Vegetarian Diet
The Benefits of a Vegetarian Diet to Diabetics
Diabetics must
choose any food they eat very carefully, as each food choice they make has a
profound impact on their overall health on a meal-to-meal basis. Diabetes
affects people of all ages, both genders, from all walks of life and
backgrounds.
Untreated, it can cause wounds to heal slowly,
infections take longer to cure, blindness, and kidney failure. Diet is one of
the most important ways of controlling diabetes, and a vegetarian lifestyle with
its emphasis on low fat, high fiber, and nutrient-rich foods is very
complementary.
Affecting more than 30 million people worldwide, this disease inhibits the
body from properly processing foods. Usually, most of the food we eat is
digested and converted to glucose, a sugar which is carried by the blood to all
cells in the body and used for energy.
The hormone insulin then helps glucose
pass into cells. But diabetics are unable to control the amount of glucose in
their blood because the mechanism which converts sugar to energy does not work correctly.
Insulin is either absent, present in insufficient quantities or ineffective.
As
a result glucose builds up in the bloodstream and leads to problems such as
weakness, inability to concentrate, loss of co-ordination and blurred vision. If the correct balance of food intake and
insulin isn’t maintained, a diabetic can also experience blood sugar levels
that are too low. If this state continues for a prolonged period of time, it
can lead to coma and even death.
Though incurable, diabetes can be
successfully controlled through diet and exercise, oral
medications, injections of insulin, or a combination. Instead of
counting calories diabetics must calculate their total
carbohydrate intake so that no less than half their food is made
up of complex carbohydrates.
Many diabetic vegetarians have
discovered that as a result of their meatless diet, they’ve had
to use insulin injections less, which gives them a feeling of
power and control over their disease.
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