Do you have type 2 diabetes, or are you at risk for diabetes? Do you worry about your blood sugar? Do you have type 1 diabetes or care for someone who does? Then you've come to the right place.
This guide gives you an overview of what you need to know about diabetes. Our other guides can teach you more about the symptoms of diabetes, as well as provide specific information about type 2 diabetes and type 1 diabetes.
We also have a practical guide about the best foods to control diabetes.
Many people with diabetes or prediabetes have improved their health with dietary changes. You can too! This may mean that you can reduce or eliminate diabetes medication, and these same dietary changes may help you lose weight as well.
Keep reading to see if this could work for you!
2. What is diabetes?
Simply put, diabetes is a disorder of blood sugar and insulin. The reason that a person develops high blood sugar depends on what type of diabetes that a person has. However, all types of diabetes indicate that something has gone wrong with the way a person makes or uses insulin.
Type 1 diabetes results when, for autoimmune or other unknown reasons, the pancreas becomes damaged and fails to produce insulin.
In type 2 diabetes, the body usually does make insulin, but can't use it effectively. Then the body has an increasingly hard time handling sugar in the blood.
Too much sugar in the blood is a problem because the sugar molecule in your blood, called glucose, damages blood vessels when there is too much of it. At the same time, other parts of the body can't get energy from glucose because the glucose stays in the bloodstream and doesn't enter other cells. Over time, this situation can harm the body in many ways and cause serious complications.
Too little insulin is a life-threatening condition, but too much insulin, a hallmark of type 2 diabetes, is a problem too. Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas that lowers blood sugar by moving sugar out of the bloodstream and into the body's cells.
Insulin's primary job is to keep blood sugar levels within a very narrow range. Insulin not only helps clear the excess glucose out of the blood, it also helps prevent muscle breakdown. However, insulin also increases fat storage, especially when blood levels are elevated, and prevents the body from using fat for fuel.
Over time, too much insulin in the blood decreases the body's ability to use insulin. This is called insulin resistance. Weight gain can be one of the first signs that the body is making too much insulin and is becoming insulin resistant. Diet and other lifestyle changes can help reverse insulin resistance and its associated weight gain, which may help prevent diabetes.
To learn more about diabetes, click here:
3. About blood sugar
Our guide, "What you need to know about blood sugar", can help you learn more about both high and low blood sugar. This guide to diabetes focuses specifically on the high blood sugar levels that occur in diabetes.
How do you know if you have too much sugar in your blood? If you don't know already, it's simple to test in a few seconds, either in your doctor's office or with your own inexpensive blood glucose meter.
If you are testing your blood sugar at home, read and follow the directions that come with your blood sugar meter. For most meters, the general procedure goes like this:
- With clean hands, place a test strip in your blood sugar meter.
- Prick the side of a finger with the lancet to draw a drop of blood.
- Place the tip of the test strip on the drop of blood.
- After a few seconds, the blood sugar meter will give you a reading.
Compare your own blood sugar reading with the ranges below:
- Normal blood sugar: Less than 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L ) after fasting overnight, and up to 140 mg/dL (7.8 mmol/L ) after a meal
- Prediabetes: Between 100-125 mg/dL (5.6-7.0 mmol/L) after fasting overnight
- Diabetes: 126 mg/dL (7.0 mmol/L) or higher after fasting overnight, or higher than 200 mg/dL (11.1 mmol/L) after a meal
Keep in mind that a single blood sugar reading isn't enough for a diagnosis of diabetes. Your doctor can perform further testing to confirm whether you have diabetes or prediabetes.
If you are already on a low-carbohydrate diet and you are concerned about the measurements you're getting, see "How a low-carb diet affects blood sugar measurements."
4. Food & diabetes
People with diabetes have difficulty keeping blood sugar levels in a normal range. The blood turns "too sweet" as glucose levels rise.
Sugar in your blood comes from two places: your liver and the food that you eat. You can't do much to control the amount of sugar your liver makes, but you can control the foods you eat.
Foods are made up of three broad categories known as macronutrients (major nutrients): carbohydrate, protein, and fat. Many foods are a combination of two or all three macronutrients, but we often group foods according to whether they are mostly carbohydrate, protein, or fat.
Carbohydrate
Foods that turn into glucose when they are digested are called carbohydrates. When glucose enters the bloodstream, it's called blood sugar.
The more carbohydrate eaten in a meal, the more sugar is absorbed into the bloodstream and the higher blood sugar will be.
Although very few people would agree that sugary foods are good for you, some foods that we think of as "healthy" - such as fruit - actually have a lot of sugar. And many people don't know that starchy foods - such as bread, rice, pasta, and potatoes - quickly turn to sugar when you digest them. Eating a potato can raise blood sugar as much as eating 9 teaspoons of sugar!
Protein
Protein foods are foods like eggs, chicken, steak, and tofu. Although different people have different responses to some protein foods, consuming moderate amounts of protein at a meal generally has little effect on blood sugar.
Fat
Dietary fat has very little effect on blood sugar. However, we seldom eat fat all by itself. Some foods, like cheese, are made up of mostly protein and fat. Those foods are not likely to raise your blood sugar very much. But some foods, like donuts and French fries, are made up mostly of carbohydrate and fat. Because of their carbohydrate content, these kinds of foods are likely to raise your blood sugar.
5. How to improve blood sugar
What happens if you remove foods that raise your blood sugar from your diet? Is there anything good left to eat? We think so. In fact, we have a whole guide on "The best foods to control diabetes."
But a picture is worth a thousand words. These are just a few of the delicious foods that don't raise blood sugar:
Many people with type 2 diabetes are now choosing a diet based primarily on low-carbohydrate foods.
They often notice that, starting with the first meal, their blood sugar improves. The need for medications, especially insulin, is usually dramatically reduced. Substantial weight loss often follows. Finally, they usually feel better, have more energy and alertness, and can improve many health markers.
Because of these benefits and others, many doctors are recommending diets low in carbohydrates for their patients with diabetes.
Choosing foods low in carbohydrates is a safe and easy way to help you control your blood sugar. However, if you are taking medications for your diabetes, you must work with your healthcare provider to adjust your medications when you change your diet. Choosing a diet made up of food with fewer sugars and starches means that your blood sugar levels may improve quickly. The need for medications, especially insulin, may be dramatically reduced.
If you are looking for a doctor who will work with you to control your diabetes with a change in diet, our map may help you find one.
6. The science of diabetes reversal
In 2019, the American Diabetes Association (ADA) stated that reducing carbohydrate intake was the most effective strategy for improving blood sugar control in those with diabetes.
Research shows that low-carb diets are a safe and effective option for treating and reversing type 2 diabetes. This body of evidence includes meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (the highest quality of evidence by our ratings.).
A meta-analysis from 2017 found that low-carb diets reduced the need for medication and also improved health markers in people with type 2 diabetes. These included reductions in hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), triglycerides and blood pressure and increases in high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol, the "good" cholesterol.
Last, a non-randomized trial of a ketogenic, low-carb diet from Virta Health involving about 330 people with type 2 diabetes, found that, at the one-year mark, 97 percent of patients had reduced or stopped their insulin use. Furthermore, 58 percent no longer had a diabetes diagnosis, meaning they had put their disease into remission. These results remained remarkable up to the two-year mark as well. This evidence disproves the idea that type 2 diabetes is a progressive and irreversible disease. Instead, it clearly demonstrate that it is a treatable disease when an effective lifestyle intervention is used. Read more
7. A message of hope
As recently as 50 years ago, type 2 diabetes was extremely rare. Now, around the world, the number of people with diabetes is increasing incredibly rapidly and is heading towards 500 million. This is a world-wide epidemic.
In the past, those affected by the most common form of diabetes, type 2, were told that they would never regain their health. Type 2 diabetes was thought to be a progressive disease with no hope for reversal or remission. People were - and sometimes still are - taught to "manage" type 2 diabetes, rather than to try to reverse their high blood sugars.
Unfortunately, "managing" type 2 diabetes often leads to an increase in medications and to serious complications: impaired vision, damaged kidneys, wounds that won't heal, and decreased cognitive function. In many cases, these complications lead to blindness, kidney failure and dialysis, amputation, dementia, and death.
But now people with type 2 diabetes can hope to regain their health! Now we know that the hallmarks of type 2 diabetes - high blood sugar and high insulin - can often be reversed. People don't just have to "manage" their diabetes as it progresses. Instead, they can often lower their blood sugar to normal levels with diet alone. This also means they may be able to avoid or discontinue most medications.
Normal blood sugar levels and fewer or no medications means no progression of disease, and no progression of disease means no complications. People with a diagnosis of type 2 diabetes may be able to live long, healthy lives, with toes, eyesight, and kidneys intact!
If you are not on any medications, you can start your journey back to health today. If you are on medications for diabetes or for other conditions, consult your doctor before beginning any lifestyle change, such as a low-carbohydrate diet, so that your medications are adjusted safely as your blood sugars improve.
When you're ready, here's where to start: A low-carbohydrate diet for beginners. During your own journey, you might be inspired by some spectacular diabetes success stories.
If you want to learn more about how you can improve your health and the health of your family, start here by keeping up with the latest news from Diet Doctor.
