• Intensive glucose control reduces the risk of any CVD event by 42 percent and the risk of heart attack, stroke, or death from CVD by 57 percent.
• In general, every percentage point drop in A1C blood test results (e.g., from 8.0 percent to 7.0 percent) reduces the risk of microvascular complications (eye, kidney, and nerve diseases) by 40 percent.
• Blood pressure control reduces the risk of CVD among persons with diabetes by 33 percent to 50 percent, and the risk of diabetic kidney, eye, and nerve disease by approximately 33 percent.
• In general, for every 10 mm Hg reduction in systolic blood pressure, the risk for any complication related to diabetes is reduced by 12 percent.
• Improved control of cholesterol or blood lipids (for example, HDL, LDL, and triglycerides) can reduce CVD complications by 20 percent to 50 percent. NDEP

Awareness + Action = Prevention®

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This month I’m focusing on a vegetable that most people have eaten and associate with Thanksgiving.

Frankly, the way it’s treated at Thanksgiving is almost criminal, especially when you consider its versatility and how good it is for you. I’m talking about the sweet potato.

First of all, a Sweet Potato is not actually a potato -- it’s a root not a tuber, so it isn’t even a distant cousin. It’s a member of the morning glory family. By the way, yams and sweet potatoes are not the same.  True yams come from tropical and subtropical regions of the world and contain more starch and less sugar than sweet potatoes.  You can recognize them easily because the flesh is a pale yellow instead of a vibrant orange.

Sweet Potatoes are native to the western hemisphere and Native Americans were already growing Sweet Potatoes when European settlers arrived. Read more

What kind of vegetable garden will you have in 2008? 

Some gardeners don’t realize that they have a choice between conventional and organic.  The grocery stores are offering a bigger variety of organic foods.  There are also specialty stores that offer mostly organic foods.  Have you ever wondered just what organic means?

In everyday terms, it means that organic vegetables were grown without using chemical fertilizers, and pesticides to control insects.  Also, the seeds used were not genetically modified with organisms (GMOs) in a lab.