Knowing about carbohydrates and your diabetes is essential.
The benefits of carbohydrates and your diabetes is that carbohydrates are an important part of your diet as it actually helps to keep your body sensitive to insulin and allows you to gain more stamina. How it works is that carbohydrates are the only part of food that has a direct affect on your blood glucose levels.
Therefore, when you eat carbohydrate foods, they break down into glucose that then raises your blood glucose levels. Your body then releases insulin into your blood stream, which is where the insulin clears the glucose from the blood and moves it into your muscles, which is how you gain more energy; as well it returns your blood glucose levels to a normal level.
Carbohydrates and your diabetes is an important aspect of maintaining a good diet.
People with diabetes need to focus on a diet that includes carbohydrates, and it is essential to establish the knowledge on how much you should eat, when to eat, and what type of carbohydrates to eat. There are two main aspects of working out the quantities of carbohydrates that you need in your diet, and they are:
• Carbohydrate counting, and
• Carbohydrate exchanges
Carbohydrate counting is simply counting the amount of grams of carbohydrate that are contained in the foods that you eat, these can be found on nutrition labels on foods, food tables of carbohydrates, or by estimating from experience. Knowing how carbohydrates and your diabetes are connected is essential.
Carbohydrate exchanges is identified as the amount of food that generally contain 10 or 15 grams of carbohydrate, for example:
• 1 slice of bread
• 1 small piece of fruit, and
• 250ml glass of milk
Knowing how carbohydrates and your diabetes is connected is vital for your health.
The sources of carbohydrate in our diet are derived mainly from plant foods and some of these include:
• Bread
• Cereals
• Grains
• Potatoes
• Rice
• Fruits
• Vegetables, and
• Legumes
The intake of fat in the Australian population has decreased as the fear of coronary artery disease is caused by high cholesterol. Unfortunately, 60 per cent of Australians are over weight or obese, we need to eat more protein so the main reason for these high instances of obesity is caused by eating too many carbohydrate foods like sweets, soft drinks, pastries, cakes and biscuits.
As we know carbohydrate is the one food that raises your blood glucose levels and this is why diabetics should stick to a low carbohydrate diet so that they can avoid the complications that are associated with the disease.
By maintaining the correct amount of carbohydrates in your diet, you can easily manage your diabetes.
By implementing the correct diet and understanding carbohydrates and your diabetes you will be able to achieve optimum health.