New Approaches to Treating Diabetes
Innovations and technological advances in treating diabetes, as well as the latest developments in checking your blood glucose, aim at increasing the quality of life for people with diabetes.
Keto Diet And Diabetes: Does It Work?
Diabetes is a medical condition that affects the body’s ability to use up sugar in the bloodstream. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas does produce insulin hormone, but it is not utilized well by the body. Thus, type 2 diabetes requires more lifestyle changes to maintain optimum sugar levels.
With lifestyle changes come to diet, and one of the most famous ones include the ketogenic diet. A keto diet recommends the intake of high fat, very low carbohydrate, moderate protein. For some people, it may help in maintaining the recommended blood sugar levels. Here are a few things to know about the ketogenic diet:
Does the ADA recommend it?
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ADA, American Diabetes Association, does not recommend any diet over others, meaning that while the keto diet may help some people, it is not backed by the association’s guidelines.
Also, since each person may have a unique dietary requirement, doctors have to customize diet plans following their preferences, habits, and target blood sugar level.
How Does Keto Diet Work?
Starch-rich foods, like pasta, bread, rice, etc. are the staple foods in most diets, making carbohydrates the primary fuel for the body. The glucose released during their digestion increases the blood sugar level, which is absorbed by various body cells with the help of insulin.
In type 2 diabetes, since the insulin does not work correctly, the sugars tend to remain high in the blood, thereby increasing the complications related to this disease.
The concept of keto diet revolves around consuming fewer carbs and reducing the spikes in blood sugar after meals. It restricts carb consumption to force the body into breaking down fats into ketones for daily energy requirements.
The idea is to maintain a diet with carbohydrates amounting to 5-10 percent, 10-20 percent protein, and a whopping 70-80% fats.
The ketogenic diet was initially developed for children with epilepsy and showed promising results during preliminary tests. Here are a few other benefits that some studies have suggested:
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- May reduce the risk of developing diabetes in those who do not have it
- Might aid in shedding excess weight
- May improve glycemic control
Keto Diet and Diabetes
This diet can help in long-term diabetes management, as it can keep the blood sugar at an optimum level. It can also help reduce larger blood sugar spikes and immediate need for more insulin.
As blood sugar levels become relatively stable, the need for medication in some type 2 patients may also reduce over time. It has also been speculated that keto diet, along with regular insulin injections, may increase the risk of hypoglycemia (lower than recommended blood sugar levels, <70 mg/dL).
Thus, switch over to the ketogenic diet only after a thorough discussion with your doctor as fewer carbohydrates may not pair well with some medicines.
Key factors
Impact on weight
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Diabetes can affect the body due to several reasons. It may be related to physical or inner health conditions. If you are going to undertake treatment by choosing the ketogenic diet method, then you may get some significant benefits. Generally, these benefits are related to lots of elements.
People who are facing issues due to excessive weight, the ketogenic diet is going to be an excellent solution to them. It will help them in getting an answer to various problems. Following this particular method will help you in working on weight loss quickly. It helps in eliminating diabetes by burning the body.
Elimination of body fat can help you in sorting out several issues. Generally, it will help you in working on getting healthy body conditions. Consuming the ketogenic diet will improvise the energy distribution system in the body. It assists in working on lots of factors with ease.
Impact on medication
Diabetes is mainly affecting the body by increasing the sugar level in blood and the body. For eliminating diabetes-related issues, the interested ones need to work on maintaining the sugar level in the blood carefully. By following this particular diet, you can work on it correctly.
It becomes an excellent option for individuals who want to consume fewer medicines. Consumption of drugs may lead to some other issues or more weaknesses. The users of ketogenic diet plans never face these types of problems.
The diet plan works similar to some other medicines. Due to it, people need to consume fewer medications for treating type 2 diabetes.
Impact on blood sugar level
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As we discussed earlier, the sugar level of the body is the most significant factor behind diabetes and related effects. If someone is not capable of controlling it, then big problems may be faced. These problems affect the entire body quickly. With the ketogenic diet, it becomes easier to maintain all these elements.
Consuming food as per the diet plan will help you in avoiding lots of adverse factors such as – glucose level and keeping body healthy. All these things happen by getting control over the levels of HbA1c. It represents the amount or volume of glucose which is going to travel through the complete body with the help of hemoglobin.
Benefits of Ketogenic Diet
While the ketogenic diet has several critics, here are a few documented benefits of this diet:
- Helps lower blood pressure
- Reduces medication-dependency
- Reduces the need for external insulin
- Improves insulin sensitivity
- Increases the good cholesterol (HDL) without increasing bad cholesterol (LDL) to an extent
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Other than this, it has been found that this diet can help burn body fat and is specifically beneficial for patients whose excess weight influenced their diabetes development. It has been found that the keto diet also promotes weight loss.
Conclusion
Before making any changes in your diabetes management plan, do ask for your doctor’s advice, or you can visit here. In the case of the keto diet, there is the question of long-term safety and increased risk of cardiovascular diseases. Thus, before switching over to this diet, be informed of the risk involved.
