Help! Good Nutrition to Control Blood Sugar

Daisey4522

Hello,

This is not for myself, but for my father-in-law who is in his 80's and has very high blood sugar. Although he has traveled to see several specialists, they are not able to control it and it seems it may become or already is life threatening. He was even hospitalized for several days because of it. Before I go into detail I will spell out what I am looking for (I know it can be annoying to read a bunch of text before getting to the point):

Do you have any suggestions of foods that would be good to control high blood sugar?
Do you have any recipes that you can share?
What types of changes have you made to control your diabetes and blood sugar?
Can you suggest a meal plan or certain number of carbs, etc that should be his daily goal?

Okay -- so I am an American but my husband is from India and my father-in-law lives in India and thus eats a lot of Indian food. I suspect all of the rice and naan may have contributed to his condition. I am especially interested in any Indian foods/recipes. I recently found a recipe for Aloo Gobi (A sort of spicy Indian Mashed Potatoes, but instead of Potatoes you can use cauliflower) that I will probably share with them.

I always look at what is in the food that I eat, but diabetes, cholesterol, etc have never been a concern of mine so I am not so aware of what would be good and what would be considered bad for someone with diabetes. I actually had full blood-work done on myself this month and my doctor just kept saying how it the results in everything were BEAUTIFUL But, I'm young and eat a lot of vegetables...

I did some research online about diabetes and it seems the main thing to do is to reduce the number of carbs and make sure you get plenty of exercise (30 mins a day -- keep in mind he is elderly). My father-in-law is not overweight and has actually been losing weight the past few months because of his condition. He also owns a business and so he is moving around everyday. I would say he is more active than most people 65+ year olds.

I would be interested in adding some friends on MFP if you log frequently and are diabetic and closely monitor your blood sugar (or have a diabetic-friendly diary). It would really help me get some ideas.

Thank you so much. I really appreciate any input you may have!

Happy Friday!

yarwell

Is he on any medication for his diabetes ?

Eating less carbohydrate will help reduce his blood sugars, less than 100 grams per day would be a start point but he may need to go lower.

Saag Paneer is about as far as my low carb Indian knowledge goes but concentrating on meats and fatty oily foods is necessary to replace the carbohydrates.

Carbs from green vegetables are less problematic than those from eg rice in terms of how fast it arrives in the blood stream.

http://www.bloodsugar101.com/ may be useful.

richardheath

Is he on insulin? How high do his numbers go? What specifically do you mean "they can't control it"?

Reducing his overall carb intake might help, but equally important is to spread them out evenly throughout the day. 3 meals plus snacks. It might be hard, given what I know about the yummy Indian diet (lots of bread and rice).

Exercise. 30 min per day, at least 5 days per week is the minimum. Walking would be good and/or light resistance training (dumbbells or resistance band sort of thing).

BUT... if his numbers are way too high and the Docs can't control it with insulin, I don't know that diet and exercise are going to do an awful lot, especially if he isn't that overweight to begin with. Worth trying of course.