It is much easier than you think. If you are overweight think about getting into your therapeutic body mass index of weight that can take 6 months to even less or for some take a year up to two years. Whatever time it takes to get in your therapeutic range it’s worth the while in getting yourself at a weight that allows you to start exercising=being active. When you reach that point in life it allows you to do so much more with your life than sit on the side lines but instead play on the field with a big view of more enjoyment and activity. Anyone can do it; you just need to have the power and perseverance. The ending results are worth it for one person only, YOU, but it will give people around you a positive impact as well. If you have a condition that doesn’t allow you to do the types of activity that I mentioned earlier there is always home remedies from treadmills, using dumb bells in light weight lifting (2.5lbs. to 20lb.), sit ups, just walking around the yard or block or using the pool you may have doing laps. You can figure it out with the help of asking your doctor (For people with any disease/illness or condition it is recommended to go to the physician first to get clearance in getting activities that you’re allowed to do). Always a health fitness coach could give direction but not replace a doctor for clearance in activity).

The foods that will help your muscular system in staying healthy: Eating well on a consistent basis is also essential in maintaining healthy muscles. The National Institute of Heath recommends you should eat 6 small meals a day. All meals being at the same level of calories, carbohydrates, protein, fat, and sugars (fairly low) excluding your one meal out of the 6 meals being high in protein (lean meats and more green vegetables primarily. These meals are 3 hours apart. By doing this you keep your sugar level at a steady rate (no peaks in sugar level). Keeping your glucose (sugar) level steady you prevent fat storage occurring. When we have too much sugar left in the bloodstream, that we got after digestion of a meal, first we use up any sugar that was transferred into our bloodstream as fuel but by absorbing it into our tissues for the energy but when we have used all the sugar we needed at that point and still have extra glucose (due to a large meal) the extra sugar in the blood gets stored somewhere in the body equaling fat storage that equals weight gain. Eat 2 or 3 moderate to large meals a day you’ll always run into this problem (extra sugar being stored in your body). To prevent this from happening you eat 6 small healthy meals a day which are lower in calories, carbs, fat and sugars including the portions, that’s the logic. Know that all carbohydrates, all sugars (calories) with certain fats when entering the stomach after eating break down into further simple or complex sugars. Than they transfer into the bloodstream when digestion is done in the stomach=more sugar than just the amount that is present on the back of the container, regarding the food that you’re eating at that time. The 6 healthy meals a day are not saying 6 big macs or small whoppers. I am talking about healthy foods eaten by the 4 food groups. In making your muscles healthier begin to make better choices with each meal. Seek to replace saturated fats and refined sugars with healthy fish (high protein) but not daily (have it 2 to 3 times a week) and fiber based foods (daily). Other suggestions include eating your first meal of the day within 30 minutes after waking up. Lastly and very important drink water (at least eight glasses a day or if possible 2 to 3 liters a day). Drinking this much helps your muscles in doing their function better, they move easier (think of the fluid helping the muscle in not drying out which allows the muscle to function better in range of motion).

Health habits are important. Unhealthy habits that have that an impact on your muscles is:

-Stress, which can be brutal for your entire body systems including your muscular system. Having emotional stress places an inordinate amount of demand on your muscles. Ways to conquer the stress is relaxation therapy (ex. Next time you have an emotional stress (angry to sad) focus and sit back with take 10 deep breaths, tired after work go to bed earlier about ½ hr. to an hour and play soft music to fall off to sleep, still not working than do EXERCISE-it tires your stress and eat healthy foods not junk).

-Poor diet: To build muscle and lose fat, you need a variety of proteins, veggies, fruits, carbs, and healthy fats properly portioned for your meals. Eating a protein helps build and maintain your muscles. It also helps fat loss because protein has a higher thermic effect than carbohydrates or fats.

There is not just one food to eat or one type of exercise to do or one healthy habit to perform that will keep you healthy, there are choices. Come onto my website which is no fee, no charge, no hacking, it will just let you check us out to look further in understanding how to take a shape for your life with Dr. Anderson and even myself as your health coach in helping you learn what a healthier diet is using with all 4 food groups in 6 meals, with knowing the exercise right for you and what healthier habits are for a better muscular system and overall life. It allows you to make all the decisions in what you want to do regarding what to eat (diet), exercise/activity, and what healthy habits you want to add in your life. We just provide the information and healthy foods in your diet and you decide if you want them. I happen to eat them 5 times out of the day with one meal being my meat or fish (high protein) and vegetable (lean and green). You make all the choices, like I do. Wouldn’t you want to be stronger, more active, with less disease/illness for yourself and for even others throughout the nation including the future generations? Well than click on over to healthyusa.tsfl.com and take a look with what Dr. Anderson and myself can provide for you. I have been in the health care system over 25 years as a Registered Nurse and I know you or anyone will benefit from this information (I lost over 20lbs. so far). Take a peek.

“Focus on your problem zones, your strength, your energy, your flexibility and all the rest. Maybe your chest is flabby or your hips or waist need toning. Also, you should change your program every thirty days. That’s the key.“

Jack LaLanne

HOW TO KEEP A HEALTHY MUSCULAR SYSTEM & WHY Part1

To understand how this system and health relate you need to understand how it works in the body. What is the muscular system? It is a body system composed of a network of tissues (cartilages, ligaments, tendons, fascias, joints, etc…) that allows the human body to control movement inside and outside of it. As simple as walking to exercise to activities we do from within the body to survive (Ex. heart beating, lungs breathing, veins returning blood to the heart from the legs=activities we don’t focus or concentrate on when awake or asleep.). Our muscles are divided into groups:

1-Skeletal Muscle: Found in the skeletal system and provides controlled movement. It maintains body movement from our head to our toes=jaw movement, poster, producing heat in the body to simply speaking while you’re standing and so much more. You get the idea that this system plays a vital role in many functions we carry out daily but a lot of times we take this for granted since we use the skeletal muscle for our daily routine functioning that is both voluntary and involuntary.

2-Visceral Smooth Muscle: Found in the digestive tract, urinary tract, and blood vessels; contractions not under voluntary control.

3-Cardiac Muscle: Found only in the heart; contractions not under voluntary control.

Skeletal muscles are organs and do vary in size and shape from long and thin, broad and flat, to bulky masses and some not.

The skeletal muscle is highly vascular. Muscle fatigue and pain result when there is insufficient oxygen delivered to the muscle. Oxygen is the fuel to the human body in making it possible for us to function and survive; without it we can’t live.

You see how important this system is and we need to keep it healthy. Keep your muscular system healthy as a priority in your daily life. By doing this you will not only improve your quality of life, overall, but you will also begin to focus more easily on enjoying what’s truly important in your life. With staying healthy in your life it will increase the risk of you living longer and a more productive one. Prevention of injury to the muscular system and all the systems of the body is the answer to happiness, so start now and the younger the easier and better are the results.

How can you do this, well there are 3 main factors that would highly impact reaching a healthy or healthier muscular system and it’s NEVER too late to get started. They would be:

1-DIET 2-EXERCISE 3-ROUTINELY PRACTICING HEALTHY HABITS

At first it may seem like a challenge but when it gets in your regular routine of daily living it’s a BREEZE. I can say that because I made changes to a degree with better healthier living. If I can do it so can you. It really isn’t that difficult. Let me first inform you what happens to the muscular system as we get older. We become more inactive from our younger years (meaning sedentary lifestyle with no form of activity) and we are more prone to practice poor healthy habits (including what’s in your diet and how you eat). The reason for this is we are no longer in high school with a higher metabolism or in college as well but working crazy hours on the run with the family and don’t have the time like we did but you end up with the following:

As we get older the tissue that comprises everyone’s muscular system decreases in size and relative strength. When muscle fibers die they are replaced by FATTY TISSUE. This makes the movement of muscles more difficult.

You want to know if this can be prevented? Well YES, it can! The good news is that the effects of this normal declining or atrophying in the muscular system when getting older can be decreased in the severity by exercising regularly. The sooner you get in a regular plan of doing it the easier it will be as you grow older. By staying active always in your years of living you will continue to be muscle toned and build new muscles as well as keep your muscular system happy and healthy with not allowing it to become atone (loose in tonicity of the muscle=little strength if any). So you don’t have to be 15 or 20 or 30 or 40 years old to start this. The longer you hold off on some form of exercise (mild to moderate to intense) the longer it takes to tolerate it and adapt to this being a part of your daily living. Like anything else for most; it may not be easy at first but in time whatever exercise you choose 3x, 5x, or even daily the sooner you will love it and want it in your life. It can range from belly dancing, to gym workouts, to fast walking, to racquetball, to swimming or hiking. Anything beats sitting most of the day or sitting behind a desk for work hours than coming home for dinner followed by TV than sleep.According to the American College of Sports Medicine, most individuals should be doing moderate aerobic activity four or more days a week for at least 30 minutes at a time. Aerobic exercise can be defined as that which engages your heart and lungs, so a leisurely walk won’t do it. Keeping your muscles healthy aerobically should also be fun and can be done with others. Hiking is a great example of such an enjoyable activity since walking hills force both big and small muscles to optimally utilize oxygen.

“The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it”

Albert Einstein

If you have been trying to lose weight or just want to live healthier to decrease the chance of suffering certain diseases or illnesses that have happened already in America to some people through poor diet and unhealthy habits, than you have come to the right blog. Today’s article is on knowing what foods to avoid to prevent slowing your metabolism down. For starters let’s discuss why foods in high sugar content are bad for you. Understand how the body works. If you buy and eat foods with the following, especially in large portions=starches, carbohydrates (CHOs), sugars, calories and even some fats depending on what is in the fat (THAT’S WHY YOU READ THE INGREDIENTS) you will cause through digestion a high peak in your blood glucose level. Even though we see on the label a section called sugars you must understand that starches, CHOs, fats, including calories and sugars breakdown to further simple and complex sugars in the body as a ending result. When we eat the food it gets into the stomach, the food than through digestive juices/acids cause break down the ingredients into complex or simple sugars which get transferred into the blood stream (fructose and glucose). Glucose is the prime fuel for the body. Fuel meaning giving energy to the body so we can function in doing our daily exercises (as simple as range of motion of extremities). Remember when digestion takes place it utilizes the glucose it needs at that time throughout the body. If you have a large meal or a small meal high in starch or carbohydrates or sugars or calories the body won’t need to utilize all the break down of these foods which is broken into simpler sugars which gets broken down in the stomach. So you’ll have extra sugar in the blood. If the human body was able to dispose of this extra sugar by getting it out of the body naturally we wouldn’t have any obesity. So when we have bagels with cream cheese, or a Mc muffin or some fast processed food for breakfast than start work followed with going out to eat for lunch at a restaurant nearby work than stop off at a pizzeria to pick up dinner for a pizza with chicken wings and blue cheese dressing followed with ice cream we are dealing with high percentages of sugars (as the ending product from digestion=fat storage=weight gain). How this works is first the body utilizes the sugar that it needs than the extra sugar still in the bloodstream when it reaches the liver fills up that organ with glucose (active sugar) that is transferred into glycogen (inactive sugar) but remember the liver is like a gas tank where it can only fill up with so much sugar and when it reaches full the sugar left in the blood stream has to go somewhere. It goes to our fat tissue where it is absorbed=weight gain. We have to be more disciplined in our eating habits. Society needs to speak up or just not go to some of these fast food joints since ending line the food is not good for you. Burger King just came out with a burger topped with fries (what the heck is this going to do for someone’s health). America wake up to the restaurant industry and know to eat out 2 times or less a week or you will be at a high probability of putting weight on. When you eat 3 large meals a day these meals take 6 to 8 hours to digest. The trick is when you are in body mass index range for your height still eat 6 small meals a day with vegetables/fruits and healthy fiber with one of the 6 meals a day being highest in protein with vegetables/fruit (being 50% of the meal on a 9″ plate, no larger and no second helpings). The 5 other meals are smaller and low in calories (80-100), carbohydrates (10-12 grams), sugar (4 or less grams) and the protein (about 6 grams). In between the meals if you feel hungry drink water or have a snack like celery or something similar to it. What you cause is your sugar intake with your metabolism of the body to stay more at a steady rate (including your sugar level 80-110) if you eat 6 healthy small meals a day. When you eat a donut, or processed cereal it will cause the sugar to spike up high and cause the metabolism to slow down (Ex. frosted flakes, grape nuts, and I could go on—again read what the ingredients are and what the products version of a serving is). You feel tired an hour or two after a large meal of unhealthy/processed food or even a healthy but large meal. Why do you have no problem in the AM with getting to work and getting started for the day? Well with drinking coffee in AM it takes care of the fatigue due to the caffeine, so you may not realize the impact of how low your metabolism is. Trust me, I was there once too. I am still trying to lose but I am getting there. So what the body actually does is this: When glucose gets transferred into the bloodstream from the stomach, following the digestion process, and reaches the pancreas which senses the free floating glucose in the bloodstream it then releases insulin into the bloodstream. Doing this the insulin now allows glucose to transfer into tissues and cells that need it at that time (fuel for energy of the cells and tissues to do their function) and if not needed we end up with extra glucose in the bloodstream. When it reaches the liver and is sensed by the liver the liver stores it to the full maximal capacity that the organ can handle. Keep in mind the liver is only so big, so when a individual has a large excess of glucose in the bloodstream from their meal that they just ate it only can store so much. The liver actually converts the sugar from glucose (active sugar=active fuel) to glycogen (inactive sugar=non-active sugar). Now if you still have extra glucose in the bloodstream after the liver does its storing the glucose has to go somewhere. The extra sugar now gets stored into the human fat tissue=weight gain. Fat storage is simply putting weight gain on the person’s body. If your sugar blood level isn’t kept between 80-110 throughout the day than your metabolism isn’t kept at a steady rate. Eat 5 days or more a week with 6 small HEALTHY meals a day and treating yourself one or two days a week to treats (only one or two times each day of the one or two days your treating yourself). In treating yourself 1 to 2 days with not as healthy foods you can do this ONLY if your body mass index is within normal range. If not than you have to lose weight first. For if you still need to lose weight and you treat yourself to fattening foods or highier sugar content foods you will put your diet behind 3 days, which will prevent you from losing weight. This is due to the food high in sugar as the ending result of digestion and you cause high fat storage with decreasing your metabolism. The sacrifice for your body is worth it but during the weight loss period you will even shrink your stomach size naturally. There are 4 food groups with each group having lean, leaner and the leanest type of foods in that group of the 4. If you want to learn more about this than go to my website healthyusa.tsfl.com and peek at what we can offer you through Dr. Wayne Scott Anderson with his book “Dr A’s Habits of Health” and even foods to buy if you want them in the beginning of your diet loss which provides health bars to lunches and dinners to desserts of all kinds to all types of shakes/drinks and so much more foods (low in fat/calories/carbs). Learn how to become healthier for yourself, even spreading the news to family or friends who may become interested and being a great mentor for your children in helping the next generation to be more healthy which would help our health care system to helping our health economy that includes insurance payments for bills at hospitals/doctor’s offices lessened. Our society has become so unhealthy in diet causing so many increases in diseases/illnesses, including children, (Obesity, Diabetes II, coronary artery disease, hypertension, and more). Take a look at facebook or UTube with pictures of people in America shopping at Walmart that some people post . It may be funny to that individual who posts it or a slender individual but it is also outright scary with what’s happening to our country.  America let’s wake up if not for our health our future children’s lives!!  Think about it.  Yes changes have been made compared to 25 years and further back but not enough that our government has to get involved.  People we can’t even take care of ourselves or little ones in living longer in a fairly healthy state of body and mind.  Let us make the change not our politicians or is it too late?  I know living unhealthy is not for me and many more so take that turn in your life, if you haven’t,  for the better of yourself and the ones around you that you impact (like your children for one).

“Persons with dementia often find themselves in confusing and upsetting situations but gradually lack the necessary coping skills to help them out. This can sometimes lead to verbally or physically aggressive behaviors. Many caregivers tell us one of the hardest things they cope with is helping people with Alzheimer’s in frustrating situations.”

Dr. Elizabeth Edgerly, Ph.D., expert researcher — is our chief program officer of a blog called Alzheimer’s Association (in Northern California).

Alzheimer’s Might be “Brain Diabetes”

It’s becoming increasingly clear that the same pathological process that leads to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes may also hold true for your brain. As you over-indulge on sugar and grains, your brain becomes overwhelmed by the consistently high levels of insulin and eventually shuts down its insulin signaling, leading to impairments in your thinking and memory abilities, and eventually causing permanent brain damage.

Regularly consuming more than 25 grams of fructose per day will dramatically increase your risk of dementia and Alzheimer’s disease. Consuming too much fructose will inevitably wreak havoc on your body’s ability to regulate proper insulin levels.

Although fructose is relatively “low glycemic” on the front end, it reduces the affinity for insulin for its receptor leading to chronic insulin resistance and elevated blood sugar on the back end. So, while you may not notice a steep increase in blood sugar immediately following fructose consumption, it is likely changing your entire endocrine system’s ability to function properly behind the scenes.

Additionally, fructose has other modes of neurotoxicity, including causing damage to the circulatory system upon which the health of your nervous system depends, as well as profoundly changing your brain’s craving mechanism, often resulting in excessive hunger and subsequent consumption of additional empty carbohydrate-based calories.

In one study from UCLA, researchers found that rats fed a fructose-rich and omega-3 fat deficient diet (similar to what is consumed by many Americans) developed both insulin resistance and impaired brain function in just six weeks.⁶

Plus, when your liver is busy processing fructose (which your liver turns into fat), it severely hampers its ability to make ^{cholesterol, an essential building block of your brain crucial to its health. This is yet another important facet that explains how and why excessive fructose consumption is so detrimental to your health. Decreasing fructose intake is one of the most important moves you can take in decreasing the risk of Alzheimer’s disease in your lifetime.}

Tips for avoiding Alzheimer’s Disease is Part 2 tomorrow. 😉

More Tips for Avoiding Alzheimer’s Disease

The beauty of following a healthy diet is that it helps treat and prevent all chronic degenerative diseases, from the common ones like heart disease, cancer, diabetes, obesity and Alzheimer’s to the ones you have never heard of or can’t even pronounce.

The first step is to eat healthy, maintaining exercise balanced with rest and practice healthy habits in addressing Alzheimer’s disease, which is currently at epidemic proportions, with 5.4 million Americans – including one in eight people aged 65 and over – living with the disease.7 By 2050, this is expected to jump to 16 million, and in the next 20 years it is projected that Alzheimer’s will affect one in four Americans. People we need to live healthier if not to help ourselves our future young ones.

In spite of how common ^{memory loss is among Westerners, it is NOT a “normal” part of aging. While even mild “senior moments” may be caused by the same brain lesions associated with Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia, these cognitive changes are by no means inevitable! People who experience very little decline in their cognitive function up until their deaths have been found (post-mortem) to be free of brain lesions, showing that it’s entirely possible to prevent the damage from occurring in the first place and one of the best ways to do this is by leading a healthy lifestyle.}

I can’t remember anything to put down for today??

Go to striveforgoodhealth.com and read one of our classic topics on Alzheimer’s Disease and see how it can relate with Diabetes!!

Here’s one of striveforgoodhealth.com’s classics and I think you mind enjoy whether reading it the first time or over again.  The human memory on average doesn’t remember everything it read or saw the first time unless with a special gift like a few for the many that have this talent in the world, like Ms. M. Henner (an actress, producer) for example who was given this gift

.  At one time Alzheimer’s disease was a disease considered with unknown etiology (or cause). Today it is considered different in the eyes of many in the medical profession. By a Dr. Mercola a physician who founded Mercola.com (Mercola.com is now the world’s top natural health resource site, with over 1.5 million subscribers.) feels this about alzeiher’s disease: “The cause of the debilitating, and fatal, brain disease Alzheimer’s is conventionally said to be a mystery.

While we know that certain diseases, like type 2 diabetes, are definitively connected to the foods you eat, Alzheimer’s is generally thought to strike without warning or reason.

That is, until recently.

Now, a growing body of research suggests there may be a powerful connection between the foods you eat and your risk of Alzheimer’s disease and dementia, via similar pathways that cause type 2 diabetes. Some have even re-named Alzheimer’s as “type 3 diabetes.”“

Can You Eat Your Way to Alzheimer’s?

In a recent animal study, researchers from Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island were able to induce many of the characteristic brain changes seen with Alzheimer’s disease (disorientation, confusion, inability to learn and remember) by interfering with insulin signaling in their brains.¹

Know that faulty insulin (and leptin, another hormone) signaling is an underlying cause for insulin resistance, which, of course, typically leads to type 2 diabetes. However, while insulin is usually associated with its role in keeping your ^{blood sugar levels in a healthy range, it also plays a role in brain signaling. When researchers disrupted the proper signaling of insulin in the brain, it resulted in dementia.}

What does this have to do with your diet? Let us go back to one of my articles on diabetes and how it impacts your diet. It states “The foods we eat that contain starches, carbohydrates, calories are made up of sugar. When food reaches our stomach in time digestion starts to take place where these foods are broken down in the stomach into individual or complex sugar molecules ( glucose being one of the most common and important ones). The glucose then passes from our stomach into our bloodstream when it reaches the liver 60 to 80 % of the glucose gets stored in that organ turning glucose into inactive glucose that’s converted to glycogen. The purpose for glycogen is when our glucose is low and our body needing energy we have this extra stored sugar, glycogen, to rely on. This is done by the liver which allows the sugar to be stored and released back into the bloodstream if we need it=energy, since nothing is in our stomach at that time, in that case scenario). When glucose=an active sugar, it is our energy for our cells and tissues and is a sugar ready to be utilized by the body where it is needed, by many organs. Think of a car for one moment, and what makes it run? That would be gas/fuel for it to function. The same principle with glucose in your bloodstream=fuel for the human body so we can function, for without it we wouldn’t survive. That is the problem with a person that has diabetes. They eat, they break the food down, the glucose gets in the blood but the glucose fuel can’t be used due to lack of or NO insulin at all. Insulin allows glucose to pass into our cells and tissues to be used as energy/fuel for the body parts to work. Glucose is used as the principle source of energy (It is used by the brain for energy, the muscles for both energy and some storage, liver for more glucose storage=that is where glucose is converted to glycogen, and even stored in fat tissue using it for triglyceride production). Glucose does get sent to other organs for more storage, as well. Insulin plays that vital role in allowing glucose to be distributed throughout the body. Without insulin the glucose has nowhere to go.” So how does this impact your brain thinking? “This new focus on the Alzheimer’s/Diabetes/Insulin connection follows a growing recognition of insulin’s role in the brain. Until recently, the hormone was typecast as a regulator of blood sugar, giving the cue for muscles, liver and fat cells to extract sugar from the blood and either use it for energy or store it as fat. We now know that it is also a master multitasker: it helps neurons, particularly in the hippocampus and frontal lobe, take up glucose for energy, and it also regulates neurotransmitters, like acetylcholine, which are crucial for memory and learning.” What is effected with Alzheimer’s disease? Your memory and learning, So your diet plays a big role in Alzheimer’s disease.”

Over-consumption of sugars and grains is what ultimately causes your body to be incapable of “hearing” the proper signals from insulin and leptin, leaving you insulin resistant in both body and brain. Alzheimer’s disease was tentatively dubbed “type 3 diabetes” in early 2005 when researchers learned that the pancreas is not the only organ that produces insulin. Your brain also produces insulin, and this brain insulin is necessary for the survival of your brain cells.

If You Have Diabetes, Your Risk of Alzheimer’s Increases Dramatically

Diabetes is linked to a 65 percent increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s, which may be due, in part, because insulin resistance and/or diabetes appear to accelerate the development of plaque in your brain, which is a hallmark of Alzheimer’s. Separate research has found that impaired insulin response was associated with a 30 percent higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease, and overall dementia and cognitive risks were associated with high fasting serum insulin, insulin resistance, impaired insulin secretion and glucose intolerance.

A drop in insulin production in your brain may contribute to the degeneration of your brain cells, mainly by depriving them of glucose, and studies have found that people with lower levels of insulin and insulin receptors in their brain often have Alzheimer’s disease (people with type 2 diabetes often wind up with low levels of insulin in their brains as well). As explained in New Scientist, which highlighted this latest research:

What’s more, it encourages the process through which neurons change shape, make new connections and strengthen others. And it is important for the function and growth of blood vessels, which supply the brain with oxygen and glucose.

As a result, reducing the level of insulin in the brain can immediately impair cognition. Spatial memory, in particular, seems to suffer when you block insulin uptake in the hippocampus… Conversely, a boost of insulin seems to improve its functioning.

When people frequently gorge on fatty, sugary food, their insulin spikes repeatedly until it sticks at a high level. Muscle, liver and fat cells then stop responding to the hormone, meaning they don’t mop up glucose and fat in the blood. As a result, the pancreas desperately works overtime to make more insulin to control the glucose – and levels of the two molecules skyrocket.

The pancreas can’t keep up with the demand indefinitely, however, and as time passes people with type 2 diabetes often end up with abnormally low levels of insulin.”

Eastern equine encephalitis virus (EEEV) is a zoonotic alphavirus and arbovirus, and was first recognized in horses in 1831 in Massachusetts. The first confirmed human cases were identified in New England in 1938. EEEV is present today in North, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. In rare cases, those that contract the virus will develop the serious neuroinvasive disease, Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE). From 2009 to 2018, between three (3) and fifteen (15) cases of EEE were reported annually in the U.S. EEE may also be commonly referred to as Triple E or sleeping sickness. EEEV is a vector-borne disease that is transmitted to humans through the bite of an infected mosquito. Culiseta melanura is the primary vector among birds, but this mosquito species does not typically feed on humans. It is believed that EEEV is mainly transmitted to humans and horses by bridge vectors that have contracted the virus by feeding on infected birds. Bridge vector species of mosquitoes may include Coquillettidia pertubans, Aedes sollicitans, and Ochlerotatus canadensis. The risk of contracting the EEE virus is highest during the summer months, and those who live and work near wetland and swamp areas are at higher risk of infection. EEEV is only spread to humans via mosquito bite, and cannot be transmitted directly by other humans or horses. There is an EEEV vaccine available for horses, and owners are encouraged to discuss vaccination with their veterinarian.

A Global View of Eastern Equine Encephalitis

EEE affects areas throughout North and South America, with outbreaks occurring mainly in the eastern coastal areas of the United States and Canada, the Caribbean, and Argentina.

Know Your Mosquitoes

In the U.S., Culiseta melanura is the mosquito responsible for the spread of EEEV in the mosquito-bird-mosquito cycle. Known as the black-tailed mosquito, Cs. melanura can be found in swamps from the Great Lakes and Maine to southern Florida and southeastern Texas. It is distinguished by its unusually long, curved dark-scaled proboscis. This mosquito is also unique because it overwinters as larvae, as opposed to most mosquito species that overwinter as adults or eggs.

EEEV is mainly transmitted to humans by bridge vectors that contract the virus by feeding on infected birds. Bridge vectors may include Aedes, Coquillettidia, and Culex species.

Aedes mosquitoes have distinct black and white markings on their body and legs. They bite during the daytime only, with the highest levels of activity occur in the early morning and evening hours. Members of the Aedes genus are known vectors of EEE, Zika virus, dengue, yellow fever, West Nile virus, and chikungunya.

Coquillettidia mosquitoes have slender bodies and long legs. They are commonly found in humid, low-lying areas that have warm summer and lots of vegetation. In addition to acting as vectors for EEE, Coquillettidia mosquitoes are also known to transmit West Nile virus to humans.

Culex mosquitoes are brown with whitish markings on the abdomen. They typically bite at dusk and at night, and are known to vector several diseases including EEE, West Nile virus, Japanese encephalitis, St. Louis encephalitis, and avian malaria.