Atkins and Diabetes

It's claimed that the Atkins diet principles lay the foundation for a healthy, more balanced way of eating than the "standard" diet today in the UK. Its emphasis is on using good carbohydrates in balance with adequate protein. This is in stark contrast to what most people eat on a daily basis. The average person eats lots of processed foods that have hidden sugars and highly processed carbohydrates.

This has put a growing number of people on the dangerous road to diabetes ("sugar diabetes") and pre-diabetic conditions. What is sad is that diabetes has a predictable set of stages and that they can be easily recognized.

The road to diabetes has to do with something called the glycemic index. All carbohydrates are rated on this index with regards to the level of insulin reaction they produce. Foods that have a high glycemic index rating will cause your pancreas to release a lot of insulin to break down the amount of sugars and carbohydrates (which produce high amounts of glucose). The refined carbohydrates and sugars that make up the vast majority of the average diet rank very high on the glycemic index. White bread is rated almost the same as pure sugar on the index!

When we are children we are able to more readily digest these foods because our bodies function more efficiently in our youth. There might well have been side effects, like weight gain and mood swings, but they didn’t stand out. As we age, however, these symptoms begin to grow and become more prevalent. The nation-wide obesity epidemic is a result of high-carbohydrate diets and unstable blood sugar levels.

Many people who are overweight are also insulin resistant. Insulin resistance means that the insulin is not doing its job in removing glucose from the blood stream. The pancreas gets over worked and it releases massive amounts of insulin, sometimes 20 times more than the body actually needs. This results in blood sugar dropping to extremely low levels. This sets off a chain reaction in the body that leads to a release of adrenaline to correct the blood sugar problem.

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