Proper nutrition in diabetes mellitus

In order to understand what should be nutrition with diabetes, you must first find out what the term means.

Diabetes is a variety of endocrine disorders in the body that are associated with a lack or complete absence in the body of insulin - a hormone that is produced in the pancreas by the so-called islets of Langerhans. Sometimes violations are not caused by a lack of insulin, but by its incorrect "chemical behavior" (interaction with other hormones). In all these cases, the body rapidly increases the amount of glucose, the metabolism is completely disturbed, the body and internal organs do not retain water. Untreated diabetes can lead to blindness, amputation of legs, death.

However, today doctors are quite easy to cope with diabetes. New medicines, the right way of life and a balanced diet allow a diabetic patient to lead a full life, no different from healthy people. At the same time, proper nutrition with diabetes is even more important than taking medications: it is precisely this that can prevent the onset of exacerbations. In addition, it is quite reliably established that very often, or rather, almost always, diabetes is a side effect of obesity. In the practice of treating this disease, multiple cases are known, when the loss of excess weight led to the stabilization of glucose and the normalization of metabolism without the use of drugs.

So what is a therapeutic diet for diabetes? This is a food that meets certain requirements, individual for each patient.

Diabetes in someone violates the protein balance, someone - carbohydrate or fat, and in severe cases, the exchange is completely broken.

It is this feature that determines nutrition in diabetes mellitus. The patient is prescribed a diet with the exclusion of certain products, restriction of others, an increased number of third.

However, it is not easy to determine the quantity of necessary substances in food: they can not be measured with a glass or a spoon, and it is impossible to remember the chemical and enzymatic composition of all products.

Therefore, to determine the necessary amount of carbohydrates in the diet, doctors introduced the concept of a grain unit. It is equal to 15 grams of carbohydrates, which is absorbed by the body. Therefore, doctors believe, promoting proper nutrition in diabetes, there is anything you can, but so much that the number of products does not exceed 18 or 25 (depending on the degree of disease) of the grain units. This calculus was introduced specifically for insulin diabetics. One unit corresponds to half a glass of oatmeal or 30 grams of bread, 1 apple or 2 pieces of prunes. Typically, doctors give patients a special table in which you can find the "capacity" of all products.

The second principle is the energy balance of food. The patient must eat so much food to fully cover his energy needs, but not exceed them. This means that the loader working at unloading the cars, and the writer sitting at the computer, with equal physical parameters should use a different amount of food.

Nutrition in diabetes involves another principle: the balance of proteins, fats and carbohydrates. However, this applies not only to sick people.

Finally, take food diabetics should not less than 5-6 times a day.

There are several diets designed specifically for patients with this diagnosis. All of them take into account the characteristics of patients. For example, people with obesity are advised to eat more sour cabbage, other vegetables. Those with impaired liver function, soy, oatmeal, buckwheat are introduced into the diet, but they do not recommend eating meat or fried foods.