The best diets for balancing your blood sugar

In a world of fast food and sugary drinks, more and more people struggle to control their blood sugar levels. Hyperglycemia or elevated blood sugar is highly dangerous and can lead to Type 2 diabetes. In the U.S. alone, around 30.3 million people suffer from this condition. Furthermore, 84.1 million Americans are already prediabetic. Diabetes, if not diagnosed, can wreak havoc on a person’s health and cause damage to his nerves and blood vessels.

Insulin is the body’s natural defense against elevated blood sugar. It is a hormone that helps your body to either metabolize glucose from food or store it for future use. Type 2 diabetes is an acquired condition where the body does not know how to use insulin effectively and eventually stops producing enough insulin to combat high blood sugar. (Related: It’s not too late: Study shows that reducing glycemic load can reduce the risk of diabetes, even for pre-diabetics.)

Diets that can control blood sugar

It’s important to be in control of one’s sugar levels as early as possible. Otherwise, high blood sugar levels may introduce a multitude of health problems. A balanced diet is always key to good health, and it is even more crucial in naturally combating high blood sugar. However, if you find it difficult to plan meals that contain less starch and sugar, the diets detailed in this article may help control blood sugar and keep diabetes at bay. (h/t to MindBodyGreen.com)

Ketogenic Diet

The ketogenic diet is all the rave these days. This diet, which limits carbohydrate intake while increasing fat intake, manipulates the body to use fat stores to supply the body with the energy it needs. The prolonged reduction of carbohydrate intake in the diet puts the body in a state of ketosis, a condition wherein the body becomes efficient in metabolizing fat for energy. Moreover, being in ketosis also effectively supplies energy to the brain by turning fat into ketones in the liver.

Intermittent fasting

Unlike other diets, intermittent fasting does not specify what food to eat. Intermittent fasting is more of an eating pattern. Rather than carefully choosing what to eat, this diet requires periods of fasting. One way to do it is to avoid any food intake for 16 hours, like eating dinner at 6 p.m. then having breakfast at 10 a.m. Then, there are skipping meals altogether every other day. Lastly, there’s a variation of intermittent fasting that limits intake for two full days every week.

Paleo diet

Another way to keep your blood sugar level in check is to follow a paleo diet. This diet limits the intake of foods that are known to cause blood sugar spikes such as processed foods, sugars, and soda. The paleo diet especially pays attention to clean and whole food sources such as vegetables, fruits, nuts, and seeds.

Autoimmune protocol

The autoimmune protocol (AIP), also known as the paleo autoimmune protocol, is a slightly stricter version of the paleo diet. Foods like eggs, nuts, and seeds are eliminated in the diet since these are known to cause inflammation in the gut. The AIP diet is based on the notion that autoimmune diseases are caused by a condition called altered intestinal permeability or “leaky gut.” By avoiding certain foods, this diet aims to “reset the immune system” and reduce symptoms of autoimmune diseases.

Combining the diets above with an active lifestyle will ensure that sugar levels remain acceptable, which is vital in avoiding health hazards caused by high blood sugar later in life.

For more tips on how to avoid blood sugar spikes, visit PreventDiabetes.news.

Sources include:

Diabetes.org

WHO.int

Healthline.com

MedicalNewsToday.com

MindBodyGreen.com