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The treatment of diabetes depends on three things: diet, exercise, and medication. To prevent fluctuations in blood sugar levels, the diabetic patient must know how to balance these three in order to live a normal life and reduce the risk of complications.

What should a diabetic eat? Young diabetics requiring insulin shots should consume as much calories as possible to gain weight. Regular eating patterns are essential for the lean patient for normal growth and development.

On the other hand, overweight individuals suffering from adult-onset diabetes who don’t need insulin should restrict their calories to lose weight. Obesity increases the body’s resistance to insulin, making it difficult to control blood glucose levels.

Alcoholic beverages can also make things worse for the diabetic and ruin his weight control program. To avoid this, limit your alcohol intake or better still, stay away from alcohol completely. If you smoke, kick the habit since this adds to the risk of heart disease and other problems.

In The Best Treatment, Dr. Isadore Rosenfeld of the New York Hospital - Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center advises the following:

The diabetic diet should be free of all simple sugars like sucrose. That means no candies, cakes, frostings, and other delicious foods. But, complex sugars of which there are many - pastas, fruits, beans, and nuts - formerly forbidden, are now considered permissible. In fact, such carbohydrates should make up 50 to 60 percent of your total calories.

Any soluble fiber like oat bran is good too because it lowers both your sugar and your cholesterol. If you miss the sweet taste in your diet, you can add one of the artificial products like aspartame (which the Food and Drug Administration has certified as ’safe’). But remember that like any other chemical, sweeteners can cause side effects especially when used in large amounts.

Your fat intake should be less than 30 percent of the total calories. There are three kinds of fat - saturated fats (found in animal foods), polyunsaturated fats (present in most vegetable oils), and monosaturated (such as olive oil).

Saturated fats should constitute less than 10 percent of your total fat intake. Since diabetics are more vulnerable to arteriosclerosis, limit cholesterol consumption to no more than 300 milligrams a day. Continue Reading »

Diabetic diet is a diet that consists of some restrictions based on the dietary rules set for a diabetic.

Diabetes is a medical condition where the production of insulin by pancreas is zero or the production is resisted. Insulin helps the cells to receive the glucose that’s present in the blood. Most of the cells work towards converting the glucose in to energy. When there is no insulin, the glucose tends to remain in the blood stream and then builds up. The situation can be dangerous.

The glucose present in the blood is derived from the food we eat. Hence, it is necessary for the diabetic to make sure that the amounts of glucose in the blood do not rise. Diabetics need to be really careful about their diet.

In case, the person is insulin dependent, the diet taken should comprise of about 35 calories of each kg of the overall body weight. Continue Reading »

The Atkins diet principles lay the foundation for a healthy, more balanced way of eating than the standard American diet. Its emphasis is on using good carbohydrates in balance with adequate protein. This is in stark contrast to what most Americans eat on a daily basis. The average American eats lots of processed foods that have hidden sugars and highly processed carbohydrates. This has put most Americans on the road to diabetes and pre-diabetic conditions. What is sad is that diabetes has a predictable set of stages and that they can be easily recognized.

The road to diabetes has to do with something called the glycemic index. All carbohydrates are rated on this index with regards to the level of insulin reaction they produce. Foods that have a high glycemic index rating will cause your pancreas to release a lot of insulin to break down the amount of sugars and carbohydrates (which produce high amounts of glucose). The refined carbohydrates and sugars that make up the vast majority of the American diet rank very high on the glycemic index.

We are able to more readily digest these foods as children, because our bodies function more efficiently in our youth. There may have been side effects, like weight gain and mood swings, but they didn’t stand out. As we age, however, these symptoms begin to grow and become more prevalent. Continue Reading »