Diabetes & Diet: 7 Foods That Control Blood Sugar
When you have type 2 diabetes, what you eat can help you control your blood sugar, stave off hunger, and feel full longer. “Diabetes is when your blood sugar or glucose levels are higher than normal. It’s carbohydrate foods like breads, cereals, rice, pasta, fruits, milk, and desserts that can cause this rise," says Maggie Powers, PhD, president-elect of Health Care & Education at the American Diabetes Association. Your eating plan should focus on the amount and type of carbs you put on your plate throughout the day, Powers says. But it’s also important to have foods you enjoy. You want to eat enough so you feel satisfied and avoid overeating and poor choices. Here are seven foods that Powers says can help keep your blood sugar in check and make you happy and healthy to boot. These add color, flavor, and texture to a meal. Choose tasty, low-carb veggies, like mushrooms, onions, eggplant, tomatoes, Brussels sprouts, and low-carb squashes, like zucchini. Try them with dips such as low-fat dressings, hummus, guacamole, and salsa, or roasted with different seasonings such as rosemary, cayenne pepper, or garlic. Go beyond your regular salad and try kale, spinach, and chard. They’re healthy, delicious, and low-carb, Powers says. Roast kale leaves in the oven with olive oil for quick, crunchy chips. You can also mix greens in with roasted veggies to add texture and a different flavor, or serve them with a little protein, like salmon. Plain water is always good, but water infused with fruits and vegetables is more interesting. Cut up a lemon or cucumber and put it in your water, or make ice cubes with some flavoring in them. If you’re not a hot tea drinker, try cold tea with lemon or a cinnamon stick. “Not only are these beverages low-carb, they can also help fill y Continue reading >>
Beans & Blood Sugar
If you are a diabetic or if you just want to lose weight and keep it off, you can benefit from understanding the role your blood sugar and insulin release plays on your health and fitness. Many people know that beans are a healthful food, but since beans are a predominantly a carbohydrate source, you may be curious just what kind of effect beans have your blood sugar levels. Video of the Day Beans Have a Low Glycemic Load The glycemic index is a numerical ranking scale that rates a food or a beverage on how much it is likely to effect your blood sugar levels. While the glycemic index is useful, according to Dr. Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., and Clinical Nutrition Specialist, the "glycemic load" is a superior measuring stick to predict the effect that a food will have on your blood sugar levels. The glycemic load measures the glycemic index of a food and the amount of carbohydrate a food has. The scale ranges from 0 to 40. Foods ranked 10 and below have a low glycemic load and will not significantly raise your blood sugar. Baked beans, black beans and kidney beans all have a very low glycemic load of 7 and will not raise your blood sugar. Dr. Jonny Bowden refers to beans as the "ultimate blood sugar regulator" because they are so rich in dietary fiber. While nearly all beans have a low glycemic load ranking and will not raise your blood sugar, the fiber in beans will also help lower and stabilize your blood sugar if you eat other higher glycemic index foods. The fiber, specifically the soluble fiber, prevents glucose from other foods and beverages from digesting in your body as quickly. In turn, this prevents your blood sugar and insulin level from increasing. The glycemic advantages that beans offer make them ideal glycemic control foods for diabetics and dieters. Another benefi Continue reading >>
Can Cannellini Beans Lower Blood Sugar Levels?
Can Cannellini Beans Lower Blood Sugar Levels? When you shop for cannellini beans, you may find them under a few different names. Sometimes, marketers call them white kidney beans and the price is usually higher. At other times, you may find them under the name of Italian kidney beans. Whatever they call them they are cannellini beans and may help regulate blood sugar levels. The magic of these beans is in their soluble fiber levels, which is an excellent dietary benefit because it absorbs fats and sugars found the bloodstream. In so doing, these beautiful white beans help to lower blood sugar levels. So the answer to our question is that yes, cannellini beans help to lower the level of sugar in our blood. That, however, is not all that they do. These beans have a lot of positive benefits for everyone, not just diabetics. Beans and other legumes are an important part of a healthy diet. At the Metabolic Research Center, they teach people about how to embrace healthy foods. Cannellini beans offer a huge health benefit in the form of 15 grams of quality protein in each serving. They are also low in calories, so they help to keep you full without filling you up on empty calories. For anyone who is concerned with healthy eating or picking foods that help control disease such as diabetes, should consider the power of cannellini beans. These beans and other legumes can absorb free floating sugars in the blood and then release them slowly. The benefit of this process is that people who eat beans avoid the sugar spike. Instead, the slow release of sugar remains at a fairly even level. There are plenty of health studies out there that illustrate how legumes help to regulate blood sugar. For more information on how to cook with cannellini beans, just visit the Metabolic Research Continue reading >>
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Are All Carbohydrates Created Equal?
twitter summary: All carbs are NOT created equal - 30 g of beans is way different from 30 g of glucose tabs; choose lower glycemic index foods for better BGs A diagnosis of diabetes – type 1 or type 2 – hits everyone very differently. However, one common memory for most of us is learning about food and carbohydrate counts. To this day, I still haven’t forgotten that one cup of milk contains 12 grams of carbs, one cup of rice contains 45 grams of carbs, and a steak doesn’t have any carbs. We also pretty quickly learn the physiology basics: a carbohydrate raises blood sugar, and the more carbs you eat, the larger the blood sugar spike (all else being equal). Those of us on insulin estimate the appropriate amount to cover the carbohydrates and bring our blood glucose back down – e.g., if I eat 30 grams of carbs, I should take three units of insulin (for someone with a 1:10 insulin-to-carb ratio). If I eat 60 grams of carbs, I need six units of insulin. Pretty simple. However, that approach embeds what seems like an illogical assumption - namely, that all foods containing carbohydrates are created equal. In other words, if I eat an equal number of carbs of two very different foods – half a cup of black beans (30 grams of carbs) and 7.5 glucose tablets (30 grams of carbs) – I should still take the same three units of insulin. Is that really true? In a few simple experiments using my CGM, I found that this was not at all the case – at least for me. The same 30 grams of carbs of black beans and glucose tablets yielded strikingly different results in blood glucose. I’ve done two head-to-head trials comparing both foods – one without insulin (a baseline) and one with insulin. Below, you will find the results of my trials, along with a short review of the rese Continue reading >>
Beans May Help Control Blood Sugar In People With Diabetes
Beans may help control blood sugar in people with diabetes A cup of beans or lentils each day, when combined with a low-glycemic diet, helped lower blood sugar levels and coronary artery disease risk in patients with type 2 diabetes. Those are the findings in a study published online Oct. 22, 2012, in Archives of Internal Medicine. Legumes, because they pack a lot of protein, help dampen the blood sugar response, and lower blood pressure. And as a good source of fiber, beans can help lower cholesterol, too. Researchers found that after just three months on the "bean diet," the patients' hemoglobin A1c levels (which reflect blood sugar level over a period of several weeks) had dropped half a percentage point. Subscribe to Harvard Health Online for immediate access to health news and information from Harvard Medical School. Find the best treatments and procedures for you Explore options for better nutrition and exercise I'd like to receive access to Harvard Health Online for only $4.99 a month. Continue reading >>
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Beans May Improve Blood Glucose Control
Eating legumes such as beans, chickpeas, and lentils may help improve blood glucose control and reduce blood pressure, cholesterol, and triglyceride (blood fat) levels in people with Type 2 diabetes, according to a new study from researchers at the University of Toronto. Foods that have a low glycemic index, or GI, (meaning that they produce a gradual rise in blood glucose levels) have been shown to improve blood glucose control in people with Type 2. To determine whether decreasing the overall GI of one’s diet by increasing the consumption of low-GI legumes would benefit blood glucose control and other health parameters, the researchers randomly assigned 121 people with Type 2 diabetes to one of two diets for three months: a low-GI diet that required participants to eat at least one cup of legumes per day, or a diet that increased insoluble fiber through the consumption of whole wheat products. At the end of the three-month period, the investigators found that the average A1C levels of people who had increased their legume consumption had dropped from 7.4% to 6.9%, compared to an average drop from 7.2% to 6.9% for those eating increased amounts of whole wheat. The legume diet also reduced cardiovascular risk considerably more than the whole wheat diet, owing mainly to a decrease in blood pressure: Compared to no blood pressure change on the whole wheat diet, on the legume diet, systolic pressure (the top number) dropped from an average of 122 to 118 points and diastolic pressure (the bottom number) dropped from an average of 72 to 69, corresponding to a roughly 1% decrease in the 10-year risk of heart attack or stroke. Furthermore, the legume diet significantly lowered average total cholesterol and triglyceride levels In an accompanying editorial, Marion Franz, MS, R Continue reading >>
What You Should Know About Diabetes And Beans
Beans are a diabetes super food. The American Diabetes Association advises people with diabetes to add dried beans or no-sodium canned beans to several meals each week. They are low on the glycemic index and can help manage blood sugar levels better than many other starchy foods. Beans also contain protein and fiber, making them a healthy two-for-one nutritional component to every meal. With so many types of beans available, there is bound to be one that suits your palette. Learn more about understanding the glycemic index here. Benefits of beans When planning your meals, remember that 1/3 cup of cooked beans is considered one starch diabetic exchange. One diabetic exchange of beans provides about 80 calories and about 15 grams of carbohydrates. If using the beans as a replacement for animal protein, the serving size or diabetic exchange is 1/2 cup. For every half-cup of beans, make sure to account for one very lean protein exchange and one starch exchange. The nutritional information for beans varies slightly from bean to bean. Here’s the nutritional information, 1/3 cup each, for some beans you may want to try: Type Black beans Lima beans Red kidney beans Calories 75 60 73 Protein (g) 5 3 5 Carbohydrates (g) 13 11 12 Fiber (g) 5 3 4 Beans are a good alternative to meat because of their high protein content. Unlike meat, beans have no saturated fat and ample fiber, which makes them a healthy exchange. When looking at exchange lists, beans are usually grouped with starches such as breads and potatoes. But remember that beans tend to be much higher in protein and fiber than other starchy foods. Beans also provide significant soluble fiber, which feeds healthy gut bacteria and results in improved gut health and reduced insulin resistance in animal studies. More research Continue reading >>
Best Foods For Type 2 Diabetes
Beans If you’re looking for foods that raise blood-sugar levels slowly and gently like rolling waves, choose high-quality carbohydrates instead of low-quality carbs like refined grains and sugary foods. Whenever possible, you’ll want to couple these carbs with protein and/or healthy fat. Beans (including black, white, navy, lima, pinto, garbanzo, soy, and kidney) are a winning combination of high-quality carbohydrates, lean protein, and soluble fiber that helps stabilize your body’s blood-sugar levels and keeps hunger in check. Beans are also inexpensive, versatile, and virtually fat-free. Continue reading >>
Legumes Improve Blood Sugar Control And Reduce Cardiovascular Risk In Diabetics
Patients with diabetes may want to think twice when choosing between whole wheat foods and legumes, like beans, chickpeas, and lentils. For patients with diabetes, controlling blood sugar levels is extremely important. Out of control blood sugar levels can lead to serious health problems and sometimes, like with a heart attack, stroke or kidney failure, the damage can’t be undone. Fortunately, there are many ways that diabetics can help control their blood sugar, like through exercise, weight control and diet. And a new study shows that incorporating more legumes into the diet could not only help control blood sugar levels but also reduce cardiovascular risk in patients with type 2 diabetes. This study was published recently in the Archives of Internal Medicine – a peer-reviewed medical journal published by the American Medical Association. Through this study, researchers assigned more than 120 patients with type 2 diabetes to one of two diets. Half of participants were instructed to eat at least 1 cup of legumes, like beans, chickpeas and lentils, a day, while the other half were instructed to eat more whole wheat products. After following patients for 3 months on these diets, researchers found that patients increasing their consumption of legumes had significantly better blood sugar control than patients who increased their intake of whole wheat products. And as mentioned earlier, increased legume intake was also associated with lower blood pressure and cardiovascular risk compared to increased intake of whole wheat products. So what’s the difference between legumes and whole wheat products? The good news is that both are packed with insoluble fiber, which is known to have many health benefits like lowering blood pressure and helping with blood sugar control. Bu Continue reading >>
Why Beans And Blood Sugar Make Excellent Friends
When it comes to controlling blood sugar, it is the plentiful amount of soluble fiber in beans that seems to be the magical nutrient. If you have insulin resistance, hypoglycemia, or diabetes, adding beans into your regular diet can be very helpful. The reason for this is that the soluble fiber in beans provides a slow burning and long lasting source of energy, consisting of complex carbohydrates and proteins for your body to use. Since these macronutrients take longer for your body to break down, blood sugar levels remain stabilized. When blood sugar are stabilized you body does not need to release as much insulin to control the glucose in the blood. This is crucial for diabetics patients, as they, especially, need to control their blood glucose and insulin levels in order maintain their health. There is an excellent article from our partners at Reuters regarding beans and blood sugar: Beans Show Promise with Diabetes: Study (Reuters) Eating a cup of beans or lentils every day may help people with type 2 diabetes control their blood sugar and possibly reduce their risk of heart attacks and stroke, according to a Canadian study. Researchers, whose results appeared in the Archives of Internal Medicine, found that compared with a diet rich in whole grains, getting a daily dose of legumes led to small drops in an important measure of blood sugar as well as in blood pressure and cholesterol levels. After three months on the bean diet, study participants’ estimated 10-year risk of cardiovascular disease had fallen from 10.7 percent to 9.6 percent, according to the group. “Legumes are good protein sources, and proteins tend to dampen the blood glucose response and they lower blood pressure,” said David Jenkins of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto, who led the study. Continue reading >>
6 Foods That Lower Blood Sugar
A healthy lifestyle of exercise with a well-balanced diet should go a long way towards keeping blood sugar levels even. For example, for maintaining good blood sugar levels, my doctor recommends a diet rich in healthy protein and fats, lower in carbohydrates, and plenty of low-carb produce. But beyond the general principles, there are some wonderful foods that specifically help keep blood sugar levels in a healthy place. Here are six of them. Tea: Animal studies have shown that black, green, white and oolong teas all help with blood sugar control. One study found that after drinking six cups of tea a day for eight weeks, patient’s blood sugar levels were 15-20 percent lower than before! Drinking tea is a beautiful and traditional practice that could also have a positive role in healthy blood sugar levels. Dark chocolate: One important aspect of good blood sugar control is how your body handles insulin. Dark chocolate was found to reduce insulin resistance, a vital part of keeping healthy blood sugar levels. This is good news for chocolate lovers — just make sure that it is a truly dark chocolate. Vinegar: In a surprising study at Arizona State University, vinegar was shown to have the same effect as a leading diabetes medication! In the study, patients were given a vinegar drink to consume before a meal rich in carbohydrates. Starting a meal with a salad with a vinegar dressing could be a good choice instead. Nuts: When diabetic patients swapped carbohydrate-rich snacks with nuts instead, they were able to lower their general blood sugar levels over time. Nuts are a healthy source of protein, as well as many nutrients (such as vitamin E and selenium), so they are a smart addition to a healthy lifestyle. Chia seeds: This tiny seed is native to Southern Mexico and Cen Continue reading >>
Eat Your Blood Sugar Down With Beans. Here’s How!
One of the best things you can do for better blood sugar control is to eat beans at every meal. Why? It’s simple. The fiber in the beans serves as a net that slows down the uptake of sugar into your bloodstream. The end result - better control. The challenge is that beans equal gas for most people at first. So, if you’re not used to beans start out small - ½ cup a day. When that starts to feel more comfortable, build it up to ½ a cup at the beginning of each meal. Here are a lot of ways to add beans to each meal: Although there are breakfast-specific recipes utilizing beans, feel free to experiment by adding a southwestern flavor to your omelets or breakfast burritos as well. Try these breakfast beans as a side to pancakes. Beans are a main ingredient in Super Pancakes. Try a breakfast burrito with beans. Give chili for breakfast a try. It is fabulous on top of polenta. The easiest way to add beans to your lunch is to toss them into your salad…or wrap, or sandwich, or soup. Add garbanzo beans to your chicken salad. Here’s a fabulous recipe. Lentils and rice make a savory dish. Top with grilled veggies, avocado, tomato, lettuce. Bring these roasted vegetables and black bean burritos with you to the office. From serving beans as side dishes, to blending them in spaghetti sauces, to adding them in soups…dinner is often the easiest meal to power up. Serve this fabulous garbanzo-kale salad before your meal. Make a white bean chili in the crockpot during the day. Pair up lentil loaf with your mashed potatoes. Minestrone soup (served at Italian joints) always contains beans. Southwestern restaurants always feature beans as a side or option in most meals. Asian eateries often offer edamame beans on their menus. Mediterranean establishments have garbanzo beans as an Continue reading >>
Beans Will Rock Your World
I’ve started eating a lot more beans. Why? They are healthy and cheap. They make me feel good, and it turns out they taste great if you prepare them right. Research shows that beans are even better if you have diabetes. A woman in my neighborhood got me started. We were talking about diabetes, and she said she had been diagnosed with Type 2 five years ago. But she now eats beans with every meal, and all her numbers are back to normal, including her glucose tolerance test. I figured I should look into it. Of course the first place to look is always Diabetes Self-Management‘s Amy Campbell. Here’s what she wrote in 2007: “Beans are a rich source of protein. One cup of beans contains about 16 grams of protein, the same as 2 ounces of meat or chicken. People who are vegetarians typically use beans and bean products as their main source of protein. Beans contain no cholesterol…and only about 1 gram of fat (non of it saturated, either).” That’s just the start. Amy says beans “also contains about 15 grams of [mostly-soluble] fiber…which can help lower cholesterol levels and lower the risk of heart disease…Beans are also a great source of iron, calcium, potassium, and magnesium, as well as vitamin A and folate.” That column was from five years ago. Since then, others have been shouting the praises of beans even more loudly. According to Jim Healthy, editor of the Web site My Healing Kitchen, “Beans are best for diabetes,” because “they are loaded with all-important fiber, which slows the breakdown of carbohydrates into sugars in your bloodstream, assists your body’s insulin response to glucose, and helps you burn fat faster.” They will limit the spikes in glucose levels after meals. (See last week’s blog entry “Stop Spiking Those Sugars!”) H Continue reading >>
Foods That Safely Reduce Blood Glucose
As we age, one of our priorities is maintaining optimal glucose levels to avoid heart disease, cancer, and diabetes.1-5 Fortunately, many Life Extension® members use supplements, hormones, and drugs to improve their insulin sensitivity, which facilitates the more efficient removal of glucose from the blood.6-12 Less well-known, however, is the fact that there are certain foods proven to decrease blood sugar levels!7,13-16 Specifically, barley and black beans have been extensively studied for their ability to maintain glycemic control. In this article, you will learn how these two foods have been shown to lower blood sugar and inhibit diabetes and other glycemic-stress-related problems such as cardiovascular disease and obesity. Including these two glucose-lowering foods as part of your normal diet can help maintain better blood sugar levels. Barley Lowers Blood Sugar and Insulin Levels Excessive dietary carbohydrates, such as white rice and potatoes, trigger surges in blood glucose, a key factor in the worldwide epidemic of type II diabetes. 17,18 Aging increases this effect—beginning as early as age 20.17 National Institutes of Health data indicate that 35% of Americans aged 20 or older have abnormally high blood glucose levels—known as prediabetes—as do 50% of those aged 65 years or older!17 Fortunately, research has established that consumption of insoluble dietary fiber—which is found in certain whole grains, including barley19—is associated with a reduced risk of type II diabetes.20 Barley is also a rich source of soluble fiber.19 In fact, one study conducted on overweight women found significantly lower insulin and glucose responses following barley ingestion, compared to ingestion of oats.15 The researchers concluded that particle size—flour versus f Continue reading >>
Nature's Best Sugar Blockers
You may have heard that whole grain products are high in fiber. However, the starch in grains quickly turns to sugar and overwhelms any blood sugar-blocking effect the fiber might have. Of course, all fruits and vegetables contain sugar; that's what makes them carbohydrates. Nevertheless, most contain proportionately more soluble fiber than sugar, so they don't raise blood sugar as much as grain products and other refined carbohydrates do. Keeping blood sugar steady is an important tool for preventing insulin spikes, which can lock fat into your cells and prevent it from being used for energy. The substance in our diet that's most responsible for these blood sugar surges is starch. But the good news is you can blunt the blood sugar-raising effects by taking advantage of natural substances in foods—like fiber in fruits and veggies—that slow carbohydrate digestion and entry into the bloodstream. You can tell which fruits and vegetables have the best balance of fiber to sugar by looking at their glycemic loads (Not sure what that means? See Glycemic Impact 101.). All of the carbohydrates that have been associated with increased risk of obesity or diabetes have glycemic loads greater than 100. On the other hand, fruits and vegetables with glycemic loads less than 100 have been associated with reduced risk. Thus, you should avoid fruits or vegetables with glycemic loads higher than 100, even though they contain soluble fiber. Fruits and vegetables whose glycemic loads are between 50 and 100 are themselves acceptable to eat, but they release enough glucose to nullify their usefulness as sugar blockers. The best fruit and vegetable sugar blockers are those with glycemic loads less than 50. It takes about 10 grams of fiber to reduce the after-meal blood sugar surge from a s Continue reading >>
