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Diabetes Diet Article
Diabetes Diet
The proper diet is critical to diabetes treatment. It can help someone with diabetes:
- Achieve and maintain desirable weight. Many people with diabetes
can control their blood glucose by losing weight and keeping it off.
- Maintain normal blood glucose levels.
- Prevent heart and blood vessel diseases, conditions that tend to occur in people with diabetes.
A doctor will usually prescribe diet as part of diabetes treatment. A dietitian or nutritionist can recommend a diet that is healthy, but also interesting and easy to follow. No one has to be limited to a preprinted, standard diet. Someone with diabetes can get assistance in the following ways:
- A doctor can recommend a local nutritionist or dietitian.
- The local American Diabetes Association, American Heart
Association, and American Dietetic Association can provide names of
qualified dietitians or nutritionists and information about diet
planning.
- Local diabetes centers at large medical clinics, hospitals, or medical universities usually have dietitians and nutritionists on staff.
The guidelines for diabetes diet planning include the following:
- Spacing meals throughout the day, instead of eating heavy meals
once or twice a day, can help a person avoid extremely high or low
blood glucose levels.
- With few exceptions, the best way to lose weight is gradually:
one or two pounds a week. Strict diets must never be
undertaken without the supervision of a doctor.
- People with diabetes have twice the risk of developing heart disease as those without diabetes, and high blood cholesterol levels raise the risk of heart disease. Losing weight and reducing intake of saturated fats and cholesterol, in favor of unsaturated and monounsaturated fats, can help lower blood cholesterol.
- Studies show that foods with fiber, such as fruits, vegetables, peas, beans, and whole-grain breads and cereals may help lower blood glucose. However, it seems that a person must eat much more fiber than the average American now consumes to get this benefit. A doctor or nutritionist can advise someone about adding fiber to a diet.
| Points to Remember
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- Exchange lists are useful in planning a diabetes diet. They place foods with similar nutrients and calories into groups. With the help of a nutritionist, the person plans the number of servings from each exchange list that he or she should eat throughout the day. Diets that use exchange lists offer more choices than preprinted diets. More information on exchange lists is available from nutritionists and from the American Diabetes Association.
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