Diabetes Archives - healthizalife

Posted on: October 7, 2022October 15, 2022

How Glucagon and Insulin control blood sugar levels

Glucagon and Insulin provide continuous energy to your body and their proper balance control blood sugar levels. The hormones insulin and glucagon assist in controlling your body’s levels of blood glucose, or sugar. Your bloodstream transports glucose, which is derived from the consumed food and serves as part of the body’s fuel supply.

Insulin regulates whether sugar is converted into energy or is stored as glycogen. Cells are instructed by glucagon to release sugar from glycogen. Your levels of blood sugar are balanced by insulin and glucagon, which help to keep them within the level that your body needs.

How Glucagon and Insulin Interact

The interaction between glucagon and insulin is known as a negative loop. In order to maintain a steady blood sugar level, one event causes another, which causes another, and so on.

How Insulin Functions

Foods that contain carbs are transformed into glucose during digestion. The majority of this glucose is injected into your bloodstream, raising blood sugar levels in the process and informing your pancreas to start producing insulin.

Your body’s cells are instructed to absorb glucose from the bloodstream by insulin. The amount of glucose in your blood decreases when it enters your cells. Glucose is used as energy by some cells. Any extra glucose is stored as a compound called glycogen in other cells, including those in your muscles and liver, which is utilized as fuel in between meals.

How Glucagon Functions

Insulin’s effects are balanced by the activity of glucagon.

The blood glucose levels fall four to six hours after a meal. Your pancreas is then prompted to start producing glucagon.

This hormone tells your muscles and liver to turn the glycogen you’ve stored back into glucose. As a result, your bloodstream receives the glucose, which is then released by these cells for usage by other cells as fuel.

The Glucagon and Insulin cycle as a whole is continuously active. It ensures that your system has a continuous amount of energy by preventing too many low blood sugar spikes.

Glucose Conditions

The control of blood glucose by your body is a remarkable metabolic achievement. But for certain individuals, the procedure is defective. Blood sugar regulation issues may result from diabetes.

Diabetes is a collective term for several ailments. Your body uses Glucagon and Insulin improperly or produces too much glucagon if you suffer from the diabetes or prediabetes. High amounts of glucose in the blood might result from this system being out of balance.

Diabetes Type-1

Type-1 diabetes is the fewer persistent of the two primary forms. The cells in your pancreas that produce insulin are considered to be destroyed by your immune system in this autoimmune condition.

Your pancreas either does not create any insulin or not enough insulin if you suffer from type 1 diabetes. As a result, you need to take insulin daily to maintain healthy blood sugar levels and avoid long-term side effects like gum disease, nerve damage, and visual difficulties.

Diabetes Type-2

Even while your body produces insulin, type 2 diabetes impairs your cells’ ability to utilize it properly. Insulin resistance is the term used to describe this.

The inability of your cells to absorb your bloodstream glucose as effectively as they formerly could results in higher levels of blood sugar.

Your body may generate less insulin over time if you have type 2 diabetes, which could lead to higher blood sugar levels. Some people can control type 2 diabetes by diet and exercise. Others might require medicine or insulin to control their blood glucose levels.

Pregnancy Diabetes

It is also known as gestational diabetes. In certain cases, gestational diabetes appears between weeks 24 and 28 of pregnancy.

Hormones associated with pregnancy may affect insulin function in people with gestational diabetes. Often, this issue goes away once the pregnancy is over.

However, if you have diabetes during pregnancy, you may be more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes later in life.

Prediabetes

Your body produces insulin in the case of prediabetes, but it is not adequately utilized. The levels of blood sugar could therefore rise, though not to the same extent as they would if you had diabetes type 2. Your likelihood of developing diabetes type 2 and other medical conditions can increase if you have prediabetes. The type 2 diabetes, however, can be prevented or delayed by altering your food and way of life.

Consult a medical professional

If you have any additional queries regarding insulin or glucagon, you might want to consult a healthcare provider. A doctor or nutritionist can recommend diet and lifestyle adjustments to adjust blood glucose in addition to assisting you in understanding how these hormones change blood sugar control.

You may have the following inquiries:

Is the amount of my blood sugar safe?
Am I pre-diabetic?
How can I prevent getting diabetes?
How can I determine whether I will have to take medications?

Posted on: September 23, 2022

Diabetes Food Myths and Facts

Diabetes, a chronic condition where the body cannot control blood sugar levels, has become far more common in India in recent years.

It can be confusing to search the internet for trustworthy information regarding the best foods for diabetes. Even occasionally, we ran into new inquiries, such as: Is it true we should stop eating bananas? Did carrots contain sugar? And is cinnamon a true diabetes cure? The answer is “No”

Common Myths about Diabetes Food

We used to frequently hear this sort of false information. Additionally, several people questioned if soda is a better drinking option than colas. Or If you toast the bread, it has no carbohydrates. (Needless to add, neither is true!)

There are many conflicting myths and viewpoints surrounding food if you have pre-diabetes, diabetes, or a loved one who does. To help diabetic persons who may be confused, we are presenting some myths and misconceptions.

Myth: “Blood sugar will not increase by eating sugar-free food.”

Many individuals solely consider the quantity of sugar a food has when reading nutrition labels. Your blood sugar is truly impacted by how much total carbohydrate you consume. One common sugar-free chocolate chip cookie, for instance, has 20 grammes of carbohydrates but zero grammes of sugar, so it still affects your blood sugar levels.

Myth: “I can only eat sweet potatoes; not white potatoes.”

Both varieties of potatoes have roughly 24 grammes of carbohydrates per cup, despite their different colours and nutritional benefits (sweet potatoes are packed with vitamin A, while white potatoes are loaded with vitamin C).

Myth: “Honey is preferable to regular sugar.”

It’s acceptable to prefer one taste over the other, but both of them are regarded as added sugars and each teaspoon of either contains roughly the same amount of sugar and carbohydrates. The sweetness of honey may allow you to use a little less of it than white sugar, which is one benefit that honey may provide. Here are some additional untruths about sugar.

Myth: “No carbohydrates are found in Gluten-free foods.”

Some People have difficulty digesting the protein gluten. It is present in wheat, grain, and rye should eat foods that are free of gluten. However, that does not indicate that they are carb-free. Simply because gluten-free bread and crackers employ other starches, such as rice or potatoes, they may have the same amount of carbohydrates as their gluten-containing counterparts.

Myth: “You should always avoid white food.”

This was supposed to be a generic warning against all grains, including pasta, bread, and rice, even though it also suggests avoiding vegetables like broccoli and onions, which is ridiculous! However, you don’t have to fully give up pasta and bread; just be mindful of your portion sizes. The same is true for whole grain products with a deeper shade, like wheat bread or brown rice.

Myth: “Fruit is high in sugar.”

It is true that fruit includes fructose, a type of natural sugar that has an impact on blood sugar. Therefore, you might need to be careful about how much fruit you eat. For example, choose a tiny banana rather than a huge one. Please don’t exclude fruit from your diet because it is also rich in fibre, vitamins, minerals, and disease-preventing substances.

Conclusion

At first, managing diabetes can be difficult, but once you are fully informed about the condition and your diet, it becomes a lot simpler.

Eating low GI and GL meals, limiting alcohol intake, Trans fat intake, taking prescription medications, and keeping an eye on your levels of blood sugar will all help you manage your conditions and enhance your general health.