Cancer Articles (Dr. S.N White)

Is it all right for a diabetic to use hot tubs? According to the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, all people who have diabetes, a history of heart disease, or blood pressure problems should check with a doctor on the advisability of using a hot tub. They also caution that nobody should bathe in a hot tub with water that is 104 degrees F. or higher, since water of 106 degrees F. can be fatal even to fully healthy adults. (Barbara, who considers herself a fully healthy adult, gets rather frightening nosebleeds after sitting in Japanese baths or hot springs.) The preceding section on foot care explained that you shouldn't put your feet in water above 85 degrees F. or 90 degrees F Since it's a little awkward to soak in a hot tub with your feet hanging out, it looks as if tepid tubs should be the order of the day for diabetics.

Are coffee and tea bad for a diabetic? Probably. Many recent studies show that drinks containing caffeine accelerate the aging process and cause headaches, heart trouble, and genetic damage. It stands to reason that any chemical that does all of that is not going to help diabetes. But what makes it a specific diabetes negative is its tendency to raise the blood sugar. Caffeine is not just found in coffee (150 milligrams per cup) and tea (50 milligrams per cup) but in cola drinks (45 milligrams per can), cocoa (15 milligrams per cup), and even in most headache tablets (35 milligrams). In that peculiar way the government has of legislating the use of harmful substances (ketchup is required to have sugar in it), cola cannot legally be called cola if it doesn't contain caffeine! Besides the problems associated with caffeine, coffee has a few distinctive problems, the most disturbing of which was revealed in a Harvard University study which implicates coffee in cancer of our b...

Do I have to measure my food? Yes, it's the only way to be sure you're getting the amount of food your diet specifies. It's not easy to recognize a half cup of orange juice or rice, unless you've measured them out a few times, and six grams of beef would be even harder. A food scale is a good investment in the beginning of your diabetic days to get you on the right measuring track. If you're really conscientious about weighing and measuring your food at first, you'll be amazed at how quickly you learn to eye measure or, as with bread, hand-weigh, when you're out to dinner at a friend's house or in a restaurant. (Hint: sometimes it helps to discreetly nudge your food into little piles, the better to estimate the quantity.) You may get so good at this eye measuring and hand weighing that you can do weight and quantity guessing parlor tricks, like the guy who guesses weights at the circus. Of course, the real and worthwhile trick is using your skill to...

Absolutely. Even though you don't generally have a problem with low blood sugar, you do have one with high blood sugar. As you know, it's the high blood sugar that causes the damage. You have to know when it's high, so you can do something to bring it down exercise, change your diet, etc. When we first learned about home blood sugar testing, we thought it wouldn't be necessary for non insulin dependent diabetics. Urine tests, we thought, would do the job for them. We've since changed our minds. Home blood sugar testing is equally important for noninsulin takers. Most are older when they're diagnosed, and remember, the older you get, the higher goes your renal threshold. You might take a urine test when your blood sugar is, say, 215, and the test will tell you that your blood sugar is normal when in reality it's dangerously high. For example, we talked to the daugher of a diabetic woman who, according to her daughter, "loves to eat, especially at ...

How do I test for ketones? A better question might be, when do I test for ketones? The answer for diabetics on insulin is whenever two consecutive urine tests measure 2 percent sugar or when your blood sugar tests are over 200. For non insulin dependent diabetics who still produce some insulin of their own, the situation is not so crucial. Those who have a high renal threshold and are running higher blood sugar than they realize, can, of course get in trouble. All diabetics need to watch for ketones when they have infections or illnesses or out of the ordinary emotional stress. Now, how do you test? There are two products to use: Ketostix.  This is a stick. You dip it into urine, wait fifteen seconds, and compare with six color blocks to determine the amount of ketones. (Keto-Diastix measure both ketones and glucose on the same stick.) Acetest.  This is a tablet. You place a drop of urine on it, wait thirty seconds, and then compare the result with a color chart. Sin...

Some doctors recommend blood sugar testing as few as four times a week; others advise doing it as often as four times a day (or more!). June usually does hers twice a day before breakfast and when she gets home from work in the late afternoon. She also does it when she's confused about what her blood sugar is because she's having trouble reading her body signals. This can be pretty often when she's under pressure or on a trip or doing an extra lot of exercising or is otherwise out of her regular routines. Many diabetics like to test two hours after eating to see how they handled the meal. Richard K. Bernstein, who advocates very tight control for juvenile diabetics, has evolved a system called "Glucograf." In this system, diabetics test as frequently as six times a day in order to keep their blood sugar normal 90 percent of the time and thereby avoid the complications long term juvenile diabetics can be susceptible to. Do you ever need to go to the doctor for...

Blood sugar often goes up when you have an infection the flu, the common cold, stomach upsets. Major surgery and pregnancy cause a rise. Then there are a number of drugs that tend to raise blood sugar. Caffeine, oral contraceptives, estrogen, and cortisone are the most important to know about. Emotional tension also causes blood sugar to swing upward. Besides being lowered by fasting or by insufficient food, blood sugar goes down when you exercise strenuously. Among drugs with a lowering effect are alcohol (when you don't eat while drinking), large doses of aspirin, blood-thinning drugs, barbiturates, and sulfonamides.

What's normal blood sugar? The normal range is around 60 to 120 (milligrams of sugar per deciliter of blood), depending on the method used to test the blood sugar. The objective of all diabetes treatment is to keep blood sugar within this range. After you eat, blood sugar rises and reaches its peak between one half and one hour later. Even in nondiabetics the blood sugar varies according to times of eating and what is eaten. Rarely, however, does it go over 150. Blood sugars above 160 suggest the person is diabetic. Here is the normal pattern of blood sugar for nondiabetics in relationship to meals: RELATION TO FOOD                                               BLOOD SUGAR RANGE Fasting (before breakfast)                                           60-10...