Eating With Diabetes: Smart Snacking

Eating with Diabetes: Smart Snacking

20 Diabetes-Friendly Snack Ideas
Whether you want to lose weight or simply eat healthier, enjoying a couple of snacks each day is a smart habit for many people. Eating a planned snack between meals can help curb your hunger (and therefore prevent overeating at mealtime) and also increase your energy levels when you need a boost. Snacks offer an additional benefit for people with type 2 diabetes: They can help optimize your blood glucose control. So if you haven't incorporated snacks into your diabetes meal plan yet, now may be the time to start. Here's what you need to know to snack smart, along with some carbohydrate-controlled snack ideas you can try today!
3 Considerations When Planning Snacks
The number of snacks a person with diabetes should eat during the day depends largely on your eating preferences, your weight-management goals, and the timing of your major meals. People with diabetes can eat snacks throughout the day for a number of reasons—simply enjoying a mid-morning snack or planning them into their day for better blood glucose control. Exactly how many snacks you should eat—and when you eat them—is very individualized. Meeting with a registered dietitian or certified diabetes educator is the best way to make sure your diabetes meal plan meets your needs. However, here are a few basic guidelines that can be helpful when planning snacks.
How many hours pass between your meals? In general, people with diabetes who want to optimize blood glucose control should not go longer than five hours without eating. If you consistently eat your main meals every 4 to 5 Continue reading

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10 Symptoms Of Diabetes That Are So Subtle You Might Totally Miss Them

Diabetes is a chronic condition where your blood sugar (a.k.a., glucose) is too high, often because your body doesn’t make enough insulin (the hormone that helps you process sugar) or process it well. While you might think you’d recognize something’s up, many people don’t. “Many times when sugars are not extremely high, you may not have symptoms,” says Poorani Goundan, M.D., an endocrinologist at Boston Medical Center. “Of the total diabetics in the U.S., a huge proportion are undiagnosed.” That’s why, she says, everyone over the age of 45 and younger people who have risk factors—including being overweight, having a family history of diabetes, or having gestational diabetes during pregnancy—should be screened regularly.
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In the meantime, even noticeable diabetes symptoms are often mild and can easily be written off as something else. Here are a few common but sneaky symptoms of diabetes every woman should know about:
As with other sign of diabetes, this classic symptom is caused by excess sugar circulating in your body. “When your blood sugar is high, your body is trying to dump it out of your system. Water follows sugar, so you end up having high-volume urine loss,” says Vouyiouklis Kellis, M.D., an endocrinologist at Cleveland Clinic. If you notice you’re suddenly peeing more often and in greater volumes for no real reason—especially if you’re waking up a few times during the night to take a whiz—it’s time to talk to your doctor, say both Goun Continue reading

Diabetes is even deadlier than we thought, study suggests

Nearly four times as many Americans may die of diabetes as indicated on death certificates, a rate that would bump the disease up from the seventh-leading cause of death to No. 3, according to estimates in a recent study.
Researchers and advocates say that more-precise figures are important as they strengthen the argument that more should be done to prevent and treat diabetes, which affects the way sugar is metabolized in the body.
“We argue diabetes is responsible for 12 percent of deaths in the U.S., rather than 3.3 percent that death certificates indicate,” lead study author Andrew Stokes of the Boston University School of Public Health said in an interview.
About 29 million Americans have diabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. There are two forms of the disease: Type 1, in which the pancreas makes insufficient insulin, and the more common Type 2, in which the body has difficulty producing and using insulin.
Using findings from two large national surveys, the study looked mainly at A1C levels (average blood sugar over two to three months) and patient-reported diabetes. In the latest study, researchers compared death rates of diabetics who had participated in these surveys to information on their death certificates.
The authors also found that diabetics had a 90 percent higher mortality rate over a five-year period than nondiabetics. This held true when controlling for age, smoking, race and other factors.
“These findings point to an urgent need for strategies to prevent diabetes in the general population. For those already affected, Continue reading

Fighting Statin-Induced Diabetes with CoQ10

Statins are cholesterol-lowering drugs sold under trade names such as Lipitor® and Crestor®.
They have been shown to benefit people at risk for heart disease caused by elevated LDL-cholesterol and/or C-reactive protein.
For appropriate patients, statin drugs reduce cardiovascular death and disability rates.1-3
But despite these benefits, evidence suggests that statins, especially high doses of potent statins, may increase the risk, especially in older patients, of developing diabetes.3-6
Compelling data reveals that supplementing with CoQ10 can significantly reduce these glucose control issues.
Facts about Statins and Diabetes
Studies show that some statins, such as rosuvastatin (Crestor®), are associated with a 27% increased risk of developing new-onset type II diabetes.7 This is just one of many studies showing this harmful connection.4-6
One meta-analysis that utilized results from 13 statin studies involving more than 91,000 participants demonstrated an across-the-board increased diabetes risk of 9%,8 and found the highest risk in trials involving older subjects. Another meta-analysis showed that those taking higher doses of statins had a 12% higher risk of developing diabetes compared with subjects receiving “moderate” doses.9
These two alarming studies have made it apparent that older patients on more intensive statin regimens are at the greatest risk of developing diabetes from their treatment.3,10 Naturally, this poses a dilemma for anyone who is on, or considering starting, statin therapy. Is lowering the risk of cardiovascular disease worth the risk of deve Continue reading

Carbohydrates — Part of a Healthful Diabetes Diet

A common nutrition myth is that individuals with diabetes need to avoid carbohydrates. While individuals with diabetes must be mindful of how much carbohydrates they eat, they don't need to avoid it altogether. Carbohydrates are the body's main source of fuel and are necessary to maintain proper cellular function. The type of carbohydrates and portion size are what matter most.
There are three types of carbohydrates: starches, sugars and fiber. Starches are found naturally in foods such as bread, cereal, rice, crackers, pasta, potatoes, peas, corn and beans. Sugars are found naturally in foods including fruits and milk and are also concentrated in processed foods such as candy, cake and soda. Fiber is the roughage in plant foods and helps keep the digestive tract healthy. Soluble fiber, found in foods including oatmeal and fruit, can help maintain a healthy cholesterol level.
Individuals with diabetes should choose most of their carbohydrates from nutrient-rich whole foods such as fruits and vegetables, beans, whole grains and dairy products. Sweets and sugary beverages should be saved for special occasions. And, spreading carbohydrates evenly throughout the day helps prevents spikes and dips in blood sugar. A registered dietitian nutritionist can create a specific meal plan that harmonizes individual preferences with the special needs of someone with diabetes.
To get a general idea of how much carbohydrates to eat, consider someone on a 2,000-calorie meal plan. For 2,000 calories, an RDN may recommend that one meal contain about 45 to 60 grams of carbohydrates. Carbohydrat Continue reading