GynoFiles

If you are diabetic or pre-diabetic, you need help sorting your nutritional needs. So individualized counseling is important. Individualized counseling has reduced the Hba1c level (blood sugar measured over 3 months) by 2%! Mediterranean diets for adults with Type 2 diabetes works well, and compared to those on other diets studied, most diabetics did the best with this diet. Low Carbohydrate diets. This is defined by getting less than 45% of your calories from carbs. First of all, these can be very hard on the kidneys, and diabetics may have kidney problems. While some diabetics can do well on these, and some can even lose weight quickly on these it is suggested you be monitored. Both the Hba1c and the blood fat triglyceride decreased on this. Those who also cut calories will lose weight. Paleolithic diets do better than old fashioned diabetic diets, and nearly all measures of diabetes lab tests got better. Glycemic index diets involve eating foods that are known to ...

Have you thought how about how you digest your food lately? Simplistically explained nutrition begins with you ingesting the proper food, breaking the nutrients out of food, and then biochemically absorbing the nutrients. Chewing begins the process. The stomach acid is the next critical step. And then the enzymes of the pancreases and the small intestine break down the major components of food including your cars, proteins and fats. If the fibers from food are not well broken down they cannot be processes in the next sequence of the steps. Finally the nutrients are ready to be absorbed. If you get to this step and don't absorb the nutrients you will never get the full benefit from your food even if you eat well. In addition to unpleasant side effects like gas the metabolism consequences can be diarrhea, weight loss, irritable bowel symptoms, and loss of bone mass. Confounding factors that can lead to gas include gallstones, smoking, poorly controlled diabetes or pre-diabetes and c...

This is a picture of the Goat's Rue plant, which is the original source of the insulin sensitizing medicine metformin. It is also known as French lilac, not known to Hippocrates, but it has been used since the middle ages to reduce thirst and frequent urination, before these symptoms were known to be due to diabetes specifically. Once only used as a treatment for diabetes, metformin today is one of the most widely prescribed medications used in PCOS, infertility, weight loss, and to preserve cardiovascular health in those with metabolic syndrome.Studies prove that it can reduce a pre-diabetic's chance of becoming a diabetic. It is critical to realize that radical lifestyle and diet changes might do even better in early treatment of many of these conditions including diabetes and PCOS. Its chemical mechanism of action is quite complicated, but it has an effect on skeletal muscle to enhance it's uptake of glucose (sugar). Overall it leads to fat burning, decreased new produc...

More normal weight women are being diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes in spite of being normal weight and not seeming to have the traditional risk factors for diabetes. In an article about this condition in the Mayo Clinic Proceeding s they looked at the factors that cause the condition they now call the 'metabolically obese normal weight' individual and found that diet was the most important reason individuals find themselves in this condition. The key points in the article were that it is possible to be obese, and have too much body fact and be normal weight,  we have to use alternative definitions for metabolic obesity to identify these patients and help them resolve their condition, because they are at risk for cardiovascular disease. One of the most important points in the article was that abdominal obesity was a more important indicator of risk than overall weight. The two diet strategies they found most helpful were DASH (a heart healthy anti-hypertensive diet), and the ...

Un-diagnosed diabetes can cause disease that is preventable. the American Diabetes Association in 2016 new standards has recommended that all adults age 45 and over, and all overweight or obese adults should be screened for diabetes. Diabetics have poor sugar control, and the reason is ultimately due to the function of insulin. Sugar intake is highly related to this, so that over time those who are obese or taking in too much sugar are most likely to also develop poor function of insulin. Although all experts agree that there are some genetic causes and some dietary causes and some cases of diabetes due to cell aging in our pancreas there is a new condition: LADA that not many talk about. LADA stands for latent autoimmune diabetes of adults. The levels of insulin precursor molecules rises and the level of glutamic acid decarboxylase auto-antibodies rise as well.. This condition is just being studied and we think that the degree of poor sugar control will have the same consequences of ...

The balance of B12 in our diet is very important. We have to consider: intake in diet and vitamins, medications or substances that can interfere with B12, and how to know if we have enough B12 in our system. B12 is an important vitamin. Women who have diets that include meat and dairy typically will have abundant B12, however vegetarians, especially vegans may have to take synthetic Vitamin B12 to get enough. the B12 that our body receives and stores comes from food processing in the stomach and small intestine, through a fairly complex set of physiologic steps. Since this begins in the stomach, many gastric conditions can lead to problems with B12 absorption. Once B12 is, however, actually absorbed past one's daily needs, the liver is where B12 is stored long term and the liver stores B12 so effectively, it may actually take years before you are actually deficient if you were eating meat and dairy and then stop. However, many common health practices and treatments can risk abno...

Pickles, ice cream, starch, ice are all craved in pregnancy by many woman, and exactly why women have these cravings is a topic of some serious study, as in the past it was just giggled off as 'one of those things' and now we know these food cravings can cause some serious issues. Fluctuating hormones, blood level nutritional deficiencies, actual components of the foods, and just cultural factors have been offered as reasons for these food desires, which do seem more prevalent during pregnancy; and nutritional health is that much more important as well. None food cravings is probably the most strange to pregnant moms, and in fact may be the most harmful if those cravings are indulged. The most common cravings are for starch, ice and earth, and they have scientific names. Pica is the craving for and consumption of nonfood items, including the ingestion of earth (geophagy), raw starch (amylophagy), and ice (pagophagy). All of these behaviors have been associated with being a...

The benefits of breastfeeding for baby has never been in doubt. The health benefits of breastfeeding for mom were mostly for many years focused on faster post partum weight loss, and then the focus blurred with not only on benefits, but physical negatives for mom from breastfeeding. The saying 'you loose a tooth for each child' meaning the loss of bone calcium in pregnancy exaggerated by calcium loss during breastfeeding. Nutrition, exercise, and avoiding smoking has pretty much eliminated that concern! But interestingly as we have begun to scientifically explore the wide ranging benefits for mom from breastfeeding beyond weight loss: less diabetes, less breast cancer, less hypertension, fewer myocardial infarctions, and now it has been shown to help prevent cardiovascular disease due to less atherosclerosis, in a study on lactation from the CARDIA group.  Breastfeeding to reduce the physical risks of gestational diabetes is becoming more and more important as gestational di...

In a new report that was just released from the Framingham Heart Study, Americans are often five or more years older in heart risk than their true age. They use blood pressure, treatment of hypertension, presence of diabetes, smoking, and BMI to calculate a theoretical heart age, and you can see what your heart age is.  These factors are definitely powerful and actually take into account your cholesterol levels, and exercise as both will effect all of the factors they do use in their heart age calculator. However, other mitigating and adverse factors such as genetic propensity to clotting, hormonal factors, history of pregnancy, weight distribution, depression, and stress may affect these numbers significantly and are not taken into consideration. Once these numbers are calculated, you can receive therapies that potentially reverses the heart aging. If you need a recent BMI or blood pressure reading, come by Women's Health Practice and we can monitor patients easily! If your Fr...

Everyone in pregnancy will be tested for diabetes through your pregnancy as normalizing blood sugar prevents multiple pregnancy complications. Every time you come in for a check up they dip your urine to see if you are spilling sugar, it is a diabetes test. At other times there are blood tests of sugar, blood tests of your sugar levels that you have had for over three months, and sugar tests that are stress tests for your pancreas by giving you sugar to drink.The World Health Organization began looking at diabetes in pregnancy in a new way. They checked the babies after birth for the amount of sugar they were exposed to. They checked the babies for large birthweight (macrosomia) and for cord blood levels of C-peptide (think of this as a marker for insulin levels). They found that these problems in the babies were associated with single abnormal results on a 2 hour 75 g glucola test. So no more two step testing in pregnancy. In the past we would do a 1 hour test, randomly, and bring ...

A carb is not a carb, is not a carb: meaning that different carbs can raise our blood sugar a lot, and some carbs don't really cause that blood sugar to soar. To research that investigators ran the OmniCarb Randomized Clinical Trial and published their results in the JAMA of December 2014. In this trial they point out that scientifically the carb effect of our individual foods is measured by the glycemic index, their example is that a banana and an apple have identical carbs, but blood sugar will generally rise a lot more after consuming a banana than an apple. But in a generally healthy, fiber and fruit and veggie filled diet, investigators wondered if this is so important we need to keep these small differences in mind when planning our meals? If it did maybe you'd do best with the DASH diet which is low in salt but a bit higher in carbs or perhaps you need to keep that salt low, but go heavier on the protein as in the OmniHeart diet ? And perhaps this depends on your curre...

PCOS has been known for many decades to be a prominent cause of infertility, but now in a new study from Italy and the Instituto di Ricovero e Cura a Carattere Scientifico PCOS has been linked to causing pregnancy problems. In their study they showed that the PCOS women had more miscarriages, more diabetes, more hypertension, more preeclampsia, and other problems of pregnancy. They studied a group of women who were PCOS but essentially normal weight and no other confounding problems such as smoking. And they were surprised to find that low-grade chronic inflammation in their system was made even worse during the pregnancies of women without polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS)  according to a study published online May 29 in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism . WBC counts, ferritin levels, and CRP were used to track inflammation during pregnancy. These markers, along with other markers of inflammation have already been implicated a...

Your lifetime risk of getting breast cancer, if you are an American woman, is 12% or about 1/8 women. The risk may be even greater if you have known family history or the If you want to know your individual lifetime risk of breast cancer you could calculate it with the Gail Model of risk . Currently the recommendation is that if your score on the Gail Model is a one year risk of 1.7% or greater you should discuss breast cancer prevention with your gyno. All the best new resolutions are to do what is positive for health, and lots of posts contain risk factors for breast cancer , but few talk about how to reduce those risk factors, such as the medical treatments including tamoxifen which can lower life time breast cancer risk. Some things are not modifiable, early first period is probably associated with overall estrogen exposure and may in fact incur increased breast cancer risk in your life. Having children early decreases your risk of breast cancer, but if you wait until after you a...

At Women’s Health Practice we advocate a pregnancy planning visit, at which time women are screened for abnormal sugar tolerance as well as diabetes. Then if you conceive, the question is when to repeat the testing for diabetes. ACOG (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists) and the ADA (American Diabetes Association) have been the two organizations weighing in on the standards that are used. The standard plan after a woman is pregnant to then test women at risk early in pregnancy, and then all women at their 28 week visit. A new guideline says doing testing mostly at 28 weeks misses as many as three quarters of all the gestational diabetes. A new guideline suggests that all pregnant women should be tested for diabetes at their first prenatal visit, unless they have already been diagnosed with the condition, according to a new clinicalpractice guideline from the Endocrine Society. Women who test abnormal on screening tests have been asked to to do further testing, l...

Could their perhaps be a way to avoid the irregular periods, the weight gain, the unwanted hair growth, or the acne of PCOS that is actually nutritionally based? Oral contraceptives, anti-androgen medications and hypoglycemic agents are mostly what is given. But careful study shows that some women with polycystic ovarian syndrome could benefit by nutritional management as well. Inositol is a vitamin in the B group that has never been considered an essential vitamin as our bodies do make this from sugar (glucose). It is also in many of the foods we eat fairly regularly such as oranges and cantaloupes. But physicians and nutritionists have begun to look at this compound as a treatment for polycystic ovaries and diabetes and some birth defect prevention such as neural tube defects. A group of Italian physicians recently looked at whether this could reduce the risk of getting gestational diabetes if you supplemented the moms with 4 grams of myo-inositol daily, and it may have worked to ...

Breast pain is a common and bothersome problem. And now we have shown that one's diet can affect breast pain in ways we have not yet expected, and that is your sugar metabolism and sugar control. Many breast pain conditions are just due to fibrocystic disease , it is very rare for breast pain to be a sign of cancer. Persistent breast pains are definitely a reason to see your gyno. and to get caught up on your mammogram s. But if you have pain, skin changes, or lumpiness that your gyno has not been able to specifically diagnose or treat, you may have a rare breast condition.  Some of these rare breast conditions are actually due to infections. These infections would include molluscum, actinomycosis, syphilis, or even tuberculosis. All these infections can cause pains or medical conditions in the underarm (also called axillary) areas as well as infections to individual breast sinuses. The disease scarcoidosis can cause breast problems. But there is a condition called diabetic ...

Many fancy and sophisticated tests have been designed to diagnose diabetes in women. Type 2 diabetes affects over 20 million Americans, and more women than men have the condition. Too few people have actually been tested for diabetes, and more testing can help us define who we have to watch and treat. Many places have patients drink the glucola and then do testing over 2 or 3 hours. But the culinary aficionados have cringed at that awful concoction given to people to drink when being tested for diabetes, and recommend that we do something to just make it more tasty! So one group tried using a "cookie" other groups have tried using gum drops, and the newest way to test for diabetes is using the muffin test! In this unique study at Albert Einstein the patients were asked to eat a tasty muffin from Beigel's after their first fasting blood sugar test, and then they had blood testing after their meal to determine if they were diabetic or if they had a normal blood sugar after...

Over 60 million Americans today are Prediabetic. For those with Prediabetes, they are very high risk to become diabetic over the next ten years. In fact they have a 49% greater chance of having a heart attack than if they didn't have diabetes. Getting diagnosed with diabetes is also critical step in prevention of blindness, heart disease, kidney disease and peripheral vascular disease. More American women need blood sugar testing, and even if you have been tested in the past, don't rely on those tests forever. According to the newest guidelines 29 million people nationwide have then progressed to diabetes, yet  an estimated 8.1 million don’t know they have the condition, based on the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention . American Diabetes Association sets the definition of diabetes , yet other organizations such as ACOG and the endocrine society do weigh in on how we define diabetes. And for pregnant moms, we tightened down the rules once again. Diabetes in preg...