THE GLYCEMIC INDEX
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NOT JUST FOR
THE DIABETIC
Unlike smoking and heavy drinking, the
other two behavior related risk factors
for chronic health problems; obesity
is the only one that has dramatically
increased in prevalence over the last
25 years.
In fact, the effects of obesity (BMI
> 30) on the number of chronic conditions
suffered is significantly larger than
the effects of either smoking or excess
drinking.
Obesity is equivalent to 20 years
of aging in terms of accelerating disease
and actually lowers the quality of life
in terms of physical health, 30 years!
Yet active physician intervention in
obesity is relatively rare unlike the
education role most physicians play
in helping patients with drinking or
smoking.
The key to optimal health is to eat
a diet which includes a balance between
calories consumed and calories burned,
moderate protein and lower fat consumption.
You should also avoid carbohydrates
that excessively raise blood glucose,
insulin and fatty acid levels in the
blood.
Balancing our calories and watching
our fat intake are relatively straightforward,
but considerable confusion occurs when
it comes to carbohydrates.
All dietary carbohydrates, from starch
to table sugar, share a basic biological
property: they can be digested or converted
into glucose.
Digestion rate, and therefore blood
glucose response, is determined by the
complexity of the carbohydrate leading
to the century old term complex carbohydrate
versus simple sugar. The saccaride chain
length was once thought to determine
the increase in blood sugar and insulin
but the work of Wahlqvist and others,
showed that it involved other variables
not easily measured.
The glycemic index was proposed
in 1981 as an alternative system
for classifying carbohydrate-containing
foods. It has become an important tool
for the diabetic to use in guiding food
selections to help control their blood
sugar.
The glycemic index and the glycemic
load of the average diet in the U.S.
have risen dramatically secondary to
changes in food processing and the type
of carbohydrates Americans eat. This
has lead to an unparalleled epidemic
of weight gain and resulting diseases
including diabetes, obesity, and cardiovascular.
Understanding and utilizing the
glycemic index can help the individual
make smarter and healthier food choices.
It is defined as the area under the
glucose response curve after a standard
amount of carbohydrate from a test food
relative to that of a control food (either
white bread or glucose) is consumed.
The glycemic index of a specific food
or meal is determined primarily by the
nature of the carbohydrate consumed
and by other dietary factors that affect
nutrient digestibility or insulin secretion.
In general, most refined starchy
foods eaten in the United States have
a high glycemic index, whereas nonstarchy
vegetables, fruit, and legumes tend
to have a low glycemic index.
Regular eating of a high glycemic
meal compared with the same calorie
low glycemic meal, results in higher
blood glucose, insulin, and HbA1c in
both diabetics and non-diabetics. For
many individuals, this is followed by
reactive low blood sugar that promotes
excess food intake, exhausting insulin
producing cells and causing changes
in blood vessels.
Thus, the habitual consumption of
high glycemic foods may increase your
risk for obesity, type II diabetes and
heart disease.
A conscious effort to eat a greater
percentage of our carbohydrates as low
glycemic foods appears to be important
in optimizing nutrition intake in both
the normal and diabetic population.
Medifast has simplified
this effort by providing a variety of
meal replacements that have a low glycemic
index. The Medifast Plus for the
Diabetics product is a refinement of
that principle and actually has been
approved as low glycemic by the Glycemic
Research Institute.
To
learn more about Medifast, click here
Medifast’s commitment to innovative
solutions allows the individual an opportunity
to not only lose weight safely, but
also keep the weight off with high-quality
fast food.
June 2002, Medifast,
Healthy Ways
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