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Greetings!
The number one killer of adult men and women in America today is heart disease. It doesn't have to be that way. There's a simple reason that heart disease continues to run rampant across America: the vast majority of healthcare providers don't know what the hell they are talking about when it comes to heart disease, and the advice they give to most patients directly increases their risk of heart disease. The vast majority of today's heart disease is preventable, and the actual buildup of plaque in the arteries is more than controllable; it is reversible. |
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Understanding Hemoglobin A1c | |
Know Thy Enemy
 Hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c) is a blood test used to gather information about someone's average blood sugar over the past three months. The test measures the amount of glycation that has occured on the hemoglobin of red blood cells. Glycation is the process of sugar bonding to protein.
The best analogy to understand Hemoglobin A1c is to imagine an M&M. As we all know, M&Ms have a thin candy shell. As red blood cells travel through the body, some sugar goops onto them (glycation). By essentially measuring the thickness of the red blood cell's "candy shell," one can correlate that thickness with an approximation of the person's average blood sugar over about the past three months. There is debate as to the exact timeframe because new research reveals that red blood cells with high amounts of glycation are broken down by the body much more rapidly than normal red blood cells, but the important point is that HbA1c is correlated with average blood sugar readings. |
| HbA1c Is Important For Everyone | |
Diabetes Is Just A Word
HbA1c has long been used to monitor blood sugar values in diabetics, but HbA1c provides valuable information for everyone, not just diabetics. A wonderful study, entitlted "Dysglycaemia and the risk of acute myocardial infarction in multiple ethnic groups: an analysis of 15,780 patients from the INTERHEART study," was published in the journal Diabetologica in January 2010. It found that the risk of heart attack (myocardial infarction) increases linearly with a Hemoglobin A1C greater than 5.5 across all ethnicities.
This leads to many important revelations. The first is that HbA1c predicts heart disease risk way better than any cholesterol value. This is a further knock on the outdated cholesterol-heart disease hypothesis. For the record, I do not believe cholesterol causes heart disease, but that's a story for another month. This reveals why advising someone to eat a low fat diet to avoid heart disease is idiocy. A low fat diet becomes a high carb diet, and Americans already eat way too many carbs. In the early 1980s everyone was told to go on a low fat diet to prevent heart disease. Did it work? No. Everyone just substituted carbs for fat and obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates further increased.
The second is that the current definitions for diabetes and prediabetes are far too high. The current standards, adopted in 2010, dropped the HbA1c value needed to diagnose diabetes from 7.0 to 6.5. That's a step in the right direction but clearly still inadequate, and many healthcare providers are still not even aware of that change.
The third is that it is criminal negligence to advise a patient with diabetes that a HbA1c level less than 7 indicates good control of their blood sugar. A HbA1c of 7 correlates with an average blood sugar of 170 mg/dl. On what planet is that a healthy blood sugar? A blood sugar greater than 140 mg/dl begins to exert damaging effects on the body, and diabetics should aim to keep their two-hour post-meal sugar less than 140 mg/dl to minimize their risk of heart disease and the other devastating effects of long-term elevated blood sugars.
Yet, patients all over the country are told that any HbA1c less than 7 indicates good management of their diabetes. That murderous incompetence, propagated by pharmaceutically-funded and controlled professional organizations like the American Diabetes Association (ADA), is the norm. Of all the worthless professional medical organziations, and there are many, the American Diabetes Association is the absolute worst. Given that most healthcare providers turn to the ADA for advice, it is no wonder that 25.1% of Americans were diabetic or prediabetic in 2006, and that number has undoubtedly escalated since that time. And with so many Americans eating far too many carbohydrates and essentially wearing out their body's ability to accommodate carbohydrates, it is no wonder that the United States is 49th in the world for life expectancy.
The fourth is that "diabetes" is merely a word. Type 1 diabetes, the kind found in young children, is a disorder where the immune system attacks the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas. Much of Type 1 diabetes could be prevented by restoring everyone's Vitamin D levels to an optimal level, as discussed in last month's newsletter. The criteria used to diagnose adults with Type II diabetes is simply blood sugar and/or HbA1c levels. The point at which someone becomes "diabetic" is nothing more than an arbitrary point on a line, and the point at which people are being alerted to a danger from their Hemoglobin A1c level is far too high. Many people with Hemoglobin A1c levels that place them at a dramatically increased risk of heart attack are told by their doctor that their test results are "normal."
The last, and probably most important, is that most healthcare providers are trapped within the simplistic thinking of "normal" versus "abnormal." They rely on crude labels to understand disorders because they fail to realize that everything exists on a spectrum. The medical model tries to categorize patients into little boxes so that they can be understood, whereas my nursing education impessed upon me that a person is more than the sum of their parts. It is true that it is normal for an American to have a HbA1c value of 5.9. Just as it is normal for an American to be overweight or obese. Normal values are based upon population averages, but just as I wouldn't want a normal American's waistline or Vitamin D level, I don't want a normal American's HbA1c. |
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Healthy Ranges And What You Can Do About It | |
If I had the power, as I someday will, to redefine the definitions of diabetes and prediabetes, I would categorize them as follows:
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Category |
Hemoglobin A1C | |
Healthy |
< 5.5 | |
Prediabetes or Impaired Fasting Glucose |
5.5-5.9 | |
Diabetes |
≥ 6.0 |
At the very least, diabetics should aim for a HbA1c less than 6 as opposed to 7. Some of you may be thinking, "It is impossible for a diabetic to achieve strict enough blood sugar control to achieve a HbA1C < 6.0." First of all, don't take that tone with me, and secondly, I don't believe in impossiblity. I have made discoveries far beyond the level I ever imagined possible, but I only did so because I proactively sought out knowledge believed by others not to exist. The barriers are mental, and your first "impossible" task is the hardest.
There are no less than two diets capable of improving a Type II diabetics blood sugar level to the point where they require no medication and no longer meet the criteria for diabetes. I am certain there are many more. Eating a completely raw food diet, as recorded in the documentary "Simply Raw: Reversing Diabetes in 30 Days," eliminates the need for medications while lowering blood sugar into a healthy range. Eating an incredibly low carbohydrate (less than 20 grams per day) diet also dramatically improves HbA1c, fasting blood sugar, and weight while reducing or eliminating the need for medication. Most people have become too afraid of eating fat for the latter, but remember, HbA1c predicts heart disease risk way better than cholesterol, and fat does not cause heart disease. It just doesn't. Don't worry about real foods that are high in fat, like grass-fed beef or whole milk, causing heart disease, worry about fake junk causing heart disease.
And remember, food is only part of the equation. Running really hard and lifting really heavy stuff improves your body's ability to metabolize carbohydrates by essentially shifting the body into an active mode. Marathoners can eat lots of carbs without fear of diabetes because they actually use those carbohydrates for energy instead of storing them as fat. Exercise is a natural way to increase the body's insulin sensitivity which is so critical because much of the problem in Type II diabetes is insulin resistance because the body has grown numb to the effects of the blood-sugar-lowering hormone insulin from years of overproduction as a result of a high carbohydrate, high sugar, and low fiber diet combined with years of sitting at a desk or on a couch.
The moral of the story is to know your HbA1c, ensure the value is calculated by a laboratory and not by an in-office HbA1c machine that
has a +/- of 0.5 (meaning an actual value of 6.5 could be reported anywhere between 6 and 7), get off your butt and challenge your body, and don't eat fake junk. Well, at least not too much.
Best Wishes,
Dan
Daniel A. Clinton, RN, BSN
CPR & First Aid Instructor and Professional Tutor
www.clintoncpr.com
www.awesomenursingtutor.com
P.S. Do you know of anyone else who may benefit from this information? Please feel free to and take advantage of the awesome social media bar at the top to share this newsletter on your facebook and/or tweet it to your followers. |
| About The Author | |
Dan Clinton is a Registered Nurse, CPR and First Aid Instructor, Professional Anatomy, Physiology, Nursing, and NCLEX-RN tutor, Researcher, Writer, Entrepreneur, and overall swell guy. Dan channels his passion for helping others through his businesses, striving to fulfill the American dream of succeeding through altruism, hard work, persistence, and ingenuity. As a CPR and First Aid Instructor, he offers comprehensive and cutting-edge American Heart Association CPR and First Aid instruction throughout Massachusetts and the New England area. As a professional tutor, Dan holistically aids his clients reach (and often exceed) their goals, and he has quickly developed a reputation as one of Boston's premier tutors for the nursing board exam (the NCLEX-RN).
Dan lives in Waltham, Massachusetts, works way too hard, and hopes to soon finish his first book which will show how to fix the fractured American healthcare system and teach its readers everything they need to know to dramatically improve their health. It is the greatest book ever written. |
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