Healthy eating for diabetes Archive

The American Heart Association recently revised its checklist for achieving optimal heart health. Adequate sleep was added, and updates were made to previous recommendations for diet, cholesterol and blood sugar measurements, and nicotine exposure.

Older adults exposed to light while sleeping at night may be more likely to have obesity, high blood pressure, and diabetes compared with adults who sleep in darkness.

Hybrid exercise training combines heart-pumping aerobic action with muscle-strengthening moves in the same exercise session. The strategy has the advantage of meeting two key goals of the federal Physical Activity Guidelines in one fell swoop. And it also appears to be one of the best—and most time-efficient—ways for people who are overweight to lower their risk of cardiovascular-related risk factors. Strong muscles boost a person's basal metabolic rate—the amount of energy the body needs to keep working during rest. That improves weight-loss efforts by ramping up the number of calories burned.

While there may be valid reasons to follow a ketogenic diet in the short term (weight loss, blood sugar control), it's difficult to maintain and could cause other health issues.

Most people with heart failure (or those at high risk for it) need several medications to treat their symptoms. New guidelines from the American College of Cardiology/American Heart Association have added another drug class to the treatment list: a group of diabetes drugs called sodium-glucose cotransporter-2 (SGLT-2) inhibitors. SGLT-2 inhibitors offer multiple benefits, such as helping to reduce swelling, lowering high blood pressure, assisting with weight loss, reducing complications associated with heart failure, and preventing hospitalization.

Seven factors appear to account for most first heart attacks in people ages 55 and younger: diabetes, depression, high blood pressure, current smoking, family history of early heart attack, low household income, and high cholesterol.

Sugar is a carbohydrate that provides the body with energy and has an important role in nutrition. It is found in many healthy whole foods, but it is also abundant in unhealthy processed foods. The problem many people have with sugar is that they consume too much of the refined kind added to many processed food products, and not enough of the natural kind in fruits, vegetables, and grains.

One in three Americans takes a daily multivitamin even though research shows this doesn't provide any meaningful health benefits for most people. And because of the way supplements are regulated, some supplements make claims that have no evidence behind them.