What Is A Healthy, Balanced Diet For Diabetes?

What is a healthy, balanced diet for diabetes?

Whether you are living with diabetes or not, eating well is important.
The foods you choose to eat in your daily diet make a difference not only to managing diabetes, but also to how well you feel and how much energy you have every day.
How much you need to eat and drink is based on your age, gender, how active you are and the goals you are looking to achieve.
Portion sizes have grown in recent years, as the plates and bowls we use have got bigger. Use smaller crockery to cut back on your portion sizes, while making the food on your plate look bigger.
No single food contains all the essential nutrients you need in the right proportion. That’s why you need to consume foods from each of the main food groups to eat well.
Fruit and vegetables
Naturally low in fat and calories and packed full of vitamins, minerals and fibre, fruit and vegetables add flavour and variety to every meal.They may also help protect against stroke, heart disease, high blood pressure and some cancers.
How often?
Everyone should eat at least five portions a day. Fresh, frozen, dried and canned fruit in juice and canned vegetables in water all count. Go for a rainbow of colours to get as wide a range of vitamins and minerals as possible.
Try:
adding an apple, banana, pear, or orange to your child’s lunchbox
sliced melon or grapefruit topped with low-fat yogurt, or a handful of berries, or fresh dates, apricots or prunes for breakfast
carrots, peas and green beans mixed up in a pasta bake
adding an extra handful of vegetables to your dishes when cooking – peas to rice, spinach to lamb or onions to ch Continue reading

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Everything You Need to Know About a Diabetic Diet

Not only are 86 million Americans prediabetic, but 90% of them don't even know they have it, the Centers for Disease Control reports. What's more, doctors diagnose as many as 1.5 million new cases of diabetes each year, according to the American Diabetes Association.
Whether you're at risk, prediabetic or following a diabetic diet as suggested by your doctor, a few simple strategies can help control blood sugar and potentially reverse the disease entirely. Plus, implementing just a few of these dietary changes can have other beneficial effects like weight loss, all without sacrificing flavor or feeling deprived.
First, let's start with the basics.
What is diabetes?
There are two main forms of diabetes: type 1 and type 2. Type 1 is an autoimmune disease that's usually diagnosed during childhood. Environmental and genetic factors can lead to the destruction of the beta cells in the pancreas that produce insulin. That's the hormone responsible for delivering glucose (sugar) to your cells for metabolism and storage.
In contrast, type 2 diabetes is often diagnosed in adulthood and caused by a variety of lifestyle factors like obesity, physical inactivity and high cholesterol. Typically, type 2 diabetics still have functioning beta cells, meaning that they're still producing insulin. However, the peripheral tissues become less sensitive to the hormone, and the liver produces more glucose, causing high blood sugar. When left unmanaged, type 2 diabetics may stop producing insulin altogether.
While you may have some symptoms of high blood sugar (nausea, lethargy, frequent thirst and Continue reading

Staph Bacteria May Be a Trigger for Type 2 Diabetes

A growing body of research indicates that exposure to bacteria and viruses affects one’s likelihood for developing a number of chronic health conditions. Increasingly, scientists are uncovering proof that certain features of the human microbiome may be a root cause of obesity and Type 2 diabetes.
A new study published this week adds to this evidence, implicating staph bacteria as one potential cause of the disease.
For the study, published in the journal mBio, a team of microbiologists at the University of Iowa Carver College of Medicine exposed rabbits to the toxin produced by Staphylococcus aureus bacteria. The researchers found that exposure to high levels of this toxin caused the animals to develop symptoms of the disease, including insulin resistance, glucose intolerance and inflammation.
Their study suggests that drugs that eradicate or neutralize staph bacteria in the body may hold some promise as a treatment for Type 2 diabetes, which affects close to 30 million people in the U.S.
Because obesity is one of the common risk factors for the condition, the authors suggest extreme weight gain has a cascade effect: Obesity alters the microbiome and makes a person—or in this case, a rabbit—more susceptible to staph bacteria. Then a higher than normal exposure to toxins produced by the bacteria will trigger the disease.
Prior research has found that the toxins produced by staph bacteria disrupt normal immune system functioning, which can result in sepsis, inflammation of the heart and toxic shock, all of which can be fatal. But this new study shows staph toxins also a Continue reading

PredictBGL is a diabetes management app predicting fluctuations in blood sugar levels

A chronic disorder that touches more than 1.5 million Australians, diabetes requires careful and lifelong management.
Seeking a way to streamline the diabetes management process for himself and his daughter led entrepreneur Simon Carter to create PredictBGL, an insulin dosage app for people for Type 1 diabetes. The app allows users track their food intake and exercise, meshing it together to calculate insulin dosages and predict fluctuations in blood sugar levels.
Typically, Carter explained, parents of children with Type 1 diabetes patients have to buy expensive devices such as glucose trackers to help monitor blood sugar levels. The device, he said, sits under the skin and measures the blood sugar level of the person every five minutes, notifying parents if the user’s blood sugar levels gets too low.
“It’s $5,000 to buy one and $2,000 a year to run it,” Carter said.
The device is predominantly used to monitor people with Type 1 diabetes overnight, a time when patients can be at higher risk due to their blood sugar level dropping while they sleep. This risk factor, Carter explained, is even higher in children.
“If they have too much insulin overnight they’re not aware if their blood sugar gets low, and can actually die overnight. It’s something that is a huge concern to both parents of kids and adults with Type 1 diabetes,” he said.
“You never really know what’s going to happen when you inject. You’re really relying on getting the right amount and the right sleep. And often you have to take a ballpark guess of the amount of insulin to take.”
Finding Continue reading

Diabetes Diet: 7 Foods That Can Help Control Your Blood Sugar Levels Naturally

Your diet plays an important role in managing diabetes. In fact, your diet and lifestyle are important aspects of diabetes management and treatment. One reason is that the food you eat on a day to day basis has a direct impact on your blood sugar levels. For instance, high carb foods raise your blood sugar levels. The digestive system breaks down the digestible ones into sugar, which enters the blood. But then again, not all carbohydrates are bad. Complex carbohydrates like whole grains take longer to digest while simple carbs like white flour and refined sugar may cause sudden spikes in your blood sugar levels. Diabetics tend to have high blood sugar levels due to the inefficiency of insulin, a hormone secreted by the pancreas, to control them. Here are six foods that can help in controlling your blood sugar levels naturally.
1. Barley
A study done by Lund University in Sweden states that eating a special mixture of dietary fibres found in barley can help reduce your appetite as well as high blood sugar levels. "Whole grains like oats, brown rice or millets like jowar and ragi contain both soluble and insoluble fibre that helps with sugar control," shares Consultant Nutritionist Dr. Rupali Datta.
The dietary fibers in whole grains can help control blood sugar. Photo Credit: Istock
2. Bananas
Accordingly to a study done by the University College Dublin in Ireland, resistant starch found in foods such as bananas, potatoes, grains and legumes, may benefit your health by aiding blood sugar control, supporting gut health and enhancing satiety. This is a form of starch that is n Continue reading