Eating apples

elainegold said:

I recently had surgery on my foot to remove a bunion and also joint fusion for severe arthritis at the same time. I saw my surgeon on Friday who stressed the importance of keeping my blood sugar under control which it is as I am type 2. I don't take medication just diet controlled. He told me not to eat apples because they contain sugar and to avoid products with artificial sweetners like diet coke. Has anyone else ever been given this advice?

Click to expand...

That's oddly specific.... There's a lot of sugar in apples, yes, but a kiwi or a pear'd have the same amount of sugars/carbs, and banana's are far worse. And some people have an insulin response to artificial sugars, but that doesn't have very much to do with wound healing. It sounds like your doc picked up some stuff, but as it's not his specialty, h doesn't quite know how endocrine issues work. not these anyway. Look, if you're a T2, you want to heal properly, right? You do that by keeping your bloodsugars in the normal range. (High bloodsugars impair the body's ability to heal, and increase the odds of complications, like wound infections). So that makes sense. But just letting go of ONLY apples? That's weird. And nowhere near enough, as that kindof says all other fruit and/or carbs are okay, when that's not the case.

https://www.diabetes.co.uk/forum/blog-entry/the-nutritional-thingy.2330/ , the dietdoctor.com website and this forum's website will be helpful, I'm hoping.

In any case, I hope you'll be feeling better soon!
Jo

Did you happen to mention apples at all or something that usually has apples in it? Because that is so oddly specific. Apples aren't even the highest glycemic fruit. The sugarless stuff makes more sense as a few studies have come out that people that have substituted sugar free drinks haven't lost weight by doing so and actually seems to cause weight gain.

It would have made far more sense if he had said something like

'fruit will raise blood glucose and isn't great for type 2s. You will heal faster and better if you avoid foods that raise your blood glucose out of range, this includes most fruit but also starchy root veg like potato and grains like rice, bread, pasta, and so on.'

As for the sweeteners, yes, some people find they get an insulin reaction from artificial sweeteners (with knock on effects to blood glucose and weight gain). But other people don't. You would do best to test out your own reaction to them, and then adjust your intake accordingly. There are also a whol range of sweeteners, some really chemically, and others more 'natural', and reactions vary between them, and from person to person.

Do you have a testing kit so that you can find out what fruit and sweeteners (and all the carby foods) do to you?

As a diet controlled T2, you can't rely on medication to control your blood glucose, so it is really down to reducing carb intake via food choices and portion control. The other option is exercise, but with severe arthritis, I am guessing that is not a good suggestion for you!

Apples have fibre which slows down the rise in blood sugar.

bobrobert said:

Apples have fibre which slows down the rise in blood sugar.

Click to expand...

...If I eat an apple I go high. Fast. Fibres are lovely, but they're not so present they don't spike me. And many others with me...

The body uses nightime for calling out the maintenance gangs. It is a time when blood sugars normally fall, and this is the signal to trigger the repair cycle. Low bgl is essential to this process, but apples are not really villains, Much of the sugar in an apple is fructose, and that will not directly spike sugars since it is handled by the liver not the muscles,

Riper the fruit, the more sucrose and less fructose it gives you since ripening is the process of converting fructose to sucrose.

Artificial sweetners have been shown to have some effect on blood sugar in that the sweetner in the mouth triggers the amylase enzyme that tells the body to prepare for sugar incoming. If there is no actual sugar, then it is empty calories but the body has already started to respond as if there was, so your insulin levels [if a T2D] will be released (stage 1 insulin response). So artificial aweetners are bad news for T2D since it keeps the insulin levels higher than they need to be, and this csn make insulin resistance worse.

I have had fusion surgery on both feet around a year apart. I follow a low carbohydrate diet and even with the stress and pain (plus a steroid shot with the first one) I kept my HbA1c in the 30s following both surgeries and my recoveries were unremarkable. Just to pick on apples is only a small part of the story. Do you eat low carb generally @elainegold ?

Oldvatr said:

The body uses nightime for calling out the maintenance gangs. It is a time when blood sugars normally fall, and this is the signal to trigger the repair cycle. Low bgl is essential to this process, but apples are not really villains, Much of the sugar in an apple is fructose, and that will not directly spike sugars since it is handled by the liver not the muscles,

Riper the fruit, the more sucrose and less fructose it gives you since ripening is the process of converting fructose to sucrose.

Artificial sweetners have been shown to have some effect on blood sugar in that the sweetner in the mouth triggers the amylase enzyme that tells the body to prepare for sugar incoming. If there is no actual sugar, then it is empty calories but the body has already started to respond as if there was, so your insulin levels [if a T2D] will be released (stage 1 insulin response). So artificial aweetners are bad news for T2D since it keeps the insulin levels higher than they need to be, and this csn make insulin resistance worse.

Click to expand...

Nice post. Thanks. That bit on fruit ripening was something I asked some time back.