Diabetes an Enemy of Healthy Cells

Diabetes not only is a leading cause of death, but it is also a leading cause of blindness, kidney failure, heart, disease, stroke, and lower limb amputations.

Because of all the things that start going wrong in the body when sugar is not safely transported out of our blood and kept at safe levels, staying on top of this can really pay off. Prevention and proper maintenance through lifestyle habits can also decrease our reliance on medical intervention and minimize the effect diabetes (or being borderline diabetic) has on our life and the ones we care about. Type 2 diabetes (as with most other chronic diseases) often takes root in lifestyle factors that contribute to the problem instead of preventing or suppressing. Pinpointing these factors can guide us in possibly preventing type 2 diabetes or at least mitigating its effect.

1. We eat a lot more packaged and processed foods (that are either artificially sweetened or breakdown rapidly into sugar) than we used to, and a lot of these foods cause a sharp spike in blood sugar.
Example of why: processed food and drinks such as candies, deserts, sodas, sweat tea, fruit drinks, etc. do not have the soluble fiber that comes with nature’s sweets. These fruits have their own soluble fiber that slows the absorption (of the sugars they contain) into our system, (God knew what he was doing when he designed nature’s sweets)!

A high carb, starchy diet will constantly keep our blood sugar spiked from the rapid breakdown of these foods into sugar, and this will continue to place a demand on the pancreas to produce more insulin. Insulin is the hormone that helps unlock the cells of our body to transport energy and nutrients into them, when this need is satisfied it will take the left-over energy and put it into our liver and fat cells for later use.

2. Activity burns off extra blood sugars. Insulin needs to take the extra glucose somewhere, either to muscles that need the energy or to the liver for our backup supply and after this it has no choice but to store it in our fat cells, (this is what makes them larger and is simply our insulin working properly). If this process does not happen and our insulin cannot regulate and remove the excess sugars from our blood it can cause a sticky gooey mess in our system that can start to cause things like blindness, and poor circulation that can lead to amputations. So, it’s important that our insulin is able to regulate the levels of glucose in the blood.

Two things can happen when you constantly put an overload of sugar into your bloodstream; 1. The cells that make up our body start to get resistant to a constant barrage of insulin and will become less responsive, and when this happens it forces the pancreas to produce a stronger surge of insulin to overcome the resistance the cells are putting up. 2. Your pancreas (which produces the insulin) may get wore out and fatigued and start producing less and less insulin causing you to become insulin dependent on an outside source.

Diet: When we eat something that is high in carbs, such as casseroles, spaghetti, and other starchy foods, avoid desserts or sugary drinks! It is easy to add in an extra 100 grams of sugar, simply by what we choose to drink or by adding a dessert! Eat foods that absorb into your system slower. Add foods that are rich in soluble fiber to your meals (to slow the absorption of sugars into your blood) such as- legumes, seeds, nuts, beans and lentils. You can also keep a bottle of BeneFiber (or other) soluble fiber powder around to mix in or sprinkle over your foods. A good way to see if its soluble or insoluble fiber is, soluble fiber mixes easily in water and insoluble fiber clumps up. Insoluble fiber helps push food through your system and helps with waste elimination, and soluble fiber forms a gel like substance in your digestive track that helps slow down sugar’s entry into your blood.

If we could get a good picture of the pain and misery that sugar loaded foods too often can cause in our lives, they probably wouldn’t look and taste so good!

Food tip: something that can really help control blood sugar naturally, and it can be used by individuals that are not diabetic as well, is a diabetic diet. This diet should be made up of protein, healthy fats, healthy carbohydrates that are low on glycemic index (not sugary or starchy), fiber, rich foods, and staying hydrated with water. It is also good to eat protein and fat prior to taking in the carbs. A diabetic diet is good even for someone that is not diabetic.

Exercise and staying active: Exercise and staying active helps your body burn off extra blood sugars that your body must otherwise figure out what to do with and also keeps your cells more insulin sensitive.

Exercise tip: Do a full body exercise, such as rapid squatting and standing arms thrusting upward for about 1–3 minutes, 5 minutes prior to eating and 1 hour after eating, this helps make your muscle cells more receptive to the glucose from the meal, takes a burden off the pancreas and helps guard us against insulin resistance.

Eat foods that break down slower and save the foods that don’t for time periods that you are going to be very active physically. In other words, don’t put jet fuel in an idling engine.