Diabetes Diet

David Perlmutter’s 2013 book Grain Brain has a prominent place in my diabetes bookshelf. Grain Brain is one of the important books ever. This book that the renowned brain specialist wrote two years ago holds a prominent place on my diabetes bookshelf.

Re-reading it recently reminded me how closely connected that our brain health is to excellent care and treatment of diabetes. The book is about how wheat, carbs, and sugar are destroying our brains. This connection with diabetes is far too close for comfort. These are the same things that raise our blood glucose the most.

The higher the A1C level we have, the greater is our risk of Alzheimer’s disease, the most dreaded form of dementia. As I wrote here last month at “High Blood Glucose Can Lead to Dementia,” people with type 2 diabetes who had A1C levels of 10.5 percent or higher are 50 percent more likely to get a diagnosis of dementia than those with levels of 6.5 percent or less. In fact, one M.D., Suzanne M. de la Monte, has named Alzheimer’s disease as “Type 3 Diabetes.”

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The pesticides in our food may explain why some of us have diabetes, a new study suggests. You still have time to switch to eating organic food, which has much less pesticide residue in it than conventionally grown food does. Pesticides that you eat seem to explain why some of us have diabetes, according to a new study.

Even when we have diabetes we can benefit from eating organically grown food. What leads to our diabetes in the first place can make it harder to control when we have to manage it.

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The new food insulin index can work much better than carbohydrate counting, which for years has been considered to be the gold standard for improving glycemic control. For those of us who have diabetes, this index is also a more comprehensive guide to blood sugar control than the glycemic index.

For years the limitation of the food insulin index (also known as just the insulin index) was the few foods tested. The original 1997 study, which in 2003 I reviewed in detail for the first time in the article “Insulin Index”on my personal website, tested only 38 foods.

We had to wait until 2011 for the index to grow to about 120 foods in “Prediction of postprandial glycemia and insulinemia in lean, young, healthy adults.” I reviewed that study here at “Manage Your Blood Sugar Better with the Insulin Index.”

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We were wrong about saturated fat, which was probably the most terrible mistake in the history of nutrition. Not long ago we called trans fat the worst fat, as I wrote in 2002 at “New Label for Worst Fat” for Diabetes Wellness News. But now we know that it is the only bad fat, because saturated fat is off the hook.

Nutrition Facts for Pop Secret “Jumbo Pop Movie Theater Butter”

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More and more of us are beginning to follow a low-carb diet as the American medical establishment is starting to accept the wisdom of this way of managing diabetes. But if you have diabetes, why should you cut your carbs? And anyway, what do we mean when we say  “low-carb?”

A critical review of “Dietary carbohydrate restriction as the first approach in diabetes management,” in the journal Nutrition early this year presented the evidence for its several big benefits:

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It would be great if you could eat tasty meals that are high in carbohydrates while keeping your blood sugar low. Actually, even if you have diabetes and otherwise follow a very low-carb diet, you can do precisely this.

If you have had diabetes for a while, you know that when you chow down on carbs, your blood sugar level is sure to go up. But there’s an exception. In the United States this food is a little-known secret, but in India it’s well-known.

It’s my fault — at least in part — for keeping this special carbohydrate food a secret. I have known about it ever since 1994 when I began to gather information on the Glycemic Index. I’m not sure when I first wrote about it on my own website, but it was in 1998 or earlier, and I have eaten it since then even as I otherwise follow a very low-carb diet. I have mentioned this food in passing here at HealthCentral.com, but I just realized that I never previously gave it the attention here that it deserves.

Now the secret is out: I’m talking about chana dal, which in India is sometimes also known as Bengal gram dal (or dhal) or chholar dal. Its scientific name is Cicer arietinum Linn, which actually doesn’t help us, because this the same scientific name as that of garbanzo beans (chick peas), which have a higher Glycemic Index.

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