Add These To Your Atta (Flour) To Make It Diabetes-Friendly

Expert-reviewed by Ashwini S.Kanade, Registered Dietician and Certified Diabetes Educator with 17 years of experience.
Fact-checked by Aditya Nar, B.Pharm, MSc. Public Health and Health Economics.
In diabetes, you indeed are what you eat. This is all the more critical when it comes to choosing to right kind of atta (or flour).
As with everything else they eat, diabetics must choose a flour that can be digested slowly, is high in fibre, low in carbs and calories to maintain blood sugar levels. Considering all this topped with the wide variety of “diabetes-friendly” attas (flours) available in the market today – one might think it is easier never to eat anything made with flour again!
But wait, help is at hand! Because today, we have the full scoop for you on which varieties and types of flours are best suited for people with diabetes.
The perfect recipe for diabetes-friendly flour
According to Dr. Jyoti Sawant, Dietitian at Delhi-based Obino, “The best flour for people with diabetes would be to eat standalone or a good mix of multigrain flour. Mix whole grains, such as finger millets (ragi or nachni), millets (bajra), barley (jau), soya beans, sorghum (jowar), amaranth grains (ramdana/rajgira), and chickpea flour (Bengal gram or kabuli chana) and your perfect diabetes-friendly flour is ready. All of these ingredients have a rich nutritional profile and are high in dietary fibre with complex carbohydrate content.Making multigrain flour an excellent choice for controlling blood sugar spikes and managing weight.”
How to make diabetes-friendly flour at home
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This Protein Could Be Spreading Type 2 Diabetes Like Mad Cow Disease

A type of misbehaving protein might be behind some cases of type 2 diabetes, indicating the condition could potentially be contracted through blood transfusions and organ transplants, or passed to children before birth.
While a lot more research needs to be done to determine if the risks to the general public are in any way significant, the find has established a new area of study in how the disease develops and spreads inside individuals.
Led by researchers from the University of Texas, the study used mice to test whether clumps of a misfolded protein called amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) taken from a pancreas can spread and produce diabetes-like symptoms when transferred between individuals.
Unlike its sister disease type 1 diabetes, type 2 – or diabetes mellitus – is a condition that forms over time, reducing a person's ability to produce or respond to insulin.
The disease is far more common that type 1, affecting just under half a billion people worldwide, but its exact causes are still vague. Researchers have identified genetic and environmental factors, but there is still a lot to learn about how many people develop the condition.
Toxic clumps of misfolded proteins similar to those in neurological disorders such as Alzheimer's disease have previously been associated with type 2 diabetes. But finding a link isn't the same thing as identifying a cause, so researchers have now taken a closer look at the amyloid proteins in the pancreas to trace their pathology.
Proteins such as IAPP can twist into forms that are more likely to clump as a result of mutations, which has al Continue reading

Polyphagia: The Relationship Between Hunger And Diabetes

Is hunger a sign of diabetes?
If you don’t have diabetes, could hunger be one of the signs of diabetes?
Is being hungry all of the time (polyphagia) a sign that you should go get checked for diabetes? After all, polyphagia is one of the “3 Poly’s,” is part of a triad of symptoms indicating diabetes. In addition to polyphagia, or increased hunger, the symptoms of polyuria and polydipsia are also signs of diabetes.
Susan’s story
Susan was constantly hunger. She never seemed to feel satisfied as she snacked off and on all day long from increasing hunger pangs. Susan’s hunger had gotten progressively worse over the past year.
She noticed that she had been going to the bathroom more frequently, and wasn’t sure if she might be getting a urinary tract infection. Oddly enough, she hadn’t gained any weight. She had even lost a few pounds. She visited her primary care provider, and relayed her symptoms to the nurse.
The doctor recommended that Susan be checked for several different conditions, but the one that stuck out in Susan’s mind was diabetes. She had an aunt with diabetes. She remembered how sick she got, and how she’d spend her days in the dialysis unit. Susan didn’t want diabetes, at least the kind that she knew about from her aunt.
When Susan contacted TheDiabetesCouncil, she was concerned that she did indeed have diabetes. She was waiting for her test results, but she was eager to find out if hunger was a sure sign that she has diabetes?
I suggest reading the following articles:
We decided to look into it for Susan. Let’s see what we found.
Polyphag Continue reading

The Professor’s Guide to Type 1 Diabetes

For students –
It’s that exciting time of the year – back to school! Whether you’re heading into college as a freshman, or returning for another year at your university, you are heading into a time where you need to be independent and assertive about your health. Unlike elementary and secondary schools, colleges have no responsibility to identify disabilities. Therefore, it is the student’s job to let his or her school know about a Type 1 diabetes diagnosis in order to find out what accommodations are available. This is your choice in the end though. (Read about one US student’s opinion on applying for disability.)
Whether or not you apply for disability, you should let your professors know about your Type 1 and what to expect through the year. Here are some essential tips to get your professors up to speed on Type 1 diabetes.
Professor’s Guide to Type 1 Diabetes –
What is Type 1 diabetes?
Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that occurs when a person’s own immune system destroys the insulin-producing cells in their pancreas. People with Type 1 are insulin-dependent for life, and must manually give themselves insulin through multiple daily injections or an insulin pump. They must carefully balance insulin, food, exercise and other factors in order to prevent or minimize serious short and long-term complications due to out-of-range blood sugar levels.
If you have not heard much about Type 1, here are some other fast facts –
T1D is not caused by a lack of exercise or eating too much sugar
T1D is not contagious
There is no cure for T1D at the present mo Continue reading

Binge Eating Disorders

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Binge eating is recognised as an eating disorder in which people feel compelled to overeat and feel powerless to be able to control their eating pattern.
Binge eating may result from psychological reasons but can also result from rises and falls in blood glucose levels from eating food with high carbohydrate content.
What counts as binge eating?
If you eat large amounts of food in a short period of time without feeling you are able to control your eating, this is a sign of binge eating.
Compulsive eating such as constantly needing to snack on high calorie foods between meal times is also a sign of binge eating.
What can cause binge eating to take place?
There are a number of psychological reasons which can trigger binge eating. The NHS state that around 50% of people that binge eat have had depression at some point in their life.
Negative feelings including being stressed, anxious, sad, helpless, guilty or bored can cause people to eat as a conscious or unconscious way of momentarily blocking out the negative emotion. In some cases people may eat to amplify the negative feelings.
Binge eating may also occur in people trying to lose weight through methods such as greatly restricted calorie content or missing meals, which can lead to intense hunger and feeling a need to binge eat.
It is common for binge eating to lead to other negative feelings such as guilt, regret or further loss of control shortly after eating which can trigger a vicious circle of continued binge eating.
How can hunger follow after recently eating?
It is not unusual to experience hunger soon after ea Continue reading