Pan fried banana

I'm beginning to change my mind about bananas. I used to think diabetics should avoid them (I don't take insulin). But I'm coming around to a different opinion about them more recently.

Here's a quick hot banana dish that has some ingredients in addition to the banana that can be very helpful.

Slice a banana longways in 3 parts. Coat the bottom of a frying pan with olive oil. Bring to a high heat and lay the bananas in the oil. Sprinkle the up side liberally with powdered cinnamon. When slightly browned turn over, sprinkle the other side with cinnamon. When browned remove bananas to a plate and squeeze the juice of a lime over them. Serve hot.

The cinnamon helps in insulin production (and helps cholesterol also). The lime juice acts as both a diuretic which can help control hypertension and to restore depleted potassium. Of course we all know how useful olive oil is.

290 calories, 125 from fat
4mg sodium
2 g. protein
47 g carbs
29 g complex carbs

Amlodipine besylate

Amlodipine besylate is a medication that's being prescribed for me because of high blood pressure (a complication that developed from the diabetes).

It is a type of medication called a calcium channel blocker. These drugs dilate blood vessels and slow the heart to reduce blood pressure and the pain of angina.

A once-a-day medication, (it) may be used alone or in combination with other drugs for high blood pressure

More common side effects may include:
Dizziness, fatigue, flushing, fluid retention and swelling, headache, palpitations (fluttery or throbbing heartbeat)
There are no known food or drug interactions with Amlodipine besylate

Coffee for diabetics

Is coffee good for diabetics?

It has no carbs. That's sure a good thing. Diabetes is about the body not being able to process carbs. If you have no carbs, then no problem.

But, interestingly enough, coffee does have fiber.

Already recognized as a source of healthful anti-inflammatory and antioxidant compounds, coffee also contains significantly higher levels of soluble dietary fiber than other commonly consumed beverages, scientists in Spain report.

I'm guessing that no carb fiber content has something to do with the reason coffee appears to be a good diabetes preventive.

And although popular medical beleif is that caffaine raises blood pressure, recent research creates some doubt about that.

What they leave out of diabetic diets

Here's the details of a 1200 calorie diabetes diet that just looks to me like it has way too many carbs.

The 1200 calories is intended to weight loss, which is certainly going to be a good thing for most of us. But they're recommending 50% or more of that diet come from carbs? Huh? What is that all about.

They just gloss over it when they talk about the diet, but it's actually about two things not directly related to diet -- the form of your medical treatment, and the amount of regular exercise built into your lifestyle activities.

They assume you're taking insulin and that the amount of insulin is enough to process the recommended 10 or so carbohydrate servings per day. If you aren't taking insulin then you're depending on your medications to stimulate insulin production. They are right in their analysis of this diet when they say that you should spread out your carb intake over the entire course of a day to even out your need to process the sugars, but, I'm not so sure about the levels.

They do mention their assumptions about taking insulin, although they only do so in passing. What they don't mention at all is the need for exercise. And that's a very critical factor in how much sugar or carbs your body is going to be able to process.

Some of us don't get regular physical activity throughout the day. I'm a writer for a living, which means a good bit of my day is spend sedentary. I do work at home, and have a large yard, so I can take frequent breaks to go outside and do a little yardwork. But the weather doesn't always cooperate with that. And, one of the complications of my diabetes is high blood pressure and a corresponding lack of stamina. So I can only tolerate exercise for short bursts.

Ten servings of carbs per day? If you take insulin and get regular brisk exercise, that's probably a good idea as long as the servings are spread out. But, if you don't take insulin and aren't able to get regular brisk exercise then that's probably at least twice the level of carbs you need to be ingesting.

Diet needs to be part of your lifestyle planning. That doesn't just mean you have to adjust your lifestyle to your diet. Sometimes you have to adjust your diet to your lifestyle. And too much of the published recommendations for diabetic diets just simply ignore that.

Some thoughts on diabetes and sugar

Last year I was kind of depressed for a while and wasn't taking my medications regularly.

I even engaged in some really stupid behavior like buying a box of Raisin Bran and half gallon of whole milk and just pigging out on all those carbs and fat in one evening.

I started feeling real bad, my back was hurting, it got really bad. Bad enough that I decided to take a trip to the emergency room. Even driving was difficult for me.

I had very high blood pressure and high sugar. The high sugar wasn't surprising, given my recent binge eating of high carb foods, but the high blood pressure was something new.

But that's not really what this post is about. It's about the food they gave me while I was in the hospital (they admitted me). Carbs. Lot's of carbs. Breakfast with grits, biscuits, fruit, milk. Lunch with corn, beans, potatoes, tomatoes, cornbread. Carbs.

And, of course no exercise. Even though they were giving me insulin shoots (I don't normally take insulin) my sugar levels stayed high. The diet they give diabetics seems to have a focus on the nutrition side of the diet (and of course that's important) but they ignore the sugar side of the diet. With diabetes I don't think that's a good idea, even though that seems to be the approach recommended by the American Diabetic Association.

What the hell did they expect?

Dark Chocolate

Small amounts of dark chocolate, eaten regularly, have recently been found to lower blood pressure. There are other health benefits to dark chocolate.

High blood pressure is a risk for diabetics, but diabetics need to be careful with the dark chocolate becuase of the sugar.

Diabetes and high blood pressure

The poor circulation of diabetes can lead to high blood pressure. High blood pressure, if you have diabetes, tends to cause other diabetes related problems (such as poor vision) to worsen.

A combination of diabetes and high blood pressure is very dangerous, it's something you need to be very careful with.