Favorite 0 Featuring Jessica Corwin, RD · August 30 2011 at 12:36 pm

Registered dietitian Jessica Butcher gives some great information on those new to the diabetes diagnosis. Host, Gerry Barnaby -  Hey, what’s happenin’, Barnaby here.  Time...

Registered dietitian Jessica Butcher gives some great information on those new to the diabetes diagnosis.

Host, Gerry Barnaby -  Hey, what’s happenin’, Barnaby here.  Time for another HelloLife moment.  This time, talking about diabetes because it is on the rise.  And if you get diagnosed with diabetes, the first stop is going to be a visit to - quite possibly, Jessica Butcher, who is a Registered Dietician.  So, what would you tell a diabetic person about diabetes when they first come to visit?

Health Coach, Jessica Butcher, RD – well, first of all, there’s two different types of diabetes, so it would depend if they had Type I diabetes or Type II diabetes.  Type I, their body no longer produces insulin and insulin is a hormone in our body that kind of goes out into our blood sugar and grabs all that sugar that’s in our blood, grabs it and feeds it to our cells for energy.  So if we don’t have that insulin, then all the sugar is rampant throughout our blood vessels causing damage and inflammation.  But on the other hand, if you have Type II diabetes, you still have some insulin just maybe not  - it’s starting to get a little bit lazy, it’s not really doing its job very well, so it’s not picking up all the blood sugars.  But, either way, it’s really important to keep an eye on all the carbohydrates you’re eating.

Barnaby - And there are two different kinds of carbohydrates  - there’s simple and complex – and then there’s kind of a guide to guide you through this morass of, ‘which is good, which is bad, how much should I have,’ and that is the glycemic index.  Can you explain that to us?

Jessica - Yeah, the glycemic index, I mean, that is, rather than just looking at, you know, simple carbs or complex carbs, it actually looks at how those carbohydrates affect your blood sugar levels. So blood sugar levels, um, depending upon the type of food you’re eating, it gets rated with a glycemic index, telling it how fast your blood sugar spikes.  So something like sugar, if you’re eating just plain, straight table sugar, that’s going to raise your blood sugar up to the level of 100 on that glycemic index.  Whereas something like, um, maybe a sweet potato maybe only would be an 85.  Or, maybe a piece of – some spinach, would maybe only be down by, less than 50. 

Barnaby - And so it’s kind of a delicate balance come dinner time, lunch, whatever meal you might be having, to manage your glycemic index.  And so there’s a bit of a guide of numbers we can offer you and that is….?

Jessica - That would be the glycemic index.  And there’s lots of resources online that we can help guide you to and we’ll even have articles here on our blog. 

Barnaby - Yeah.  And so a good glycemic number for a meal would be what?

Jessica - You want to try to keep at least that main entrée below 70 – that’d be a good guide.  And then any of those other options, you know, aim to try to make half your plate vegetables, you know, non-starchy vegetables and those would be definitely far less than 50 and that would really be a great goal.  So you want to keep an eye on that bigger picture of your entire meal, so you know you’re not getting just a mass overload of simple carbohydrates that are going to spike your blood sugar. 

Barnaby - See?  It used to be that you’d just sit down and eat a meal but now suddenly, there’s glycemic indexes  - there’s all sorts of things to think about.  But we as human beings are in charge of our own lives.  It’s daunting, I know, but, all you need to is check in with HelloLife.net for good information about how to live the best life possible.  Because we are all about matching your commitment to a healthy lifestyle.

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