Evelyn Bankole Naija.com
If you are a diabetes patient, you have probably heard that sweet potato regulates blood sugar. It’s quite hard to believe it due to the effect of regular potatoes on diabetic patients. Still, sweet potatoes do have a positive effect on diabetes. Check them out below!
Sweet potatoes for blood sugar control
Sweet potatoes contain a lot of food fibers, which are able to slow down the process of digestion and absorption of carbs by the body. Slowing down the digestion process means causing a positive effect of the level of blood glucose. Certainly, this is exactly the effect diabetics search for in their meals!
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Regular potatoes contain plenty of carbs and this is why diabetic patients try to avoid them. Sweet potatoes are quite different because they have a power of a different type. Being nourishing and containing carbs, sweet potatoes don’t increase the level of glucose in the blood.
Not all types of sweet potatoes have the same effect. For instance, purple ones can be more effective when it’s necessary to decrease blood sugar level. Japanese sweet potatoes are probably the most effective ones among the existing types. Japanese scientists have even created a remedy for diabetics that’s based on sweet potato extracts.
Sweet potatoes and the amount of carbs
If you are into including sweet potatoes into your diet, you need to know how much you are allowed to eat. To begin with, you need to know both your body better than anybody else and the amount of carbs that makes you feel good enough.
Actually, the amount of carbs you consume with your meals depends on the blood sugar level and other specific features of your individual diabetes. Besides that, the amount of carbs depends on the level of your physical activity. On average, specialists recommend that a person with a normal body weight and a normal amount of physical activity should eat between 45 and 60 grams of carbs within a meal. Sometimes, diabetes sufferers need fewer carbs to control the level of their blood glucose.
In this regard, you need to consider the amount of sweet potato that you can eat within a day, for example. One big sweet potato contains about 37 grams of carbohydrates (if it’s baked without adding anything else). Since it’s almost the entire portion allowed per a meal, you need to plan it so that there are no other carbs in your plate.
Can one eat sweet potato having gestational diabetes?
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Pregnant women often suffer from a condition, which is called gestational diabetes. This condition is caused by the fact that pregnancy hormones in a woman’s blood make her body decrease its own insulin resistance. In most cases, after the baby birth, the level of blood glucose returns to the normal one.
Gestational diabetes is like the regular one. It’s necessary to observe the amount of carbohydrates a woman consumes and the level of blood sugar. Sweet potatoes are a great pregnancy replacement for regular potatoes. What’s more, there’s research data, which shows that the risks of the development of gestational diabetes is connected to a high quantity of potato in the pre-pregnancy ration.
Sweet potatoes have a range of positive effects on a pregnant woman’s body and the positive effect on the gestational diabetes is one of the most important. Decreasing the level of blood glucose, fighting constipations and providing the body with plenty of vitamins and minerals – these are the reasons why pregnant women with gestational diabetes should not refuse sweet potatoes.
Effective sweet potato diabetes recipes
- Sweet potato smoothie
This is a quick way to have a healthy snack avoiding an abrupt rise of blood glucose at the same time. Take one sweet potato (boiled or baked), ½ of a banana (choose a small one to avoid eating too much of carbs), some plain yogurt, a little cinnamon or ginger. You will receive proteins, carbs, and sugar in your blood will not go high abruptly.
- Sweet potato breakfast
Prepare egg scramble and add ½ of a cooked sweet potato (boiled or baked one), season it with peanut butter (a dollop will be enough) and several berries of grapes. This is a nourishing breakfast that will help you boost your metabolism without overloading your body with carbs.
- Sweet potato toasts
Cook a big sweet potato and cut it into thin slices. Roast them then in a toaster and then eat with whatever source of protein you like. Try seasoning the sweet potato toasts with cottage cheese, egg scramble or whatever else you like. Such a balanced breakfast if good for the entire body and it’s able to decrease the level of blood sugar due to the abilities of sweet potatoes.
- Baked sweet potatoes with seasoning
Just bake or cook sweet potatoes and eat them with some chipotle pepper, which will give them some spicy flavor. It’s also a good idea to roll pieces of sweet potatoes in chopped nuts and seeds. Such a snack will provide you with healthy carbs, proteins and even healthy fats, which are necessary for a good metabolism.
- Sweet potato mash
Since they are sweet by themselves, these potatoes don’t need additional sugaring, which is important for diabetic patients. If you decide to mash sweet potatoes, everything you need is add some cinnamon. Its spicy and sweet taste is able to emphasize the sweetness of these potatoes. In a combination with some nuts and a glass of yogurt, such a mash is a delicious, nourishing, and healthy breakfast.
- Sweet potato bowl
Cook a big sweet potato, take ½ of it and cut into cubes and mix with black beans, sautéed spinach, and cooked quinoa. This can be a great light lunch or a snack or a breakfast, depending on what you are used to. This meal is rich in proteins and low in carbs and can be a great support for the body if you are doing sports or a perfect meal if you need to lose weight.
Sweet potato side effects you need to know
Just as anything, no matter how useful and healing, sweet potatoes can have side effects and contraindications. There are people who are allergic to sweet potatoes and thus cannot eat them at all. even those who have already tried them some time ago can develop allergic reactions to these vegetables within a certain time.
Finally, if you have heart issues and need to take beta-blockers for the normal performance of your heart, you should eat very little of this vegetable. The point is that sweet potatoes contain a lot of potassium and beta blockers increase the amount of potassium if you. The doubled effect can cause a severe imbalance and serious complications.
People with kidney issues should also limit the consumption of sweet potatoesor even refuse eating them. Again, the high level of potassium in blood should be withdrawn from the body and the body does it through kidneys. Excessive load on them can even be fatal.
The least harmful but still unpleasant complication of sweet potato overeating is orange coloring of nails and skin. It disappears after you stop eating these vegetables.
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