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GI Diet

miriamy

miriamy

Well-Known Member
Messages
212
Location
South Cotswolds
Type of diabetes
Treatment type
Tablets (oral)
Dislikes
Medics who tell you what to do.
Politicians who blame people for being poor and praise bankers for being rich.
TV
Butter Beans
Is there a thread on the GI approach to managing my diabetes?
I really would like advice from those with knowledge and experience.
Thanks
 
Sorry I couldn't find one either. Let's hope that some knowledgeable GI and/or GL diet followers come along to help you soon.
 
A quick Google came up with a link to Diabetes UK stating that a Cochrane review of research found that a GI diet can lower HbA1c by 0.5% which personally I don't find too impressive.

Jennie Brand Miller devised the GI and one of her students, Susanna Holt, developed the Insulin Index. They are similar for the most part, with a few notable exceptions e.g. beef, milk and rice.

If you haven't found it the official GI website is glycemicindex.com which should be able to answer any question on GI hopefully.

I tried it but swapping to lower GI carbs didn't work for me.
 
I use the Collins Gem GL book .you still have to test every meal as there are some howlers like porridge etc but you soon weed them out
 
Thank you all for your suggestions and for sharing your own experience. I am trying to maintain a low carb approach and someone suggested tracking low GL as a way to manage the spikes I'm having. I've tended to avoid GI diet as I find it much easier to track low carb.
 
Also, as far as I know, the GI tests were done on normal people, not diabetics - I think that may explain why some type 2's have wildly variable responses to carbs that don't affect people with normal glucose metabolism. That's why we're diabetics after all.
 
Maybe we should refer to non diabetics as 'healthy' people?
 
The insulin index of food is promising. I might take the GI/GL more seriously if they re-did the studies using diabetics as the subjects - though I still think there would be widely differing responses between individuals - as we all discover when we start using our glucometers to track our BG response to food.

https://optimisingnutrition.wordpress.com/the-insulin-index/
 
whatever. .I agree that the word 'normal' is problematic and i avoid using it. However, with the current rates of diabetes T2 and projected increase we might sadly be referring to HAVING it as normal to our society.
Shall we talk about GI and glycemic load again?
 
Patrick Holford has an interesting book on low GI.

I read it and tried eating that way for a few months. Felt great on it. Ate more carbs and grains than for the last 20 years. Loved it. Thought i had been handed the keys to the kingdom. Except for a bit of weight gain. But then, i was used to that.

Then i joined this forum and bought a bg meter - and was shocked at how high my bg had been running! For months!

Such a pity.

So while i think it is an enjoyable, sustainable way of eating, i would urge people with glucose intolerance (we not-normals) to test their bg while doing low GI. Hopefully it will work like a charm. But regrettably it didn't work for me.
 
I use a GI approach along with reduced carbs to manage my T2 and have found the approach to be a great help.

I was diagnosed 6 years ago and placed on insulin, I cut back on the amount of food I was eating quite dramatically and paid special attention to testing my blood glucose before and 2 hours after eating and found that by substituting wholegrain breads or Burgen for white bread and a few other swaps to low GI foods I managed to lose 5 stone in weight tightly control my bg levels wean myself off insulin and have maintained my weight loss for the last 5 years.

Good luck n your journey and I hope you find what works for you :)
 
Last edited by a moderator:
That's heartening news Sid. Based on following a tight-ish low carbon - 90g a day - diet for the last 4 weeks, I have a feeling that would work for me too. I am mainly looking at the GL more than the GI as I am looking carefully at carb content already. I am trying to get my bg levels down and eliminate/reduce spikes.
so far, my fbg has gone down from ave. 16 -20 to 8-9 but I am still getting spikes and not much reduction 2 hrs after a meal. I need to increase exercise. This week I am trialling a 30 moderate walk after a meal, 3 times a day.
 
Actually there have been many tests of GI done with people who have diabetes, and many of the GI rankings in the University of Sydney data base are from tests done on people with diabetes. ( you can actually check each item to see who tested it, the number and type of people tested and when it was tested)
It's a ranking and in a comparison of 20 foods* tested with non diabetics and diabetics the correlation between them was 0.94 (over 0.9 is considered high)
if most non diabetic people get much higher glucose spikes with fluffy white rice than with lentils then so will a person with T2 diabetes (though the person with diabetes may have higher overall levels than the person without)
Portion control is important and that's where the GL comes in because it takes into account both the GI and the amount of carbs involved. It's no good thinking that pasta (cooked al dente) has a low GI and so eat the enormous bowl full that is often served in the UK (not so much in Italy!)
It's really a tool to distinguish between varieties of carb containing food. The emphasis recently has moved towards dietary patterns that tend to have an overall lower GI; so diets like the traditional Greek Mediterranean diet; In general minimally processed foods are lower in GI .
There is a world of difference for example in the GI of some whole barley or wheat cooked in a casserole or even as a porridge than the same grain finely milled flour and stuck into a 'whole grain' bread . (in the bread stakes coarser, denser and sourdough helps lower GI; ie more like peasant breads than typical supermarket offerings)
http://www.glycemicindex.com/ (the newsletters often have helpful information )

* http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584181 This paper also has 2 supplements, lists of foods that have been tested. the first is in 'normal' the second includes those tested on PWD.
 
[QUOTE="Brunneria, post:

So while i think it is an enjoyable, sustainable way of eating, i would urge people with glucose intolerance (we not-normals) to test their bg while doing low GI. Hopefully it will work like a charm. But regrettably it didn't work for me.[/QUOTE]

Brunneria,
I agree with you. I am totally convinced of the low carb approach.
My initial thoughts on GI information I've looked at, is there may be a benefit in taking into account glycaemic load when meal planning as a possible way to eliminate spikes after a meal.
 
phoenix said:
Actually there have been many tests of GI done with people who have diabetes, and many of the GI rankings in the University of Sydney data base are from tests done on people with diabetes. ( you can actually check each item to see who tested it, the number and type of people tested and when it was tested)
It's a ranking and in a comparison of 20 foods* tested with non diabetics and diabetics the correlation between them was 0.94 (over 0.9 is considered high)
if most non diabetic people get much higher glucose spikes with fluffy white rice than with lentils then so will a person with T2 diabetes (though the person with diabetes may have higher overall levels than the person without)
Portion control is important and that's where the GL comes in because it takes into account both the GI and the amount of carbs involved. It's no good thinking that pasta (cooked al dente) has a low GI and so eat the enormous bowl full that is often served in the UK (not so much in Italy!)
It's really a tool to distinguish between varieties of carb containing food. The emphasis recently has moved towards dietary patterns that tend to have an overall lower GI; so diets like the traditional Greek Mediterranean diet; In general minimally processed foods are lower in GI .
There is a world of difference for example in the GI of some whole barley or wheat cooked in a casserole or even as a porridge than the same grain finely milled flour and stuck into a 'whole grain' bread . (in the bread stakes coarser, denser and sourdough helps lower GI; ie more like peasant breads than typical supermarket offerings)
http://www.glycemicindex.com/ (the newsletters often have helpful information )

* http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2584181 This paper also has 2 supplements, lists of foods that have been tested. the first is in 'normal' the second includes those tested on PWD.
Click to expand...

Phoenix,
thankyou for this valuable information. what you say confirms my experience.
Portion control and increased physical activity are the two areas I struggle with.
 
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