still leave almost 80% of the racial differences in diabetes management unaccounted for, so unfortunately the mystery remains. But, on the bright side, every little bit helps -- if even just to give more focus to the researching!

Of those diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, almost all had "pre-diabetes" before-hand. Pre-diabetes is defined as blood glucose levels that are higher than normal, but not high enough to actually be diabetes. There may be as many as 54 million people in the U.S. that have pre-diabetes, and it's important to know if you're one of them for 2 main reasons: research suggests that internal damage to arteries and organs may already be happening in the pre-diabetes stage, and it's possible to prevent full-blown type 2 diabetes from ever developing if you take steps to manage your blood sugar early.

So how do you know if you have pre-diabetes? Testing your blood sugar at home isn't the way to go, instead you should see your doctor and have either a fasting plasma glucose test (FPG) or an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT). As far as treatment if you do have it? Expect your doctor to recommend some diet and exercise strategies, as most people have positive results with losing as little as 10 pounds.