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Fruit and Cereals

D

Dupont

Well-Known Member
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Hi, I maintain pretty good control of my BS without meds, but seem to be hitting problems with most fruits and all breakfast cereals.

Bananas literally make my BS go bananas. :lol: Up to around the 10 mark after an hour. :crazy:

Fruit and cereals mostly have me at about 7.5 to 8.5 after 2 hours.

Is this ok or should I just cut them out of my diet?
 
I'm a nutritionist so this one is easy. Wheat is the highest glycemic food there is, other than most dried fruits, jams, and juices etc. Other grains eaten as cereals are usually problematic as well, even oatmeal can spike blood sugar. Fresh fruits such as citrus, berries, apples, and melons are mostly low glycemic - glycemic load less that 20. Bananas are medium glycemic load and are equal to about 1/4 sugar by weight. Wheat has a glycemic index of 72 where table sugar is 59. So think 10 teaspoons of wheat flour will send your blood sugar higher than 10 teaspoons of sugar! The reason we get type 2 diabetes is because our bodies are not designed for a half pound of wheat and a half pound of sugar every day. This has become the average daily consumption in the U.S. Grapefruit is the lowest glycemic fruit and may actually lower blood sugars besides being a superfruit for health.
Grapefruit:
assists in weight loss
lowers blood sugar
lowers insulin
encourages satiety
raises HDL (good cholesterol)
lowers blood pressure
increases mental wellbeing
prevents obesity
prevents insulin resistance (type 2 diabetes)
prevents and helps diabetes
prevents scurvy
prevents heart disease
anti-bacterial
ant-inflammatory
helps prostatitis
helps eczema
decreases cholesterol
decreases fat absorption
lessens gallstones
reduces release of insulin by up to 20%
blocks glucose transport into fat by up to 30%
vitamin C content can boost the white cancer fighting blood cells
good for skin disorders
good amounts of vitamin C, potassium, foliate, iron, bata carotene, and calcium
can detoxify and help treat cellulite
each fruit has about 8 grams of fiber
lowers high triglycerides
reduces LDL cholesterol
reduces risk of dementia and alzheimer's
reduces risk of Parkinson's disease
promotes circulation and general health
 
. . . but don't eat grapefruit if you're on statins.

Don't know why, but that's what is said on the label - of the one I used to take, at any rate.

Other than adding that caveat, I agree wholeheartedly with Robert Conroy. All carbs are metabolised in the body to glucose, which goes into the blood; if you want to lower your blood glucose, it seems to me to make sense to lower or at least control your carbohydrate intake. I don't handle carbs at all well. If I have more than about 70g per day my BGs start to rise and I start gaining weight. So I try to avoid them.

Except on days like today! :oops: Four inches of snow is a toast day - I'll be good again when it's gone! :wink:

Viv 8)
 
Dupont said:
Bananas literally make my BS go bananas. :lol: Up to around the 10 mark after an hour. :crazy:
Click to expand...

That's probably normal after 1 hour. It's how fast it comes down that matters. Also, the ripeness, and size of a banana, matter greatly. There are loads of studies:

Plasma glucose and insulin responses to bananas of varying ripeness in persons with noninsulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Postprandial glucose and insulin responses to various tropical fruits of equivalent carbohydrate content in non-insulin-dependent diabetes mellitus.
Influence of ripeness of banana on the blood glucose and insulin response in type 2 diabetic subjects.

My meter manual even states that one should not be worried about the occasional reading of 11. The target range for a type 2 diabetic is under 8.5 2 hours after a meal. You can, with diet and exercise, improve on that but it takes some weeks.
 
Thanks guys. :thumbup:

I was under the impression that you could eat grapefruit while on statins. The advice label means not to actually take the pill with grapefruit??? I could well be wrong though.

In all honesty I am never over over 8.5 after two hours no matter what I eat. Cereals, white bread and sweet fruits have me at around the 8 - 8.5 mark but never over.

Last night I had a large chicken madras with brown rice and was at 5.2 two hours later.
 
Simvastatin and some other drugs don't go well with grapefruit. It has the same effect as increasing the dose and, thereby, increasing the chance of the side effects. Some statins are OK with grapefruit, other statins are not OK, hence you see blanket statements like all statins. Atorvastatin is not OK but, as far as I know, Pravastatin is OK. It's something to do with a cytochrome P450 inhibitor in grapefruit and the way it interacts with an active ingredient in some statins.
 
The information sheet for Atorvastatin states:

Grapefruit juice

Do not take more than one or two small glasses of grapefruit juice per day because large quantities of grapefruit juice can change the effects of Atorvastatin.

I remember being on Simvastatin and that did warn on the label and on the information leaflet not to have grapefruit.

It is worth your while to re read the information leaflets every now and again. I stopped taking Simvastatin after being on it quite some time and eventually went back to the GP to look at alternatives.
 
Hiya can someone help me.
am type 2 my nurse increased my satin to 80mg i am haveing real bad runs.i was fine on 40mg i have stop takein the 80 and gone back to 40 i sm only able to see my nurse next week as anyone else been like this.

Sent from the Diabetes Forum App
 
If you eat grapefruit you probably won't need a statin, which you don't if you read the new book The Great Cholesterol Myth written by a heart specialist
 
Fruit and Cereals

Fruit: The natural sugar and calories than most vegetables, you absolutely can not eat it with abandon, but fruit that has all the advantages of vegetables - it is full of the nutrients you need, it is low in fat, it , most other foods high in fiber and relatively low in calories compared.

Cereals: Whole-grain cereal nowadays is one of the most healthy breakfast. Breakfast cereal with milk or yogurt are packed and are consumed together. Cooking grains like oatmeal porridge as required and serving. Cereals with nuts and dried fruit you can taste.
 
Biochemist's view on Fruit and Cereals

I can tell you what we teach medical students on this problem although it is not obvious why it is a problem since you showed that fruit and cereal have a bad effect on blood sugar. It is logical that you should not eat any more carbohydrate than that which does not effect your blood sugar. The idea that “Whole-grain cereal nowadays is one of the most healthy breakfast” makes no sense at all. Vegetables are better than fruit because they have lower carbohydrate. Glycemic index is a weak form of low carbohydrate. We agree with vivienne, that low carb diets are best although we describe as “the default diet,” the one to try first. (May not be for everybody but it is the one that is best supported by the science)

In the States, the American Diabetes Association has very weak acceptance of low-carbohydrate diets but when you confront them -- I have had two debates with the author of their guidelines paper, they have little to say -- duck the issue or pretend that they are supportive. “Eat to the meter” still seems best but if you are taking medication, you should talk to a physician. Generally, you need to lower medication before going on a low carbohydrate diet -- an indication that it does what the drug does for lowering blood sugar.

Robert Conroy is correct that on The Great Cholesterol Myth on fat and heart disease but you have to work it out with your doctor about statins.

Grapefruit contains a compound called bergomottin (originally isolated from bergamot (surprise)) and it interacts with a protein in the liver called P450 which is involved in the breakdown of drugs so when it is inhibited, the drug will accumulate (not necessarily bad in that the drug may have longer effect) and may have other reactions. I would follow the advice on the label.

Hope this helps.

Richard David Feinman, Professor of Cell Biology (Biochemistry), SUNY Downstate Medical Center
blog: http://rdfeinman.wordpress.com
 
Accucheck (where did you get that nickname, I wonder?), you are type 1, so you can control the awful blood glucose raising effects of fruits and cereals by injecting more insulin. Most of us type 2s can't do that, so we avoid them if we can't tolerate them. Please don't say that certain foods are "healthy" - it' simplistic and misleading.
 
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