Normal Blood Sugar Levels

This is important in order to prevent high blood sugar surges or low blood sugar dips throughout the day. In people with no problems maintaining normal blood sugar levels, the body is able to secrete insulin and respond to insulin secretions adequately according to how heavy the meal is. A heavy meal will result in more insulin secretion. This mechanism is unfortunately impaired amongst people with type 2 diabetes.

Hence, a good recommendation would be eating small meals every 4 hourly throughout the day (except when you are sleeping of course). This ensures that your body is better able to maintain normal blood sugar levels throughout the day.

This sounds strange doesn’t it? This may at first sound counterproductive towards maintaining normal blood sugar levels but it is important to include carbos in your food so that you can prevent low blood sugar dips. Many type 2 diabetics believe that the best way to achieve normal blood sugar levels is by totally avoiding carbohydrates. This could result in dangerous hypoglycemias.

Low GI foods are foods that are able to release smaller amounts of sugar into the blood over a longer period of time compared to high GI foods (for a similar quantity of food). Replacing high GI foods with low GI foods will ensure that the body will not be subjected to the stresses of high insulin requirements demanded by high GI foods. Having gradual increases in blood sugar levels will help your body to maintain normal blood sugar levels.

Examples of low GI foods are: oats, wheat, bran, natural muesli, raw carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, wholewheat, mushrooms, cabbage and many others.

Having a low fat diet is important as diabetes is highly associated with heart disease. Diabetes alone, without high blood cholesterol already doubles the chance of a diabetic getting a heart attack, compared to the chance of getting a heart attack in the general population. Therefore, the combination of diabetes and high blood cholesterol due to consumption of oily foods is one that should be avoided as much as possible.

High fibre diets are recommended to type 2 diabetics as it was found to improve blood sugar control in type 2 diabetics. I am not sure how it works and would be happy if someone can give the explanation. It probably has to do with ensuring good passage of food through the gut and decreasing the rate of absorption of carbohydrates, thus helping to maintain normal blood sugar levels.