Recommended foods for a diabetic person

 

What are some recommended foods for a diabetic person to eat before bedtime to avoid high blood sugar levels in the morning?

High blood sugar levels in the morning could be on account of several reasons. Your doctor, on careful observation of your different blood sugar tests over a period, could get to know what is or what are the probable causes of your high morning glucose levels.

The previous night's meal is also one of the reasons for hyperglycemia in the morning hours before you have had breakfast or any drink with calories.

My experience as a layman tells me that eating:

• High calorie foods (rich fats, heavy meats)
• Large quantity of food
• High GI foods
• Late dinners (close to bedtime)

All of them disrupt the metabolism and can lead to either hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia, which will again lead to hyperglycemia.

The blood sugar levels work like a rubber ball hit against a wall. The faster and more forcefully you hit the ball against the wall, the farther it will bounce back. If you consider the hit as a glucose spike, the bouncing back is the glucose crash. Thus, a big spike causes a bigger crash.

When you consume a high-calorie food or high GI food or a large quantity of food, you are likely to get a sugar spike by midnight. Your pancreas works hard, overshoots its job, produces more insulin, and causes a sugar crash as explained above. Now, the body's natural survival mechanism takes over and starts a mechanism called the ‘dawn effect’ to generate sugar from its stores. Similar to the production of insulin, the pancreas now overshoots its job of producing glucagon too. Glucagon acts to release glucose from the liver, thus causing higher-than-normal sugar levels.

Hence, one way to prevent high morning blood sugar levels is to eat:

• Light low low-calorie food.
• Moderate quantity.
• Low GI, unprocessed, and high fiber foods like millets, lentils, and vegetables.
• Have an early dinner, say around 7 pm, and go to bed around 10 pm.

These foods don't cause sugar spikes. There are no crashes either. The dawn effect would be optimal. Fasting blood sugar is better.

Click here to find more.