Archive for the ‘Diabetes’ Category

• (Русский) БЕРЕМЕННОСТЬ И ДИАБЕТ

  Date: 2010.10.28 | Category: Diabetes | Response: 0

• THE CASE FOR LOW G.I. FOODS

  Date: 2009.05.08 | Category: Diabetes | Response: 0

  Imagine that it is possible to carry a reservoir or an extra store of carbohydrate to use when needed in the small intestine (not the stomach).
  

  A meal containing carbohydrate must be eaten about two hours before strenuous exercise, such as a race, allowing time for the food to leave the stomach and reach the small intestine. You may experience nausea and stomach cramps if you eat too close to the race, e.g. less than an hour beforehand.
  

  The problem is that by allowing a gap of about two hours, the carbohydrate in most foods would have been burnt as fuel well before the race begins. The small intestine would be empty and no longer acting as a reservoir of carbohydrate. There is one other possibility. What if you could package the carbohydrate in such a way as to make it be released more slowly from the small intestine during the event?
  

  What is needed is a food that is so slowly digested that it remains in the small intestine for hours after consumption. Only some foods have their carbohydrate packaged in such a way as to make it slowly digested and absorbed and gradually released from the small intestine.
  

  In the same way that certain drugs have been formulated as lente (the Italian word for slowly) or ‘slow-release’ compounds so that the drug’s action is evenly maintained throughout the day, it is possible to do this with the carbohydrate in food, too.
  

  It shouldn’t come as a surprise to learn that nature originally provided carbohydrate in a slow-release form or as lente carbohydrate. Starch and sugars in raw, unprocessed foods are packaged in a cell matrix surrounded by fibre and only gradually broken down by the enzymes of the gastrointestinal tract. In the days of hunter-gatherers, when early humans literally ran for their lives from predatory animals, slow-release carbohydrate gave them the ultimate survival advantage. Before the introduction of horses, American Indians ran for miles rounding up bison and herding them over the cliffs to their death. The traditional foods of these people provided a slow-release source of glucose for the exercising muscle.
  

  Fortunately, there are still some foods in our modern diet that remain slowly digested and absorbed. These foods have a G.I. factor less than 55. They include all kinds of pasta, barley, whole grains, porridge, All-Bran and some varieties of rice, and bread made with softened whole grains. They also include many foods made with lentils, chick peas, couscous and barley. The traditional Mediterranean diet was high in legumes, which have exceptionally low G.I. factors.
  

  Low G.I. foods have been proven by Australian researchers to extend endurance when eaten alone one to two hours before prolonged strenuous exercise. When a pre-event meal of lentils (low G.I. factor) was compared with one of potatoes (high G.I. factor), cyclists were able to continue cycling at high intensity (65 per cent of their maximum) for 20 minutes longer when the meal was lentils. Their blood sugar and insulin levels were significantly higher at the end of exercise, indicating that carbohydrate was still being absorbed from the small intestine even after 90 minutes of strenuous exercise.
  

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