There have been some really interesting announcements in the news recently. For one thing, smartphone companies announced that they’ll be loading their phones with new health apps to measure a lot of your numbers for you. And a new study showed sugar substitutes — those blue packages of aspartame, yellow packages of sucralose and pink packages of saccharin — cause insulin resistance and lead to obesity. Another study suggested that prediabetes and diabetes increase your risk of cancer; and a third key study found that diabetes and prediabetes increase the risk of heart failure by three to six times.
There’s some intriguing science in these studies. For example, the sugar substitutes change the bacteria in your intestine to produce something that causes insulin resistance, or the start of diabetes. Development of diabetes was demonstrated in the mice model used, and the change in bacteria and insulin resistance in both mice and four of the seven humans tested. Pretty interesting — another food like red meat that changes your intestinal bacteria and then leads to increased blood sugar that causes injury to you.
While the science is fascinating to those of us who are into wellness research, there is an important implication for you: Keep your blood sugar below 110 mg/dL, which indicates prediabetes. Now, we aren’t sure that’s the level that causes you to injure yourself, but that seems rational from these studies — and some people will repair that injury with scars — or heart failure, and some with excessive tissue growth, or cancers. The common finding of these three new studies is that slight elevation of your blood sugar causes injury that leads to serious chronic disease.
[Read: What to Look for in a Fitness App .]
But to do something about this finding so you can stay well, I need your help. At least two smartphone systems or companies said they were adding important health apps to their smartphones. The companies so far announced embedding apps that keep track of your heart rate, your steps and your sleep. Do you need to know these moment to moment, as opposed to occasionally? Probably not, for the vast majority of us.
But there is one number these studies stress that all of us should know moment to moment. These smartphones (at least as far as I can determine) don’t give it to you, at least so far. That crucial number is your blood sugar level — so I need you to write to your provider, and tell them to work on getting it onto your phone.
[Read: Quitting Smoking the Geeky Way .]
Yes, steps in a day are important, and so is your maximum heart rate with intense exercise three times a week. But if you knew your sugar value every minute, you could use that information to keep it under 110 — and help protect yourself from heart attack or cancer. Until then, avoid added sugars, added syrups, any non-100 percent grain, red meat and all sugar-substitutes. I’ve often said you get a do-over — but even better is to know how to get that do-over more easily, and how to prevent injury in the first place. Knowing your blood sugar value at any given moment will help; I wish it were on my and your phones now. So write, and maybe one of those companies will make it easier for you to avoid heart disease and cancer.
[Read: How to Turn Your Phone Into the Ultimate Weight-Loss Tool.]
Thanks for reading. Re member these are the views of Dr. Mike Roizen only, and do not necessarily reflect those of any organization that he is or was affiliated with.
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Why Your Smartphone Needs to Measure Blood Sugar Levels originally appeared on usnews.com
