Changing Your Diet Can Change Your Diabetes

If you've been diagnosed with diabetes as an adult, most likely you've been diagnosed with type II. You may have been given a diet and exercise plan to control your diabetes without medication, or you may have been put on an oral medication, or perhaps you've already been on an oral medication, still couldn't control that diabetes and ended up on insulin. Whichever the case may be for you, there is hope. You may be able to stave off the secondary problems and conditions diabetes can cause, such as vision problems, neuropathies, or painful feet, kidney disease and heart disease. Have you ever heard of the glycemic index? It sounds complicated, but it's not.

Eating your meals and snacks according to the glycemic index value of the foods you've chosen helps alter the amount of "sugar" or glucose in your blood. The less glucose in your blood, the less likely you are to experience some of these secondary problems associated with diabetes. The glycemic index value of a particular food is a number between 0 and 100 that's been assigned to that food item based on how much glucose or sugar remains in a person's blood after eating and digesting that food. The higher the glycemic index, the more sugar in the blood. The more sugar in the blood, the more likely you are to start developing these long-term complications of diabetes. You'll also be more likely to end up on insulin as well as oral medications.

Why is that glycemic value important? Well, the lower the number, the better for you. A lower glycemic value can result in one of two things. First, a lower number can mean slower digestion, which means that the sugar or glucose enters the bloodstream over a longer period of time. Or, the lower number may mean that all the glucose enters the bloodstream fairly quickly, but there's a whole lot less sugar entering at one time than a food with a higher glycemic index would produce. Excess sugar in the bloodstream has the potential to muck up quite a few of the various systems in our bodies or its organs.

Finally, being aware of the glycemic values of the foods we eat, means that we can pair lower value foods with higher value foods and still manage to better control our blood sugar. It doesn't necessarily mean that you can no longer eat the foods you enjoy. You just need to be aware of how quickly and how much sugar the food dumps into your blood. Generally, whole grains (here's another reason to eat those) digest more slowly and will have a lower glycemic index. A slice of white bread, which is a simple carbohydrate, has a higher glycemic index than a teaspoon of sugar!

In addition to becoming more aware of how the foods you eat affect your blood sugar, exercise and weight loss also play a huge role in helping to control your diabetes. So, of course, you'll want to include these in your lifestyle change as well. Always talk to your doctor before making any of these changes. He or she can be a great source for information about glycemic index values of food and how to start the most effective exercise and weight loss plan for you. By the way, if you're also a smoker, that can help contribute to the development of heart disease because the chemicals in the cigarette smoke can cause inflammation in your blood vessels as well.