Diabetes diet and healthy living – how to make healthy food choices

Healthy feeding is good for everybody; diabetic or non – diabetic. It makes you live healthy, happy and more meaningful life. It becomes more important to take in healthy food when diabetes is being treated.

It entails eating the food that is good for your body and doing away with those ones that harm or do nothing good for you. Animal fat (fat gotten from animals) are known to cause harm to your body. They should be eliminated in diet, if possible.

A healthy diet (or food) is a diet that contains the combination of all food classes in their right proportion and the elimination of harmful and useless ones.

A diabetic, most especially, needs to eat good food in order to be healthy and stay alive. This is because healthy food helps to keep diabetes in check.

To help you easily get healthy diet, nutritionists have made simple rules and guidelines which you can follow when selecting your food substances. I have listed them below;

1) Know your ideal weight. Your ideal weight is the weight which you are expected to have to be healthy. It is different from your actual weight. It is derived from a standard weight chart. Tell a doctor or any healthy worker to show you a standard weight chart. use the chart to check your ideal weight. if the chart is calibrated in pounds, convert it to kilogram by roughly dividing it by 2.

2) Realize that you need to eat 25 calories for each kilogram of your body weight each day. Therefore, to get the calories of food you need each day, multiply your body weight in kg. by 25. What ever you get is the total calories of food you need each day. If you do strenuous work, increase the total by 50% to 75%. People who want to loose weight can also reduce the figure.

3) Out of this 25 calories per kilogram, your body needs one gram of protein. One gram is equivalent to 4 calories. This means that your body needs 4 calories of protein for each kilogram of body weight. So, to get the total protein your body needs, multiply your body weight by 4.

4) Also, your body needs 40% of carbohydrate from the total (25 calories) each day. 40% of 25 calories is equal to 10 calories. thus, to get the number of carbohydrate you need each day, multiply your body weight by 10.

5) The remaining calories should come from fat. this is equivalent to 11 calories. this value should also be multiplied by the body weight to get the total fat needed by your body.

In conclusion, out of the 25 calories per kg you need everyday, you need 10 calories of carbohydrate, 4 calories of protein and 11calories of fats and oil per k.g of body weight.

Also,

1 gram of carbohydrate = 4 calories
1 gram of protein = 4 calories
1 gram of fat and oil = 9 calories

A person who has 60kg weight, for example, will need 25 x 60 = 1500 calories of energy each day which is made up of 10 x 60 = 600 calories of carbohydrate. 4 x 60 = 240 calories of protein and 11 x 60 calories of fat each day.

In order to help you spice up your life with good food while Selecting varieties of food, nutritionists has worked of a formula and list to help you. This is called per serving exchanges. you can follow the link to read more about food exchanges

Recently, a more improved and easy to use nutritional guide has been developed. it is called the food pyramid guide. you can also learn more about it in my post on food guide pyramid

Diabetes Care And Management - How To Live Healthy And Enjoyable Life Even With Diabetes

Diabetes has no known cure but it can be managed. When the disease is well managed, the diabetic enjoys healthy life. There are several diabetes cares and management steps you can adopt to enjoy better life.

Firstly, you must go to the doctor to confirm that you have diabetes. He will perform a urinary test (or any other effective test) on you.

When you are confirmed diabetics, you might find out that you are psychologically affected thus; the first diabetes care you have to consider is your psychology. You have to realize that you can still live long and healthy physical, social and emotional life. You might even end up liveing more healthier and meaningful life than people without diabetes. Yes! The reason is simple. Diabetes care and management is all about forming healthy lifestyles which is a prerequisite for longer and healthier life.

Another thing you have to do is to take balanced and healthy diets. It is a very vital diabetes care and management strategy. Healthy diets help your body to get all the nutrients and energy it needs. It is very important because it forms a major determinant of whether the disorder is well controlled or not.

Diabetes care and management also has to do with exercise. Exercise is good for you. It helps to burn unwanted fat. Little daily exercise alone can improve your health to a great extent. While exercising, go on exercises that are mild for you and avoid bruising yourself.

Your drugs, tests and treatments should also be taken seriously. Always go to your doctor for advice and report any strange change in your body promptly.

Never for any reason miss or ignore your treatments. You might meet people who might want to dissuade you from taking your treatments, most especially on the ground that diabetes has cure. Never listen to them. Remember that your life is what is at stake. Diabetes has no proven cure. Don’t risk your life. Diabetes care and management is the proven best way. Guard your life jealously. It is yours and yours alone.

Diabetes Causes And Prevention - What You Can Do To Prevent Diabetes From Touching You

The main diabetes causes are not all known yet there are evidences that indicate that it has a genetic disposition to it. This means that whether you will have diabetes or not is determined by your gene.

Another known diabetes cause is obesity. This is the most common type-2 diabetes cause in children, adolescents and young adults.

Sedentary life style also another diabetes cause. It influences the onset of diabetes a great deal. In a study involving diabetic school children, it was observed that during school days, they tend to need diabetic drugs like insulin but when there was break or holiday, they needed their drugs less and sometimes seemed to be able to do without them. The reason is not far fetched, children are more active during breaks and holidays than on school days when they sit in class and learn.

There is also increasing evidence that some toxic gases like bisphenol-A Influences the onset of diabetes.It is a rare diabetes cause.

Though there might still be other (yet unknown) prevention of diabetes, the best preventions are influencing the genetic factor and loosing weight. Influencing the genetic factor might be difficult but loosing weight is within everybody’s power and only needs will power.

Diabetes Symptoms - signs of diabetes

Basically there are 3 symptoms to look out for before suspecting that somebody is beginning to suffer from diabetes. These diabetes symptoms are sometimes called classical diabetes symptoms.

1) Frequent urination. In medical terms, this diabetes symptom is called polyuria. When this happens, the person urinates more frequently than normal.

2) Increased thirst and consequently increased fluid intake. This is caused by the loss of water from the body due to frequent urination. A person who urinates more frequently is dehydrating and needs more water. In response to that, the person’s body reacts in form of thirst; thus making him/her to take more water. Medically, this diabetes symptom is called polydipsia.

3) The third of the signs of diabetes is increased appetite for food, which is called polyphagia. this diabetes symptom can make the patient eat like a gluton.

These signs are more noticeable (and profound) in type one diabetes. In type 2 diabetes, they may take time, sometimes years, to show.

Type 1 diabetes can cause rapid weight loss and irreducible fatigue. Though irreducible fatigue can occur in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus, it does not lead to weight loss.

There is yet another way to know that a person is suffering from diabetes, though it is not medically and hygienically advised. It is simply by tasting the urine. The urine of a diabetic patient tastes sugary.

The surest way to confirm that a person is diabetic is to go for test in medical laboratory.

Types Of Diabetes Mellitus (Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus And Others) - Exploring The Divisions Of Diabetes Mellitus

Scientists like to classify diabetes mellitus according to where things go wrong in the insulin cycle. When I say insulin cycle, I mean the movement of insulin from the sight of production, the pancreas, to the final point (the tissue).

Broadly speaking, there are two types of diabetes mellitus. Type 1 diabetes mellitus and type 2 diabetes mellitus.

Type 1 diabetes mellitus most times begins at childhood age, for that reason, it is called juvenile diabetes. There are also other names associated with it such as childhood– onset diabetes and insulin dependent diabetes (IDDM).

it is the type of diabetes in which the body is unable to produce inadequate insulin. Insulin is a hormone which makes it possible for your body tissues to absorb blood sugar. This inability occurs when the beta cell (which is found in the pancreas become defected or destroyed. This destruction is caused by an auto immune attack. This attack is mediated by a type of cell called thymus cell (or T-cell). Auto immune attack is an immune response of an organism against its own cells and tissues. This happens when it (the organism) is unable to recognize its own constituent part as self.

Type 1 diabetes mellitus has a genetic predisposition to it. This means that the likelihood of every body to have type 1 diabetes mellitus is in the gene. It is believed to be triggered by environmental factors such as certain drugs and virus infection.

Type 1 diabetes mellitus has no known cure. It is treated with the injection of insulin into the patients’ body. There are also non insulin treatment such as monoclonal anti bodies and stem cell. Type 2 diabetes mellitus, on the other hand, often begins at adult age thus it is also called adult onset diabetes. It also has other names associated with it such as obesity related diabetes and non - insulin dependent diabetes mellitus (NIDDM).

It (type 2 diabetes mellitus) is the type of diabetes in which the body tissues are insensitive or resistant to insulin. This leads to an abnormally high concentration of glucose in the blood. In medical terms, it is called hyperglycemia.

This insulin resistance and insensitivity in type 2 diabetes mellitus is caused by several factors such as aging, family history and obesity, especially central obesity. Central obesity is the concentration of non subcutaneous fat around the waist.

There is increasing evidence that some environmental factor such as pisphenol (a gas) in the air can trigger the onset of type 2 diabetes mellitus. Pisphenol is a constituent of polycarbonate plastic.

Type 2 diabetes mellitus is treated by increasing physical activity i.e. exercising more frequently, reducing the intake of fat and loosing weight.

It can also be treated with drugs known as anti diabetic drugs for example, sulfonylurea which regulates inappropriate release of glucose by the liver and attenuate insulin resistance And thiazolidine which substantially attenuate insulin resistance.

There are also other types of diabetes mellitus which cannot be sharply classified as type 1 or 2 example type 1.5 diabetes mellitus which is also referred to as insulin resistant type 1 diabetes mellitus and gestational diabetes mellitus which occurs during pregnancy. This type is totally treatable and goes away after delivery.

information on diabetes- what you need to know about diabetes

Diabetes is a disease that, when caught, leads to excessive urination and increased thirst.
There are two kinds of diabetes; diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus. These grouping is like when you say that there are several kinds of fever; typhoid fever, yellow fever, malaria fever etcetera
Diabetes mellitus is the most popular and dangerous kind of diabetes. This is why when you hear people call the word diabetes; they are usually referring to it. In this site, I shall be doing the same (calling diabetes mellitus just “diabetes”). It is the type of diabetes that occurs when the body is unable to secrete adequate quantity of insulin. It also occurs when the body tissues are insensitive or resistant to it. Insulin is a hormone which kelps on the conversion of blood sugar to energy.
Diabetes insipidus, on the other hand, is a diseased cause by the inability of the kidney to concentrate urine. This is caused by the deficiency of vasopressin in the body or the insensitivity of the kidney to it. It can also be induced by drugs. Vasopressin is a hormone produced in the thyroid gland. It helps the kidney to concentrate urine.
Both diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus can be treated.