Myths About Diabetes

25 Jun

Posted by admin as Diabetes Information

Diabetes is a complicated disease. If you have it or even if you don’t, there’s a lot for you to learn, including separating fact from fiction. Take a look at some of these common myths about diabetes.

Myths about diabetes

All diabetes is inherited. Not everyone who gets diabetes inherits it. People tend to inherit the risk of type 2 diabetes more than type 1. You are considered at risk for developing type 2 if any first-degree relatives have diabetes.

People with diabetes should never eat sugar and sweets. Sugar and sweets do raise your blood glucose, but people with diabetes can safely eat sugar as part of their meal plan. And just to clear up another myth, you can?t get diabetes from eating too much sugar.

Every day in the United States, 4,100 new cases of diabetes are diagnosed. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention predicts that one in three Americans born in 2000 will develop diabetes.

Myth: People with diabetes cannot eat sugar. People with diabetes who eat sugar, even in moderation, are considered “cheating.”

Fact: Sweets are no more out of bounds to people with diabetes than they are to people who are not diabetic. Many diabetes nutritional programs include sweets in moderation if included as part of a healthy diet, or combined with exercise. People who take oral medications or insulin for their diabetes may sometimes need to eat high-sugar foods to prevent or treat low blood sugar.

These alarming rates have sparked new educational campaigns to help prevent type 2 diabetes, the most common form of the disease, which is closely tied to being overweight.

Warshaw said the nutrition recommendations for people with diabetes are the same as the general public - no rigid diet and no need to limit your selections to sugar-free foods.

Eating sweets causes diabetes.

False. Being a chocoholic doesn’t mean that you are destined to develop diabetes. It is speculated that type 1 is caused by heredity and certain environmental factors not yet clearly understood by experts.

Aspirin must be totally avoided during diabetes mellitus.

Aspirin, being an antibiotic, many diabetic people tend to stay away from it. However, a recent recommendation by the American Diabetic Association (ADA) suggests that people with diabetes mellitus must take an aspirin a day. This reduces their chances of having heart attacks later on. The advantage of taking aspirin is that it reduces the clotting within the arteries and prevents the possibility of cardiovascular diseases.

Myth: Diabetes is rare in the United States.

Fact: Diabetes mellitus affects 13 million people (6% of the population) in the United States. Over 5 million of these people have the disease but do not know it. The direct and indirect cost of diabetes mellitus is $98 billion per year in the United States alone.

Carbohydrates Are Bad.

In fact, carbohydrates are good. They form the foundation of a healthy diabetes diet – or of any healthy diet.

Carbohydrates have the greatest effect on blood glucose levels, which is why you are asked to monitor how much carbohydrate you eat when following a diabetes diet.

In the beginning, this disorder was called sugar diabetes and many mistakenly believed that eating excessive sugar was the cause. This led to the myth that people with diabetes must avoid all foods that contain sugar. It’s almost impossible to avoid all sugar, and it’s unnecessary. The current nutritional therapy for diabetes does not endorse unlimited sugar, but it does accept using sugar as part of the total carbohydrate intake.