Diabetes and Diet

Carbohydrates (carbs, for short) are one of the three macro-nutrients that your body needs for proper functioning. (Micro-nutrients are things like vitamins, minerals, etc.) The other macro-nutrients are proteins and fats.

Proteins are the building blocks for your muscles, organs, tissues, etc. Fats are necessary for long term energy storage, they carry certain forms of vitamins and nutrients (Vitamin E, for example) and your body needs fats for many of its metabolic processes.

Carbohydrates are the fuel that your body uses for energy. Your body prefers to use carbohydrates for energy, though it can also use fats and proteins, which is why “low carb” diets work. They are easier to process for energy than either the fats or the proteins and your body gets more energy “bang for the buck” with carbs.

On the molecular level carboydrates are ring molecules. A “simple” carb, like glucose, is one ring of six carbon atoms. Just like the ring on your finger. Table sugar, sucrose, is made up of two of these simple sugar rings. Starches and “complex carbohydrates” are made up of many of these rings. This is why your body takes longer to digest the complex carbs, it has to break them down into the individual rings first and then use them for energy.

This quick digestion is why your blood sugar will leap sky high when consuming a meal of simple carbs. Your body can use them almost immediately. Eat something with a lot of sugar, such as a soda, and bam! Sugar is immediately pumped into the system and your blood suger levels leap. Insulin is secreted into the blood and the insulin causes the sugar levels to drop, along with your energy.

A meal of complex carbs takes longer to digest and as a result doesn’t slam sugars into your system, rather the complex carbs provide longer term energy. Fats and proteins take even longer to digest and convert into the carbs your body needs.

Extreme low-carb diets, such as they first part of the Atkins Diet, are not recommended for anything other than short term use. Even the Atkins diet brings you back into carbs after than first section, but they are the complex carbs. Simple carbs are almost completely abandoned.

As far as energy goes, though, your body only needs so much at one time and it can only store so much at one time. Someone exercising regularly or working at hard manual labor need more carbs than someone who isn’t, but there are still limits to how much they can use. Those extra carbs are stored in two ways.

One way is conversion into glycogen, a type of starch, which is then stored in the muscles for near term energy reserves. The other way they are stored is fat. The body stores excess carbohydrate as fat after it has used what it needs for energy and glycogen storage. (This is a little over-simplified, but close enough.)

In addition to being converted to fat, excess simple carbs over a long period of time can lead to a variety of health issues, diabetes and heart issues being among them.

So what foods are the simple carbs? Any kind of sugar, rice, white flour, potatoes, Rice Krispies, Corn Flakes, etc. These are all “high glycemic index” (GI) foods. The GI compares foods to a glass of glucose and measures how fast those foods will spike your blood sugar.

Fruits tend to be in the medium GI range and most veggies are pretty low. Go to Google.com and look for “high glycemic foods” or “glycemic index” and you’ll find charts with examples of various foods and their ratings.

So while you body does needs carbs for fuel it doesn’t need a ton of them and it works best if they come in slowly and steadily, rather than in a burst. You may have heard of the “eat several small meals” plans? This is one of the reasons they work. Your body has the time to properly process the carbs and so uses them, rather than storing them as fat.

Want to gain weight fast? Eat one big meal a day, preferably in the evening, and sleep afterwards. That’s how the Sumo wrestlers of Japan do it.

Greg Mee
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/carbohydrates-what-do-they-do-for-you-565468.html

Now a days diabetes treatment has become a common disease among people. It is caused due to mismanagement of carbohydrate metabolism inside the body. Diabetes is identified with the excessive production of urine, hunger, thirst and excessive loss of weight, blurred vision, and delay in healing of skin, repeated infection, and excessive fatigue.

Diabetes has got a serous issue of human health. It denotes sugar in blood and urine very excessively.
So, when it comes to treatment of diabetes the main concern should be given to control blood sugar, which is main cause of diabetes.Managing blood sugar is the stepping-stone of this diabetes treatment program.

To remove the complications of diabetes one must take it seriously and adopt some good diet process or healthy exercise.

Apart from doing so some take insulin and any other type of medication program to be cured to some extent. Frequent testing of blood sugar can denote you how much you have improved on your part to manage suitable
measure of sugar in blood.

It is very important to learn the right range of glucose in blood unless and until you cannot have the idea about the complication you are facing about this disease. It depends on age mainly such as in younger age assuming not much complication is there the suitable range of glucose is 80-120 mg/dL and in older age it is 100-140 mg/dL.

Diabetes program includes some specific self-treatments like having good and suitable diet, having proper exercise, maintaining healthy weight and medication. When it is about good and suitable diet it does not make any suggestion to take all dull food which are not of your interest rather it denotes to have more fruits, vegetables and grains that means you should be conscious in taking the foods of high nutrition and lower fat and calories. Avoid taking sweets and animal
products with no limit. The main part of this diabetes treatment program is that you own self should be challenging in this task otherwise this program will be harder enough.

Consult any dietitian about meal plan and try to maintain it at the fixed times every day with same amount according to your diet plan.

On the part of having proper exercise you should be cautious about all aerobic exercises. In this diabetes treatment program you can make your choices among the daily exercises like doing morning or evening walk,
jogging, hiking, biking, swimming and any other exercises of heart and lungs. Remember giving consistency to your exercise process is very important to get the best result through it.

Try to maintain weight according to your activity level and age because overweight is dangerous factor which help to make your cells more resistant to insulin. Making suitable weight loss plan and going according to that can make its result more effectively.

Sometimes medication takes a very important role in case where it is found that good dieting and exercise are not fulfilling it purpose.

This type of diabetes program includes the insert of insulin as per requirement. As it can’t be taken in form of pill some people have it injected by syringe or some have it with insulin pump.

So now it is very clear that diabetes is always manageable if the sufferer give a serious daily attention to it. Although diabetes stands for life long suffering, yet it never means the end of your life. You
just have to remember that the disease will be in your control only and only if you are self disciplined for your each and every step of treatment program.

Gaetane Ross
http://www.articlesbase.com/non-fiction-articles/how-is-diabetes-treated-104013.html

Diabetes is something we hear about often these days. Over 20 million Americans have diabetes.

When the world went fat-free, sugar took over to add taste to otherwise lame tasting foods. Unfortunately there is sugar in most packaged and fast food. You have to really study the labels to see if sugar is added to even seemingly non-sugar needing foods. Take packaged smoked salmon for example. Why do I need sugar in my salmon, or my tomato sauce? In my sushi? Or salad dressing?

Is it only the sugar ?
Omitting the processed sugary snacks, cookies, and foods with sugar added is not the only thing to do for prevention of a potential sugar overload lurking around the corner. Whether you already have diabetes, pre-diabetes, or just want to bring more awareness around sugar into your life, this hopefully will help you out. Most people think that diabetes is only about getting the sugar and simple carbs out of the diet. It is NOT. Meat and dairy plays a role as well. Surprise to most of you?

A new study that just came out says that a low-fat vegan diet treats type 2 diabetes more effectively than a standard diabetes diet, according to a study in Diabetes Care, a journal published by the American Diabetes Association. Study participants on the low-fat vegan diet showed dramatic improvement in four disease markers: blood sugar control, cholesterol reduction, weight control, and kidney function.

This is not surprising news to the macrobiotic world though. Michio Kushi has for years recommended wholegrain, especially millet, round sweet vegetable, especially pumpkin, and beans, especially adzuki beans, for diabetes. These are foods that help strengthen the pancreas.

In her book What to Eat, Marion Nestle talks about how children with type 1 diabetes often have antibodies against cow-milk proteins, which might have cross-reacted and destroyed the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin.

In another study, just one egg per day added to the diet of diabetics doubled their risk of heart disease.

And how does meat fit in? Excess meat not only makes you highly acidic, it also affects your pancreas, which then can affect insulin production. Animal fat and saturated fat is actually linked to insulin resistance.

Diabetes Prevention: Where does the sweetness in life come from?
Replace sugary substances with naturally sweet foods; omit cookies and candy. But also remember the fruit juices, sport drinks, and all those so-called naturally sweetened ice-teas.
Watch out for granola bars and other health fakes that promise energy. They are normally loaded with sugar, which indeed gives you energy, here and now. But increased health? No.
Instead blend fruit juices with water, put some fresh lemon in water, have chilled peppermint tea or unsweetened green tea. Choose fresh fruit and nuts instead of granola bars.

Replace refined grain and flour with wholegrain. People who eat wholegrain have a lower risk of diabetes, say researchers at the University of Minnesota. Wholegrain, fiber from grains, and the magnesium found in wholegrain seem to have a positive effect on diabetes, the study concluded.

Refined grain converts to sugar too fast as it does not have the same fiber content as wholegrain. This means omit or at least limit, all refined flour, wheat, tropical fruit, most cold cereals (normally coated in a sweetener), regular refined wheatflour pasta and white rice.

It is also best to omit bread because of the yeast. Yeast can cause bacteria overgrowth and increase mycotoxins, which are linked to diabetes. You can get bread from sprouted grain instead that are actually quite delicious. As for the yeast, this also includes beer, wine, and all other baked goods.

Add more fiber rich food:
-Wholegrain (millet, oats, rye, bran, brown rice, quinoa, barley and buckwheat) – Legumes; beans, lentils, peas. – Have lots of most vegetables. For some root vegetables are fine, for others, be careful with the glycemic index. The more fiber in the vegetables, the slower the sugar is absorbed. Pumpkin is also recommended. – Fresh fruit (dried fruit has a higher glycemic index). – Alkalize with a lot of green food and chlorophyll. Dark leafy greens such as kale, fiber rich green food such as broccoli, brusselssprouts, string beans, asparagus; and green drinks from cereal grasses such as wheatgrass, if you are on a health track. – Limit saturated and animal fats. This means meat and dairy products such as cheese, butter, and milk. There are also mycotoxins found in meat, again linked to diabetes. – Instead, get your healthy fats from foods rich in omega 3. Nuts, seeds, avocado, flaxseed, olive and flaxseed oil. Some fish can be implemented especially those higher in omega 3 fatty acids. (Wild salmon, herring, mackerel, sardines). – And of course, do not forget to exercise, move, breathe, de-stress (stress causes acidity in the body as well)

In his book, The Healing Power of Illness, Thorwald Dethlefsen draws the parallel between the pancreas (the organ weakened in diabetes) and our longing for love. Is that why we crave the sweet stuff?

SO: Since I always come from the perspective of Self-Nourishment, consider where your sweetness in life is coming from. Don’t let it be the substitute of sugar, let it be the real stuff as in good healthy food, nature, love, community, laughter, and some nice ME-time.

In a nutshell:
1. A carefully balanced diet based on whole foods; wholegrain, beans and lentils, vegetables and fruit, plus low in saturated and animal fat.
2. A pure, positive, and creative mind. -Try some meditation. And a loving, open heart. -Especially when it comes to loving yourself.
3. An active lifestyle, which includes work, physical movement, and breathing exercises. -Yoga works well, so does nice walks or bicycle rides.

LIFE IS SWEET AFTER ALL.

Jeanette Bronee
http://www.articlesbase.com/health-articles/is-it-only-the-sugar-diabetes-awareness-77158.html

Stress is something most people experience at some point in our lives. During times of stress, those people who have Type 2 diabetes have a harder time keeping their blood glucose at the right level. This cycle of stress, not propoerly managing your diabetes, and the resulting poor health can impact your quality of life and cause life-threatening complications. A combination of high stress and diabetes can lead to blindness, kidney disease, cardiovascular problems, and require limb amputation.

Maintaining a healthy quality of life requires managing your stress level. There are many methods used to decrease stress. Some people will use prayer, exercise, meditation, and breathing techniques to decrease stress. Another form of therapy is biofeedback. Biofeedback measures the stress levels in the body through monitoring body temperature and muscle tenseness. This helps a person recognize the symptoms of stress and deal with it at that time. Recently there have been studies aiming to discover whether biofeedback could be paired with relaxation techniques to lower a diabetic’s blood glucose levels.

It is medically-accepted that patients who have excess stress also have problems controlling their blood sugar levels. They are often unable to control their eating habits or maintain an exercise regimen due stress. Uncontrollable blood glucose levels, then sickness, and acute complications often result. By using relaxation techniques in conjunction with biofeedback to recognize the signs of stress, patients have been able to alter their stress responses. This has the added benefit of helping to control glucose levels. When a person experiences stress, the body releases a chemical called cortisol. That chemical decreases the ability of the body to properly absorb insulin. Patients who were merely educated about their stress did not as effectively control their glucose levels as the patients who had also undergone biofeedback and relaxation therapy. Studies found that those who learned relaxation therapy and biofeedback also had lowered muscle tension, depression, and anxiety.

This is one more good reason to control our stress. Do you recognize your body’s stress signals? Do feel tightening in your shoulder and neck muscles? You may find that you have a hard time inhaling deeply. Perhaps you clench your teeth, or constantly feel hot. Whenever your body tells you that it is stressed, you need to heed the signs and begin relaxation techniques.

Most people know what stress can do to our bodies as well as our mental health. One of the best ways to release stress is to exercise. Exercise has many benefits. Exercise helps you lose weight, lowers your blood glucose levels, and reduces stress-related feelings. If you are suffering from work-related stress, try standing up from your desk, or taking a short walk. Your over-all physical and mental health will greatly benefit from exercise. Using relaxation techniques will help decrease your risk of stress-related complications. Exercise is merely one way to relax. Other methods to help release tension and stress from your body include listening to music, breathing exercises, praying or meditating.

Patricia Davis
http://www.articlesbase.com/self-help-articles/relaxation-therapy-to-control-blood-glucose-levels-92156.html

I have suffered all my life with being morbidly overweight. I have several symptoms of diabetes, such as I get really tired after I eat and I always seem to be cold in my feet and arms. I also just seem to have no energy to do anything half the time. It also sometimes takes a long time for cuts and scrapes to heal on me. I got a staph infection in my nose that took 2 weeks to go away with antibiotics (and no I do not pick my nose).

I also do not eat bad, I eat a pretty balanced diet and do not over eat at all but yet, I can not lose weight. I do not eat fruits and vegetables every day but I do eat them and everything I buy is low fat, no fat, or no sugar. I even drink 1% milk only drink diet pop. I even get some exercise because I have to walk everywhere I go by bus because I don’t have a car.

I have been tested for diabetes and thyroid issues but all came back normal. Has anyone else experienced this and is there anything I ask my doctor about?

I am also obese and have been my entire life. I am in the process of losing weight. I have the same symptoms and have also had negative test results on both. (Thank god) It most likely has to do with how much weight you are caring, it is causing your body to be tired. Also, as far as cuts and scrapes not healing quickly and being cold, that most likley has to do with poor circulation because of your weight.

Remember, make healthy food choices and get exercise daily. (more than what you are doing). You could do something as simple as walking in place during comercial breaks of your favorite shows, walking around the block or doing workout dvds at home. Richard Simmons and The Biggest Loser have some great ones. I do them alot.

Please don’t take this wrong but I used to believe the same thing. That I didn’t eat bad, I didn’t eat alot and for some reason I just wasn’t losing. There has to be a reason, you are obviously taking in enough calories to maintain your weight. Servings sizes that you may look at as normal could very possibly be 2, 3, or even 4 times more than what you need. Trust me, I was the exact same way. I still struggle at times. One more thing… I don’t know if you have ever tried Weight Watchers but they work well. I went for awhile. I am not going now because I cannot afford it but I still follow the guidelines they have set. They are really big on portion control and moving more.

If you need any support or have any questions please contact me. I would love to help.

hi,
im a 15 year old female whose been having recurrent symptoms for the past 6 months. At the beginning of this year i started eating healthier (not crazily or anything) i was eating three healthy square meals a day with 2 snacks, plenty of fresh fruit, vegetables, wholegrains, protein and the odd piece of cake or chocolate etc. Around the same time i came down with a throat infection which went untreated but seemed to pass. I started feeling very weak (especially in my thighs) and just exhausted and grumpy. I slept for hours longer then usual but wouldn’t be refreshed in the morning and was unbelievable tired by about 8 pm which is very out the ordinary. I went from about 53 kilos to 48 and my periods stopped. I went to numerous doctors, including and endocrinologist who suggested chronic fatigue and even hypothyroidism but tests were within normal ranges.
My question is under advice i started eating more junk food to put weight on so my periods would return and it seemed at soon as i started eating huge amounts of junk food i felt alot better and my periods came back. It seems like i need junk food to feel good, is this a sign of diabetes or was is just that i needed to gain weight?

any answers greatly appreciated

go to webmd,they will tell you about medical conditions.If you are that concerned go to the doctor and get tested.nobody on this website is a doctor ,so don’t let them practice medicine on you, if you value your health.just for the record what you are thinking about diabetes is frighting .very few people in America need to gain weight.