Wellness Blog Home › Wellness Blog

Avoid Diabetes

Posted by Baskaran under Health, Lifestyle

One of the most dangerous aspects of diabetes is that it increases your risk of heart disease. In fact, your entire circulatory system is pretty much ravaged by diabetes, which takes a heavy toll on what are called microvessels, the smallest tributaries for blood extended into your hands, feet, penis, and even your eyes. Eventually, gangrene in your fingers and toes can require surgery, perhaps even amputation. In extreme cases, you can go blind as well. Impotence is also common among diabetics. Want that to happen?

To combat diabetes, you need to get moving every day, and you need to eat the right things. Commit to exercise, record it, and keep track of what you’ve been doing. Exercise will make your insulin-resistant cells more sensitive to insulin. Resistance training will help improve blood-sugar control and lower cholesterol levels. Everything will begin to work better, and you’ll feel better, too.

Now that you’re feeling better because you’re moving rather than melting into your couch, you should be able to think more clearly about all the foods that your body is craving: whole fruits, vegetables, beans, whole grains, nuts, and seeds. They don’t take much preparation. It’s just as easy to grab a piece of fruit as it is to scarf down a doughnut. The fruit will keep you healthy, but the donut—or 6 of them—will definitely turn you in the wrong direction.

One piece of great news that we’ve collected in the past decade is the glycemic index of foods. It’s a rating based on how quickly 100 grams of a food raises your blood-glucose levels after eating, compared with 100 grams of glucose. Glucose is at the top at 100—it is absorbed very rapidly. What difference does this make? When blood sugar is raised, it stimulates an insulin response. Insulin helps remove the sugar from your bloodstream and transport it into muscle and liver cells.

Blood sugar returns to normal and stays there for several hours until it begins to drop and you eat again. This is the normal, healthy response that we want. However, when blood-sugar levels rise rapidly over and over again, too much insulin may be secreted. This constant wash of insulin over the cells of your body causes the cells to become resistant to insulin, inhibiting the transport of glucose into the cells. Give it time, and you’ve got Type II diabetes.

Many things affect the glycemic index of a food. Other nutrients, like fat and protein, slow absorption. Fiber slows absorption to a remarkable extent. If absorption of carbohydrates is slower rather than faster, then glucose passes into the bloodstream in a timed-release fashion and the insulin response stays well under control. Carbohydrate metabolism remains normal and healthy.

But remember, stop thinking about what you can’t eat next. Instead, focus on all the foods that your body needs to eat to stay healthy. Fuel yourself so that you can begin to increase the amount of exercise that you are doing. It’s the most positive way to change those old, unhealthy habits into new healthy habits.

3 Comments

Dentist Hayward wrote on September 18, 2009 at 5:02 am

Baskaran wrote on April 22, 2010 at 12:20 am

Dr. Vijay Sharma wrote on August 26, 2010 at 10:10 pm

POST COMMENT

Name

Email

(will not be published)

Website

Comment