Eureka! I have just stumbled across the best explanation of Type 2 diabetes that I have ever read. The author is fitness enthusiast Mark Sisson and the entire text can be accessed at his website, Mark's Daily Apple. This is where Mark posts his blogs on health and fitness-related topics, and it also links into his online store, which sells nutritional supplements.

Mark does a great job of explaining what he calls the "Completely Unnecessary Disease Epidemic" - how Type 2 diabetes works and why the US Food and Drug Administration could be doing much more to help people avoid or minimize the disease's impact. We are overloading ourselves with carbohydrates and those carbs are poisoning us. Why? Because they are converted into sugars that our bodies just can't handle. In a detailed, yet easy-to-read and light-hearted way, Mark explains exactly how this occurs and his advice is simple: ignore the government's stodgy old food pyramid and cut those carbs. (Yes, I know, they've updated the food pyramid, but not enough to really address the problem, as far as I'm concerned.)

Mark, in fact, personally favors the "Stone Age" diet that did good things in a recent study involving overweight Type 2 diabetics. Click here to read more about that. He has even designed his own "Carb Pyramid," which you can view by clicking here. Mark happily describes his own food routine, and this is where he and I part ways because he says "I'm not really a pasta or pizza guy" and "I'm not much of a snacker." Must be nice...

After you've read his blog, Mark says, "Print this explanation out, stick it on your fridge, email it to your aunt. And put down the pasta." Oh, Mark, now you're just breaking my heart!

Wow. I love the Internet. All you wanted to know - and then some! - about rocker Bret Michaels and his experiences with Type 1 diabetes can be found at DiabetesHealth. No, wait! Don't leave. I swear, this is really quite interesting reading.

Michaels (44) is the longtime vocalist with the campy hair metal band "Poison," most famous for the weepy 1988 power ballad "Every Rose Has its Thorn." Don't laugh. The guy has sold 25 million albums. Anyway, about the diabetes: Michaels was diagnosed with the condition at age six. The early diagnosis, Michaels says, was a blessing in disguise in that he grew up accepting it as part and parcel of everyday life. He remembers going to insulin shock at least four times as a child, and recalls one incident when his father, afraid Michaels was having a seizure, tried to force his mouth open and Michaels bit down so hard he nearly separated dad from finger. Aww. Good times!

Like lots of diabetic kids, Michaels attended diabetes camp and says he remains a big supporter, even contributing fundraising dollars to underwrite camp scholarships.

His observations on diet are worth reading. Favorite food/dietary weakess? Peanut butter: "Man, I could eat a jar of it, and that's why I have to just keep it away from me." And he stresses his secret comes down to portion control. "Cut 'em back," Michaels says. "The more carbs you pound in, the more your blood sugar's just going to rise. Your blood sugar goes high, you start to gain a lot of weight, and next thing you know, it's a lose, lose, lose situation that just spirals down."

Michaels is now on a three shots-a-day regimen and checks his blood sugar levels four to six times daily, and makes it eight times a day when he's on tour. He goes backstage twice during shows to check his blood sugar. He also admits he's "a little old school," in that he sticks with standard injections and meters. Pumps? Apparently, Michaels is not "cosmetically ready for the pump just yet." Guess it's hard to conceal a pump under spandex...

Here's a question for you to ponder: we know that obesity/overeating is harmful to the body, right? It leads to Type 2 diabetes, among a myriad of other harmful effects. So why do we continue to eat the way we do? Author and academic (at the University of California, Berkeley) Michael Pollan has taken a valiant stab at answering that question. Pollan is the author of the well-received book The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals. I have not read the book (though I'm adding it to my list of books to read in 2007), but I did read Pollan's fab article "Unhappy Meals" in this weekend's New York Times. Our obesity problem, says Pollan, is all tied up with a national hangup about eating and nutrition.

The "elephant in the room," writes Pollan, is the Western way of eating. To be healthier and to avoid diseases like Type 2 diabetes, we should cut consumption of meat and carbs, avoid processed foods, and eat lots more fruits and vegetables. In the case of Type 2 diabetes, the nation needs to stop, in the word's of a scientist quoted by Pollan, "mainlining glucose." And yet...it doesn't happen. Instead, Americans subscribe to fad diets, they invest in expensive exercise equipment and gym memberships. Moreover, says Pollan, Americans are beset by "nutritionism." That is, we try to prevent obesity and diet-related diseases like diabetes by identifying and eliminating the harmful substances in our foods - like salt, fat or carbs - when what we need is to totally modify our diets. He (politely) places a lot of the blame for this on scientists and the media for supplying us with a constant stream of nutrition-related advice that's so confusing and contradictory and seemingly-important that we keep forgetting about that big old "elephant" - the Western diet as a whole. This focus, he says, "has diminished our pleasure in eating it while doing little or nothing to improve our health." It's a conundrum alright.