Diabetes Diet Information
Foundation for Healing

If you're doctor has ignored, or de-emphasized, the importance of your diet in controlling your blood sugar, you may think I'm crazy, but please at least consider the diabetes diet information I'll share with you on this page, before continuing to treat your diabetes with drugs, while virtually ignoring your diet.

If you understand the role of diet in causing diabetes, you'll understand why using drugs, while ignoring diet, is a mistake of major proportions.

It is widely accepted by the medical community that diabetes is caused by what is called "poor lifestyle choices". The most deadly of these choices is our choice of an unhealthy diet.

The problem is the the typical diet today in most "western", or "developed" countries is unhealthy. There are two major reasons for this. The first is that the typical diet is very high in refined starches and sugars, and the second is that it is very low in variety. As we briefly consider this diet, I believe you'll understand what I mean.

The "classic American Diet" is based on meat, potatoes, and refined foods made from white flour. As our income has increased, so has our consumption of these staples.

But the problem is, as food production has moved from local family farms into agribusiness, the nutritional value of our staple foods has steadily decreased, and the variety of foods we enjoy eating has contracted regularly, as well.

For most of human history we ate hundreds, if not thousands of foods on a regular basis, but not excessive amounts of any one food. Yet in the past fifty years we've come to rely almost exclusively, on less than fifty foods for the majority of our calories and nutrients. The overall effect of this dietary change has been devastating to our health.

The increase in type 2 diabetes is a predicable result of our current diet. If you'd like an in depth understanding of why I make this assertion, I'd highly recommend a book called Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. Although called a cookbook, this book is far more than that. It provides an extensive education in nutrition, and how it affects our health.

The important piece of diabetes diet information you need to understand is these changes are fueling the skyrocketing rates of type 2 diabetes in the western world.

So now that you have a better, although somewhat superficial, understanding of what is causing the problem, the next question is, what changes need to be made to avoid or reverse diabetes?

We'll return to answer that question shortly, but before doing so, let's get a basic understanding of the conventional medical approach to a "good" diabetes diet.

Diabetes Diet Information
Conventional Approach

Foods within each groups may be exchanged freely for each other, so if you prefer green beans to brussel sprouts, you can exchange brussel sprouts for green beans in your meal plans.

However, foods from different groups can't be exchanged, so if you want dessert, but you've already eaten all your dessert exchanges for the day, you can't skip those green beans and eat dessert instead, since the green beans aren't in the dessert exchange group.

Their diabetes diet information focuses on total number of calories consumed, and on eating a "balanced diet" according to the government's idea of balanced based on the "food pyramid".

For a complete understanding of the diet along with detailed lists of the different food exchanges, visit the mayo clinic's diabetes exchange diet information page by clicking on the preceding link.

Diabetes Diet Information
Understanding Nutrition

This is why a foundational key to preventing, and reversing, high blood sugar is discovering truly effective diabetes diet information. Simply looking at calories, and balanced nutrition doesn't necessarily lead to balanced blood sugar.

However, there is one measurement of how our bodies use the calories found in food that will lead to balanced blood sugar. It is called the Glycemic Load.

To understand glycemic load, you will first need to understand the glycemic index, since it is related to the measurement of glycemic load.

The glycemic index is simply a measurement of how quickly your body breaks down a specific food into glucose. If you think about it, you'll quickly understand that only foods containing sugars or starches would have a glycemic index, since those are the only foods containing sugar.

If you look for a food such as olive oil on the glycemic index, you probably won't find it, since oils by definition contain fats, not carbohydrates.

So they don't have a glycemic index, or if they are listed on a glycemic index chart their glycemic index will be listed as 0 since they are never converted to sugar in the body.

For an extensive list of common foods with their corresponding numbers for both glycemic index, and glycemic load, visit this page for further information and the ratings for almost all common foods.

If you truly want to understand these concepts thoroughly, you'll want to explore these pages in depth, and possibly print off the charts for future reference.

When doctors and researchers first developed the glycemic index, they assumed that if people limited their food choices to those with medium or low numbers on the glycemic index, they'd be able to control and normalize their blood sugar.

However, after several years of further research, they developed the glycemic load. This is not only a measurement of the food's glycemic index, but also the amount of available carbohydrates in a standard serving of the food.

This is more practical for blood sugar control because some foods with a high number on the glycemic index still have low glycemic loads as long as they are eaten in moderate amounts, so they won't raise your blood sugar quickly.

One example of this is a large carrot. It has a high number on the glycemic index, around the same as that of spaghetti or other pasta, but its glycemic load is far lower than that of pasta, since the carbohydrates in pasta are far more concentrated in a regular serving, than those of carrots. So the glycemic load of carrots is only two, while the glycemic load of pasta is 16.

According to Dr. Whitaker, a leading integrative doctor from California...

Hundreds of studies on the effects of a low GI(glycemic index), or GL(glycemic load) diet have been conducted, most of them focused on blood sugar. One typical study, a meta-analysis of clinical trials involving more than 350 patients, revealed that a low GL diet improved both long- and short-term management of blood sugar levels.

Dr. Whitaker isn't the only doctor recommending this type of diet. The South Beach Diet, developed by Dr. Agatston, a heart doctor based in South Florida, and PACE, Rediscover Your Natural Fitness by Dr. Al Sears, another heart doctor both recommend similar diets for their overweight heart patients, or those who are at risk for heart disease due to obesity, and blood sugar control problems.

Both of these men have written books explaining their diets in great detail. They might well be available for reading from your public library, but if not, they can be economically obtained from Amazon as well, by clicking on the ads to the left and right respectively.

• It takes you where you are and provides needed guidelines for both diet and exercise to help you normalize and stabilize your blood sugar naturally.
  
• It takes far less time for exercise, while still enabling you to achieve physical fitness and improve your overall health. Nonetheless, it does emphasize the importance of exercise, and help you find an exercise you can make a part of your regular life so that you are able to lose excess weight. Another necessary key to controlling blood sugar and curing diabetes naturally.
  
• It helps you understand how to apply the principles of low glycemic load eating to everyday life without allowing it to monopolize your whole life.
  
• Rather than focusing on short term "diet" mentality, it teaches long term life style changes that will improve your overall health, and enable you to far better enjoy the extra years of life you'll gain, by making those changes.

However, any low glycemic load diet will enable you to achieve blood sugar control naturally and prevent or reverse high blood sugar, if you practice it regularly.

Consistent low glycemic load eating, is a major key to any natural diabetes cure. With this effective diabetes diet in place, lowering your blood sugar naturally becomes possible, and once lowered, blood sugar balance can be effectively maintained.

Diabetes Diet Information
Conclusions

Nonetheless, a low glycemic load diet, such as those presented by Dr. Al Sears or Dr. Arthur Agatston, both prominent cardiologists, will lower blood sugar naturally. When integrated with the other keys to lowering blood sugar naturally, this type of diabetes Diet information, when applied, will provide the foundational steps for an effective type 2 diabetes cure.

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