How do doctors determine if you have type 2 diabetes? The doctor has three different tests he can perform to see if your blood glucose levels fit into the range of diabetes or pre-diabetes. These include the fasting plasma glucose, the oral glucose tolerance test, and the random plasma glucose test. All but the last one will then diagnose diabetes and pre-diabetes. The last one will only diagnose diabetes. When you come into the doctor’s office with a list of symptoms, your doctor will likely recommend one of these three. Let’s look at each one and what the results may be.

The first type of test your doctor may perform to check for type 2 diabetes is the fasting plasma glucose or FPG. This health test is both convenient and also low priced. This makes it the first choice for many physicians to make an initial diagnosis. It may occassionally yield a wrong answer or a false negative. So many medical teams may use another test to then verify. With this test, the patient must fast for 8 hours before. Many doctors perform the test early in the morning before the patient eats breakfast. The test measures the glucose levels in milligrams per deciliter or mmol/L. With a reading of 99 mg/dl (5.5 mmol/l) or below, the patient is normal and does not have diabetes. If the reading is between 100 and 125 mg/dl (5.6 – 7.0 mmol/L), the patient likely has pre-diabetes. A reading over 125 mg/dl (7.0 mmol/l) now implies the person likely has Type 2 Diabetes. Your healthcare team will likely repeat the test if they need to verify the final result.

Another test performed is the oral glucose tolerance test or OGTT. It is definitely more sensitive or accurate than the FPG. It also requires an 8 hour fast. At the time of the test, the technician takes the plasma glucose level. Immediately after this, the person has a glass of water with 75 grams of glucose dissolved in it. Two hours later, the technician then takes a second plasma glucose level. The reading taken after the two hours is what is measured. If the blood glucose level is in the vicinity 139 mg/dl (7.7 mmol/l) or less, the person is then clear of Diabetes. If the reading is between, 140 and 199 mg/dl (7.7 -11 mmol/l), the patient has pre-diabetes. If the reading is over 200 mg/dl (11 mmol/l), the patient has diabetes.

The benefits of green, black, red, and white tea are confirmed in multiple scientific studies. The detriments of caffeine in blood sugar control for Type 2 diabetics, however, are also well documented. Do the benefits of tea for people with Type 2 diabetes outweigh its negatives?

What Can A Cup of Tea Do For Your Body: First of all, while it is true that caffeine can stimulate the release of cortisol by the adrenal glands and cortisol can stimulate the release of stored sugar from your liver, it’s important to note that a cup of brewed tea has only one quarter to one half of the amount of caffeine in a cup of coffee. Moreover, tea is an important source of antioxidants. One study found that in the British diet, 82 per cent of all antioxidants were derived from tea! Iced tea drinkers in the American South similarly depend on tea for their free radical protection.

The Benefit of Drinking Tea Includes: There is good evidence that drinking 2 to 3 cups of tea a day helps to prevent colorectal cancer. There is also some evidence that drinking 1 to 3 cups of tea a day can reduce the risk of ovarian cancer in women. Tea stops the fermentation of carbohydrates by the bacteria that cause tooth decay… actually depriving them of their food source and protecting the enamel of your teeth. This is interesting, women who drink tea have more calcium in their bones. Tea is a terrific way to hydrate, not having a diuretic effect (an increased output of urine by increasing your cardiac output and then increasing circulation through your kidneys) unless more than about 2 liters (8 cups, or 4 glasses) is drunk at a single time.

Important Benefits for Type 2 Diabetics: For diabetics, however, the most important benefit of tea may be the role of tea in protecting against heart disease. The flavonoids in tea help to keep your arteries open. The polyphenols in tea keep cholesterol from being oxidized into a form that can harden in the linings of blood vessels. And it only is necessary to drink 2 or 3 cups of black tea a day for this benefit.

Additional Hints When Drinking Tea: Adding sugar to your tea, of course, cancels out these benefits! If you drink more than 2 or 3 cups of tea a day, you may want to brew decaffeinated tea later in the day or in the evening. Loose tea has far greater antioxidant benefits than bagged.

I’m sure you’ve already heard that there is a rapid rise in diabetes all around the world. In fact, the numbers boggle the mind when you start to really study them. First of all, type 2 diabetes didn’t even exist before the 1920’s and did not exist until artificial oils were introduced into the food supply on a grand scale. Doctors were totally perplexed with it started showing up and there is a full discussion of this when you start digging into the literature. The political discourse about this before World War 2 is also very telling. By the end of the 1930’s, type 2 diabetes had risen a staggering 1000%! Now, only about 90 years later, we are told by the CDC that approximately 23.6 million people have diabetes in the United States. Another 57 million have “pre-diabetes” which is just another way of saying that their blood sugar levels are just below the official mark for diabetes.

By several accounts, one third to one half of the American population is expected to have diabetes in the next few decades. The International Diabetes Federation estimates that 7 million more people develop diabetes every year. Wow! Shouldn’t this be front page news in every major newspaper worldwide? Most of these cases of diabetes are of the type 2 variety and remember that type 2 diabetes didn’t even exist before 1920.

There is no doubt we live in a scarier world than our Grandparents grew up in. Almost every time you turn on the news you hear about someone getting shot, raped, or otherwise violently attacked. We are constantly bombarded with news about terrorist attacks, school shootings, and serial killers. This no doubt accounts for why we are so much more vigilant than our Grandparents had to be when they were kids. It’s a totally different world as they say. But… are we being as vigilant as we should be about our current health crisis? Have we become desensitized when it comes to our health?

What I don’t understand is why there isn’t more of a public outcry about the rise in diabetes and other serious medical conditions that are skyrocketing completely out of control. Why do we sit back and so passively accept this rise in diabetes? Shouldn’t we do something about it? I truly believe people need to wake up to reality and begin to question why diseases like diabetes have risen so much and why they are rising even faster now than they did only a few decades ago.

So much of what is going on with the rising rate of diabetes can be tracked to the artificial foods and other crazy things that are going on with our food supply. Why aren’t citizens demanding that our government take appropriate action to prevent this? Why does the USDA allow these artificial substances to be added to our food without them being thoroughly tested? Artificial foods are totally taking over the grocery shelves. Our bodies are not at all designed to handle this artificial food and it’s no wonder that we are developing diabetes and other serious diseases at alarming rates. If you buy pre-packaged or processed of any kind, you are almost certainly eating this artificial food. If you eat out, you are almost certainly getting it too. Even some of the food that is marketed as being extra healthy is actually artificial food. You could almost think of it as a grand scale experiment and the results do not look good for the human race.

Type 2 diabetes is a disease characterized by high levels of sugar in the bloodstream. The most common form of diabetes, type 2 diabetes today affects over 25,000,000 Americans and in 2006 was the 7th leading cause of death in the United States. People with type 2 diabetes have what’s known as insulin resistance. This is the inability of liver, fat and muscle cells to respond normally to insulin. As a result the sugar in your blood can’t get into the cells so it can be used as energy.

The basic fuel that the body uses is called glucose. Glucose is created when the body breaks down the sugar in your food. Insulin created by the pancreas then takes the sugar from the blood and carries it to the cells. The problem arises when there isn’t enough insulin to carry the glucose or when the cells don’t take the glucose in. When the sugar doesn’t get into the cells, the sugar in the blood starts to build up resulting in a condition called hyperglycemia. As levels of glucose in the blood increase, the pancreas responds by producing more and more insulin, but not enough to keep up with demand.

Genetics play a big role in determining who will develop type 2 diabetes as it tends to run in families. Because excess fat interferes with the body’s ability to use insulin, being excessively overweight can greatly increase your chances of developing type 2 diabetes. Other prominent factors in developing the disease are a sedentary lifestyle and bad diet.

Managing your weight and eating a nutritious diet are critically important to living with diabetes. If diet is brought under control some people with type 2 diabetes can even progress to the point where they can stop taking medications after the losing weight. They still must be vigilant and keep the weight off because they still have diabetes.

Regular exercise is another important method of preventing and dealing with the effects of diabetes. Exercise lowers your blood sugar level and helps burn off excess calories and fat and helps to keep your weight under control. Even without the benefit of burning fat, exercise can help you fight diabetes by improving your blood flow and blood pressure. Increased energy, lower tension and an improvement in your ability to handle stress can also do a lot to improve your overall health.

If diet and exercise don’t do enough to maintain normal blood glucose levels your doctor may have to prescribe medication. These drugs help to lower your blood sugar levels and often work in different ways. This means that often you may need to take more than one of them.

You can help prevent type 2 diabetes by keeping a healthy body weight and an active lifestyle. If you have a family history of diabetes you should be especially careful about your diet and exercise and make sure you visit your doctor twice a year to monitor you blood sugar levels.