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What Are Carbohydrates And Their Impact on Diabetes

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Carbohydrates pop up in so many of our favorite daily foods and tasty dietary staples. Yet, believe it or not, these simple compounds could be the pesky source sabotaging your wellness journey and putting you at risk for abnormal insulin levels.If you have diabetes, whether it be Type 1 or Type 2, your health and wellbeing depends on your ability to keep your blood sugar balanced and normal, which all goes back to your diet and eating habits.

Quick Navigation
“What are carbohydrates?”
How Do Carbohydrates Effect Diabetes?
Contributing Factors
Dangers of High or Low Blood Sugar
Conclusion

Even if you are prediabetic, now is the time to get your blood sugar levels back on track and at a healthy level. If you are thinking to yourself “What are carbohydrates?”, and wondering if they really could affect you so significantly, the following comprehensive analysis was written just for you. What Are Carbohydrates? Overview To answer the question 

“What are carbohydrates?”

This compound is a series of elements found in food and tissues composed of sugar, starch, and cellulose. Not all carbohydrates are created equally regarding the quality of the sugar, starch, and cellulose that vary based on the source.Whenever you eat a carbohydrate food source, your body dissects and disperses the digestible elements into the form of sugar which goes into your bloodstream. This causes your blood sugar levels to elevate, stimulating your pancreas to produce more insulin.

Insulin is the hormone responsible for causing cells to use the sugar stores for later or consume them immediately as energy.As your cells absorb the blood sugar, the amount originally in your blood stream after initial consumption of the carbohydrates will drop. Your body begins to produce glucagon, which alerts your liver to release its stored sugar. The insulin and glucagon work together to make sure that your cells and brain are enjoying sufficient amounts of blood sugar.In the case of Type 2 diabetes, your body is unable to produce sufficient insulin, or utilize what it already has, to manage blood sugar consumption, causing carbohydrates to become a threatening substance to the body. It typically takes time for Type 2 diabetes to develop.

The process usually begins with your muscles and cells failing to react properly to insulin, eventually leading to insulin resistance. With insulin resistance, your blood sugar levels remain elevated long after you have finished a meal, wearing the cells down to where insulin output ceases entirely. Therefore, carbohydrates become a dangerous irritant to a system unable to metabolize or disperse these innate sugars properly. Not all carbohydrates are created equally. 

In answering the query “What are carbohydrates?”, it is crucial to distinguish between the simple and complex varieties.

Simple carbohydrates are basic chemical compounds containing only 1 or 2 sugar sources, making them easily absorbed by the body. This can lead to significant blood sugar spikes in a short amount of time and high insulin production.

Complex carbohydrates have more detailed compounds, composed of 3 or more connected sugars. Foods like fruits and vegetables, containing vitamins, minerals, and fiber, are complex carbohydrates. Their complex form causes them to take more time to digest and hit the blood stream more slowly. There are other common foods like white potatoes which are considered complex carbohydrates, but do not contain the same essential nutrients.

How Do Carbohydrates Effect Diabetes?

The Glycemic Index and Blood Sugar, we must next examine how they affect diabetes in a noticeable way. Despite the obvious differences between simple and complex carbohydrates, their compound makeup is not enough to explain their ultimate impact on blood sugar and, therefore, diabetic individuals. This is where the glycemic index comes into play.

The glycemic index was created to better separate the carbohydrates that cause danger to conditions like diabetes from those which could be considered healthy food sources when enjoyed in moderation. The glycemic index takes the form of a scale, rating carbohydrates on a 0 to 100 computation.

Foods such as white bread, which are digested very quickly and hit your blood sugar levels almost immediately causing spikes, come in high on the glycemic index. Alternatively, whole, fibrous grains, like oats that digest slowly and disperse their innate sugars over time to allow for balanced blood sugar levels, rate much lower on the glycemic index.

To be considered a low-glycemic carbohydrate source, a food must be rated at 55 or less. Foods between 70 and 100 are on the high end of the glycemic spectrum. If you consistently eat high-glycemic foods, constantly spiking and unbalancing your blood sugar levels, you not only put yourself at greater risk for diabetes, not to mention weight gain and heart disease, to name a few potential consequences.

If you are already diabetic, the outcome of consistent high-glycemic carbohydrate consumption can be catastrophic.Eating foods with a low glycemic rating can not only help you manage your Type 2 diabetes, but improve your blood sugar levels and enable you to achieve your weight loss goals. Eating carbohydrate foods low on the glycemic index can reduce inflammation greatly, which is another key player in controlling diabetes.

Contributing Factors

Whole Wheat Bread

Image by Couleur from Pixabay  

There are pertinent factors that determine the answer to the question “What are carbohydrates?”, in that a particular food’s glycemic index rating and carbohydrate amount varies based on a few key elements. Highly processed and refined carbohydrate foods, that remove much of the fibrous content, are harder on your blood sugar levels and thus, higher on the glycemic index.

Eating whole grains in moderation is an excellent way to weave carbohydrates into your diet as a diabetic without spiking blood sugar and insulin levels. The more fiber food has, the less of a digestible source of carbohydrates it contains, which slows its digestion and absorption to maintain optimal blood sugar dispersion.

Foods containing fats or acid are also much slower to turn into sugar.While fruits and vegetables are far healthier carbohydrate sources than cakes or cookies, overly ripe ones will have a higher glycemic rating and still cause spikes, if not consumed in moderation. Speak with your doctor regarding questions you may have pertinent to your own dietary needs and carbohydrate consumption to work out an eating plan that is best for you.

Dangers of High or Low Blood Sugar

Signs and Symptoms

Understanding the Difference

Conclusion

Determining “What are carbohydrates?” is not inherently complicated. The various compound makeups of simple and complex carbohydrates affect your diabetes by either elevating, lowering, or balancing your blood sugar levels. Choosing carbohydrate food sources that are on the lower end of the glycemic index is a great place to start when configuring a diet to manage your diabetes.  Speak with your doctor regarding an eating plan that is best for you to balance your blood sugar levels and maintain optimal energy and vitality.

Featured Image by เสาวภา ลื่นลม from Pixabay

20 Diabetes Signs that You Need to be Aware Of

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Diabetes is often misunderstood as a condition that primarily affects people who are hereditarily predisposed to acquire the illness or people who consume a lot of sugary foods. However, with the lifestyle of the average person becoming increasingly more sedentary, the risk of developing diabetes has become far more widespread. An increasing number of people are being diagnosed with the disease, and many more are living with the disease without being diagnosed. Knowing the diabetes signs and symptoms can help people seek medical intervention at an early stage, thus making it easier to manage the condition and lead a relatively normal life. In this article, you’ll learn about the diabetes signs that you need to keep an eye out for.

Quick Navigation
What Is Diabetes?
What Causes Diabetes?
Common Diabetes Signs to Look Out For
Conclusion

What Is Diabetes?

Contrary to popular opinion, diabetes (also known as diabetes mellitus) isn’t just one single disease. Rather, it’s a group of diseases that stem from metabolic disorders that prevent the body from using and storing glucose properly, resulting in high glucose concentrations in the blood. There are three kinds of diabetes as we’ll see below.

Type 1 Diabetes

This type of diabetes occurs when the body’s immune system begins to attack the beta cells in the pancreas, thus resulting in a reduction in the ability of the pancreas to produce sufficient insulin. Type 1 diabetes used to be more common in children, which was why it was previously referred to as juvenile diabetes. However, adults can also develop type 1 diabetes.

Type 2 Diabetes

Here, the body’s cells slowly and progressively fail to respond correctly to insulin, leading to insulin resistance. As a result, glucose levels in the blood continue to rise, eventually leading to severe complications. Type 2 diabetes can often go undiagnosed for a long time and is usually detected only when serious symptoms begin to appear.

Gestational Diabetes

As is evident from the name, gestational diabetes occurs in pregnant women. The condition often resolves itself after childbirth. However, studies have shown that a significant percentage of women who suffer from gestational diabetes go on to develop type 2 diabetes later in life.

What Causes Diabetes?

The precise cause of type 1 diabetes is currently unknown. However, type 2 diabetes can develop for a number of reasons. Some common causes and risk factors of type 2 diabetes are:

  • Being overweight or obese
  • A sedentary lifestyle that doesn’t include adequate exercise
  • Growing older
  • High blood pressure
  • Gestational diabetes
  • Ethnicity (people belonging to certain ethnic groups like African Americans, Native Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans are at a higher risk)
  • A family history of the disease
  • Fat accumulation in the abdomen 

Common Diabetes Signs to Look Out For

Explained below are some of the commonly noticed signs and symptoms that indicate the onset of diabetes.

​Thirst is often one of the first symptoms of diabetes. Since the body is unable to use the glucose in the bloodstream, it’s excreted through the urinary system. A lot of the water from the bodily tissues is also eliminated along with the excess glucose, leaving the patient feeling thirsty and dehydrated.

Feeling Thirsty Often

Man drinking a bottle of water while at the beach

Image by Olya Adamovich from Pixabay

Dark Patches on the Skin

Dark patches on the skin can occur because of a number of reasons, and diabetes is one among these causes. The disease triggers the insulin receptors present in the skin, eventually causing mutations to the normal tissue.  This can result in irregularly shaped dark patches on the skin.

Unexplained Weight Loss

Weight loss is a common side effect of the disease, particularly in type 1 diabetes. Loss of water from the body’s tissues can result in considerable loss of weight in the preliminary stages of the disease. Eventually, as the body burns fat or muscle to meet the energy requirements, patients can lose more weight.

Woman is depressed after weighing herself at the weighing scale

Image by luxstorm from Pixabay

Word weight gain placed at the center of a blue plate

Image by Natasha Spenser from Pixabay

Unexpected Weight Gain

As frustrating as it might seem, weight loss isn’t the only weight-related issue that is among the various diabetes signs. The disease can also result in an increase in weight in some people, because it affects the delicate balance in the body’s endocrine system, leading to an accumulation of fat.
 

Increased Hunger

Frequent hunger pangs and an increase in appetite are some of the other common symptoms that people with diabetes report before they’re diagnosed with the disease. Diabetes results in insulin resistance, which interferes with the absorption of sugar. Consequently, people with diabetes have lower energy levels and feel hungry frequently.

Food for breakfast and some utensils

Image by RitaE from Pixabay

Sweetness of Breath

Sweet-smelling breath can be a pleasant and welcome change. However, beneath this pleasantness, there could be a more sinister reason like diabetic changes in the body. Lack of adequate insulin makes your body burn more fat and muscles in order to produce energy, leading to ketones being released into your bloodstream. This can then make your breath smell fruity.

Pain in Your Extremities

A kind of nerve damage called peripheral neuropathy occurs as diabetes progresses. This kind of damage involves the nerves in the extremities like the hands and the feet. Hyperglycemia, which is the term used for excess sugar in the bloodstream, damages the nerves and causes frequent sharp pains in the process.

Dryness of Mouth

Since diabetes generally results in a lot of water being leeched from your body’s tissues in order to flush out excess sugar in the blood, your mouth can often feel drier than it normally does. Dryness can eventually lead to issues like tooth decay and other gum-related problems like gum recession.

Changes in Your Vision

When you wonder about the diabetes signs that are noticeable at the onset of the disease, your vision isn’t the first thing that you’ll think of. However, high levels of blood sugar can lead to blurred vision. Diabetes also causes changes in vision, like diabetic retinopathy, where blood vessels in the retina are damaged, causing vision loss.

A Feeling of Nausea

Diabetes can interfere with the ability of the stomach to empty completely. This condition is called diabetic gastroparesis. A resultant side effect of this condition is nausea, which can occur often and frequently. However, since nausea can be the result of various causes, it isn’t immediately linked with diabetes unless other diabetes signs occur simultaneously.

Guy at the window is experiencing a fatigue

Image by Мария Ткачук from Pixabay

Fatigue and Exhaustion

Fatigue is something everyone experiences at some point in their lives. However, fatigue and exhaustion can also be diabetes signs. Since the body is unable to extract the nutrients needed for it to function, patients with untreated diabetes can often feel exhausted. In extreme cases, diabetic ketoacidosis can occur.

PCOD and Other Hormone-Related Disorders

Another one of the many diabetes signs that are often misread to be symptoms of other conditions is PCOD. Shifting blood glucose levels can also result in fluctuating hormone levels in your bloodstream. This can cause weight gain and hormonal imbalances, leading to disorders like PCOD.

Person's feet while the body is covered with blanket

Image via Pexels

Numbness in Your Arms and Legs

The pins-and-needles sensation is a common feeling, especially if you’ve been sitting or standing still for too long. However, diabetic numbness is different from this feeling. In extreme cases, when diabetes and its related symptoms are left untreated, the numbness could pave the way to tissue death and gangrene.

Frequent Urination

An increased frequency in urination is one of the most common diabetes signs. Since the body extracts more water from the tissues to meet the demands of flushing out the excess glucose in the blood, you may find that you feel the need to urinate more frequently, even if you’re not drinking more water than usual.

White ceramic urinal toilet

Photo by Lucas Ettore Chiereguini from Pexels

Stomach Pain

Stomach pain is such a common issue that it’s not the first thing you’ll associate with diabetes. However, as you’ve already learned, diabetes can often result in diabetic gastroparesis, meaning that the stomach doesn’t empty entirely. As a result, the body’s ability to absorb nutrients is impaired. A side-effect of this condition is an intense abdominal pain in the stomach region.   

Increased Instances of Infection

One of the lesser-known diabetes signs is the increased risk of infections associated with the disease. The possible infections that can arise as a result of diabetes include kidney or bladder contaminants, and dermal infections that can occur due to cracks in the skin. Diabetes can also cause nerve damage in the extremities.

Intravenous hose on person's hands

Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels

Kid looking at the window while raining and he look so weak

Image by Free-Photos from Pixabay

General Weakness

Another one of the various diabetes signs that are often mistaken as symptoms of other diseases is general weakness. Untreated diabetes can make regular chores like washing the dishes or mopping the house feel like tough challenges because the body doesn’t process glucose properly, leaving patients with too little energy.

Itchy Skin

People with undiagnosed diabetes may find that their skin feels drier and more itchy that it usually does. This is because your skin is dehydrated, as the disease pulls water from your body’s tissues. Sometimes, the skin can also get so dry that it begins to feel rough and shows signs of cracking.

Reduced Healing Ability

Diabetes impedes the body’s natural ability to heal. The functioning of the red blood cells and white blood cells is affected, and this reduces the body’s capacity to heal minor wounds and issues like cuts, sores, or cracks. If you find that you don’t recover from minor problems as fast as you usually do, get yourself tested.

Conclusion

Now you’ve had a chance to understand the various diabetes signs and symptoms, it should be easier to recognize any noticeable changes in your body that could indicate the onset of the disease. As with most other conditions, a single symptom may not always suggest that you’re suffering from diabetes. However, if you notice two or more of these symptoms together, it may be a good idea to visit the doctor and get yourself checked up. After all, early detection can help manage the condition far more easily.

Featured Image by Tumisu from Pixabay

10 Ways to Keep Your Feet Warm and Happy This Winter

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10 Ways to Keep Your Feet Warm and Happy This Winter

The weather is getting colder and the days are getting shorter, but the demands on your feet aren’t getting any less. For diabetics, this season is especially important, when hot and cold sensitivity (or lack of thereof) and nerve damage causes a person not to notice when their feet are injured or cold. This is very common among diabetics and is important to be aware of.

Keeping your feet warm, healthy and happy when you have diabetes can be a challenge during the winter, especially if you spend a better part of the day outside. Luckily, with proper footwear your feet can be happy and healthy all winter long.

Since 1977, we have been providing service to our customers who suffer from diabetes and recently won the “Best Pharmacy” and “Best Customer Service” awards from The Dallas Post’s Best of the Back Mountain Awards.

We have pulled from our 30+ years of experience to put together a list of 10 things you can do to help keep your feet warm, happy and healthy all winter long:

  1. A proper fit is important:Having shoes that fit properly is important for good blood flow and ultimately warm feet.
  2. Check your feet daily: It can be easy to miss a cut or bruise when your feet aren’t as sensitive, so make sure you check your feet daily.
  3. Good slippers are key: Having warm feet indoors is just as important as outdoors! A good pair of sturdy slippers is great for indoor use, not only to keep your feet warm, but also to protect you from objects that could cause an abrasion.
  4. Avoid hot water: When it is cold outside a steaming bath or hot tub might seem appealing, but nerve damage in your feet caused my diabetes hinders the ability to sense if the water is too hot and could burn the skin.
  5. Invest in good socks: A really good pair of moisture-wicking socks can help keep your feet dry. Unlike cotton socks, these types of socks are engineered to remove moisture so your feet can stay dry.
  6. Look into orthotics: Custom orthotics not only help keep your feet from aching after a long day, but they can also help with your back and your knees. Consider investing in a custom set.
  7. Try toe warmers: If you know you are going to be outside for a long period of time, you may want to try toe warmers to keep your feet warm. They are relatively inexpensive and make a noticeable difference.
  8. Go waterproof: A good pair of all-weather shoes is great to have on hand when the snow starts falling and you have to start shoveling. Just like we mentioned above, fit is important, even for snow shoes!
  9. Check-ups are important: Maintaining a regular appointment schedule with your doctor is important so you can discuss any issues you are having and fix any problems before they become worse.
  10. Dress for the weather: Your body’s natural reaction is to heat your core first and then your limbs, feet and hands. Make sure you are dressed appropriately for the temperature so that you maximize the blood flow to your feet.

At Cook’s Pharmacy, customer happiness is important to us. For a limited time only, we are offering a free pair of Dr. Comfort therapeutic slippers to our patients. Dr. Comfort is the worldwide leading provider of diabetic footwear. Click here to claim your offer.

See what others have said upon receiving the slippers:

“Just received these and they are so comfortable. I have been suffering terribly for the last month from a flare-up of AS that is impacting the nerves in my feet. Put these on and they fit perfectly….going to make my walking so much less painful. Wish they came in black….I’d wear them everywhere (like in the office).” – Paula Lauerman

We have a team of highly qualified staff to answer any questions you may have about diabetes, foot care, or any other questions you may have. Our friendly atmosphere and excellent customer service will make you feel comfortable so you can get the help you need.

For more tips and information about diabetic foot care, please visit http://cookspharmacy.net/ or call  570.675.1191.