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Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.

Today's post: Tuesday, 1-9-2007

Eat Low Glycemic foods for health….

People who do that & get enough exercise tend to be healthy & trim.

People who do the opposite, which is currently far too easy to do, virtually all are fat. And, many develop type II diabetes &/or heart disease or strokes or other cardiovascular problems.

We’ve had many posts on the multiple benefits of exercise.

This one is on low glycemic foods. Simply put, low glycemic foods are those that give you good nutrition but tend to give you a small or little rise in your blood sugar level.

High glycemic foods like refined grains or any food made from them; sugar; & high fructose corn syrup; & potatoes* often have little in the way of nutrition & tend to cause rapid increases in your blood sugar. And, if you do that too often, particularly if you don’t exercise, you get fat & sick.

*(Plain potatoes do have some nutrients; but french fries have little of those. And, even a plain baked potato is quite high in its glycemic index.)

The good news is that many low glycemic foods taste good or can be put in recipes that do.

A friend asked me for some low glycemic foods & how to look up the glycemic index of foods.

Here are the foods I emailed him:

If it has fiber & real nutrition or if its main components are protein & fat, the glycemic index of a food will be low or lower than alternatives. (Foods with only protein & fat are essentially zero as are nuts according to one doctor I read.)

So, nuts, eggs, extra virgin olive oil, wild caught salmon, sardines, exclusively grass fed beef, buffalo, etc & exclusively free range poultry all are all low or very low & tend to promote good health. (Grain fed beef is too high in omega 6 fats & saturated fat to be safe for your health to eat with any but the smallest frequency.)

Whole grains & brans tend to be moderately low; & refined grains are astonishingly high. So, it's no surprise that people who eat only whole grain & virtually no refined grain products are MUCH healthier than people who do the reverse. (Unfortunately that's still millions of people in this country.)

Barley is lower than most grains. And, I suspect Kasha, which is whole buckwheat groats, is quite low.

Beans tend to be low due to their high fiber content. Lentils are both lowest easily available beans & the most nutritious. Black-eyed peas are low. And pinto beans are moderately low. (Beans have decent plant based protein & lots of fiber.)

In fruit, cherries, plums, peaches, & nectarines are surprisingly low. Whole pears & apples are low; & surprisingly, so is unsweetened apple sauce.

Oranges moderately low; & orange juice too may be somewhat low.

Bananas are a bit high but are very good nutritionally. And, you can eat them at a meal where you eat eggs or nuts first; & the combined meal will be low in its effects.

In vegetables, potatoes are unusually high. So they are OK only in small servings & when served with lots of cheese or extra virgin olive oil to give the combination a lower effect.

Carrots are high on some charts; but they are quite high in nutrition. And, their amount of effect is actually quite low because they have so little sugars & so much fiber that something called their glycemic load is still quite low.

(Glycemic load measures the total effect of a food since a very small serving of a high glycemic food like cornflakes or potato, clearly has much less of an effect than a very large one.)

Corn is moderately high; & popcorn & cornflakes are quite high.Almost all other vegetables, particularly green ones, are low or very low.

Milk & skim milk are listed as low; but it has a lot of lactose or milk sugar; & one doctor says he has found that it increases insulin levels much the same as high glycemic foods.

Here are some high glycemic foods to avoid not in my email to my friend. (I think he already knows better than to consume them.)

Soft drinks are high whether made with high fructose corn syrup or with sugar. And, surprisingly, diet soft drinks tend to make people fat as they seem to induce people to crave sugar or high glycemic foods enough that people who drink them tend to take in too many high glycemic foods.

Here are some sources for more glycemic index information:

The Reverse Heart Disease Now book we reviewed & recommended Thursday last week has some information.

And, there are now many books on the Glycemic Index that contain information.

Or you can simply search online.

The information in this post will get you started. And, most of our Superfood list from our posts in April & May last year (2006) are low in glycemic index.

What if you have a favorite food that’s high or at least NOT low in glycemic index?

My friend had another friend who had type II diabetes who loved sourdough bread.

Here are the several ideas I emailed him that could allow his other friend to enjoy sourdough bread safely:

If his other friend does nothing else to reduce or reverse his (or her) type II diabetes & eats lots of sourdough bread that would indeed be a problem.

It may be that sourdough has a lower glycemic index than plain, soft, white bread; but plain, soft, white bread is quite high.

So, his other friend might do well to get one of those glucose blood testing devices & see what the sourdough does to his or her blood sugar level.

Many diabetics find that bread dramatically increases their blood sugar levels & does so even more than candy bars.That said, here are some ways your friend could still enjoy some sourdough bread safely.

1. Reverse the type II by getting a lot of exercise including a lot of strength training; taking supplements like alpha lipoic acid; magnesium citrate; & chromium polynicontinate & others; & eating a very low glycemic index diet otherwise.

2. Take a New Chapter CinnamonForce supplement & or a gram of a supplement called D-Ribose right before or after eating it. (Either or both will prevent the blood sugar surge otherwise likely.)

3. Have it as garlic bread made with LOTS of extra virgin olive oil & no butter.

4. Eat it last after a very low glycemic index meal instead of first or only.

5. And, there is a whole wheat sourdough bread that his friend might like that also might well be less of a problem in increase blood sugar levels due to its higher fiber content.

6. Eat it once or twice a week instead of daily.

7. Do all or most of the above.

Here’s more on WHY to eat low glycemic foods:

People who eat lots of low glycemic foods & hardly ever eat high glycemic foods or drink soft drinks who were doing the reverse before:

Have lost excess fat—sometimes a LOT;

Reversed type II diabetes;

And, reversed or at least slowed down heart disease. (That’s why there’s information on it in Dr Sinatra & Dr Roberts’s book on reversing heart disease.)


And, this all works even better with enough regular exercise.