Health

The amount of sugar (or really glucose, technically speaking) is tightly regulated in the human bloodstream. A normal blood sugar (glucose) is under 100 mg/dL, and when the sugar rises to between 100 mg/dL to 125 mg/dL the serious medical conditions of glucose intolerance, pre-diabetes are diagnosed. Once above 125 mg/dL diabetes is diagnosed. As more research is done, the optimal blood glucose number goes lower and lower. The bottom line is you want to keep the blood sugar as low as you can for optimal health.

It’s been a spectacular journey over these past year, testing the concept of nutritional ketosis on myself. What started out as a simple n=1 experiment to learn if a very high-fat, moderate protein, very low-carbohydrate nutritional approach could make a impact on my weight and health once a traditional Atkins or Paleo-style diet wasn’t working for me anymore, has now become much more than that.

Here we go again with another "Read Meat Kills!" study. This month, Tom Naughton points his bologna meter at the headlines and another study of misinterpreted facts.

Somatopsychic Health & Wellness: "It's all in your head." In mid-20th-century America this was a common diagnosis. While it is now widely excepted that stress plays a part in illness, the notion of purely psychogenic disease has fallen out of favor.

6 Reasons to Attend the Ancestral Health Symposium in 2014: I've been a CrossFit athlete for close to two years and I consider myself an evolutionary eater for the purposes of health and performance. To say I was very excited to attend this conference is an understatement. I had never heard of AHS before the publishers of CarbSmart asked me to attend, but one look at the website and I was sold.

Does Red Meat Cause Diabetes? Of course you heard, it was trumpeted all over the media. Are we all really going to go blind and lose our feet?

Bologna Meter: Alzheimer's Bologna. A new study made a splash in the media recently – the splash coming in the form of headlines like these: Saturated Fat May Make the Brain Vulnerable to Alzheimer's and How a High Fat Diet Increases Alzheimer's Risk. Holy moly! Saturated fat causes Alzheimer’s?! I’d throw away all my sausage, except I can’t remember where I put it.

Eat Your Veggies for Optimal Metabolic Functioning! by Dr. Eric Westman. We look at carbohydrates in their most nutritious – and benign – form.

More Than Skin Deep by Sagdrina Jalal in the June 2013 issue of CarbSmart Magazine. Welcome the self-confidence that comes with feeling great in your own skin.

Feed Your Body What it Needs by Adele Hite in the June 2013 issue of CarbSmart Magazine. Give yourself what it takes to be great!

Many people taking prescription or OTC meds are willing to risk some mild side effects to feel better. Package inserts, drug info sites on the Internet, pharmacists, and the prescribing practitioner can be helpful providing information about side effects. However, one of the potentially damaging side effects you are rarely told about is the negative effect of medications on nutrient levels. Drugs can interfere with absorption of nutrients or inappropriately increase excretion. Keep in mind that vitamins and minerals play a major role in hundreds and hundreds of chemical reactions in the body vital for life.

Dana's Kitchen: Gluten Free Cooking 101. When Dana started creating low carb recipes 18 years ago she had no idea she was way, way ahead of the curve on a future trend: gluten-free cooking.