The glycemic index is a method used to measure the impact of carbohydrate-containing foods on your blood glucose levels. High-glycemic foods raise your glucose more than low-glycemic foods. Diabetics can help prevent unhealthy fluctuations in their glucose levels by increasing or maintaining their consumption of foods that have a low glycemic index.
Glycemic Index Basics
Doctors assign any given carbohydrate its glycemic index by comparing its effects on your blood glucose to the effects of either pure glucose or a certain quantity of white bread. When you eat foods with a high glycemic index, they rapidly raise your glucose levels and trigger a subsequent rise in the production of the glucose-controlling hormone insulin. In the aftermath of eating a high-glycemic food, you can also develop a steep drop in your blood glucose levels that leads to a low blood glucose disorder called hypoglycemia. Consumption of low-glycemic foods produces more gentle and gradual increases and decreases in both your glucose and insulin levels, in addition to putting less strain on your body's systems.
Glycemic Load
Glycemic index measurements calculate the effects of equal amounts of different foods. However, in reality, you don't eat the same amounts of every food. Instead, you choose serving sizes, which provide you with different food amounts based on common dietary practices and your personal eating habits. To fully calculate the impact of various foods on your blood glucose levels, you must take serving sizes into account. Doctors refer to the glycemic effects of any given food at common serving sizes as that food's glycemic load.
Varying Glycemic Effects
In addition to white bread, foods with a high glycemic index include dried dates, pancakes, table sugar, white potatoes, cornflakes, jelly beans, doughnuts and white rice. Foods with a low glycemic index include peanuts, barley, kidney beans, lentils, cashews, skim milk and uncooked apples, pears and oranges. When judged in terms of their glycemic load, foods such as dates and pancakes still have a high impact on your blood glucose levels. However, other foods with a high-glycemic index, such as table sugar and white bread, have relatively small impacts when viewed in terms of their glycemic load. Foods with a low glycemic index typically also have a low glycemic load.
Considerations
The Joslin Diabetes Center notes that the differences between glycemic index and glycemic load can easily confuse people trying to create a diabetes control or diabetes prevention diet. In addition, the glycemic impact of various foods can change according to factors that include your age and level of physical activity, the amount of fat and protein in your diet, the methods you use to cook your carbohydrates and the amount of refined foods you eat. For these reasons, most doctors and registered nutritionists teach diabetics to keep track of their overall carbohydrate intake, or count carbs, instead. They can then use glycemic index and load measurements as a secondary, nonessential way to monitor their condition.
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