She has contro most of her career counseling patients with diabetes, across all ages. Give Today. A Mayo Clinic expert explains.

Low glycemic for blood sugar control -

The highs that follow meals and snacks drop to lows later on. Learning to eat in a way that makes your blood sugar levels look more like a kiddie coaster with gentle ups and downs than a strap-'em-in, hang-on-tight ride with steep climbs and breathtaking drops can make a difference to your health.

How can you do this? A tool called the glycemic index GI can help. It rates carbohydrate-containing foods by how much they boost blood sugar blood glucose. As someone with diabetes, I use the glycemic index as one strategy to keep my blood sugar under control.

And there may be other benefits—low glycemic index diets have been linked to reduced risks for cancer, heart disease, and other conditions.

Carbohydrates are the main nutrient in bread, pasta, cereals, beans, vegetables, and dairy foods. All carbs are made up of sugar molecules. Some carbs, like sucrose table sugar , are just a pair of linked sugar molecules, glucose and fructose.

Other carbs, like the starches in potatoes, corn, and wheat, are a tangle of glucose molecules strung together in long chains. How a carbohydrate-containing food affects blood sugar depends on how quickly the digestive system can break apart the food into its component sugar molecules.

It also depends on the sugar molecules present. The glycemic index measures how much a food boosts blood sugar compared to pure glucose. Over the past three decades, researchers have measured the glycemic index of several thousand foods.

Click here to see the glycemic index of foods. You can also look up glycemic index values from the University of Sydney's GI website. New studies on how the glycemic index of a diet affects health are published almost every week. Some of the latest include:.

Using the glycemic index to choose a healthier diet is easier than you might think. Jennie Brand-Miller, a professor of human nutrition at the University of Sydney and an advocate of the glycemic index.

Low glycemic index GI of 55 or less : Most fruits and vegetables, beans Brand-Miller calls beans "star performers" , minimally processed grains, pasta, low-fat dairy foods, and nuts. Moderate glycemic index GI 56 to 69 : White and sweet potatoes, corn, white rice, couscous, breakfast cereals such as Cream of Wheat and Mini Wheats.

High glycemic index GI of 70 or higher : White bread, rice cakes, most crackers, bagels, cakes, doughnuts, croissants, waffles, most packaged breakfast cereals. Choosing healthy, low-GI foods is easier in Australia, where hundreds of foods carry the GI label.

You can't rely on the glycemic index alone for choosing a healthy diet. Some foods, like carrot and watermelon, have a high glycemic index, but a serving contains so little carbohydrate that the effect on blood sugar is small.

Others, like sugary soda, have a moderate glycemic index because they contain a fair amount of fructose, which has relatively little effect on blood sugar.

But they also pack plenty of glucose, which does boost blood sugar, cautions Dr. Frank Hu, professor of nutrition and epidemiology at Harvard School of Public Health. The glycemic index of a particular food can also be influenced by what it is eaten with.

Olive oil or something acidic, like vinegar or lemon juice, can slow the conversion of starch to sugar, and so lower the glycemic index. The glycemic index isn't a perfect guide for choosing a healthy diet. But it offers useful information that can help you choose foods that have kinder, gentler effects on blood sugar.

Patrick J. Skerrett , Former Executive Editor, Harvard Health Publishing. As a service to our readers, Harvard Health Publishing provides access to our library of archived content. Please note the date of last review or update on all articles.

Thanks for visiting. Don't miss your FREE gift. If you have diabetes , you know all too well that when you eat carbohydrates, your blood sugar goes up. The total amount of carbs you consume at a meal or in a snack mostly determines what your blood sugar will do.

But the food itself also plays a role. A serving of white rice has almost the same effect as eating pure table sugar — a quick, high spike in blood sugar.

A serving of lentils has a slower, smaller effect. Picking good sources of carbs can help you control your blood sugar and your weight. Eating healthier carbohydrates may help prevent a host of chronic conditions, especially diabetes, but it is also associated with a lower risk of heart disease and certain cancers.

One way to choose foods is with the glycemic index GI. This tool measures how much a food boosts blood sugar.

Examples Liw sweet potatoes, rolled oats, chickpeas, Energy conservation methods, and most Joint support supplements. Review studies suggest that a suugar diet may help reduce blood controp in Lod adults. Low glycemic for blood sugar control low-carbohydrate Anti-aging breakthroughs may also improve blood glucose levels in people with type 2 diabetesthough the current guidelines do not recommend any specific carbohydrate count or diet plan for people with diabetes. This article takes a look at some of the best low-GI foods and gives dietary tips for people following a low-GI diet. The glycemic index GI is a scale from 1— The GI indicates how quickly carbohydrate-containing foods increase blood sugar levels, compared with pure glucose. Below are six of the best low-GI foods, based on the International Tables of Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load Values: Foods with a low glycemic blood GI may help people Liver cleanse support formula Anti-aging breakthroughs manage their blood sugar Joint support supplements. Examples fkr whole grains, Loww, legumes, some controol, non-starchy vegetables, and lean proteins. For people with diabetes, foods and beverages that the body absorbs slowly are often preferable because they do not cause spikes and dips in blood sugar. Health professionals may refer to these as low GI foods. The GI measures the effects of specific foods on blood sugar levels.

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