What Is A Glycemic Index?What is a glycemic index? Many of you have probably asked yourself that very question.
Well, it is most important when considering blood sugar. Also, it is an important consideration in Naturopathic Medicine. Naturopathy takes into account nutritional factors of health.
It is a reference that tells us how quickly what we eat will be absorbed and increase our blood glucose, or blood sugar.
The more glucose in our blood stream, the more insulin our pancreas secretes to tell the cells of our body to take in the glucose.
The glucose is either then utilized as fuel (ideally), if our activity level supports this, or stored as fat (most typical).
When we consider what is a gylcemic index, the problem often seen is that we eat foods that are very high glycemic index, meaning they are absorbed quickly, often because they aren't whole foods and lack fiber.
They also, most likely, contain a high proportion of refined carbohydrates.
I often illustrate this by comparing it loud noises. When we are first exposed to loud, obnoxious noises, we are very aware of the noise.
However, after repeated exposure, eventually the noise may not even be noticeable.
This is comparable to how your body's cells respond to excessive insulin and high blood glucose.
Your insulin receptors on your cells become desensitized by it all.
More and more insulin has to be secreted over time to get the same cellular response, leading to an overworked pancreas and high blood sugar levels.
This as you can probably figure out, leads to type 11 diabetes quite often.
It is very important to consider what is a glycemic index.
Glycemic index acceptable foods include basically any whole food.
Now there will be exceptions to this rule.
Fats and proteins don't pose much of a problem with the glycemic index.
Not to say they don't cause trouble in other ways!
Primarily, it is carbohydrates we need to talk about.
Complex carbohydrates are fruits, vegetables, and whole grains that have not been altered from how they grow.
There is more fiber, vitamins and minerals in whole foods.
Eat the fruit instead of the fruit juice which lacks fiber to slow down the absorption.
The sum is much great than any individual component of plants.
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