A health expert is warning that even lower blood sugar levels should be promoted in people with diabetes in order to help prevent the spread of the condition. After spending weeks munching down on Christmas cookies and chocolates, you probably don’t want to hear that your blood sugar levels should go even lower than previously recommended, but it’s important, so keep reading.
Yes, dieticians have been telling us for ages that we need to get our blood sugar levels under control in order to help prevent the development of diabetes. If you’ve been ignoring this advice, listen up now because it’s very important. Eating lots of sugary foods causes your blood sugar to rise.
Your body produces excess insulin to deal with these sugar levels and therefore you need more and more insulin to metabolize the sugar. Eventually, your body becomes resistant to insulin and that’s when you are at the highest risk of developing Type II diabetes.
If you already suffer from diabetes, and are controlling your blood sugar with drugs and diet changes, even that may not be enough to protect you from the most dangerous complication — heart disease. People with diabetes run a high risk of heart disease and according to Dr. William Cefalu of the Pennington Biomedical Research Center. According to Dr. Cefalu, their heightened blood sugar levels may be what put them at risk.
Now, the key is to get your blood sugar levels down an extra percentage point or two. While this may not sound significant, it can make quite an impact on your health. It’s also a very hard task, considering how difficult it is for diabetics to meet the currently required seven to eight percent goals that are already in place.
Dr. Cefalu believes that reducing blood sugar levels in diabetics is a difficult goal, but it is not an impossible one. He believes that doing this could seriously reduce the risk of heart disease later in life in people with diabetes — especially if these changes to blood sugar limits are made sooner rather than later. And that fact alone may just make the challenge of maintaining lower blood sugar levels quite worthwhile.