Understanding What are Carbohydrates?

Carbohydrate or carbs comes from wide varieties of foods. Pie, bread, spaghetti, noodles, beans, milk, cookies etc are examples. They come in different forms. Starch, sugar and fibers are the three famous and abundant kinds of carbohydrate.

The simple union of oxygen, hydrogen and carbon composes the sugar molecule, which is the building block of carbohydrates. The essential chains of sugar molecules are starches and fibers.

There are two groups of carbohydrates.

• Simple carbohydrate, which includes sugars, fructose or fruit sugar, glucose and dextrose, grape or corn sugar, sucrose or table sugar. This type is considered bad.

• Complex carbohydrate, which includes all, made of three or more linked sugars.

Compared to protein and fats, carbs have a lot of impact on blood sugar. It directly affects the blood glucose as evidence now suggests. The amount and type of sugar intake affects the glucose level in the blood. One gram of carbohydrates is equal to four calories. 50 to 60% of carbohydrates are the recommended daily dietary allowance.

If carbohydrates do affect our blood sugar level, there might be a link connecting carbohydrates to illnesses borne of taking too much sugar. One of these is diabetes. Are diabetic patients allowed to eat carbohydrate-rich food?

Yes, there is a link. If you are a diabetic patient, to be able to manage your health you have to have a carefully planned diet. The level of carbohydrates in your diet might affect your health. You should be aware that carbohydrates always break down to sugars.

So if you are eating simple bread, pudding, or even jelly beans, the amount of carbohydrate you eat will end up as sugar absorption. Counting the total amount of carbohydrate in your diet can be your most important step.

Although all carbohydrates turn into simple sugars, the conversion may vary. It is between 3-5 hours before the carbohydrate is converted to sugar. Therefore, the effect is diverse depending on the foods in a diabetic patient’s diet—that is, the effect on their blood sugar levels.

Fatty acids in the blood are stored in your body’s fat cells through a hormone secretion in the pancreas, known as the insulin. It is where the low carbohydrate diet originates. Sugars are well monitored in your blood, because sugars are well circulated in the blood.

The insulin is injected in our body if the blood sugar level arises. Insulin instructs our body to absorb the sugar and triglycerides from our blood, because insulin is the chemical messenger in our body. Therefore, the sugar level decreases and becomes normal.

It is helpful to diabetic people to reduce carbohydrates in their diet. Diabetic patients can be significantly overweight. The more overweight you are, the bigger your insulin resistance is. This is a sign that you need to cut extra carbs from your diet.

If there is a member in your family who has a history of diabetes, you should take note. Control your carbohydrates for you may be predisposed to diabetes. Controlling your diet by cutting the carbs in your diet might be a great help.