Column: Live Longer, Live Stronger — Tackling Diabetes

The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine’s publication “Nutrition for Health” contains excellent information about addressing the major health challenges we face, such as obesity, diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Diabetes is a condition where too much sugar, called glucose, is in a person’s bloodstream. With diabetes, the person’s insulin doesn’t work correctly, and the glucose builds up and causes problems, resulting in heart disease, chronic kidney disease, neuropathy and many other problems with vision, oral health, hearing and mental health.

Obviously, this is something we want to avoid if we want to live longer and live stronger!

Type 2 diabetes, where the pancreas can make insulin but not enough, is on the rise: 50 years ago, only one person in 100 had it, whereas today, one in 10 have it. No surprise: The cause is our standard American diet.

The best way to prevent or control diabetes, and even reverse it, is to take three steps when choosing foods and beverages:

__1. Go plant-based.__

For far too long, we have thought “sugar diabetes” was caused by eating too much sugar. Eating sugar isn't good for us, but it's not the culprit. Animal fat and oils interfere with our insulin's ability to move glucose into our cells, and there are many added benefits of giving them up, such as reduced heart disease, obesity and a host of other health problems. So, skip the meat, poultry, fish, dairy and eggs. This eliminates animal fat and is the key to managing diabetes.

__2. Eat low-fat foods.__

Since you're already avoiding animal fats as mentioned in point No. 1, look closely at labels and avoid vegetable oils, too. Yes, we mean olive oil, dressings, nuts, seeds and avocados. Again, it interferes with insulin!

__3. Choose low-glycemic-index foods.__

Higher glycemic-index foods cause the blood sugar to rise sharply. White bread and white potatoes can be plant-based, but they aren't the best choices. To avoid blood sugar spikes, avoid sugar, white and wheat breads, white potatoes and most cold cereals, all of which are high-glycemic-index foods. Choose fruits, rye or pumpernickel breads, sweet potatoes, oatmeal and bran cereals. In fact, oatmeal is one of those super foods when it comes to managing blood sugar!

Research shows we actually do better with complying to dietary changes when we don’t take baby steps, because if we make big changes, we feel so much better that we never want to go back to the old ways of eating. But a word of caution: When you make those big steps to plant-based, low-fat and low-glycemic foods, monitor your blood sugar closely, because it will go down, sometimes rapidly, and hypoglycemia can occur. Check with your physician to make sure you are regulating your dosage correctly when you see the blood sugars improve.

There are excellent resources at www.PCRM.org related to diabetes and more. If you search “glycemic index chart,” you can get great lists of the lowest and highest glycemic-index foods to live longer and live stronger!

Cheryl Mothes is a natural health nutrition counselor who loves helping others realize the impact nutrition can have on living their best, as well as preventing and reversing disease. She and her husband Rick Hetzel own Fresh Healthy Café to offer healthy food choices to the community.