Ground ginger and ginger tea are put to the test for blood sugar control.

In a case report of the “successful management of type 2 diabetes with lifestyle intervention,” a 45-year-old man took responsibility for his health into his own hands and sought to defeat his disease and get off the meds by eating foods purported to be anti-diabetic, as you can see below and at 0:20 in my video Flashback Friday: Is Ginger Beneficial in a Diabetic Diet?. How strong is the evidence for ginger?

“Diabetes is reaching pandemic levels…and requires safe, affordable, and effective therapies.” So, what about ginger’s “potential in prevention and treatment”? As you can see in the graph below and at 0:37 in my video, in a petri dish, increasing exposure to ginger compounds improves blood sugar uptake of muscle cells almost as much as the popular diabetes drug metformin. 

And, in rats, ginger might work even better than metformin, but weight and blood sugar reduction observed in rodent models “does not translate to humans.” As you can see in the graph below and at 0:59 in my video, a combination of nutraceuticals caused mice to lose 30 percent of their body weight in one month, but what about people? Researchers found no benefit compared to placebo. You don’t really know if something works in humans until you put it to the test.

When researchers fed people refined white–flour bread with a cup of water, their blood sugars rose over the next two hours. But, when they drank some unsweetened green tea with that white bread instead of plain water, there was less of a blood sugar spike. The same with cinnamon tea and also with ginger tea made by mixing a tablespoon of grated fresh ginger into a cup of hot water. You can see this below and at 1:17 in my video. The study subjects were all healthy, though. What about the effects of ginger in people with diabetes? 

In the first study of its kind, diabetics were randomized to take a teaspoon of ground ginger a day for two months. It was hidden in pill form, so the researchers could compare results with subjects taking identical-looking sugar pill placebos. The result? Ginger supplementation decreased the levels of insulin, which is a good thing, as well as lowered levels of triglycerides and LDL cholesterol, but without a significant effect on blood sugars. Now, heart disease is the leading killer of diabetics, so a 13 percent drop in bad LDL cholesterol would be reason enough to shell out the nickel a day it would cost to add that much ginger to your diet, but it would have been nice to also see an improvement in blood sugar control. There was that drop in insulin levels, which suggests improved insulin sensitivity, and a significant drop in insulin resistance. Is it possible the researchers just didn’t give the ginger enough time to work? That study gave it two months, but what giving three months? 

Researchers gave subjects even less ginger, just 1.6 grams, less than a teaspoon a day, but did so for 12 weeks, and ginger did in fact reduce blood sugar levels, as well as decrease inflammation, cutting C-reactive protein levels in half. 

What about scaling down to just eight weeks, but, this time, using a higher dose—3.0 grams a day, which is about one and a half teaspoons? Researchers found a significant decrease in fasting blood sugars and long-term blood sugar control in the ginger group, “thereby showing the effect of ginger in controlling diabetes.” In fact, the placebo group continued to get worse, while the ginger group got better, as you can see below and at 3:14 in my video. 

Similarly, researchers saw amazing results in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study with a teaspoon a day for 12 weeks and also recorded improvements using a teaspoon and a half, where all of the participants in the ginger group were better and all of those in the non-ginger group were worse, as you can see below and at 3:27 in my video. 

So much significant difference, just because of a small amount of an inexpensive, safe, simple, and side-effect-free spice. If you put together all of the studies, “the combined data clearly demonstrated” that ginger can lower blood sugar levels and improve long-term blood sugar control—and do so at a totally manageable dose. You could just stir a teaspoon of ginger powder into a cup of hot water and drink it. How easy is that? So, “overall…‘adding [a] little spice to our life’ may serve as a delicious and sensible way to maintain a healthy body.” 

If one plant can do all of this, can you imagine if your whole diet was centered around plants?

Here’s a video to draw you in to the dozens more I have on diabetes, one of our leading killers: How Not to Die from Diabetes.

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What are the effects of cell phone radiation on sleep quantity and quality?

“Sleep is crucial to the development of physically and psychologically healthy children,” but a number of factors have been identified as interfering with sufficient sleep, including the use of electronic media devices. These days, most children and nearly all adolescents have at least one such device “in their sleep environment, with most used near bedtime.” Such use is associated with “inadequate sleep quantity, poor sleep quality, with excessive daytime sleepiness.” There are calls to minimize access to these devices at bedtime, but “which comes first, media use or sleep problem?” Are the kids and teens not sleeping because they’re on their phone, or are they on their phone because they can’t sleep? I discuss this in my video Friday Favorites: Do Mobile Phones Affect Sleep?.

“Higher media use has been consistently associated with more irregular sleep patterns, shorter sleep duration, as well as more sleep problems.” Are we pushing back our bedtime because we’re so caught up in whatever we’re reading, writing, watching, or playing, or does using our devices key us up so we have trouble falling asleep? In college-aged students, it may be more of the reverse—not sleeping leading to pulling out their screens rather than just staring at the ceiling. In early childhood, though, it may be a bit of both. How might screen time interfere with sleep?

Use of smartphones and tablets may not just push back bedtimes and overstimulate us. The “light emitted from devices affects circadian timing” by interfering with the production of melatonin, the sleepiness hormone that starts ramping up as soon as the sun goes down. When we put a screen in front of our face, the excess light at night may confuse our brain. Of course, if you’re checking email with the lights on, then you’re already overexposed and the little bit of extra light from the screen may not make much difference. But, if you’re in the dark and need to send off that final message, then adjusting the light settings on your screen to be more yellow may help.

What about the cell phone radiation? Might leaving your phone on the nightstand somehow affect your sleep? There’s an enzyme called ß-trace protein that makes a sleep-promoting neurohormone in the brain, and researchers found that those with greater long-term exposure to cell phones or cordless phones tended to have lower levels of this enzyme in their bloodstream. So, the thinking is that the “emissions from wireless phones affect the release of ß-trace protein in the brain,” especially from the tissues right up under the skull, closest to where we typically hold the phone. So, there is a possible mechanism if cell phones do indeed affect sleep, but you simply don’t know until you put to the test.

Study participants were exposed to 30 minutes of a cell phone in talk, listen, standby, or off modes. All of the lights and speakers were disabled, and insulation was used to prevent them from feeling if the device was heating up, so the participants didn’t know which group they were in. After the exposure, researchers took away the phones, shut off the lights, and told participants to close their eyes and try to fall asleep. As you can see in the graph below and at 2:59 in my video, those exposed to the phone when it was off or in listen or standby mode fell asleep within about 20 to 30 minutes, but after being exposed to the same phone in talk mode, it took closer to 50 minutes on average to fall asleep.

The reason for the significant difference between talking and listening might be because the typical SAR value—that is, the specific absorption rate of how much cell phone energy your body absorbs—is about nine times higher when you’re talking than when you’re just listening to someone else talk.

When you do finally get to sleep, though, what are the effects of cell phone exposure on sleep quality? There have been about 20 studies, and they’re split about half and half in terms of whether cell phone exposure affected sleep parameters—and not all in a negative way. It reminds me of the brain function data. (See Do Mobile Phones Affect Brain Function? for more on this.) Yes, an increase in the excitability in our brain cortex, the outer layer of our brain, in response to exposure to cell phone emissions might disrupt sleep, but that increased excitability may also mean faster reaction times.

Similarly, in affected study subjects, those exposed to an active cell phone showed significantly more R sleep. But R stands for REM, so participants got about 4 percent more potential dream time, which isn’t not necessarily a bad thing.

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Every month, we publish around eight new videos, four Friday Favorites, eight blogs, and four podcasts on NutritionFacts.org. We are bursting at the seams with all sorts of health and nutrition info that we don’t want you to miss, so we wrapped up the juiciest bits into a nice, bite-sized blog as an end-of-month recap in case you missed anything or just want a refresher. So, what were some highlights from April?

Dietary Guidelines: “Eat as Little Dietary Cholesterol as Possible”

The reason we care about cholesterol is because we care about heart disease, the number one killer of men and women. Individuals who eat more eggs have been found to have significantly higher coronary artery calcium scores, which is a sign of atherosclerotic plaque buildup in the arteries. And, this seems to translate into a higher risk of heart attacks and death. Each additional half an egg consumed per day was significantly associated with higher risk of developing cardiovascular disease and dying from all causes put together. The Institution of Medicine recommends that individuals should eat as little dietary cholesterol as possible, and this was reiterated in the 2020 – 2025 Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Dr. Greger has testified before the committee a couple of times. Check out the highlights from 2020.

 

A Case of Stage 3 Cancer Reversal with Fasting and Spontaneous Regression of Cancer with Fasting

Dr. Greger previously addressed what to eat after a cancer diagnosis, but what about eating nothing at all? In 2015, a remarkable case report was published in which a woman with stage 3 follicular lymphoma underwent a medically supervised, 21-day water-only fast, after which her enlarged lymph nodes were substantially reduced in size. The patient then remained on a whole food, plant-based diet, and, at six- and nine-month follow-up visits, she remained asymptomatic. After three years, her follow-up was published: Remarkably, she appeared to remain cancer-free, confirmed by CT and PET scans, with no additional intervention other than the dietary change. At present, long-term fasting in cancer treatment is supported only by some case reports, so more research is desperately needed. In the meantime, starting on a healthier diet seems like a win-win. In fact, following a whole food, plant-based diet free of sugar, oil, and salt—with or without fasting—is sometimes sufficient to induce an intense healing response.

 

Friday Favorites: Win-Win Dietary Solutions to the Climate Crisis

Happy Earth Month! Did you know we have the power to improve our own health and that of our planet every time we eat? We are facing a climate emergency. Fossil fuel use is going up, but so is per capita meat consumption. In fact, one of the solutions to help the climate crisis is to eat mostly plant-based foods and reduce consumption of animal products. What makes designing a sustainable diet so easy is that the same advice is good for us and our planet. The least healthy foods also sometimes cause the worst environmental impact. The foods with the most nutrition often just so happen to be the foods that cause the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, so we get a win-win effect.

Can Oxidized Cholesterol 27HC Explain Three Breast Cancer Mysteries?

For more than a century, we’ve known that cholesterol may be associated with cancer proliferation. Consumption of dietary cholesterol increases breast cancer risk, and there appears to be a dose-response—the more cholesterol consumed, the higher the risk. Researchers found that about two years after breast cancer treatment (surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation), not one woman in the lowest third of LDL cholesterol blood levels had a recurrence of breast cancer, but that was not the case for women with higher cholesterol.

It was recently discovered that 27-hydroxycholesterol (27HC) is a cholesterol metabolite that can function as an estrogen and increase the proliferation of estrogen receptor-positive breast cancer cells, as well as stimulate prostate cancer cell proliferation. So, it isn’t necessarily the cholesterol, but what cholesterol turns into; oxidized cholesterol may play a role in the initiation, promotion, and progression of cancer. Some estrogen-driven breast cancer tumors may rely on 27HC to grow when estrogen isn’t available. 27HC may also explain why breast cancer patients with higher vitamin D levels appear to live longer, as vitamin D supplementation decreases 27HC levels in the blood. For Dr. Greger’s vitamin D recommendations, see our Optimum Nutrients page.

 

Is It Safe to Consume Cannabis Edibles?

Smoking cannabis can create respiratory problems, so using a vaporizer is an alternative, but what about eating it? Edibles may carry increased risks to children and pets, as well as increased risk of overdosing, which can lead to severe respiratory depression. The American Academy of Pediatrics continues to oppose legalization. At the very least, cannabis edibles shouldn’t be packaged to look like popular candy, like Keef Kat, Buddahfinger, and Munchy Way. Some states have banned selling marijuana-infused candy with that kind of imagery, but to play it safe, perhaps we shouldn’t be making cannabis candy at all.

One issue with edibles is that it may take an hour or two after consumption before an effect is felt, so users may overconsume, thinking they didn’t ingest enough to feel an effect when they perhaps didn’t wait long enough. In fact, there have been case reports of individuals dying after overconsuming cannabis edibles. If you’re interested in learning more about cannabis, check out our extended series starting with The Institute of Medicine Report on the Health Effects of Marijuana.

The Right Idea, the Wrong Message

When individuals were offered a bacon cheeseburger, a chicken sandwich, or a fish sandwich, 17 percent chose the bacon cheeseburger. Swap out the fish sandwich choice for a veggie burger, and bacon cheeseburger preference doubled to 37 percent. How can offering a healthier food option actually drive people to make even worse choices? It’s thanks to a mind-blowing glitch of human psychology called self-licensing. The thought is that when we see a healthier option, many may make a mental note to choose that at some unknown next time, thereby giving them the excuse to indulge now. We may unwittingly justify doing something that draws us away from our goals after we’ve just done something that takes us towards them—like justifying eating a donut because you lost so much weight last week. Not only does making progress towards a goal rationalize decision making that undermines us, but even just considering making progress can have a similar licensing effect. Listen to the podcast to hear more about this fascinating glitch and the wild reality of “remedy marketing.”

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This has been a wrap-up of just a small sampling of our recent content. To see everything from the past month, be sure to check out the video, blog, and podcast pages.

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