Natural Cures for Diabetes: Finding the Nutritional Culprits
First, before you roll your eyes and say that you already know sweets are “bad” for you, let’s talk about individual foods one by one. Sweets can be foods made of different types of sugars, along with wheat, corn, egg, yeast, milk, food colorings, preservatives, and many other items.
Many people with diabetes have hidden food sensitivities, the kind that actually show up as food addictions. That is, the very foods that a person craves and temporarily feels better eating are the ones that may worsen insulin resistance and raise blood sugar levels into the abnormal range. If you step back and decide if you have cycles of feeling better and worse every day, these hidden food sensitivities could be a problem for you.
What foods are involved? The trick to this part is that each person is an individual. The same food could be fine for one diabetic, but very bad for another person with diabetes. The most common foods involved in this type of food sensitivity (which is not a classic food allergy, so ordinary skin tests and the lack of a runny nose after eating won’t tell you much one way or the other) are: corn, egg, wheat, yeast, milk, egg, beef, potato, tomato. Foods can be in the same food “family”. That is, potato, tomato, and eggplant are all related to one another in the plant world. Obviously, chicken and eggs are related to one another. So are cow’s milk and beef.
The easiest way to sort it all out is to eliminate all forms of a specific food (you really need to read labels to be sure) for 4-5 days and then eat the food by itself in a single meal to see what happens. During the avoidance period, you may feel much worse for the first couple of days, but will improve if you hang in there. When you do a food test, if the food is a problem for you, you will experience a spike of your individual symptoms, whatever they might be. This could include anything from mood changes to joint pains to fatigue to headache to out-of-control blood sugar levels.
Sugar comes in several different varieties, including corn syrup, cane sugar, and beet sugar. Some diabetics’ bodies are so precise that they have a worse time from one type of sugar from a particular source (corn, cane, beet) than from another.
Oddly enough, some people might find that their ability to eat sweets gets better when they eliminate beef from their diet. For those people with a beef sensitivity, it was the food that triggered their body to be resistant to the effects of insulin. Sounds strange, but you can test out this idea for yourself in your own situation.
