Diabetes mellitus is a metabolic disease characterized by hyperglycemia due to insufficient or defective insulin secretion or action, or the coexistence of both. If the treatment is not timely, the patient will inevitably suffer from various complications.
The treatment of diabetes mainly includes diet and drug treatment, both of which are indispensable. Medication is easy to understand, so why can diet improve symptoms?
An article in the "Basic Medicine Forum" explains this problem as follows: through a scientific and reasonable diet, patients can prevent excessive nutrient intake, gradually reach the ideal weight, keep blood sugar at normal levels as much as possible, and maintain normal blood lipid range, thereby preventing and controlling the occurrence and development of diabetes, improving overall health status, and improving the quality of life of diabetic patients.
Blood sugar can increase with the increase of diet, and the more calories you eat food, the higher the blood sugar value rises, and the greater the amount of insulin required to fight. Because type 2 diabetes is caused by insufficient insulin secretion or insulin does not work well, the purpose of restricting the diet is also to reduce the burden of insulin and make it get a good rest to facilitate the recovery of function.
If the patient does not want to control the diet and only tries to control blood sugar by taking more hypoglycemic drugs, then the result will only accelerate the progression of the disease, or even completely exhaust the islets. It is precisely because of this that in order to get rid of diabetes, patients must control their diet.
So, how should the diet of diabetics be controlled?
The purpose of controlling the diet is to control the total calories, which includes not only staple foods, but also side foods and snacks, generally eating until seven or eight points are full, this method can be gradual. The amount of staple food per day is more appropriate between 200g-400g, and divided into 3 or 4 times to eat, each meal is not more than 100g should also be coarse grain with reasonable meals, mainly coarse grains, do not cook porridge and porridge to eat, so fast absorption, blood sugar rise is also fast, this practice should be avoided.
Patients should ensure that the various nutritional ratios are appropriate, 250g of milk, 1 egg and 100-150g of lean meat should be guaranteed throughout the day, and the calories provided by oil and fat should not exceed 30% of the total calories per day, and the calories provided by animal oil should not exceed 10% of the total calories. In addition, patients should eat less fried foods and eat more vegetables, which is conducive to lowering blood sugar and weight loss.
In terms of fruits, patients can choose fruits with relatively low sugar content, such as apples, pears (10-14% sugar content), bananas (20% sugar content), watermelon (40% sugar content) and so on. Although the fruit can be eaten, but also in moderation, for patients with postprandial blood sugar below 10mmol/L, it is possible to eat 1 apple or pear per day, but it is best to eat between meals and count the calories of the fruit within the total calories (that is, reduce the amount of staple food).
In terms of meat, patients can take fish, shrimp, chicken, rabbit white meat as the first choice, and eat less red meat such as pigs, cattle, sheep and animal offal to avoid elevated blood lipids.
In terms of snacks, the author mentioned that because peanuts, melon seeds, walnuts, almonds, etc. are high in oil and fat, calories are large, 100g of this type of food can produce calories equivalent to 100g of staple foods, and the oil will eventually be converted into glucose in the body, so patients should limit the intake of such snacks.
Reasonable diet does not mean that patients should eat less to be good, after all, people also need to survive, need to consume enough nutrients from food, so the correct reasonable diet is to be adjusted according to their own physical condition, reasonable arrangement of three meals at the same time with drug treatment, in order to delay the various complications of diabetes, improve the quality of life of patients.
bibliography:
JIANG Chunmei. Dietary care for diabetic patients[J]. Primary Medicine Forum, 15(33):2.