In this article you’ll find out how diabetics can win the “defeat diabetes" game through supplements. You’ll see how Supermarket foods (both processed and fresh) are failing the nutrition test and how to avoid this trap.  In addition, you’ll learn how both lifestyle and aging in older diabetics may make the situation more difficult and how you can best deal with it.  Lastly, you’ll understand how something simple like controlling blood sugar and weight may just be easily controlled by replacing missing nutrients like Chromium.

If diabetes is 90% preventable, what will help?

Type 2 diabetics, aware of the New England Journal of Medicine published reports, know that diabetes is 90% preventable.

It is hard enough to be a type 2 diabetic, but when you find out that most of today’s processed food aggravates or caused your condition, it’s even harder.(The New England Journal of Medicine September 13, 2001; 345)

Let’s get to “12 Reasons You Might Need Supplements."

Today, in the era of Holistic Medicine, proper supplemental nutrition is not in competition with traditional medical approaches for controlling diabetes.

Instead, they should be mutually suportive:

12 Reasons Why You Might Need Supplements:

1. If you are over fifty years old, you know that your body loses its ability to fully absorb nutrients, particularly chromium, iron, calcium and zinc. Fiber intake is often lower. This alone is reason enough to seek supplement support.

1. If you are honest about your eating habits, you, and over 90% of the population doesn’t eat the way the Food Pyramid Guide suggests. You can see the need to supplement your diet with high-quality whole food supplements.

1. If you drink Coke or Pepsi, be aware that “soda sucks chromium out of your system," and chromium is an essential mineral that helps maintain healthy blood sugar levels and minimize the onset of diabetes (Beijing Medical University study, Harvard School of Public Health).

1. If you shop at a grocery store, be aware that many of the Supermarket Foods consist of  refined high-fat, high-sugar (hhigh fructose corn syrup).  This diet alone contributes to major nutrient deficiencies and diabetic problems.

1. Your favorite highly processed foods often see drastically reduced nutrient content.  Processors use highly refined wheat to make white flour that has removed over 80% of its magnesium, 70-80% of its zinc, 87% of its chromium, 88% of its manganese and 50% of its cobalt.  Good grief!

1. Food additives can deplete nutrients.  Thousands of artificial flavors, colors, dough conditioners, stabilizers and preservatives are added to many foods.  While some are harmless and may increase the value of food, many are toxic and can deplete the body of nutrients.

1. Because we eat so much refined, low-quality food loaded with additives, our digestion is impaired.  This further impairs nutrient absorption and increases nutritional needs.

1. Stress! This single most evil problem is not unusual to many of us. Stress can deplete your energy, cause clinical depression, lead to acceleration of aging process and degenerative diseases. The symptoms of stress include fatigue, depression, panic, anxiety, loss of appetite, and insomnia. Depression can be a result of high blood sugar. There are natural supplements that aid in the natural “production of serotonin" –a naturally occurring chemical to prevent depression. 

1. Do you smoke? Chew tobacco? Drink Alcoholic beverages? Eat meals of microwaved food? Take Oral Contraceptives? If your alive in 2008 you most likely are in this group. All of these lifestyle factors dramatically increases your need for nutrients that diet alone just can’t provide.

1. How about your food-store eggs, they are a lot older than you think. Nothing is fresh and grown within a mile of your home.  Many foods are grown thousands of miles from your home.  These fresh foods spend weeks on trucks or trains to reach you.  As soon as food is harvested, the level of certain nutrients begins to diminish, sometimes in a day.  This is another factor that reduces our nutrient intake and increases the need for supplements

1. Antibiotics in our food. More than 80 million pounds of antibiotics are consumed each year in the U.S.  Residues of antibiotics are detected in livestock, farm-fed fish and commercial eggs. Antibiotics kill friendly bacteria in our intestines. We need these friendly bacteria to help our bodies absorb nutrients - especially B-vitamins. Such deficiencies can result in a variety of nervous and digestive conditions.

1. Soil depletion (the cry of the Mid-West the Big Goiter capital of the US. Commercial farming, the use or artificial fertilizers and synthetic pesticides and acid rains, have caused soil depletion. So we deplete the essential nutrients in the soil. The nutritional values of fruits and vegetables are greatly reduced. In fact, the vegetables you eat today taste bland due to lack of minerals in the soil. According to a recent study sponsored by United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), about 17% of land in the world has been damaged.

Re-discovering Supplements in the United States

Is it a wonder that diabetic supplements and herbal remedies have been rediscovered and become so popular overnight?  Diabetes is a dangerous and complicated disease that demands a lifestyle change vanquish it’s debilitating effects. This demands:

q       Diabetic Diet:  Not just “lose weight" but eat healthy.  This means adding supplements focused on blood sugar and weight loss. 

q       Exercise.  This means getting out and moving around briskly - like the famous “Rove Exercise" of Live Longer Now fame. 

q       Weight Loss.  The Supermarket system is not helping here, so you need to learn how to safely navigate the dangerous food aisles of your grocery store, avoiding those foods that cause the most diabetic damage and focus on foods that will help make you healthy.

So take control of your destiny and educate your self, be your number one heath researcher and counselor.   Make those lifestyle changes, and see if supplements might not be the key to better health.