If you have been following me for awhile, you probably know that I live with diabetes. I was diagnosed with Type 1 over 35 years ago. I struggled for years, decades, over trying to balance what I ate and what I did with how much insulin I took. Things were a bit different when I was first diagnosed. I was told to “eat healthy” but was never sent to a diabetes educator or nutritionist. I was not even sent to an endocrinologist. I didn’t’ go to one until much later in life and then I was not impressed and never…

Gestational diabetes, i.e., diabetes occurring during pregnancy, is a growing health problem. Research1has shown that obese women are up to eight times more likely to develop gestational diabetes than others. And the problem doesn´t stop there. New research2shows that children born by mothers with gestational diabetes run a significantly higher risk of developing impaired blood glucose control, adiposity and increased blood pressure, already at a very early age.

So — trying to keep a healthy lifestyle isn´t just a matter of wellbeing for the pregnant woman. It is also a way of giving the offspring a good start in life…

No matter how hard we try to do the right thing, eat the right foods, drink enough water, etc things can’t happen that we don’t expect. This happened to me last week. My intern, Miranda and I were working hard getting the office ready for two big events, the official Ribbon Cutting with the Chamber of Commerce and our Community Health Fair. The ribbon cutting was scheduled for Thursday the 25th. The day before we were doing some last minute clean up and organizing when all of a sudden I felt like I got hit by a ton of bricks…

The human body is a fantastic creation. As long as there is a balance between the input (=energy from food) and output (=energy used by our bodies) we usually don´t have to worry too much about what we eat and drink. This is often referred to as the energy balance, and the simple equation is that the more you spend on physical activities, the more you need to eat…and the more you can eat without gaining those extra pounds. …

As the semester comes to an end, so does my internship at the Diabetes Wellness Council. A bittersweet feeling washes over me knowing I’ll be crossing the stage in front of my family, friends, and peers at Coastal Carolina University in just a short 3 weeks. Reminiscing over the past semester, I’m so thankful for all the friends I’ve made, the knowledge I’ve learned, and the experiences I’ve lived. The relationships I’ve built will stay with me for a lifetime.

The Council has become like a second home to me. I have acquired skills over the past four months that…

Your body becomes what you eat. Few people would object to that statement being true and valid both literally, and referring to the understanding that what you eat and drink can have a significant impact on your health, wellbeing, and performance.

Biohackers are a growing group of people that take this to a new level. Seeing their bodies as machines that can be optimized by the right kind of “fuel” — food, exercise, sleep, etc — biohackers spend a lot of time trying to measure, understand and improve their own functions. There´s a wide span of biohackers. Extreme “Grinders” can…

I just returned home this week after a few days at a conference in Chicago. While sometimes the travel itself is a bear, the conference was really great.

I also feel motivated and inspired when I attend conference, no matter what they topic. This was related to health, obesity, and to how we change the trajectory for the health of today’s youth. That really gets my mind going. In fact, while sitting in some of the plenaries and sessions, I had to start writing down ideas furiously so that I wouldn’t forget them. I even started writing down a new…

“Our results provide further support to limit intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and to replace them with other beverages, preferably water, to improve overall health and longevity.”

These are the words of Vasanti Malik, a research scientist at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and lead author of an extensive study of the relation between intake of sugar-sweetened beverages and premature death. Malik and colleagues have analyzed the results of two previous studies comprising more than 80 000 American women between 1980 and 2014, and around 38 000 American men between 1986 and 2014.

In short, the study, published…