Written and Presented by Olivia Farrow, RD, MHS
Created with support from Dietitian Success Center's Dietetic Intern, Melissa Kirkwood MHSc(c).
Reviewed by Krista Kolodziejzyk, RD, MPH, MBA
Welcome to this blog and video (click to watch!) on the basics of diabetes. We will cover what diabetes is and how it relates to food and nutrition. Let’s get started.
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Glucose (Sugar)
Before we talk about what diabetes is, we have to talk about glucose. Glucose is a fancy word for the sugar that our bodies use for energy. And that doesn’t mean that boost of energy you get from your coffee in the morning.
Your body and brain need glucose to function. For the most part, glucose comes from the carbohydrates, or carbs, we eat. Carbs come from foods like fruit, milk, grain products like bread, rice, pasta, oats, crackers, anything made from flour, starchy vegetables like potatoes, corn, peas, and plantains, beans, lentils, chickpeas, and some other vegetables also have carbs. Also, sweets, juice, and soda pop. When you eat foods with carbs, your body breaks them down into glucose. Glucose is then moved into the blood and travels through the blood, making its way to the cells of the body, where it’s used for energy. But here’s where things get complicated.
The cells of the body can’t use glucose without something called insulin. You can think of the body’s cells like a door with a lock. To get glucose through the door, we need the key, which is insulin. . The factory that makes insulin in your body is an organ called the pancreas.
This system works to keep your body working. But what about when you have diabetes? With diabetes, the body’s cells stay locked. Glucose builds up in the blood and cannot be used in the cells for energy.
Types of Diabetes
There are different types of diabetes, but they all have one thing in common. They affect how your body handles the sugar, glucose, from carbohydrate foods.
With type 1 diabetes, the insulin factory, the pancreas, stops making enough or any insulin. There are not enough keys to unlock the cells of the body for glucose. This causes the amount of sugar in the blood to get dangerously high, and the body’s cells can’t use this sugar for energy, so they aren’t able to work properly.
With type 1 diabetes, you can get very sick. You might feel very thirsty, very hungry, very tired, and have to pee a lot. With type 1 diabetes, insulin injections are needed to provide the keys and unlock the body’s cells. Type 2 diabetes is different. Typically, the factory is still working to make insulin.
The issue is with the locks. The locks aren’t working well. The cells of the body can’t use the keys well. This is called insulin resistance.
This causes the blood sugar to be high over time. When blood sugar is high over time, it can cause damage to the body. The heart, the brain, the eyes, the kidneys, even your feet and fingers. With type 2 diabetes, eating a balanced diet and moving your body can help your body’s locks work better.
Your doctor might also prescribe medications and you may eventually need to take insulin injections.
Basic Nutrition Tips for Type 2 Diabetes and Prediabetes
Now let’s go over some basic nutrition tips for type 2 diabetes and pre diabetes, which is when your blood glucose, aka blood sugars, are high, but not quite high enough to be diagnosed with diabetes yet. For many people with diabetes, the main nutrition goal will be to balance carbohydrates, to keep blood sugar stable.
Since when you eat carbohydrates, your blood sugar goes up, it is possible to make these rises in your blood sugar more stable and steady. If you looked at it on a graph of blood sugar over time, this would look like calm rolling hills. When your blood sugars aren’t stable, this graph would look like a roller coaster with quick spikes and quick drops.
If you eat a lot of carbohydrates and sugars at once, it can overwhelm the locks of the body, especially since they aren’t working well due to insulin resistance. This can lead to a lot of glucose in the blood and that rollercoaster of blood sugar, which doesn’t feel very good in your body. But also over time these spikes of blood sugar increase your risk of diabetes complications and burning out your insulin factory. There are some things we can do to make things a little bit easier on the body, so it’s not so overwhelming and we can have those nice rolling hills of blood sugar.
Tip #1: Choose high fiber carbohydrates
Fiber helps to slow the breakdown of carbohydrates into sugar. This means that blood glucose increases more slowly and is less overwhelming for the body’s locks.
Carbohydrates high in fiber include fruits, legumes like beans and lentils, vegetables, and whole grains, to name a few.
Tip #2: Carbohydrate consistency
Eating moderate amounts of carbohydrates spread throughout regular times of the day can help keep carbohydrate breakdown more consistent and keep your blood sugar more stable.
Tip #3: Eat your carbs with protein and fat
Similar to fiber, combining carbs with protein and fat helps to slow the breakdown into sugars. Protein comes from legumes, beans and lentils, eggs, meat, fish, soy, dairy, and seeds. And heart healthy fats include olive oil, avocado, and nuts and seeds, and fatty fish like salmon.
Tip #4: Choose water
Water, plain coffee and tea, and other sugar free drinks. Do not raise your blood sugar, but keep your body hydrated and working well. Drinks like soda pop and juice, even 100 percent fruit juice, do raise your blood sugar, and they do it very quickly, without any fiber, protein, or fat to slow things down.
Sugary drinks can be a big culprit behind rollercoaster blood sugars.
Tip #5: Move your body
Lastly, get that body moving every day in ways that feel enjoyable. Moving your body helps to move some of the sugar in the blood to the muscles for energy, lowering your blood sugar. It can also help make the locks of the body work more smoothly.
Always talk to your doctor before adding new physical activity to your routine.
Let's Recap
Carbohydrate foods like fruit, milk, grains, and sweets are broken into a sugar in the body called glucose. The body needs glucose for energy, but in order for it to be used by the body, we need insulin to move it from the blood into the cells of the body. In type 1 diabetes, the body doesn’t make enough or any insulin.
In type 2 diabetes, the body doesn’t use the insulin it makes very well. In both of these cases, the result is high blood sugar, which can be dangerously high in type 1 diabetes. And in type 2 diabetes, when blood sugar stays too high for too long, it can damage the body. For type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes, a nutritious diet that includes fiber, protein, and fat, alongside a moderate amount of regularly spaced carbs and movement, can help the body use the glucose from food, keeping the blood sugar stable and the body healthy.
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