60 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar

by Dennis Pollock

  Nutrition facts from a popular cereal

  For some strange reason bread sometimes does it the other way. Its nutrition information is listed for two slices rather than one (I suppose since most people use two slices for a sandwich). In this case you will need to divide by two to get the information for a single slice.

  The servings per container measurement is also useful as it gives you a good idea of just how much their serving size amounts to. If you are looking at a can of beans and it says that there are five servings per container, you can imagine that one fifth of a can of beans is going to amount to some slim pickings.

  After checking out the serving size and servings per container, go straight to the carbohydrates category. You will find total carbohydrates, and under that you should see subcategories that list the sugars and fiber. Don’t be too impressed if the sugar count is low (if the carb count is high). Your body really doesn’t care whether the carbs are coming from sugar or from starches that will quickly turn into sugar. Both can be big trouble.

  The fiber category is significant. Fiber is the one carbohydrate you don’t have to fear. It will quietly pass through your body without raising your blood sugar. Indeed it will help flush out your colon and do you good. For this reason you can deduct the fiber grams from the total carbs to get the “net carbs” you should consider. The slice of bread (see the first sample label) has 17 total grams of carbs and lists 2 grams of fiber. You can subtract the 2 fiber grams from the 17 total grams and get 15 net grams of carbs for the slice of bread.

  This is not too much of a discount, but there are some products, such as some low-carb bagels, that are loaded with fiber, and the subtraction makes a huge difference. I eat Nature’s Grain Carb Check bagels, which contain 36 grams of carbs per bagel. But 18 of those 36 grams are fiber grams, which are going to have little effect on my blood sugar. To put it in shopper’s terms, this is a phenomenal discount! On top of that I only eat a half bagel at a time, so I am now dealing with only 9 grams of carbs.

  Speaking of beans, if you check out some of the popular pork-and-beans on the Internet, you will find they list around 24 grams of carbs per serving. But the serving size they list is half a cup. Do you know how many beans are in half a cup of pork-and-beans? I do. I counted those in one sauce-heavy brand and found 19 beans. Who in the world is going to be satisfied with 19 beans?

  Some food products, such as the vegetables you see in the produce section, don’t have nutrition facts listed on them. (It would be kind of tricky to put nutrition facts on grapes!) You can use the Internet for these and quickly find their carb content. You can also do this with foods you commonly buy at chain restaurants. Want to know how many carbs in a Big Mac? I just searched for it online and in a few seconds found it to be 47 grams—too many!

  One thing I do as I check the carbs of various foods is make what I call the candy bar comparison. The average normal-sized candy bar will have between 32 and 40 grams of carbs. So when I find foods such as the Big Mac we just mentioned or evaluate a bowl of cereal, I just imagine what it would do to me to eat one or two candy bars for a meal. Lots of diabetics would never eat a candy bar, yet they think nothing of eating a large bowl of cereal, or some toast and pre-sweetened oatmeal, or a generous helping of lasagna that will have twice as many carbs as the candy bar.

  Granted, it is a bit of a hassle to be a carb checker and nutrition facts analyzer. But what a small price to pay for your health. Go ahead! Read those labels.

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  Vegetables—Your Best Friends (Mostly)

  In the battle against high blood sugar your greatest allies are the vegetables. Granted, you could live on meat and eggs and keep everything under control, but you would get precious few vitamins. If you are serious about maintaining reasonable blood-sugar levels and getting the necessary nutrition to maintain excellent health, you will need to become good friends with the vegetable family.

  There are a few veggies that are high in carbs, but most are not. It is not that they have no carbs. All vegetables have carbs—they’re not like that can of tuna that lists a big fat zero for the carbohydrate amount. But many vegetables have so few carbs and so many vitamins and nutrients they are nearly perfect as food for diabetics. In many cases you would have to eat so much of the veggie to accumulate a significant amount of carbs that you can forget the need to count their carbs. And the carbs they do have are locked into the fiber of the food, so that they hit your bloodstream slowly and gently.

  Here is a list of most of the vegetables you will see in your local grocery store, with their net carb content (total carbs minus fiber carbs) based on a cupful of each vegetable. Keep in mind that carb counts are tricky things and there are gobs of carb charts available. The numbers can vary pretty widely based on whether the foods are boiled, cooked, or raw, and the portion size listed. And, people being people, some charts simply differ from others. So while I won’t guarantee that others may not come up with somewhat different numbers, the categories are what you need to focus on.( The actual figures are from the website www.fatsecret.com.)

  As you can see, not all vegetables are created equal. Sadly, two of the tastiest and most popular vegetables (potatoes and corn) are the absolute worst ones you can eat, sugarwise. The key to successful blood-sugar control is being willing to load up on the low-carb foods and go easy on the high-carb ones. Many Americans fill up on potatoes, breads, chips, and pastas, drink sugar-saturated drinks, and enjoy prodigious desserts and candy way too often. Not good! Those of us who battle high blood sugar have to reverse this and make vegetables, meats, eggs, and cheese foundational in our diet, supplemented by low-carb, high-fiber breads and lesser portions of some of the other foods.

  You really do have a say in what your blood-sugar monitor reads when you prick your finger and wait for the results. Choose wisely and make low-carb vegetables an important part of your diet.

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  Fruits—Be Discriminating

  I saw an article on the Internet in which the author gave a blistering defense of fruit. When she gives lectures on nutrition and speaks of the benefits of fruit, she reports that she is often challenged by her students. They tell her that fruit is filled with carbs or loaded with sugar and shouldn’t be considered a “healthy food.”

  In righteous indignation this woman declares how much better fruit is than most of the sweets Americans eat. She details how that fruit comes complete with fiber, antioxidants, minerals, and phytonutrients, and is bursting with vitamins. On top of that, much fruit is relatively low in calories, far lower than the “sweets” we normally eat. She compares an orange to a cola drink, and shows that the orange has less sugar, fewer carbs, fewer calories, and more vitamins, minerals, nutrients, and fiber.

  I have no argument with her, as far as she goes. If someone were to set an orange and a Coke in front of me, put a gun to my head, and tell me I had to ingest one or the other, I’d go for the orange in a heartbeat. (No one has ever done that, and I have a suspicion that I will live out my years without that ever happening.)

  However, for the diabetic and prediabetic the question is not whether oranges are healthier than soda, or apples better for us than Snickers bars. Our major concern is keeping our intake of carbs from driving our blood sugar sky-high and eventually leading us into the land of sores that won’t heal, terrible circulation, amputations, and all the other diabetic complications that will destroy our health. With that in mind I make a simple observation: there is a reason why little Johnny refuses to eat his broccoli and his cauliflower but has no problem finishing his apple chunks and his pear slices. Ounce for ounce, fruit has considerably more sugar in it than most vegetables. And for people watching their sugar intake, that is not insignificant.

  I am not suggesting that diabetics never eat fruit. Fruit is a great source of vitamins and can be a part of a healthy diet. But we must be discriminating, and we must not be naïve. You cannot eat as much fruit as you want, any time you want, and any type you want, if you wa
nt blood-sugar control. Your body doesn’t give natural sugars a pass while reacting violently to the sugar in sodas and candy bars.

  One simple rule for diabetics is to eat half—half an apple, half an orange, half a pear, and so on at a meal rather than a full one. Remember this simple thought: reduce the portion size—reduce the carbs your body has to deal with. Don’t eat several fruits at one setting. Eating a large sweet apple, a big banana, and a bunch of grapes will quickly get you near 75 to 80 grams of sugar your pancreas has to try to deal with. If these are a part of a meal that includes significant other sources of carbs, you have put an enormous load on your body, and rising blood sugar will be inevitable.

  Carb-wise, the worst fruits of all are the dried fruits. With these the water has been mostly evaporated but the sugar remains. And since they are smaller in size, you get the impression you can eat quite a lot of them without really eating too much. What you are ingesting primarily is sugar, sugar, sugar. One cup of dried figs is 130 grams of carbs! A cup of prunes, which are dried plums, contains around 106 grams, and a cup of raisins has 130 grams. You might as well eat three candy bars (blood-sugar-wise—yes, they do have more vitamins and so on.).

  Some fruits are far more acceptable than others. A small tangerine is only about 7 or 8 grams of carbs, which is quite good for the vitamins you are getting. Melons and berries aren’t too bad, as long as you don’t consume them in large quantities.

  The chart below, from diabetescare.com, gives a good comparative guide to the carbs in fruits. As with the vegetables chart, there are slight differences in the numbers in various charts you find. But it is a good resource for making comparisons.

  And don’t forget that ultimately it is the net carbs, not the total carbs, that count. The chart lists raspberries as having 14.4 grams of carbs per cup, but this amount includes 8.4 grams of fiber. Thus, you really are having to deal with only 6 grams of carbs for a cup of raspberries, which isn’t bad at all. You can put some of these babies on a low-carb pancake without guilt, and it will be a great treat. You can see how a little knowledge can make a big difference. The mangos have 25 grams of net carbs per cup, whereas papayas (which I really enjoy) have only around 11 grams per cup. Switching from mangos to papayas cuts your carbs in half, and a little more.

  Ultimately the test for any and all fruits is what they do to your blood-sugar levels. If you enjoy a lunch that includes an apple or a pear, fine. Test yourself about an hour and 15 minutes afterward and see what happened. Remember, 120 mg/dl as a peak is normal, 140 is acceptable. But when that number goes north of 150 it’s probably time to make some changes. Try half an apple or half a pear next time, and test again. Keep cutting back until the number becomes something you can live with (literally).

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  Fantastic Fiber

  Nearly every nutrition expert agrees that fiber is very, very good for us. Fiber is classified as a carbohydrate, but it is the one carb from which you have nothing to fear. It will pass through your body without being digested, so it has almost no impact upon blood sugar. When you read the nutrition information on the label of the food, you will see that the fiber is placed within the carbohydrate category, but you can deduct the fiber amount from the total carbohydrate count to discover how many sugar-producing carbs you are going to have to deal with. We call this the net carbs.

  Fiber is categorized by two different types: soluble fiber and insoluble fiber. Neither will impact your blood sugar and both are beneficial, but they have differing benefits. The insoluble fiber doesn’t break down at all in your digestive system. It passes through pretty much “as is” and heads for the exit door with haste. So how can this be beneficial, if it isn’t digested? There are several things it does do. First, the insoluble fiber keeps your bowel movements more regular and prevents constipation. We sometimes call it “roughage” and it not only passes through your bowels quickly, but tends to carry the other foods along with it on a faster journey. Since it helps your food not be clogged up in your intestines, it is thought to be a colon-cancer-preventative agent. Another benefit of this fiber is that it adds bulk, attracts water to the colon (making your stool softer), and gives you a feeling of fullness, preventing you from overeating.

  The soluble fiber does break down, to a degree, and forms a gel-like mass that has been shown in many studies to reduce blood-sugar spikes. Yet like the insoluble fiber it does not affect blood-sugar levels. The New England Journal of Medicine reports the following:

  Beneficial effects of high dietary fiber intake in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus: A high intake of dietary fiber, particularly of the soluble type, above the level recommended by the ADA, improves glycemic control, decreases hyperinsulinemia, and lowers plasma lipid concentrations in patients with type 2 diabetes.8

  Basically, this gel-like mass keeps other carbs from being too quickly absorbed and turning into sugar. The release of glucose in your body is of a kinder, gentler (and slower) nature than it would be otherwise.

  It is not the purpose of this book to delve very deeply into theory; I am more concerned about getting you traveling in the right direction. Let us sum up what research has learned about fiber with these two simple but important facts: 1) Fiber is really good for you; and 2) the higher the ratio of fiber carbs to total carbs, the better a food is for the diabetic. For example, if a slice of bread has 22 grams of carbs with 1 gram of fiber, that is not impressive. But if, as in the case of some “double fiber” breads, a slice has 13 grams of carbs with 5 of those being fiber carbs, that is significant. You are dealing with only 8 sugar-producing grams of carbs for that slice, which isn’t too bad.

  The fiber percentage you need to consider is found by dividing the fiber grams by the total grams of carbs. Peanuts are listed as having 5 grams of carbs per ounce, and 2 of these carb grams are listed as dietary fiber. Divide 2 by 5 and you get .40, which means that 40 percent of the carbs in peanuts are fiber, which is quite good, far better than most foods.

  A low-carb bagel sounds like an oxymoron but researchers have been able to create these wonders by ratcheting the fiber carbs to absurd levels. The low-carb bagels I eat contain 36 grams per bagel but exactly half of these (18) are fiber carbs which don’t affect blood sugar.

  Just because a food is high in fiber doesn’t mean that it is low in net carbs. There are some high-fiber cereals that still blow the roof off in terms of net carbs. Don’t be taken in simply by a high-fiber label on the food. The true test of the food is the net carbs. Many granola cereals look so crunchy, healthy, and fiber-full that they surely must be great for the diabetic. Not! In fact, most granola-type cereals have a naturally high carb count and then (to add insult to injury) they add loads of sugar, so that they become some of the highest carb cereals on the shelf.

  Foods highest in the ratio of fiber carbs to regular carbs. The mother of all foods when it comes to the ratio between fiber carbs and total carbs is the lowly flaxseed. When you buy flaxseed meal you find an amazing fact on the nutrition information: the number of total carbs and fiber carbs in a serving is exactly the same! In truth there is a slight difference, but so little that they don’t bother to list it. (Something like 4.0 total carbs to 3.84 fiber carbs.) This is why flaxseed meal is found in so many low-carb recipes, as in flaxseed muffins (see chapter 28) and low-carb bread (chapter 10) With flaxseed you can pretty much eat as much as you can stand, without worrying about carbs or blood sugar.

  Other great fiber-to-regular-carb-ratio foods include wheat bran, spinach, collard greens, broccoli, avocados, and blackberries. All these have more fiber carbs in them than digestible carbs. Asparagus, celery, eggplant, lettuce, mushrooms, radishes, and red raspberries have about an equal amount of fiber to digestible carbs, which is great. Almost all nuts are high in fiber and fairly low in carbs, and are great foods for diabetics.

  Wheat flour fares pretty low in this category compared with soy flour. A serving of wheat flour contains 3 grams of fiber, as does the same amount of soy flour. But the
soy flour contains only 8 grams of total carbs, whereas the wheat flour contains 21 grams. So the soy flour’s ratio of fiber to total carbs is 37 percent, but the wheat flour’s percentage is 14 percent.

  To sum up, fiber is tremendously beneficial, and no diet should be without it. However, those concerned with blood sugar should not assume “high fiber” makes a food safe for them. Watch for the net carbs, and also be aware of the fiber-to-total-carbs ratio.

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  Managing the Cost of the Low-Carb Lifestyle

  As you move toward a low-carb lifestyle you will soon find that there is a cost involved. In my early days I used to eat a lot of low-carb candy bars, and I would be so envious when I looked at the regular candy bars sitting proudly on the racks as I waited in line to check out. Whereas I might be paying a dollar and a half for my low-carb bar, these sugar-filled delights were sitting there selling for a mere fifty cents. It just wasn’t fair!

  And it still isn’t. Food retailers know they have the low-carbers over a barrel. Some years ago I used to buy a low-carb bagel that was absolutely delicious, but pricey. I think I was paying around five or six dollars for a bag of six. After a while the product disappeared from the grocery shelves. I called the company to order some and they told me an interesting story about that particular bagel. They said the FDA had decided that these bagels weren’t as low-carb as they had been advertising, and forced them to change their nutrition information. They were still lower in net carbs than most bagels but were no longer low enough to be advertised as low-carb. The company took the “low-carb” boast off the label and started selling the same bagels for about a little over half of what they had been charging before. Since they were no longer low-carb they figured they could never get the former price. Such is the nature of the low-carb food business.