High blood sugar is a serious health condition which usually leads to diabetes – a metabolic disease which elevates the levels of glucose in the blood. It may be caused either by insulin resistance or inadequate production of insulin.
Diabetes increases the risk of other severe health issues, such as kidney failure, blindness, heart disease and even amputations of the lower extremity. Diabetes is the 7th leading cause of death in America.
If your blood sugar levels are high, it doesn’t mean you have diabetes. You should control the blood glucose and do regular checkups since if it remains high for long period of time it may lead to diabetes.
The major reasons for diabetes are:
• High intake of sugary foods and soda
• Genetic predispositions
• Smoking
• Physical inactivity
• Stress
In most cases, symptoms are mild, so patients fail to recognize them. Therefore, we are going to present you the most common ones:
• Blurry vision
• Being very thirsty
• Feeling worn out
• Dry mouth
• Frequent urination
• Irritability
• Impotence
• Numbness and tingling in your feet or hands
• Weight gain
• Recurring yeast infections
• Wounds that don’t heal
Ongoing high levels of blood sugar may induce:
• Nerve damage
• Hair loss
• Skin and vaginal infections
• Intestinal problems
• Eye and vision problems
Glycemic index
Diabetes is a preventable disease, so it is important to test your blood regularly and pay attention to what you eat. Apart from that, you should increase the level of your physical activity and drink plenty of water.
In order to control the blood sugar you should make some dietary modifications and increase the intake of foods with low GI (glycemic index) and avoid those with high or moderate GI.
GI measures how foods rich in carbohydrates raise the glucose in the blood. Foods that have high glycemic index raise the glucose more than foods with low or moderate GI.
Therefore, you should plan your meals. If you eat foods with high GI make sure you combine them with foods that have low GI.
Foods with low glycemic index:
• Eggs
• Walnuts
• Hummus
• Broccoli
• Apples
• Cherries
• Yogurt
• Butter beans
• Kidney beans
• Green grapes
• Bananas
• Oranges
• Carrots
Foods with moderate glycemic index:
• Oatmeal
• Honey
• White rice
• Brown rice
Foods with high glycemic index:
• White bread
• Popcorns, puffed rice, corn flakes, brain flakes
• Potatoes
• Pineapple
• Melons
• Saltine crackers
• Rice pasta