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GI diet?


However,

If you are in control and your health has improved, your insulin resistance is good, your glucose levels are fine, you're going to allow for a bit of wiggle room, so if you are not intolerant, and low GI/ complex carbs don't spike you, why not?


:***:

I wish I could! (A really low GI chip buttie!)
 
Lamont D said:
If you are in control and your health has improved, your insulin resistance is good, your glucose levels are fine, you're going to allow for a bit of wiggle room, so if you are not intolerant, and low GI/ complex carbs don't spike you, why not?
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OK that can go on the Blue side but only just.
GI good foods that don't spike you index that's under a rating of 50 units. Lists cake, jam and mars bars.

I had thought of this side of the argument already.

The simple answer to 2 would be LC diet is much better.
 
I'll have a go at defending the usefulness of the concept of low GI.

Personally I don't pay any attention to it, as I learned early on that anything with any carbs in it had a very similar effect, and I certainly couldn't do porridge for example. It was just simpler and safer to assume that all carbs will be equally bad. Anyway, I like to understand stuff so I'll have a go...

I can only really think of one way in which it may be a useful concept: I think the current research suggests that blood glucose is possibly only 'toxic' over a certain level. I.e. I don't think that any increase is always bad - it may need to be an increase beyond a certain point. I don't think we know enough about this. Also, some research suggests kidney damage is more influenced by big swings in blood sugar levels rather than a constant high level for example.

There are of course studies which suggest that the GI can be ignored:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...people-without-diabetes-idUSKBN0JU2IR20141216

but then there are also studies that suggest keeping blood sugar at less than a certain level e.g. 7.8 at all times can greatly reduce the chances of complications.

So looking at the difference in the blood sugar 'curve' between a low-GI and high-GI food, yes a low GI food raises blood sugar for longer, but may never get it above a damaging level, whereas a high-GI food may take it into damaging territory for an hour or so, before things then return to safe levels.

I think the concept and research into GI has also been useful in showing us how we really can't assume that just because we take a reading at zero and 2 hours when eating, we really know what is going on. As I discovered recently, if I'd just looked at those readings when taking an OGTT, I could think I have 'impaired glucose tolerance' rather than being majorly diabetic. We really need to see the full curve to know how high we get and for how long, in order to properly assess what a meal is doing to us.

I'd say that we'd all be far more educated about the food we eat if we used continuous glucose monitors and logged the actual shape of the graph, or at least the starting point, high point and time-to-return-point rather than just a 2 hour measurement. In other words, if we all built our own GI chart of foods. It wouldn't exactly be the 'GI' as such, the main thing of interest would be the high point of the graph. And it would need to be our own chart, because one of the many flaws of the standard GI chart is that, in reality, we are all remarkably different in how we digest foods. I wish I could find it now but I saw an interesting chart where some people could flat-line while eating cookies but spike on a banana, and vice-versa.

So in summary I'd say that:

* It's not a bad concept
* We'd need to make our own personal charts for it to be useful
* The charts need to be based on whole meals that we eat, not individual ingredients
* It would take so much effort and time that it's probably better for most people just to play safe, and assume all carbs will affect them in the way the worst example they can find does
 
Lally123 said:
low GI works great for me
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There is no right way to control your diabetes just the way that is right for you.
I'm happy to hear any input you have its why I asked the question.

Lally123 said:
why do you write 'bag' after all your posts? Not being rude just curious!
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It should show up as an emoji I just use it as a signature, nobody else was so I have claimed it as mine.
Just a harmless bit of silliness
 
I second that 'yep'!
 
AdamJames said:
There are of course studies which suggest that the GI can be ignored:
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Choosing to ignore the report saying to ignore the benefits or not in GI food as it's author is a former president American Heart Association.
Who are still advocating low fat diet.
 
Ah I see, for some reason it doesn't come up with an emoji, I'm using the app maybe that's Why! Just couldn't work it out lol. 're low GI I take meds but only take gliclazide in the evening so need to be careful during the day as effects usually wear off after a few hours. If I ate say white bread for lunch my bg would rise quickly for hours. If I eat low GI bread it doesn't rise much at all and stays well below 7 and I've tested at 1 2 3 and 4 hours to make sure. Same with say porridge something like ready brek will raise me very quickly but proper porridge oats don't at all. I keep carbs lowish (less than 100g) but not keto and this way definitely works much better for me feeling healthy with lots of energy!
 

Nice well though out response.
It dose offer an option for a greater choice in foods for anyone with a less impaired IR response. But not for anyone with impaired insulin production.

I have heard this kind of circular argument before from nephrologist when looking at patients in renal failure, kidneys don't handle protein or sugar well when they have reached that state. So it must be the protein or sugar which caused the problem in the first place. Just like cancer thrives of sugar so sugar causes cancer.

"kidney damage is more influenced by big swings in blood sugar" but then so is the heart and every thing else.

I don't have any of the answers, I do appreciate your incite.
 
Lally123 said:
If I eat low GI bread it doesn't rise much at all and stays well below 7 and I've tested at 1 2 3 and 4 hours to make sure.
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And that's pretty much all any of us are aiming for, if its working for you that's great.

What's your opinion on the low GI score 50 or under including jam, cakes and mars bars in respect to anyone looking into low GI food for there first time, to control blood glucose?

I looked at 5:2 diet and one of the first recommended meals had Heinz baked beans in it. I didn't look any further.
For me it was the same with GI looking at the index there was practcaly nothing on the index I choose to eat that scored higher than a 10 GI units so discarded it a the choice for me.
....bag.....
 
Personally I don't eat cake jam or mars bars and can't believe they are meant to be low GI especially jam! Unbelievable. Thinking about It, one poster used the analogy of cars on a motorway so to put it a different way: if 1000 cars on a motorway an hour give off say 3 tonnes of CO2 the trees and plants can only absorb so much of that CO2 and turn it into oxygen in that hour because there is a limit to how much respiration those trees can do so the unused CO2 floats around in the atmosphere causing harm and pollution. But over 3 hours if 333 cars travel that same motorway an hour over 3 hours, those trees may well be able to cope with that amount so that less enters the atmosphere and more is turned into oxygen. So if I eat a slice of white bread and my bg goes up to 15 in an hour and takes 4 or 5 hours to come.down to normal, that's going to cause me big problems and damage to my organs over time. But if I eat a slice of wholemeal seeded bread and my bg goes up from say 5.5 to 7 over the same period of time, that's far less damaging! Sorry it's not scientific and I have no idea how much pollution is caused by cars but hopefully that makes sense!
 
Lally123 said:
Personally I don't eat cake jam or mars bars and can't believe they are meant to be low GI especially jam! Unbelievable. Thinking about It, one poster used the analogy of cars
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Yeah I started the whole traffic jam analogy to show the logic behind spreading out a work load over a length of time it was nothing to do with pollution just how you could compare the low rise in bg associated with GI to easing congestion during rush hour.
But then it took on a life of its own I blame @Guzzler

Lally123 said:
Personally I don't eat cake jam or mars bars and can't believe they are meant to be low GI especially jam! Unbelievable.
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I know that was my reaction which is why many people myself included just completely dismiss the whole GI concept out of hand. Jam is fruit and sugar.

I used to make jam it was lovely. (drool) I wouldn't eat it now and never considered it a acceptable food for a diabetic but it's on the list next mars bar.

I am not saying its your fault it's on the list. ..winky face...
....bag....
(for those people whose emoji's are not showing up properly.)
 
I got a pocket size gi index for reference. I don't use it much these days.

One thing to remember is that many of these diets and accompanying recipes are not diabetic specific. I follow lchf/keto and if a recipe includes an ingredient I am not happy with, I don't use the recipe.
 
I think it (GI) is just a handy way of placing foods on the worst=>less bad=>slightly bad=>neutral=>slightly better=>better=>best continuum.

I mean, if I was living on doughnuts, chips and pies, and I switched to low GI then that would be a HUGE improvement. Add in a few diabetic drugs to help with blood glucose control, and it might turn out to be a very sustainable even pleasurable way to eat AND control my diabetes.

On the other hand, if I started off on a low GI mediterranean diet, got diagnosed, added in a medication or two which didn't control my blood glucose sufficiently, then I might move further away from low GI and into keto.

Always a choice.

But we all start at different places on the continuum, and we all need to take different measures to get the results we want.

From my perspective, I am playing a very long game. I intend to live forever even if I do eventually die I want it to be a bolt from the blue while skydiving as a centenarian, not from diabetes complications. And I'm not 100% certain that low GI (with or without meds) will do enough to delay the progression of my glucose dysfunction. So I opt for very low carb, because I want to undercut my carb tolerance to prevent straining my ability to cope with them. Especially as my carb tolerance is likely to decrease with time and age.
 
Brunneria said:
. Add in a few diabetic drugs to help with blood glucose control,
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OK that's definitely on the Blue side.
I had not taken medication into account. The argument that GI is the "lesser of 2 evils" I had though of.

It's easy to have a "preachy" mindset. And forget that its lots of little choices that put me on the path I'm on. IF I had been exposed to GI food at the start I probably would have completely dismissed it out of had as a diet that *"enables"* diabetes instead of reversing it.

I say this not as a person who has spent time reading up on the condition, but thinking back to first diagnosed and one fundamentally simple understanding diabetic = my body can't handle sugar = sugar is bad.
GI has jam & cake & mars bars =. GI is bad for me.

*"enables"* diabetes is a progressive condition and there is nothing you can do about that except find a way to slow the progression down by "controlling" how fast it progresses

"controlling" that's the propaganda I was fed by the DN.

The same DN who, when I had my last Hba1c sat there in front of me and went back and double check previous Hba1c results to make sure I was Diabetic in the first place.
Colour me smug.
 

Didn’t mean to come over as preachy, so apologies to all, if I did.

What I should perhaps have said in my last post is that if I could get a prescription for Metformin, i would snap their hands off.
But my HbA1c is below the medication threshold, so the NHS won’t prescribe it for me.

I’m not anti drug. I just see diet as the first option for controlling T2, with exercise and medication (where appropriate) bringing up the rear. We all of us make different choices on how far we take any of those options.
 
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