Why limiting Carbohydrates in Diabetes is important?

So, carbohydrates is the food group that has the most impact on our blood glucose because this is a type of food that is a staple food. So, carbohydrates is commonly found in foods such as rice, potato, pasta, yam, cassava, plantain, cereals, and porridge, and also some fruits. So when we think about our meals, some from breakfast, lunch, and dinner, most of these meals will have some form of carbohydrates in them. And what we've learned is that people are consuming far too much carbohydrate in their diet than they actually need to, or they're actually using. So if we're eating carbohydrates, we also need to remember that this breaks down into a single molecule of glucose where we need lots of insulin. What we've seen over the years is that where people have reduced their carbohydrates to a low carbohydrate diet, which basically means reducing your intake of carbohydrate to less than 130 grams of carbohydrate per day, that actually has a significant improvement on their blood glucose. So that basically means where you've reduced your carbohydrate intake and replace it with other foods such as green leafy vegetables, protein, dairy, you actually have a better diabetes control at the end of the day, and you don't have too many highs and lows. But the other thing we've got to remember are that there are some carbohydrates which have more fiber, and these are known as more complex carbohydrates or even foods which have more lower glycemic index because there's more fiber in them. They release the glucose much slowly, and they're much, much better for in terms of improving our diabetes management. So for example, foods where there are more breads, where there's more seeds in them, foods where there's more nuts and grains, or even things like more of the newer carbohydrates such as quinoa or buckwheat or bulgur wheat, even things like couscous, they have a slightly higher fibre content and are much better for us. When we think about foods such as white rice, white pasta, white grains, white bread. These are released very, very quickly, increase your blood glucose and give you that spike in blood glucose. So you could replace these with foods such as whole grain pasta, whole grain bread with seeded breads, even adding more nuts and seeds to your porridge in the morning, having replacing white potato instead of having more sweet potato or having things like more cassava and yam where there's more fiber, or even just reducing your carbohydrate and increasing more salads, vegetables, protein in your diet will improve your overall diabetes management. And just lastly, there's also lots of evidence that where we reduce our carbohydrate intake, it actually also leads to weight loss. More and more research is coming out where people are reducing their carbohydrate intake from food and also liquids. And remember, let's not forget that Lots of fruit juices have lots of sugar. Often people forget alcoholic drinks have carbohydrates as well. And some snacks we eat, things like having that extra biscuit with your tea, having a piece of cake, often at work or you go to someone's house, there's ample snacks in between our meals. And we often forget to count these things where we eventually add up to a lot of carbohydrates per day. So if we're more mindful of the type of carbohydrates we're eating, how much carbohydrate we're eating and in terms of the amount, how many times we're eating, it can all add up. But if we reduce the carbohydrate, it actually can have a significant impact on your blood glucose.