Diabetes and Diet

Diabetes Information Network

Diet and Diabetes

Most of the food you consume must be converted into sugar (glucose) before it can be used as fuel for energy production. The sugar your digestive system sends into your bloodstream is intended to be transported to the muscles where it can be used to produce energy. Insulin is the hormone that acts like a gatekeeper. If insulin is operating normally, the sugar in the blood is allowed to pass into the muscles where it is burned to produce energy.

But in diabetics the body no longer responds to it’s own insulin in a normal way. As a result, the sugar in the blood can’t move into the muscles. Sugar backs up in the bloodstream (high blood sugar or hyperglycemia). The sugar that is normally seen by the body as fuel, now becomes toxic and fuels complications throughout the body. In addition, in a frustrated attempt to boost the transfer of sugar into the muscles, the body increases it’s production of insulin to dangerous levels that can damage various tissues throughout the body.

Obesity makes diabetes much worse and is a key risk factor for type II diabetes. In fact, eighty percent of type II diabetics are obese at the time of their diagnosis. But do you need to lose 50lbs to have a positive effect on your disease? The good news is that even a small 5lb weight loss can markedly improve blood sugar control no matter how heavy you are initially. And the heavier you are, the easier it will be to lose those first few pounds.

A high fat diet (particularly one high in saturated animal fat) increases glucose intolerance. Reduce saturated animal fat intake and you improve glucose control. By replacing saturated animal fats with mono and polyunsaturated fats (olive oil is best), and you can reduce serum glucose levels.

The Fiber Story

Diabetes is very rare in Asian and African villages where an extremely high fiber diet is consumed. While in the US, where a low fiber diet is the rule, diabetes is far too common.

Studies have shown that a high fiber, high legume diet (rich in beans) improves glucose control and reduces the level of fats in the blood. Studies have found that a high soluble fiber diet (up to 40g/day) including legume fiber plus green vegetables improves glucose tolerance.

Also, a high fiber diet improves glucose tolerance by slowing stomach emptying. As an added benefit, a high fiber diet has been shown to reduce blood cholesterol levels substantially. Perhaps you’ve noticed cereal commercials that now promote the use of oat fiber for lowering total cholesterol.

For diabetics fat is the real culprit. A high fat, low carbohydrate diet can actually induce diabetes in otherwise healthy mice! When they were switched to a high carbohydrate, low fat diet, the blood sugar levels of the mice returned to normal.

In humans, a meal rich in animal fat eaten by healthy volunteers before a blood sugar test dramatically increases blood sugar levels often into the abnormal diabetic range!

Humans are simply not equipped to eat animal foods. Meat-eating animals have small salivary glands, fat-digesting enzymes in their saliva, acidic saliva, sharp flesh tearing teeth, extremely strong stomach acid and short intestinal tracts.

On the other hand, fruit-eating animals have large salivary glands, no fat-digesting enzymes in their saliva, alkaline saliva, flat grinding teeth, weaker stomach acid and a long intestinal tract. Humans, with our grinding molars and long intestinal tracts, clearly belong to the fruit-eating group. This is why over the past thirty years the vegetarian diet has emerged as the single most healthy diet available.

We simply need to give our bodies the right fuel. Would you buy a new Mercedes and fill the gas tank with paint thinner? Of course not. You’d only use the fuel the car was designed for – the fuel recommended in the owner’s manual. And that’s exactly what you should do with your body – give it the proper fuel – the fuel it was designed for.

Lower fat in our diets means less indigestion, clearer thinking and more energy. And don’t think that you need to eat rich fatty high protein foods for their protein content. Research has shown that as little as 20-25 grams of protein may be sufficient for a fully grown adult if the remainder of the diet is otherwise adequate. Some researchers put the minimum number even lower.

Unfortunately the body has no way to easily store protein, so it must be processed immediately by the kidneys. Excessive protein consumption stresses the kidneys whose job it is to excrete the metabolic wastes proteins create.

When a diabetic consumes too much protein they worsen their already increased odds of suffering kidney problems. Diabetes is the number one cause of kidney failure in the United States, and the majority of patients on kidney dialysis are diabetics. Reducing protein intake may slow or even partially reverse any decline in kidney health.

Although widely ignored until the late 1970s, a high fiber diet has been found to prevent colon cancer, increase cholesterol control, promote weight loss and smooth intestinal operation as well as increase serum glucose control.

A high-fiber diet can:

Improve glucose control and blood lipid levels

Improve glucose tolerance by slowing stomach emptying

Reduce plasma cholesterol levels

Reduce insulin requirements in diabetics – 60 percent discontinued insulin completely while 40 percent were able to reduce dosage levels.

Fiber should be a mainstay of any diabetic’s diet. A diet rich in soluble fiber can improve several aspects of diabetic control. In one study, seven out of eight diabetics improved their blood sugar control simply by increasing the level of fiber in their diets.

Soluble fiber is best for diabetics. You should consider consuming between 40-50 grams per day. Eat your fill of beans, pea fiber, psyllium (as in Metamucil), pectins, gums, apples, carrots and oats.

In addition, a high fiber diet reduces total cholesterol and may protect against retinopathy. (People with the highest fiber intake had the least diabetic retinopathy)

When forensic pathologists studied the stomach contents of bodies discovered in ancient tar pools in Africa they found that the fiber intake of our distant ancestors was somewhere around 100-200 grams per day! Clearly we were intended to eat much more fiber than we now consume.

Truth is, for millions of years our predecessors consumed enormous quantities of fiber. We have evolved as high fiber eaters. It’s only reasonable to expect us to have metabolic problems when we attempt to suddenly change this long established pattern. Remember - there is little or no fiber in animal foods. Fiber is only present in plant foods such as fruits and vegetables.

Sources of Fiber

Beans are an excellent source of fiber, and also contain generous quantities of vitamins and minerals. They taste great, are inexpensive, extremely versatile and come in a wide variety of shapes and flavors. Of course intestinal gas may be a problem, particularly at first. If you do have a problem, be patient but if the gas persists, you may want to explore using a product like “Beano” which can block the formation of intestinal gas before it gets started.

Water-insoluble fiber which is found in wheat bran and vegetables does not dissolve in water but can absorb and suspend water. It can add bulk to the stool and increases the efficiency of digestive elimination of wastes.

The body deposits it’s liquid waste products into the colon. The fiber there is supposed to absorb these toxic wastes and remove them from the body. You might want to think of fiber as the body’s garbage man. Unfortunately, if there is little or no fiber present in the colon when the wastes arrive, some of the waste products will be re-absorbed into the bloodstream where they can contaminate the blood and give rise to a number of common health problems.

Half of Americans have digestive problems, many of which can be can be traced back to a lack of dietary fiber. Many Americans consume almost no fiber at all (the meat and potatoes and/or fast food eaters). Most Americans consume less than 10 grams of fiber per day while major health organizations routinely recommend a daily consumption of from 25 to 50 grams.

Pectins are water-soluble and include beans and some vegetables, as well as apples and other fruits including citrus fruits and grains such as oats. Gums and mucilage also contain pectin, which helps lower cholesterol by binding with bile acids and extracting cholesterol from the blood stream.

One caution with fiber: if you’re unaccustomed to eating fiber rich foods, start up slowly. Take small amounts at first and then when you’ve adapted to the increased intake you can further increase your consumption. If you start taking in too much too quickly you may experience troublesome gas and abdominal bloating or worse - diarrhea.

Back