• excess body fat around the abdomen or central area is more indicative of type 2 than anything else. There is a direct connection between an increase in your abdominal region, insulin resistance and diabetes.
• insulin works less effectively in your body when you are overweight, especially when you store excess fat on your waist.
• fat stored around your internal organs is different to fat stored on your hips.  This particular fat allows fatty acids and hormones to leak into your circulation and they act as a signal that your fat stores are full.  Then fewer insulin-receptors are made to absorb glucose.

Imagine yourself losing a small amount of your total body weight … say 5-10%.  Fat stores around organs are easier to lose than fat on your hips.  Here is a quick way to check if you are “apple”‘ or “pear” shape:

• a waist measurement of more than 37″ (94cm) for most men or 31″ (80cm) for most women, is a sign of internal fat deposits around your pancreas, kidneys, liver and heart.  In other words, men who have this type of fat have a waist much larger than their hips.   Women have a waist measuring at least eighty per cent of their hip measurement.
• over these measurements would indicate you are “apple” shape.

To check your risk level, it is important you measure your waist accurately:

• measure directly against your skin
• breathe out normally
• tape should be firm but not compressing your skin
• the ideal place to measure is halfway between your lowest rib and the top of your hip bone.   In other words, roughly in line with your belly button

Usually men and women successfully lose a modest amount of weight by following a healthy eating plan containing low-GI (carbohydrates), a moderate amount of protein and small amounts of unsaturated fats.  Add to this some physical activity and, a possibility of medications for a short period; your health will improve and complications from type 2 diabetes will be reduced.

It is important for you to confirm your suspicions by visiting your health care provider who will order:

• fasting blood sugar levels
• glucose tolerance test which takes place over a period of two hours.  Blood is taken prior to drinking a glucose solution and again after two hours
• fasting insulin level … not always taken but an elevated level, if caught early enough, is a smoking gun indicating prediabetes.
• tests for blood fats, (cholesterol, triglycerides)

You don’t wake up one day and discover you have diabetes.  It is a slow process from normal to prediabetic and then onto type 2 diabetes.

It’s important to pay attention to smoking health risks but although the headlines read “Smoking cessation may actually Increase Risk of Developing Type 2 Diabetes”, this really was a little misleading. The only risk from quitting smoking in relation to Type 2 Diabetes is from any weight you might gain; not from the loss of any of the poisons and tars in a cigarette. In fact there is a far greater risk to your health if you continue to smoke.

Study Leader Hsin-Chieh “Jessica” Yeh, Ph.D., an assistant professor of general internal medicine and epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, says “If you smoke, give it up. That’s the right thing to do. But people have to also watch their weight,”

Risk factors of quitting

Smokers are constantly bombarded with the risk factors attached to their habit but rarely consider that there may be some risk attached to quitting. Of course continuing to smoke is dangerous at every level but we quit smoking to support our health – as most smokers do – then we need to take care of ourselves in other ways also.

When you quit smoking, the only real risk to your health is to then swap one unhealthy habit for another! Why would you do that? Massive weight gain is NOT inevitable.

Weight gain facts

• On average former smokers gain around 8lbs in weight
• Therefore, logically, some gain a great deal more, some less, some none at all and some may even lose weight – this makes up the average
• Food tastes and smells better when we have quit so is more tempting
• Some smokers swap their “mouth habit” to food instead of cigarettes – it’s just an alternative pacifier (child’s dummy – UK).

Many of my clients are really worried about weight gain when I help them quit but when I tell them the average and how it’s made up they are amazed. They seem to have gained a false impression that smokers balloon out of all proportion automatically, piling on weight and unable to quit like an express train whose brakes have failed. NOT TRUE.

Prevention Well, in the first couple of weeks you may well find yourself nibbling a bit more but the only way you can prevent that turning into a permanent habit – replacing the old smoking habit which you just rejected – is to be aware of your tendencies. You see, many people just go about their habits with no thought that they can be changed. They just keep nibbling without engaging in any assessment of their new behaviours. If you don’t notice you’re doing it how can you stop it?

Many former smokers assume, as I said above, that weight gain is inevitable. It isn’t. You are in charge of your own body. You have made an awesome decision to quit smoking; you’ve achieved one of the most important goals for your future health; you’ve succeeded – maybe after months or years of previous failures. Don’t ruin it all by making the assumption that you will put on weight because that very assumption will become your reality!

How to think Instead; keep looking at those bullet points above. These are proof positive that permanent weight gain is not inevitable. Make a choice. Make a decision. If you notice you are eating more than you used to, just go back to eating the amount you did before and eat your meals slowly:

• chewing your food thoroughly sends messages to the brain that you are, in fact, eating. When we gulp food down fast and use little or no chewing motions, our brain thinks we haven’t eaten.
• Chewing food helps digestion. The food reaches the stomach sooner, is processed more quickly and therefore you feel fuller before you cram down the pudding.
• Chewing food at a meal takes a lot longer than just shoveling it down. It takes about 20 minutes for your stomach to feel full so it makes sense to take a long time over a meal.
• Chewing food thoroughly helps weight loss immeasurably. The food becomes mixed with saliva which helps it break down correctly in the digestion process and reduces the amount of fat stored.

So cut those smoking health risks today and cut the only quit-smoking health risk along with it and you’ll have a healthy future to look forward too with no more cigarette toxins in your body and no weight gain either.

Smoking health risks are just a small element amongst the mega-learning that you’ll gain from Stop Smoking Now and there’s loads more information on how to stay slim and trim afterwards in our free bonus guide too. Find out more about the only hospital-based program on the market and how it can help you achieve your dream.

Scientists have just discovered the “smoking gun” that links smoking (specifically nicotine) to increased levels of blood sugar. While doctors have long known that smokers with diabetes have had higher blood sugar levels than non-smokers with diabetes, what eluded them was the causal agent that increased blood sugar levels. The uncertainty is over.

“This is an important study.” said Dr. Xiao-Chuan Liu, director of the new research, and professor at California State Polytechnic University. “It is the first study, to establish a strong link between nicotine and diabetes complications. If you’re a smoker and have diabetes, you should be concerned and make every effort to quit smoking.” he went on.

“Smoking is really harmful for diabetics. It is even more harmful to them than to a non-diabetic.” said Dr. Liu. And thus, smoking (nicotine) is really really harmful to gestational diabetes moms or diabetic women who get pregnant, because of its negative effect on two lives, one of which is especially sensitive to chemicals because of the baby’s heightened vulnerability during in utero development.

Here is another critical implication of the research. Since nicotine itself is the culprit, nicotine patches, electronic cigarettes, and other nicotine substitution, non-smoking products, would have the same effect. It’s the nicotine intake that has to be stopped, not the particular way it gets into your body.

So now, for gestational diabetes moms, nicotine’s role in raising blood sugar levels carries damaging health implications for her, and for her developing baby, as high blood sugar levels from the mother are passed through the placenta affecting her baby.

Up till now, the recommended strategy for most gestational diabetes moms was to control their elevated levels of blood sugar through diet. For more resistant cases, medication or insulin might be required. Smoking might have been addressed, but only because of its already documented relationship with ill-health. But now, this new research provides even more compelling reasons for pregnant women to stop smoking. It uncovers a previously unknown factor in raising blood sugar to unhealthy levels: nicotine.

This new study indicates that gestational diabetes women can be rigorous in their diet, controlling sugar and carbohydrate intake, eating lots of veggies, but still be experiencing elevated levels of blood sugar because they are smoking, or just being exposed to second-hand smoke. The latter is another consideration for gestational diabetes women: it doesn’t matter where the nicotine comes from, your cigarette, another smoker nearby, a nicotine patch or gum.

“This study should encourage diabetics to quit smoking completely, And to realize that it’s the nicotine that’s raising blood sugar levels.” said Dr. Liu.

Every time a gestational diabetes woman smokes, she is raising her blood sugar level (even small amounts of nicotine were seen to raise blood sugar levels: there is no triggering level amount, it starts with the first puff.). She is increasing her risks, and that of her baby for all kinds of diabetes complications, not only in the short-term, because of the risk of delivery complications, but also the long-term. And, she is raising the specter of higher health care expenses because of the additional costs caused any complicating factors.

It can be challenging to control blood sugar levels through diet alone, but if you smoke, you may be canceling the benefits of adherence to a diabetes diet. So, quitting smoking or diminishing your exposure to secondhand smoke, is now critical for managing blood sugar levels in addition to your diet.

The bottom line is this: this new research underscores why pregnant women with diabetes must stop smoking, even if it is temporary gestational diabetes. They are endangering their health, both in the short and long term, and they are exposing their developing babies to this danger as well.