Banana Peel Bacon
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I Was Diagnosed With Diabetes. What Do I Do? There Is A Cure?
How to understand it. Types and cure.
Currently, there are many people who still do not exactly understand what the word DIABETES means for our health. Once diagnosed with this condition, and before we are alarmed, we need to know exactly what it means and keep in mind that there are several types of diabetes.
Diabetes (also called Diabetes Mellitus) is a long-lasting chronic health condition that affects how your body turns food into energy.
Your body breaks down most of the food you eat into sugar (glucose) and releases it into your bloodstream. Glucose it’s an important source of energy for the cells that make up your muscles and tissues. It’s also your brain’s main source of fuel. When your blood sugar goes up, it signals your pancreas to release insulin. Insulin acts like a key to letting the blood sugar into your body’s cells for use as energy.
With diabetes, your body doesn’t make enough insulin or can’t use it as well as it should. When there isn’t enough insulin or cells stop responding to insulin, too much blood sugar stays in your bloodstream.
Types of Diabetes
The underlying cause of diabetes varies by type. But, no matter what type of diabetes you have, it can lead to excess sugar in your blood. Too much sugar in your blood can lead to serious health problems.
Chronic diabetes conditions include type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, gestational diabetes, and prediabetes.
Type 1 diabetes is thought to be caused by an auto-immune response (the organism attacks itself by mistake). This reaction prevents the production of insulin in your body. It is commonly diagnosed in children, teenagers, and young adults. If you have type 1 diabetes, you must take insulin each day to survive. Currently, it is not clear how to prevent type 1 diabetes.
With type 2 diabetes, your body does not use insulin properly and cannot maintain normal blood glucose levels. Approximately 90-95% of diabetics are type 2. It lasts several years and is usually diagnosed in adults (but increasingly in children, adolescents, and young adults). You may not notice any symptoms, so it’s important to get your blood sugar tested if you’re at risk. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented or delayed with healthy lifestyle changes, such as:
- Losing weight.
- Eating healthy food.
- Being active.
Gestational diabetes
During pregnancy, the placenta produces hormones to sustain your pregnancy. These hormones make your cells more resistant to insulin.
Normally, your pancreas responds by producing enough extra insulin to overcome this resistance. But sometimes your pancreas can’t keep up. When this happens, too little glucose gets into your cells and too much stays in your blood, resulting in gestational diabetes but may be resolved after the baby is delivered.
Potentially reversible diabetes conditions include prediabetes and gestational diabetes. Prediabetes occurs when your blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough to be classified as diabetes. It is often the precursor of diabetes unless appropriate measures are taken to prevent progression.
In the United States, 96 million adults—more than 1 in 3—have prediabetes. More than 8 in 10 of them don’t know they have it. With prediabetes, blood sugar levels are higher than normal, but not high enough for a type 2 diabetes diagnosis. Prediabetes raises your risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, vision loss, kidney disease and stroke. But there’s good news. If you have prediabetes, a CDC-recognized lifestyle change program can help you take healthy steps to reverse it.
How to know if I have diabetes? Here we list some possible symptoms.
Common symptoms of diabetes:
- Urinating often
- Feeling very thirsty
- Feeling very hungry—even though you are eating
- Extreme fatigue
- Blurry vision
- Cuts/bruises that are slow to heal
- Weight loss—even though you are eating more (type 1)
- Tingling, pain, or numbness in the hands/feet (type 2)
Early detection and treatment of diabetes can decrease the risk of developing complications of diabetes.
Prevention
- Eat healthy foods. Choose foods lower in fat and higher in fiber. Focus on fruits, vegetables and whole grains moderating the consumption of refined flours. Strive for variety to prevent boredom.
- Get more physical activity. 30 minutes of moderate aerobic activity on most days of the week will help a lot. Walking can also be an easy exercise that would help you regulate your weight.
- Lose excess pounds. If you’re overweight, losing can reduce the risk of diabetes.
- Don’t try to lose weight during pregnancy, however. Talk to your doctor about how much weight is healthy for you to gain during pregnancy.
Sometimes medication is an option as well. Oral diabetes drugs such as Metformin or Semaglutide (Ozempic) may reduce the risk of type 2 diabetes, but healthy lifestyle choices remain essential (healthy food and exercise). Have your blood sugar checked at least once a year to check that you haven’t developed type 2 diabetes (A1C blood test).
Food and Sugars Allowed.
If you are those persons that like to eat bread you have to change to whole wheat flour using rye flour (has very high levels of fiber and reduces insulin resistance), oats, soybeans, chickpeas or quinoa (has a lower amount of carbohydrates than conventional flour and also has more fiber), coconut flour and flaxseed flour.
Humans need to ingest carbohydrates because we need energy, but you have to choose better carbohydrates (with a higher fiber content) and consume the
On some occasions, especially for desserts, we can also use almond flour (finely ground almond), which provides a sweet touch and a juicier texture thanks to its essential oils.
Sugars Substitutes.
Saying goodbye to sugar can be difficult, but with how harmful it is, it’s worth the effort. The goal is to train our palate to settle for fewer sweeteners and when it is impossible to avoid them, choose natural sweeteners that do not increase blood glucose.
Sweeteners are useful for diabetics and obese people because they are sweet substances that are not sugar and lack caloric value, but they are also used in numerous products of habitual consumption.
The most commonly known sugars for diabetics are stevia, xylitol, erythritol, cyclamates saccharin and the new one known as monk fruit. Stevia is extracted from the leaves of a South American plant. It contains no calories and is not associated with any adverse effects. It’s a lot sweeter than sugar, so a couple of drops or a pinch tends to be more than enough to sweeten a drink.
Both erythritol and xylitol are low-calorie sugar alcohols that have no effect on the body’s glucose levels, making them a good choice for diabetics. They are found in fruits and their taste is very similar to that of sugar. When consumed in excess they can cause stomach problems.
Cyclamate is an artificial sweetener. It is 30–50 times sweeter than sucrose (table sugar), making it the least potent of the commercially used artificial sweeteners. It is often used with other artificial sweeteners, especially saccharin. It is less expensive than most sweeteners and is stable under heating.
Monk Fruit is a natural and recent addition to the sugar alternative market in the United States. Contain good-for-you antioxidants. Commonly found in plant foods, antioxidants fight off free radicals that can lead to health problems like cancer and heart disease.
Just because they are sweeteners that do no elevate the levels of sugar in our bodies does not mean that you have to consume lots of it every day. Don’t go overboard. Drink plenty of plain water or tea, and eat natural foods without an ultra-sweet taste. Over time, your taste buds adjust, and you may not need to use sweeteners as much.
Honey, like other natural sugars such as coconut sugar or maple syrup, is still sugar and the liver metabolizes it as such. Sure, maybe it has less fructose than table sugar and more nutrients, but it’s still adverse for people with diabetes. The key here is to limit the amount of honey and use it only when a recipe warrants it, but it should not be part of your daily diet.
If you don’t have trouble metabolizing sugar, a little honey in moderation won’t hurt.
This is how we turn our life with diabetes into normal life but with better eating habits and sometimes with the medication prescribed by our health professional, whatever our disease, we must always keep in mind that a good diet with exercises or at least walking is the key to everything.
