Summary

The Mind-Body Diabetes Revolution is the first book to show how stress, depression, and anger affect blood sugar. It's also the first to provide a proven, step-by-step health program to help the millions of people with diabetes manage their disease. Until now, this life-changing program was available only to patients at Duke University Medical Center, but The Mind-Body Diabetes Revolution makes it available to everyone who needs it -- diabetic people and the millions at risk for developing the disease.

Over the past forty years, little has changed in the treatment of type 2 diabetes. Diet, exercise, and medication are still the three primary methods used to control blood sugar. Yet diabetes is reaching epidemic proportions not just in the United States, but also in other countries all over the world. Now, after twenty years of research, Dr. Richard S. Surwit -- a leader in the field of the psychology of diabetes -- adds the vital fourth component to treating diabetes: a revolutionary mind-body program that lowers blood sugar levels and dramatically reduces the disease's serious, damaging side effects, which can include painful nerve damage, heart disease, impotence, eye problems, and kidney ailments.

The Mind-Body Diabetes Revolution explains how thoughts and beliefs influence a person's emotions and moods and shows how these can translate into chronic anger, cynicism, anxiety, and depression -- all of which increase your blood sugar level. But, with compelling case studies and a powerfully effective step-by-step six-week program, Dr. Surwit demonstrates how you can learn to manage the emotions and stress that lead to elevated hormones and higher blood sugar levels. After he explains the mind-metabolism connection so that you see how it works in your own body, Dr. Surwit provides self-tests and reflective quizzes to test your personality type and decide on the best -- and easiest -- psychological techniques to help you lower your blood sugar level, and keep it low. Then he helps you develop the best long-term mind-body program for your needs and shows how to use the planner to keep track of your progress.

An invaluable aid to your overall well-being, The Mind-Body Diabetes Revolution helps you enlist your own mind and body as powerful allies in controlling your diabetes, and enjoy greater general health as a result.

Author Biography

Richard S. Surwit, Ph.D., is vice chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and chief of the division of medical psychology at Duke University Medical Center. He is an internationally known researcher in diabetes and his work has been funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Diabetes Association. He is the author of more than one hundred studies on diabetes, metabolism, and stress.

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Foreword	p. xi
Preface	p. xv
Your Mind's Healing Power
Understanding Diabetes: Manage the Emotions That Can Aggravate Your Condition	p. 3
The Mind-Metabolism Connection: Why Psychological Techniques Can Help You Control Your Blood Sugar	p. 22
The First Blood Sugar Booster: Stress May Trigger and Aggravate Diabetes	p. 33
The Second Blood Sugar Booster: Diabetes Control and Depression Seem Closely Linked	p. 41
The Final Blood Sugar Booster: How Cynicism, Anger, and Aggression May Hinder Metabolism	p. 51
The Program
Test Your Personality: Find the Optimal Mind-Body Program for You	p. 65
Progressive Muscle Relaxation: Six Steps to Stress Relief and Better Blood Sugar Control	p. 73
Cognitive Behavior Therapy: Six Steps That Will Help You Relieve Anxiety, Improve Your Mood, and Ease Hostility	p. 97
Putting It All Together: Your Step-by-Step Six-Week Planner	p. 120
Additional Things You Can Do: Drugs, Herbs, and Other Behavioral Approaches
Appetite Awareness: A Mind-Body Program for Eating Less and Losing Weight	p. 201
From Caffeine to Valium: Substances That Affect Blood Sugar, Mind, and Body	p. 219
The Wide World of Relaxation: Six Additional Mind-Body Techniques	p. 234
Getting More Help: Resources to Help You Maximize the Program	p. 246
Selected Bibliography	p. 253
Index	p. 257
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Excerpts

Chapter 1: Understanding Diabetes: Manage the Emotions That Can Aggravate Your Condition Two of my grandparents had diabetes. My father's father had diabetes from the time he was a young man and died at the age of fifty-nine, when I was only two years old. My mother's mother came down with it in her fifties. I still remember my grandmother, who died when I was ten, giving herself insulin shots.Both my grandfather and grandmother died of heart disease, the major cause of death among patients with diabetes. Because both of these grandparents were immigrants and raised their families during the Great Depression, they attributed their diabetes to the terrible stress of their lives, so I too always assumed that diabetes was somehow related to stress.Now, many years later, I earn my living as a stress researcher. I have spent the best part of the past thirty years trying to understand how stress affects the development, progression, and resolution of illness. During my graduate studies at McGill University and postdoctoral studies at Harvard Medical School,I studied how stress affects high blood pressure, migraine headache, and Raynaud's disease (poor blood flow in the fingers and toes).In the late 1970s, shortly after I moved to Duke, I ran into a young endocrinologist, Mark Feinglos, who had also studied at McGill. He wanted to know if I had any psychological techniques that might be useful for treating diabetes. I had completely forgotten about diabetes, the disease that had killed my grandparents and the disease for which I likely carried at least some of the genes. Although I had assumed that stress was as important in diabetes as my grandparents thought, I did not really know it to be true scientifically. I decided to find out.Working with Dr. Feinglos, I set out on a research program that has spanned almost a quarter-century. My research group and others at universities around the world have conducted numerous studies on thousands of patients and animals to understand better how stress and other psychological factors influence this disease. The results of this research have proven that my grandparents were right: stress, depression, and a person's general psychological state greatly influence blood sugar in every individual with diabetes. These mental states may even determine whether genetically susceptible people develop diabetes in the first place.Although research on the importance of psychological factors has been published in the top scientific journals, it has not found its way into most diabetes treatment programs. To this day, most people with diabetes are still treated with the same three program components that have been used for the past fifty years: diet, exercise, and medication. Patients are provided with some training in nutrition, told to exercise regularly, and given oral medicine or insulin, or both. Few treatment programs address the important psychological factors involved in blood sugar control.The Mind-Body Diabetes Revolution gives you the fourth important component of diabetes treatment in a detailed step-by-step program. You'll learn how to use the power of your mind to control your body better. The psychological techniques in this program have been proven at Duke University Medical School and elsewhere to improve blood sugar control, and the different components of this program have been tested in clinics around the country in studies involving hundreds of patients. We have shown over and over again that once you know why your blood sugar remains high, you will be able to address the emotions that may aggravate your condition.Before we get into the program, let's first take a closer look at your metabolism, the rate at which your body burns up or uses blood sugar (glucose).YOUR METABOLISM 101Diabetes is quickly becoming the nation's biggest health crisis. It affects nearly 20 million people. Since you're re