Diabetes Food Advice You Should — And Shouldn’t — Follow To Manage Your Blood Sugar

Diabetes Food Advice You Should — and Shouldn’t — Follow to Manage Your Blood Sugar

Building a good diabetes diet can be tough. Not only can the new food restrictions be difficult to cope with emotionally, but the often-conflicting advice you might find online about what food is good for diabetes and bad for diabetes can complicate matters even more.
That confusion ends now. We turned to registered dietitians across the country to collect the very best and worst advice out there. This way, you’ll know exactly what constitutes the best diet for type 2 diabetes.
Though you should think of this as your guide for creating a type 2 diabetes diet, if you still have any questions or concerns about what you should be eating to best manage your blood sugar, you can always connect with a registered dietitian who’s a certified diabetes educator. You can find such a person at EatRight.org.
“Talk to a registered dietitian to create a personalized nutrition care plan to help manage your blood sugar throughout the day, prevent further health complications, and feel your best,” says Samina Qureshi, RDN, who is in private practice in Houston.
Now, the truth about what you really should be eating for diabetes — and more.
Good Advice: Fill Half Your Plate With Veggies
When it comes to managing diabetes, eating your vegetables is key. “By making half your plate vegetables, you are naturally consuming more dietary fiber,” says Emily Kyle, RDN, who is in private practice in Rochester, New York. “We know fiber is good for regulating blood sugar and keeping us fuller for longer.”
Bad Advice: Check Your Blood Sugar Once a Day
When you have diabetes, regularly che Continue reading

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Aromatherapy and Essential Oils for Diabetes

Home Page > Aromatherapy Articles & Guides > Essential Oil Uses and Applications > Aromatherapy and Essential Oils for Diabetes
Aromatherapy and Essential Oils for Diabetes
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention , 8.3% of the population in the United States has diabetes, and the percentage is predicted to increase dramatically. Of those that have diabetes, 27% of these individuals aren't even aware that they have this life-threatening disease. [" Diabetes - At a Glance " CDC.gov. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Web: Accessed 23 June 2013.]
The statistics on the CDC's site are alarming and indicative of a growing diabetes epidemic in the United States and throughout the world.
Effectively stabilizing and controlling blood sugar levels as closely to "normal" is a key goal to ensure the minimization of diabetic complications like diabetic peripheral neuropathy, diabetic retinopathy/blindness, heart attack and kidney failure.
According to a number of online sources and books, the misinformation given to diabetics by well-intentioned doctors and diabetes associations may contribute to diabetic complications --even when diabetics are doing their best to follow the medical advice they are given by their doctors and health practitioners.
It's no wonder that a number of diabetics and pre-diabetics are frightened, discouraged and outraged and are considering holistic aromatherapy as a possibility. Diabetes routinely ask me (a) if there are essential oils or holistic aromatherapy practices that are beneficial to pre-diabetic and diabetic indivi Continue reading

HbA1c, a diabetes marker for the past and for the future?

HbA1c, a diabetes marker for the past and for the future?
Ever since large clinical outcome studies in the 1990s demonstrated that tight blood glucose control, as measured by glycated haemoglobin (HbA1c), is able to slow down the progress of diabetes-related complications, HbA1c is regarded as the gold standard to evaluate the clinical efficacy of new anti-diabetes compounds in clinical trials as well as the most important biomarker to guide the individual treatment of patients with diabetes. Furthermore, much more recently (since 2010), various diabetes societies and the World Health Organization (WHO) have accepted the use of HbA1c in screenings to diagnose diabetes, mainly type 2 diabetes (T2D). Despite its long-time status as gold standard parameter to assess diabetes therapy, many limitations of the HbA1c-value have been discussed in literature and experts in the field of diabetes are now saying that HbA1c alone is not enough and other parameters have to be considered for drug approval and treatment success. In this text the strengths and limitations of HbA1c and its role in future diabetes therapy are discussed.
Discovered by Iranian doctor Samuel Rahbar in 1968, HbA1c is a minor component of human haemoglobin formed by condensation of glucose to alpha- and beta-chains of the haemoglobin Hb A variant. In principle, the higher the blood glucose concentration, the more haemoglobin will be glycated. As the lifespan of red blood cells in which the haemoglobin is present is 120 days, HbA1c provides an estimate of the average glucose control in a human being over that p Continue reading

Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Mood in Women with Type 2 Diabetes

Vitamin D Supplementation Improves Mood in Women with Type 2 Diabetes
1Loyola University Chicago, Health Sciences Campus, 2160 S. First Avenue, Maywood, IL 60153, USA
2Advocate Medical Group, 3825 Highland Avenue, Suite 400, Downers Grove, IL 60515, USA
Correspondence should be addressed to Sue Penckofer ; ude.cul@okcneps
Received 28 April 2017; Accepted 27 July 2017; Published 7 September 2017
Copyright 2017 Sue Penckofer et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Objective. The aim of this study was to determine the effect of vitamin D supplementation on improving mood (depression and anxiety) and health status (mental and physical) in women with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methods. Fifty women with T2DM and significant depressive symptomology were enrolled into the Sunshine Study, where weekly vitamin D supplementation (ergocalciferol, 50,000 IU) was given to all participants for six months. The main outcomes included (1) depression (Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression, CES-D, and Patient Health Questionnaire, PHQ-9), (2) anxiety (State-Trait Anxiety), and (3) health status (Short Form, SF-12). Results. Forty-six women (92%) completed all visits. There was a significant decrease in depression (CES-D and PHQ-9,
). An improvement in mental health status (SF-12,
) was also found. After controlling for covariates (race, season of enrollment, baseline vitamin D, baseline depr Continue reading

7 Ways to Beat the Diabetes Blues

Written by Susan McQuillan, MS, RDN, CDN
Up to 29% of people with diabetes also suffer from major depression. Those who have type 2 diabetes and use insulin have higher rates of depression than those with type 1 or with type 2 not using insulin. Women are almost twice as likely as men to succumb to major depression, which hits hardest between the ages of 30 and 59. If you become depressed, it can affect your ability to manage your own health. Heres what you can do to control your emotions before they control you.
Talk to your family and friends about what it means to have diabetes so they understand your needs, concerns and frustrations. Describe what it feels like when your blood sugar goes out of range. Let them know exactly how they can help. Explain that you are not always able to control your blood sugar , even when youre doing everything right, so you may need some empathy. If you are changing your diet and making healthier food choices, you may want to ask them to join you, and keep junk food out of the house. Try to find an exercise buddy.
Taking steps to manage your blood sugar levels and generally taking good care of yourself is obviously essential for your own physical and mental health, but staying in control also helps strengthen your relationships, because it puts less pressure on your loved ones, who may worry about you or have to help take care of you. When you are consistent, and your blood sugar routinely stays within an acceptable range, diabetes can become just one more thing in your life; it doesnt have to be the big thing that takes over your lif Continue reading