Anyone who has diabetes or has seen a diabetic from close quarters would agree that diabetes is truly a silent killer. Most people become drug or insulin dependent during the early stages of the disease, and the main reason for this is that it can slowly grow in you and damage many functions of other vital organs, before you even know that you have developed diabetes. Yet both oral anti-diabetes drugs and insulin are not very health-friendly solutions for the disease. They speed up the process of aging, damage your liver, heart and other organs and if neglected, can pave the way for many other serious health complications.

Did you know that diabetes can be controlled if not completely cured by bringing about many lifestyle changes as well as changes in your diet? Ask any diabetic specialist and the doctor would ask you to do rigorous and regular physical exercise, stop smoking and alcohol and eat the right kind of food. So essentially what you are doing is addressing the root cause of diabetes to reverse the situation and enhance your body’s own insulin production as naturally as possible, with out the help of drugs and other medication which may only perpetuate the condition. When making a diet plan for a diabetic, doing away with foods which promote or support diabetes is critically important. These include refined carbohydrates like white flour, rice, bread and pasta, corn syrup, mayonnaise, processed food and oils etc.

To counter diabetes it is also important to know why it affects us in the first place. If we continue to consume food rich in carbohydrates, fats and starches and avoid burning out calories through physical exercise, we will gradually gain weight and the body’s capacity of producing adequate insulin would decrease with time. As the body tissues become more exposed to excessive insulin, we develop what in medical terms is called ‘insulin resistance’, a condition where the body tissues have absorbed all the insulin they can retain. This syndrome usually leads to diabetes. Incidentally, 17 million Americans, nearly 7.3 percent of the population are diabetic with an astounding 33 percent rise in the prevalence of the disease between 1990 and 1999.

So to combat or live with disease and keep it under check, it is vitally important to do regular exercise and eat foods which are rich in vitamins and minerals rather than foods which are rich in fats, carbohydrates and low in fibers. Include a lot of boiled vegetables in your diet as well as fruits and vegetables, walk regularly and try to burn as much calories as your body needs, reduce body weight to bring it down to optimal and you can either get diabetes out of your system or live with it happily ever after. At least, you can reduce the quantity of medications or even reduce your insulin dependence.