If you are a diabetic, making changes in your diet can affect your blood sugar levels. Making healthy food choices, and understanding which foods to avoid, can help you prevent excessively high blood glucose levels.
Healthy Foods
There are many types of healthy foods that a diabetic can choose from. Sources of healthy protein include fish, chicken, turkey, pork and lean beef. Vegetables such as spinach, broccoli and asparagus are a source of many vitamins and minerals, as well as fiber. Cheese, yogurt and other dairy products provide calcium. Bread made from oats, whole wheat and other whole grains has more fiber than processed white breads, and contains important nutrients.
Foods to Avoid
A diabetic should be concerned about how much a food raises her blood sugar levels. The carbohydrates in food raise the amount of glucose present in the blood. Some foods contain more carbohydrates, or contain simple carbohydrates, which increase blood sugar levels faster. Avoid these foods in order to prevent a rapid or unsafe increase in your blood sugar. Bread products made with refined flour, such as white bread, are digested quickly, resulting in a swift rise in blood sugar. Sugar in general is another simple carbohydrate that you should avoid when possible, since it raises your blood sugar quickly. Other names for sugar include corn syrup, dextrose, fructose, lactose, glucose and sucrose.
Considerations
In order to increase the amount of foods that you can eat without affecting your health, learn to combine foods to moderate the effect on your blood sugar. While foods that are high in carbohydrates will raise your blood sugar quickly if eaten alone, they have a much slower effect if eaten with foods that are high in protein, fat or fiber, which slow the digestion process. As a result, the carbohydrates are absorbed and converted into sugar slowly, giving your body enough time to process them, and preventing a sudden spike in blood sugar levels.
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