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 probably the essential 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, many 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 quantity 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 isnt maintained, a diabetic can also experience blood sugar that are too low. If this state continues for a prolonged period of time, it can result in 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'e had to use insulin injections less, which gives them a feeling of power and control over their disease.
Luckily, a vegetarian s diet affects their health in many positive ways as well. First, because fruits and vegetables are not processed and cooked to the extent that typical meats are, they actually lower a vegetarian s risk of developing something like cancer. Red meats and processed products actually make it more likely that someone will develop cancer so naturally eating less of it lowers someone s risk of developing it at all.
Another positive way that a vegetarian s diet affects their health is that they have a much lower risk of heart disease. Some studies have placed the reduction rate at as high as 32%, a huge number. This is because again, red meats are known to increase one s risk of developing heart disease so not eating any means you do not have the risk. There are even ways that a vegetarian s diet affects their health that nobody realizes their risks of stroke and diabetes, for instance, is significantly lowered as well.
by: David King
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