Foods that slow digestion can help stabilize glucose levels, preventing both hyper- and hypoglycemia -- high and low blood sugars. Dietary fat can slow digestion, help you feel full faster and stay satisfied longer, and may even help you lose weight. Because excess body fat interferes with how effectively your body can use insulin, losing weight may help increase insulin sensitivity. A study in the May 2003 issue of "The New England Journal of Medicine" states that a high-fat diet is more effective than a high-carb diet for weight loss, increased insulin sensitivity and lower triglyceride levels.
Hypoglycemia
If you don't have diabetes, low blood sugar can be caused by an underlying illness, such as a tumor in your pancreas that causes you to produce too much insulin or a hormone imbalance. For diabetics, hypoglycemia is most often caused by taking more insulin than needed, skipping a meal, not eating enough carbohydrates or being more physically active than usual. Symptoms include hunger, often with a craving for sweets, headache, irritability and mood swings. Once your blood sugar starts to drop, the only way to raise blood sugar is by eating.
Prevention
The best way to treat low sugar is to prevent it by making dietary changes. Limit simple carbohydrates that your body can quickly digest and eat foods that slow digestion instead. Your best choices are fat, fiber and protein. Following a lower-carb diet, especially one that limits sugar and starch and emphasizes high-fiber complex carbohydrates, will help regulate glucose production. To replace needed calories in your diet from limiting carbs, you can increase fat and protein consumption.
Fat vs. Protein
Both fat and protein slow digestion and stabilize blood sugar, preventing hypoglycemia. If you have diabetes, you may need to increase fat intake rather than protein to avoid placing additional strain on your kidneys. Protein digestion taxes your kidneys and can speed the progression of kidney failure if you already have compromised kidney function. Increasing fat intake can still help you feel satisfied eating less food and allow you to go longer between meals. Although protein and carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram, fat has 9 calories per gram, which you must taken into account when trying to maintain or reach your ideal weight.
Healthy Fat Choices
Diabetes can increase your risk of heart disease, so try to limit other risk factors, such as high cholesterol. Both saturated fats, the type most commonly found in animal protein, and trans fats, often found in commercially baked goods and fried foods, are linked to increased "bad" low-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels. The American Heart Association recommends limiting saturated fat intake to no more than 7 percent of total caloric intake, and trans fats should make up less than 1 percent of your diet. Eat unsaturated fats such as vegetable oils instead of butter and fish or seafood instead of beef and pork.
References
- "The New England Journal of Medicine"; A Low-Carbohydrate as Compared With a Low-Fat Diet in Severe Obesity; F.F. Samaha, et al.; May 2003
- National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases; Hypoglycemia; October 2008
- EndocrineWeb; Treatment of Diabetes: The Diabetic Diet; James Norman, M.D.; March 2009
- American Heart Association: Know Your Fats
