Correcting low blood sugar or hypoglycemia requires
four crucial elements. Low blood sugar diets are only one of these main
components.
1) In consultation with your health professional advisor choose one from
among the several different available hypoglycemia diets. Making this choice
correctly is a major focus of our office consultations.
2) Select Nutritional Supplements to increase the effectiveness of your low
blood sugar diet
3) Identify and Treat Physical and Psychological Illness that bring out or
worsen vulnerability to hypoglycemia. Such accompanying health issues are
almost always also present.
4) Help Your Body’s Natural Healing Systems, thereby
reducing low blood sugar reactivity. The most important of these strategies:
- Relaxation Skills
- Training To Reduce the Effects of Stress
- Retraining distressed breathing
- Just The Right Amount of Exercise
- Better Sleep
Low Blood Sugar Diets, Hypoglycemia Diets
There are two main, different types of low blood sugar
diets:
- Low carbohydrate hypoglycemia diets, which reduce
all forms of carbohydrates, thereby increasing protein and fat
- High carbohydrate low blood sugar diets. These
hypoglycemia diets reduce intake of simple sugars, breads, and all
processed grains. In contrast, they expand emphasis on vegetables, fruits,
berries and whole grains.
Despite their key differences, both of these low blood
sugar hypoglycemia diets have important factors in common:
1) These hypoglycemia diets all recommend eating smaller but more frequent
meals, with between meal snacks.
2) All low blood sugar diets reduce intake of sugars of all kinds (including
molasses and honey) and, as important, simple, processed carbohydrates e.g
most breads, cereals, potatoes, and rice. The reason for reducing these
frequently eaten foods: the digestive system converts most processed
carbohydrates rapidly into sugar. Thus, for hypoglycemia diets, whole wheat
bread is just as bad as white bread.
3) Reducing or eliminating caffeine is an effective aide to any hypoglycemia
diet.
4) Reducing alcohol is also important for low blood sugar diets
5) Adding a small amount of protein or a modest amount of fat along with
each carbohydrate serving helps most hypoglycemia diets. This slows the rate
of food passing through the stomach.
With slower passage through the stomach, blood sugar increases less rapidly
after eating. The less rapid rise in blood sugar, reduces the insulin
response. Less insulin means that blood sugar falls more slowly. Blood sugar
falling slowly, makes the destructive over-reaction of adrenalin and
cortisol less necessary to prevent sugar from falling too low. With
adrenalin and cortisol under control, hypoglycemia symptoms resolve.
6) Olive oil is particularly effective for low blood sugar diets, because of
its exceptionally high ability to slow the stomach down. A giant benefit,
for relatively few calories. Add one to three teaspoons of olive oil to each
meal to strengthen your low blood sugar diet. Spread the olive oil on your
food or take it straight from the teaspoon. Once the low blood sugar diets
are working well, you can cut back on your olive oil dose.
Which of the low blood sugar diets are best for your individual needs? Each
version of the hypoglycemia diet has its pros and cons and is person
specific. There is no tailor made one fits all solution. For a large
%age of patients with hypoglycemia however , the best hypoglycemia
diets are those that are relatively high in total carbohydrates, but very
low in sugar and most grains.
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