What should people with diabetes pay attention to?

For diabetics, dietary restrictions can be said to be a major pain point. Many people tend to simply understand that it means avoiding all sugar, but many people have illusions about sugar. Some people want to avoid all sugar, while others think that as long as they don't eat sucrose, it will be fine. In fact, for diabetic diets, two important indexes should be paid attention to in general: the glycemic index GI (Glycemic Index) and the glycemic load index, referred to as GL (Glycemi Load), which are two important indicators of the diet of diabetic patients. Then some people say, in addition to these two indicators, is there anything else to pay attention to? Today, let's talk about what diabetics usually need to pay attention to?

01. Glycemic Index (GI)

GI is an indicator that reflects the increase in blood sugar levels after eating.

After eating different foods, due to the differences in the foods themselves and the body's digestion and absorption of food, different foods will cause different changes in blood sugar.

As shown in the figure below, the general glycemic index can be illustrated by the area under the blood sugar time curve. Below are the food curves with high glycemic index and low glycemic index respectively.

For diabetic patients, it is better to choose foods with a low glycemic index, which can reduce the impact of blood sugar in the blood on the human body after eating.

Different foods have different glycemic indexes. Nutritionists have summarized the glycemic index of various daily foods for us. You may wish to make your choices based on this.

02. Glycemic Load Index (GI)

Different foods of the same weight have different sugar contents, which results in different effects on blood sugar when consumed in equal amounts. Therefore, the glycemic load index GI appears, which refers to the product of the glycemic index of a food and its sugar content. Therefore, when consuming food, we should not only consider its glycemic index, but also its sugar content, which forms the overall GL.

Because of this, when choosing food for diabetic patients, we need to observe both GI and GL. Only when both are suitable can we choose the best food.

03. Insulin Index

In addition, some people have mentioned another index, the insulin index, which is used to measure the impact of specific foods on insulin secretion. However, this concept is still in progress due to the complexity of research, but it should serve as an important reference for food in the future.

After reading this, many people may find the diabetic diet overwhelming and feel at a loss as to what to do.

In fact, it is not that difficult, because our daily food is not as much as you think. There are actually very few common types of food for humans. The staple food is nothing more than rice and pasta. Meat is also common pork, beef, mutton, fish, chicken, etc. Vegetables generally do not require special attention, and fruits are even more so. As long as you spend a day carefully to understand and summarize the nutritional components of these common foods in detail, then in the future coping with diabetes, you can completely remain unchanged in the face of changes. It is not good to be afraid of trouble. After all, diabetes, a metabolic disease, is itself a more troublesome situation.

04. How to adjust in daily life?

Not only that, but some adjustments still need to be made in daily life.

1. Lose weight

Obesity is an important risk factor for diabetes. Multiple studies have confirmed that as the prevalence of overweight and obesity increases, the prevalence of diabetes has also increased significantly. This is often related to the metabolic stress caused by obese people, which leads to abnormal blood sugar metabolism in the body.

Among obesity, abdominal obesity is an important risk factor for diabetes. Modern people spend more and more time sitting, and the incidence of abdominal obesity is also very high, so weight loss is an important part. Studies have also confirmed that weight loss can not only prevent the occurrence of diabetes, but also relieve the symptoms of diabetes to a certain extent for people who already have diabetes.

2. Change bad habits such as smoking

Bad habits are also risk factors for diabetes. For example, smoking is a common risk factor for diabetes. Of course, the danger of smoking itself is not just to diabetes, it is also related to many diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease. Therefore, it is recommended that smokers try to reduce smoking.

3. Balanced diet

This is actually quite clear to diabetics, but I still want to emphasize that a balanced diet is still something that diabetics must strengthen. Because diabetics have some dietary restrictions, and if their own dietary structure is unreasonable, it is easy to lead to unreasonable nutritional intake and unbalanced intake of some necessary vitamins and trace elements, which will affect the health of the body, so extra attention should be paid to dietary balance.

Through the above introduction, we can see that for diabetic patients, the two strategies of controlling your mouth and moving your legs are also applicable. In fact, many diseases that affect human health are metabolic diseases. Controlling your mouth and moving your legs are the only way to deal with metabolic diseases in daily conditioning.