Sugar is known to be the main cause of the rise of hypoglycemia and diabetes especially type 2 diabetes . By itself, sugar is important for our body as it provides the necessary boost of energy we need to function everyday. However, consuming too much of it and too often can put a tremendous strain to your organs and those glands that are doing the work to control blood sugar levels.
The glands that we refer to are your pancreas which help to produce juices to aid your digestion by breaking down the food that you consume everyday. They also produced the hormone insulin to help control blood sugar levels and allows your body to use and store the energy that comes from processing the food intake. So if you do not suffer from pre-diabetes or do not have hypoglycemia, and do not take too much sugary foods, your pancreas can quite easily handle any occasional sweet foods. On the other hand if you lose controlling eating sweet and sugary food as you pleased, your pancreas will soon become over sensitive to sugar and as a result will flood your body with too much insulin. When this happens, it causes lower blood sugar levels and may give rise to a whole series of problems and complications for your body, like high blood pressure and heart diseases.
When this condition is reached your liver releases the glucose which had been stored and you now have too much glucose in the blood. It is still not too bad if this condition happens every once in a while if you indulged in it infrequently. But if it occurs every too often, your pancreas eventually will stop working normally and stops insulin production. You body cells may develop a resistance to insulin and that is when a person can develop diabetes mellitus.
Control of Diabetes When You Lower Blood Sugar
Medical and research studies have shown that a majority of American women consume about 80 pounds of sugar every year together with big amounts of carbohydrates like white flour, which can be very quickly converted to high amount of glucose in your body.
Reduce The Blood Sugar Through Diet
Don’t let your love for sweet food affect your health to a state of no return. If you are seriously looking to control blood glucose levels, there is no better way than through your diet and develop a healthy-eating plan. Your diet is the most important factor of all the ways to achieve a healthy lifestyle besides exercise of course. Most people mistakenly believed that as long as they do not add sugar during the food preparation, that is good enough. It’s not, because while some food like deserts and sweets are more obvious of the sugary content, other foods that appear to have less sugar can actually have large amounts of sugar in them too. Some of these foods include salad dressings, pasta sauces or dry cereals and they can contain a significantly high amount of sugar.
If you already have a high blood sugar and embarking on a self imposed or doctor’s advice to restore good blood sugar control then you should avoid all forms of sugar. These will include corn syrup, honey, maple syrup, barley malt sucrose, glucose and molasses. Avoid processed foods and cultivate an acquired taste for unprocessed food like fresh fruits, vegetables such as carrots or yams. You may struggle with this diet change initially but soon you will get over your sweet cravings after a few weeks of adjusting to the new diet. Call it a life changing diabetes diet if you will. Even if you are not a diabetic it will also reduce your chance of being overweight or worse obese and maintain a good physical appearance as well . Lowering blood sugar is a serious thing and needs a lot of sacrifices and determination to succeed. But then again it is your body that we are talking about and you do want to keep it healthy and strong. Besides preventing diabetes you are also keeping your body free of many other diseases including the risk of heart disease, cholesterol, kidney problems and other cardiovascular disease.
Avoid too much carbohydrates like pasta and breads, made from rice or flour as these can be quickly converted into sugars in your body. You may have taken this for granted but do you know that your coffee that you drink each day contains caffeine that stresses your adrenal glands to work harder to normalise to a low blood sugar level? So do remember that when you’re increasing the intake of this drink to give you that much needed boost each day, you are also stressing your glands. Similarly for alcohol too it slows the body’s function in using glucose and stimulates insulin release, sometimes excessively.
How To Stabilize Blood Sugar Levels?
Avoid taking big hearty meals. Instead go for smaller meals but eat more frequently taking care not to skip any of your meals. So this means you should plan to eat three meals a day but include mid morning, mid afternoon and evening snacks. You should always keep to a regular time for your meals.
So what is the best diet to have?
A good diabetic diet that is rich in fiber is the best especially soluble fiber and most doctors and nutritionists recommend it too for patients.The reason why this is so good is because fibre slows down the digestion and absorption of carbohydrates and as a result will help to maintain your blood sugars.The soluble fiber ensures that the pancreas do not secrete excessive insulin as well as improves the liver’s use of glucose and help to keep the blood sugar levels from skyrocking.
Recommended Intake of Fiber per day: 50 grams
- whole grains
- nuts
- seeds
- vegetables
- fruits (apples and pears)
- oat bran
Also include small amount of protein or fat when you are snacking so as to stabilize the blood sugar like an apple with some almonds or carrot sticks and walnuts.
To ensure a well balanced blood sugar levels, you should also take about two to three spoonfuls of fiber supplements. Just add it in a glass of water twice a day before taking your meals.
