Category: Diabetes Diet

Blood sugar may sound like an unusual term if you have not heard of it before but it is very important in regards to our health. It is simply the level of glucose that is found in the blood of a person which abnormally high and low levels of blood sugar can create problems. Talking about high blood sugar we need to know what exactly it is. It is the presence of sugar glucose in the blood in higher quantities than normal. The glucose then gets transferred to the urine making the urine a little sugary.

It is important that you do not let your blood sugar level reach a high level as it may lead to many complications. To help you with that the following are some ways on how to lower your blood sugar.

Eating the right kind of meals will help you out immensely and keep your blood sugar in check and at optimum levels as required by your body. Fruits and vegetables are preferable to lower the level since they take a little bit of time to be completely digested. They work in keeping your blood sugar in check even for diabetic patients. Everyone normally has the tendency of eating three times a day in large portions but you would be better off breaking down the meal portions and eating four to five times a day instead. Staying fit is another good way to keep the blood sugar in check. I recommend working out daily in order to keep the metabolism of your body going. If you want to lower the glucose content in your blood then an early morning workout before breakfast is very useful. This method is as useful as taking medicines itself. What you need to understand is that diabetes is seen to affect obese people more and working out will keep those extra pounds in check and indirectly decrease the risk of diabetes.

Caffeinated drinks should be totally avoided since they contain a lot of sugar and carbohydrates. While taking medication for other health problems make sure you check with your doctor because over the counter pills can work against you since many of them might increase your blood sugar level. The reason for increased blood sugar level is not the same for everyone, the metabolism activity differs from person to person. I recommend going to the clinic and finding the exact reason for your increasing blood sugar levels because high levels of stress are also known to increase the blood sugar levels. Make a note of all of these things because sometimes the smallest change can make the biggest difference in your overall health.

You can easily obtain high levels of sugar in the blood level by living an unhealthy lifestyle. This condition, also known as hyperglycemia, causes the glucose level in the body to fluctuate and increase temporarily. Severe conditions of high sugar levels can cause other health issues that are more dangerous and serious such as infections, blood problems or the inability to heal fast. Therefore, it is vital to stay informed and to practice prevention steps against high blood sugar level.

Some of the general symptoms that you can look out for include these: Frequent urination and during sleep, dry and itchy skin, fatigue, weight loss and thirst.Upon severity, you may experience dizziness that could leave to unconsciousness.

With that said, how could maintain a lower sugar level in your blood? Just like many other conditions, it is important to maintain a healthy lifestyle always. Regular and consistent exercise is so helpful in keeping the body balanced in so many ways. Many people think that exercising is too much of a hassle or an inconvenience. However, the amount of exercise that the body needs is only approximately 30 minutes a day. So there really isn’t an excuse that could be used against it. Lack of exercise can lead to an increase in weight as well which slows down many processes in the body, including the process of food sugars in the blood.

Another good way to keep away from high blood sugar is to eat smart. Not only would you want to eat balanced meals, but certain foods can maintain lower sugar levels in blood. Food items with such properties would include fruits and vegetables as they are slowest to digest. Grains are also great food items to consider in your diet plan. These food will remain in the digestive systems to keep the hyperglycemic body in control when everything else goes out of control. Another kind of food that seems to be very helpful in reducing blood sugar levels is cinnamon. You could be creative with your cooking and include cinnamon in your daily cooking. Besides eating healthy and keeping an eye out for special food, you could also consider eating in small portions throughout the day. This would mean having about 4 to 5 meals a day rather than 3 large and heavy portioned meals.

Just as the name of the condition proposes, abstaining from excessive dosages of sugar is highly important. In this unhealthy age and generation, it is very easy to lose track of your daily sugar intake and consume more than what the body requires. To avoid any mishaps that may occur with blissful indulgence, you should always check the ingredients and the properties of your food before eating. Always strive to eat healthy. Remember, we eat to live and not live to eat.

Another aspect of health that some people tend to neglect and forget at the same time is the mind. Our latest enemy, stress, is strongly prevalent among today’s generation. This sparks so many other problems because when bad stress kicks in the mind, the body is weak and finds it difficult to fight for control. Therefore, to maintain a low blood sugar level in the body, you should learn to live a healthy mind as well.

When all is healthy, life is golden because as the saying goes, the greatest wealth is health.

Stevia is a shrub found in South America with leaves that are being used a source of artificial sweetener in Brazil and Paraguay along with Japan and many other countries since centuries now. Diabetes and Stevia are closely linked. Basically this herb is low in calories, which is the reason for it being used as an important source of sugar. It’s often used as non-insulin activator as a sweetener. The shrub cannot be used directly or poured into the food as it is. It is used in the form of sugar only. Variety of brands are using stevia in the form of sugar for creating false sweet in whatever it may be used with. The taste is almost like the natural sugar but with less harm which is a precaution to be maintained by a diabetic patient.

Every company uses Stevia in different forms. The contents and ingredients used inside them vary in accordance with the variations in the production processes and demands that they focus on in the market. This is connected with the requirements of the society too. In some products, there would be a sort of bitterness after the taste which is sometimes the result of process which extracting the defects of the herb. Now this entirely depends on the company’s systems and processes. They need to be highly careful about maintaining the quality of their product. Only with best quality control systems, efficient products can be developed and maintained in the market. Sweeter taste is not only sufficient enough, it’s really very necessary to develop a product with no bitterness kind of taste afterwards.
Diabetes and stevia are connected in a way that the diabetes patient is not allowed to have sugar whereas stevia supports the requirement by providing the necessary taste and with no side effects. FDA approval is required for the product which is being used as sweetener. With this support, the product gets recognition of safety which is required with its use. Since quite a long time now people have started understanding this connection and diabetes and stevia both have be accepted by the society. It’s better to take precautions that undergo losses; this fact rests on the truth that stevia as sweetener can help in protecting the person to much greater extent. Use of stevia in any type of food variety reduces the risk attached with the disease and protects the person from other disorders too.

Best brands have come ahead in the task of supporting diabetes and stevia by creating effective products to save the life of people that are already affected and also those who are under the risk. Saving yourself beforehand is the best technique. While preparing food, one should be very much conscious about the health and problematic situations that are being detected among people. Do not eat high sugar food and even if you are eating, make sure you are using the best substitute as sugar with good quality processing with the use of stevia. Create a diet chart for yourself and be careful, rest would be taken care by alternative solutions.

For a diabetes sufferer, it is very important to follow the instructions provided by the doctor regarding proper diabetes diet.

Here is a list of the food items that should be avoided by diabetics.

Sugar, honey and artificial sweeteners are the foods that come first in the list of avoidance for a diabetic. It is allowed to take a sweetener named stevia. It is actually very impossible to remove sugar from your routine diet, so it is recommended to gradually decrease the level of it from your diet.
Try to avoid chocolates and sweets completely. In case you wish to eat them, then opt for the continental dark chocolate which contains 70% of the cocoa solids and neglect the chocolates that contain high amount of sugars.

For a good diabetes diet, the food items containing carbohydrates ending with “ol” or “ose” like glucose, fructose, dextrose and many more should be avoided. Do not take biscuits, cakes, tarts, wheat, rice, barley, breakfast cereals, corn, pasta, bread and similar items in order to control the diabetes. There are some vegetables containing high amount of carbohydrates and starch such as carrots, potatoes, beet, beans, parsnips, peas and such.
The diabetic patient needs to avoid fruits such as banana, mangoes, water melon, grapes, sugarcane, jackfruit, strawberry and chikoos.

Regarding the milk products, it is advisable to take the milk in very small quantity. Cheese and yogurts should not be taken by the diabetic as they contain a large amount of fat. Make a habit of taking considerable amount of tea or coffee as well as the required quantity of sugar so that the sugar level in your body does not get increased.
The diabetic should not prefer to take junk foods or snacks available outside. Such food items have much more amount of calories.
Fruit juices are also not advisable in the diabetes diet as they contain high amounts of carbohydrates. If you really love to drink fruit juices, then take one part of the fruit juice and mix 3-4 parts of water in it to reduce the content of sugar.

The diabetic should not prefer saturated fats like dairy products, fatty meat, butter and many such fat containing products. You require unsaturated fats such as corn oil, soya oil, sunflower oil, or olive oil.

You might ask yourself — if the above food items are not suitable for the diabetic patient, then are there any food items left to eat? The answer is yes. The most important thing to be precise while preparing a diabetes diet — you should distribute the fruits, vegetables and other food items according to the levels of sugar, fat and carbohydrates.

Cinnamon plays a great role by improving blood sugar level in diabetes. Cinnamon and diabetes have great connection and it has been proven in lot of studies. After undergoing too many researches these studies say that cinnamon is very much helpful in minimizing blood sugar levels in human in type II diabetes.

Role of glucose and insulin

Type I diabetes do not produce enough insulin and in type II diabetes the body can produce insulin but it has no sensitivity to insulin.
The sugars and starches in a food break down into blood sugar called as glucose. Insulin absorbs that glucose that circulates in the blood. Glucose may store as a fat or can used for energy.
Fluctuation in glucose and insulin cause diabetes. For instance, if a body lost its sensitivity to insulin or fail to produce insulin (type I diabetes) and that will increase the glucose levels. As a result, that will remain in the blood for long time.
This increased glucose lead to many health problems like eyes problem, kidney disease, heart attack and other health associated problems. This is the process of glucose and insulin.

Studies and researches

Now let’s see how cinnamon and diabetes related with this process. Researches have proved that a special substance in cinnamon has the potential to cut blood sugar levels in people who have type II diabetes. Actually the substance in cinnamon improves glucose metabolism and insulin and that reveres insulin resistance.
Lots of cinnamon and diabetes products are available in market these days. People should very much careful in choosing the right one because there are some cinnamon products like MCHP, which is not the perfect cinnamon substance because it will not improve the blood sugar levels in type II diabetes.

Leading researches of diabetes believe that even one gram of cinnamon in a day has lot of benefits in type II diabetes. Apart from that, studies also prove that these Cinnamons have the potential to lower the blood sugar, LDL cholesterol and triglycerides in type II diabetes.

In Pakistan, during the year 2003, a research had made of cinnamon with 60 people for type II diabetes. There are six groups of 10 people in each group. The first three groups undergone cinnamon capsules totaling one, three or six grams in a day and the next three groups undergone placebo capsules. They need to take this capsule three times in a day after meals.

Though all the groups showed good result, the leading result was those who undergone one gram cinnamon a day.
There are two types of cinnamon sold in United States they are – chinnamomum zeylanicum nees and cinnamomum cassia (L.) blume. According to this Pakistan study, the most common among these two cinnamons is cinnamomum cassia and the study used only this particular cinnamon for research purpose.

The research has done been only with small amount of people and that became very much successful but the researchers are still confused whether it explores long-term benefits or not. Also, there is no proper evidence that cinnamon plays major role against type II diabetes. However, having more cinnamon along with the healthy lifestyle will not cause any harmful effects or side effects. Thus, cinnamon and diabetes related with each others.

If you have been diagnosed with diabetes, you need to know what you can eat without sending the sugar levels in your body out of control. There are special things that you have to watch because anything that contains sugar in it which has the potential to send you into a diabetic coma or something else. Knowing what you can and can’t eat will greatly increase your body’s health in the long run. Here are some things that you want to eat and other things that you should just turn away from.

If you are looking for the perfect meal for people with diabetes, then you want a balanced meal. Eating a regular meal with the right serving sizes can lead to you controlling your sugar levels by just what you eat. If you think about the foods you eat, you might want to know about how long it takes the food to get into your bloodstream. The fastest thing that is going to hit your blood the fastest is candy. It is almost pure sugar so it dissolves quickly. When it comes to carbohydrates, the sugars take about 2 hours to enter the bloodstream. It takes about 4 to 6 hours for meats and other proteins to enter the blood. And the thing that it takes the longest to enter the blood stream is fats.

There are some things that you have to avoid if you can when you are a diabetic because it can put too much sugar into your body. Some foods that you want to stay away from or try and cut down drastically eating them is fried foods, fast food restaurants, and fatty red meats. You want to stay away from these foods because they are loaded with saturated fats. That kind of fat is very bad for diabetics because it contains things that can drain the body of sugar that your body needs.

Now that you know some of the foods that you should stay away from if you are a diabetic, there are some drinks that can cause harm as well. If you are taking insulin to help control your sugar levels in your body, you need to stay away from any liquid beverage that contains sugar. Pop is very bad because it contains a lot of sugar and will do a number to your body. There is some soda that is specially made for people with diabetes but you have to read the label.

Do you want to know about test kits for diabetic test? We have it here and we trying our best to figure out which is the best possible test kits out there in the market. You might want to read about the information we got for you.