If you have diabetes, your blood glucose levels are chronically high due to problems making or responding to the pancreatic hormone insulin. To keep your blood glucose levels under control, you have to be aware of the total number of carbohydrates you eat. You must also limit added sugars.
Why Diabetics Count Carbohydrates
When you consume carbohydrates of any sort, your digestive tract breaks them down into glucose. As a result, your blood glucose levels rise. If you have diabetes, an increase in blood glucose levels can cause problems because your body has trouble responding properly to elevated blood glucose levels. This can increase your risk of developing diabetes-related complications, including kidney damage, neuropathy and damage to your retina.
About Sugar
Your body breaks down and absorbs added sugars more rapidly than it does complex carbohydrates, sending your blood glucose levels up faster. The effect of different kinds of carbohydrates on your blood glucose levels is calculated as part of the glycemic index of foods. Foods with added sugar have a high glycemic index, causing a greater and more rapid increase in blood glucose levels than lower glycemic index foods.
Finding Carbs
To count carbohydrates, you need to know the carbohydrate content of all of the foods you eat. In many cases you can determine this content from the nutrition labels on foods, but you may need to look some foods up in an online database or from books designed to help diabetics count carbohydrates. This process also requires you to keep track of how many servings of each food that you eat.
Considerations
Eating foods low in cholesterol and fat, particularly saturated fat, will help reduce your risk of developing atherosclerosis, a major complication of diabetes. You should also get your carbohydrates from vegetables, fruits and whole grains, as these carbohydrates provide important vitamins and minerals as well as fiber, which can help lower your blood glucose levels.
