Welcome to M.V Hospital for Diabetes, established by late Prof. M.Viswanathan, Doyen of Diabetology in India in 1954 as a general hospital. In 1971 it became a hospital exclusively for Diabetes care. It has, at present,100 beds for the treatment of diabetes and its complications.

Monday, January 9, 2017

Measuring the effect of carbohydrate can help glucose management

While planning the diet for people with diabetes, certain terms such as the Glycaemic Index (GI) of carbohydrates and Glycaemic Load (GL) are usually used.





 The Glycaemic Indexis a value given to foods on the basis of  how slowly or quickly they raise blood glucose levels. Foods that are lowon the GI scale tend to release glucose slowly and steadily. Foods that are high on the GI scale tend to release glucose quickly. People with diabetes have to focus on foods low on the GI scale as the slow release ofglucose is helpful in controllingblood glucose levels.

But the GIdoes not tell you how high your blood sugar could go when you actually eat the food. To understand the complete effect of a food on blood sugar, you need to know how quickly the food makes the glucose enter the blood stream and how much glucose it will deliver.

This is done by the Glycaemic Load. The Glycaemic Load gives a more accurate effect of the food on blood sugar levels.



The Glycaemic Load of food is a number that evaluates how much of that food will raise a person’s blood glucose level after eating it.

So check out the GI and GL of foods on www.health.harvard.edu to understand how the foods you eat can impact your blood sugar.

Some foods such as lean meats and proteins produce an insulin response even though there is no carbohydrate present, and some foods show an uneven insulin response when compared to their carbohydrate content. In these cases the Insulin Index can be more useful than either the Glycaemic Index or the Glycaemic Load.

The Insulin Index of a food is a fairly new concept that tells us how much the food raises the level of insulin in the blood during the two-hour period after it is eaten.While the GI shows the effect of carbohydrate in food on blood glucose levels, the insulin index takes into account the carbohydrate in food, the quality and quantity of protein and fat and their interaction.

Holt et al noted that the glucose and insulin scores of most foods are highly correlated, but high-protein foods and bakery products that are rich in fat and refined carbohydrates "elicit insulin responses that were disproportionately higher than their glycemic responses."

Compared with the 2500 foods tested for GI ,there are only a few for Insulin Index,  but those foods tested include top 100 sources of energyin 10 categories of food.

Check out   www.mendosa.com for comparative glycaemic and insulin scores of various foods.
‘High insulin level in blood is not a responseto a single nutrient (CHO), but rather the sum total effect ofmetabolic  reactions among different nutrients within foods’

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