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Get The Most From Your Doctor – Know Your Numbers Part 4: Diabetes and Hemoglobin A1C

April 12, 2013 in Healthy Living

This is the fourth of my six part series on Getting the Most from your Doctor. In part three of this series, I talked about the importance of vitamin D levels and gave you tips on how to increase vitamin D in your body.

In part four, I’ll discuss diabetes and Hemoglobin A1C.

Screening for Diabetes

I screen my patients for diabetes – and encourage healthy behaviors that prevent diabetes – because diabetes has such horrible consequences.

Diabetes can damage our vision, damage our kidneys, increase our risk of heart disease – there are all kinds of long term consequences of having diabetes. So it’s crucial to prevent it before it ever starts.

Hemoglobin A1c and Diabetes

The Hemoglobin A1c (or HbA1c) test looks at our average blood sugar over the course of the last 3-4 months of our lives, which makes it a great screening test for pre-diabetes. Yet so many doctors still do not do give this test, and they don’t find diabetes until it’s full-blown.

How Does the HbA1c Test Work?

Red blood cells last in our body for about 3-4 months. And the HbA1c test can look at sugar that’s attached to molecules of hemoglobin in our red blood cells. So we’re able to tell what a person’s blood sugar looks like, on average, over the last 3 or 4 months.

I’ve been using this test on my patients for close to 10 years now, because pre-diabetes is much more easily reversed – and much less damaging – than full-blown diabetes.

How to Decrease your Risk of Diabetes

Pre-diabetes can usually be very easily reversed with lifestyle changes, including:

  • eating a lower-carb diet
  • reducing your sugar intake
  • eating more vegetables
  • eating more lean proteins
  • getting more exercise

All these things will help you lose weight in a healthy way and majorly decrease your risk of diabetes.

Supplements that Lower Blood Sugar

I help my patients reverse diabetes all the time, through nutrition programs, by decreasing their sugar intake, and by amping up their exercise.

And some of them benefit from supplements too. Chromium picolinate or chromium nicotinate are forms of the mineral chromium that can help lower blood sugar in the body. Ask your doctor how these supplements can work for you.

Getting the Most from Your Doctor – Prevention vs. Disease

A doctor’s training goes something like this: here is the disease and here is the medicine to treat that disease.

This may sound simplified, but most doctors are not trained in how to keep people from becoming unhealthy or how to prevent unwanted medical situations from happening in the first place. In a word, they are not trained in prevention.

It’s up to each of us to become educated in disease prevention – and practice it on ourselves and our families.

Take Good Care

As a hormone specialist, I have a lively practice helping men and women balance their hormones and restore their health. And I want to reach even more people with the information I have. I’m glad you’re here.

Wishing you great health, great happiness and great moments,

Dr. Jen

Hormone Expert MD

P.S. – Take the FREE Hormone Quiz Today!

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Get the Most From Your Doctor – Know Your Numbers Part Three

March 14, 2013 in Healthy Living, Men's Health, Women's Health

This is the third of my six part series on Getting the Most from your Doctor. In part two of this series, I talked about inflammation and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP), and gave you tips on how to decrease inflammation in your body.

In this third installment, I’ll share with you the numbers you want to know and the questions you want to ask your doctor about vitamin D levels.

What’s your vitamin D level and why is it important?

Vitamin D was misnamed. It’s not really a vitamin, it’s actually a pro-hormone, so it acts in the body more like a hormone than a vitamin.

And that’s why it’s been shown to be so beneficial in preventing so many diseases, including these major ones:

  • diabetes
  • heart disease
  • depression
  • osteoporosis
  • Alzheimer’s disease

Vitamin D protects our heart, our brains, and our bones – all those things we are really concerned about as we age – but not if we don’t have optimal levels of it in our bodies.

The Mason-Dixon Line

We used to be taught that if you lived south of the line that runs between San Francisco and Virginia, you’re getting enough vitamin D, just from the sun.

But that’s not always true. I live in Florida (the Sunshine State!), and over the years, the vast majority of my patients have been either vitamin D deficient or suffer from a lack of vitamin D.

How to Increase Vitamin D

So how do you get more vitamin D? What are the optimal levels?

Most labs quote 30-100 ng/ml as the normal range for Vitamin D levels. So if you’re below 30 ng/ml, you can certainly benefit from vitamin D supplementation.

But as I always says, normal is not the same thing as optimal. I like to see my patients between 55 and 70 ng/ml, because those are the levels where Vitamin D is really going to work to help prevent disease.

Vitamin D Supplements

For most of my patients with suboptimal Vitamin D levels, I usually recommend 2000 – 5000 IUs a day. In general, I don’t recommend taking more than 4000 IUs per day, unless you are having your vitamin D levels regularly monitored (every 4-6 months). I recommend monitoring vitamin D levels just like I would monitor any other hormone level.

Getting the Most from Your Doctor – Prevention vs. Disease

A doctor’s training goes something like this: here is a disease and here is the medicine to treat that disease.

This may sound simplified, but most doctors are not trained in how to keep people from becoming unhealthy or how to prevent unwanted medical situations from happening. In a word, they are not trained in prevention.

It’s up to each of us to become educated in disease prevention – and practice it on ourselves and our families.

Take Good Care

As a hormone specialist, I have a lively practice helping men and women balance their hormones and restore their health. And I want to reach even more people with the information I have. I am here to support you and I’m glad you’re here.

Wishing you great health, great happiness and great moments.

Dr. Jen
TAKE MY FREE  HORMONE QUIZ!

P.S.  Remember to LIKE my Facebook page where you can connect, learn – and get cool stuff (we do giveaways for some great products).

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Get the Most from Your Doctor – Know Your Numbers Part Two:

February 21, 2013 in Healthy Living, Nutrition & Diets

With the average doctor’s visit lasting only about seven minutes, it’s crucial that you go in armed with information and questions vital to your health.

What specific things do you need to know for optimal health?

If you don’t know what to ask for, you might miss the opportunity to get the information you need from your doctor. It’s left to you to educate yourself and your family, and I’m here to help.

Know your numbers – it’s crucial!

This is the second of my six part series on Getting the Most from your Doctor. In part one of this series, I talked about optimal blood pressure and gave you some tips on how to decrease your blood pressure.

In this second installment, I’ll share with you the numbers you want to know and the questions you want to ask your doctor about inflammation and high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hs-CRP).

Inflammation and hs-CRP

Hs-CRP is a marker for inflammation around the heart. This marker has been shown to be an independent risk factor for heart disease – just like cholesterol is. But many doctors don’t check this number. And it is such an important number to know when looking at your risk for heart disease.

In addition, ANY inflammation in your body will increase the risk of getting every disease under the sun. Even Alzheimer’s disease and cancer. So you want to make sure that your hs-CRP, your inflammation level, is low.

How to Decrease Inflammation

When testing for hs-CRP, between 1-3 mg/L is considered average. But we want our hs-CRP to be less than 1 mg/L, because that is really considered optimal.

So what do you do to have a lower hs-CRP? What do you do to lower your levels of inflammation around the heart?

Fish oil, with its omega-3 fatty acids – especially EPA – is a great option. EPA is a really effective natural anti-inflammatory. You can get these omega-3s by eating foods like salmon, walnuts, avocados, etc…, but to get high enough levels of EPA to lower inflammation, you may really want to take fish oil supplements.

Fish oils are a great way to decrease your inflammation. And it’s important to take a pharmaceutical grade fish oil supplement, because low quality fish oil supplements can be contaminated with toxins, mercury, and PCBs.

Eat Clean to lower your Inflammation

You can also lower your inflammation by exercising and eating a clean diet. Eating clean means eating foods that come from nature (in their natural forms as much as possible), and staying away from processed foods.

Fish oil, exercise, and a clean diet are an important part of any healthy lifestyle, but are especially crucial when dealing with an elevated hs-CRP. Know your numbers – have your doctor check your hs-CRP, and if it’s elevated, take steps to decrease your inflammation.

I’d love to hear your feedback. Let me know if you find this article helpful.  Leave your comments below or on my Facebook page.  Be sure to let me know what other topics you want to hear about!  Thanks

Wishing you the best of great health, great happiness and, of course, great sex.

Dr. Jen, Sexpert MD

 

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