What we should know:vinegar and diabetics

Hi Everyone & Jen in particular: I saw on the group forum someone suggesting that vinegar would help in lowering our count in our blood if taken each meal. I do not beleive that is an excuse to continue eating improper food for a diabetic new or otherwise. I meant that my whole life I have eaten starches such as bread, and now to completely change my eating habits is a bit hard to do. Necessary but hard to do. My mindset I need to change as well as what I eat. Perhaps I need to do it in slow but methodical effort. It is a bit overwhelming because on the serfice it would seem I can not eat anything because every thing has the potential to raise my count and reck havock with my health. Then intilect kicks in and reason but it is still overwhelming. Others have said until my levels in my blood get regulated to a steady level then I need to watch what I eat closely. And of course continue even after my count is at a better level, and of course lose the weight that has an influence on my health. I thought someone on line would maybe have their experience of how they changed their meal dependancy on starches, and could share their experience of how they delt with the situation when they were diagnosed. My words must have been mis-understood by you Jen and maybe others. I regret that. Thank you for your comments. Babbs

Okay Babbs - here's my story:
When I was first diagnosed, my doc put me on metformin and told me to keep my carbs under 100g per day. And that's what I did. Knowing that 140 is sorta the cutoff level for sustaining damage from high BG, I tried for several weeks to get a reading of 140 or less, all while diligently counting out 100g of carbs each day but continuing to include my usual favorites; corn, potatoes, bread. Sorta like quitting smoking by cutting down - doesn't work. And I wasn't getting the low readings I wanted either. But those were doc's instructions so what was I doing wrong? Turns out, nothing - except using somebody else's guideline for my own personal management.

After a few weeks of this total aggravation, I was beginning to hear voices online saying "eat to your meter". That's when I started testing at 1-hour and 2-hour postprandial intervals. Whichever foods sent me past 140 (even at 1 hour) were deleted from my menus, and the first ones to go were bread, potatoes, corn, etc. And don't think I wasn't just as big a carb lover as you are, Babbs . . . nobody loves bread/potatoes/pasta/corn/rice more than I do.

So when you asked about vinegar helping you taper off carbs, I told you to try it, test & see what works for you. I'm pretty sure I didn't misunderstand, but I didn't give you a specific answer, because there ARE no blanket rules for us. Yes we know that carbs do us in, but each of us has to find exactly WHICH carbs hurt us the most. There are a few people who have found they can eat small amounts of potatoes or brown rice or certain low-carb breads - some can even enjoy fruit . . . and it's wonderful that they can. But because they can doesn't mean I can. I had to do my own tests to see what I can tolerate.

Everybody here loves their carbs . . . Jen is a bread baker from way back, so now she still bakes her bread and gives it all away. I'm a bread baker from way back too, but I can't handle having it in the house, even long enough to carry it to a neighbor, so I stopped baking because I CANNOT eat it and stay under 140. Not even one slice.

When I was a youngster, I hated doing dishes. If I would fiddle around long enough, sometimes Mom would finish cleaning up what I didn't do. And when the guilt niggled me, I'd rationalize that Mom "liked" doing dishes, so it didn't bother her as much as it did me. Yeah riiiight. A lot of new diabetics kinda think well - those guys just don't understand - they don't love bread/potatoes/pasta as much as I love it! And that is SO not true! We all love it - and some of us have had to sacrifice it to gain good health and lower the risks of complications. I decided that protecting my vision was more important than eating bread, and it really wasn't such a hard decision after all.

Babbs said:

My words must have been mis-understood by you Jen and maybe others. I regret that. Thank you for your comments. Babbs

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Babbs - my comment was NOT directed at you at all. It was meant for the original poster. There is nothing wrong with using vinegar - I'm the Queen of Vinaigrette. But promulgating the idea that a diabetic will control blood sugar with vinegar just seems irresponsible. I also think there's nothing wrong with including bread in your diet - I do, occasionally, and will not sacrifice it. I was trying to point out to the OP that regardless of the levening method, eating bread will increase your blood sugar...your body will treat the grain in that bread pretty much the same, whether it's sourdough, yeasted, or raised with baking soda / powder.

In the end, it's up to the individual to determine which carbs work for them and which don't. You can use rules of thumb (avoid the "whites", include more lower carb veggies and fruits, etc.) as a starting point, and then fine tune it all by eating and testing, eating and testing....

So sorry to have upset you. Please accept my apology.

jen

Shanny said:

There are a few people who have found they can eat small amounts of potatoes or brown rice or certain low-carb breads - some can even enjoy fruit . . . and it's wonderful that they can. But because they can doesn't mean I can.

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First of all, at the present time I am one of those that can enjoy bread, potatoes, and small amounts of rice and not see a great spike in my blood sugar. I can eat an orange and not have much problem, but a half of grapefruit (which is one of my favorites) is almost completely off the table. I am type 1 so I am injecting obviously, but we will all get in trouble when we start to apply only concepts we have learned from others. I have had I don't know how many people come tell me how to eat. But I know that certain things are worse for ME than they are for others and vice versa.
We all have to try each thing out for ourselves.

Breeze 2 User said:

So.. my question is: when I Googled the word "Vinegar", I found there were as many as 40 or so different kinds. Does one work any better than the others.. and if so, which one(s)?

I know. Why am I always the one who comes up with these oddball questions? I guess it's the "engineering/analytical" mind that pops up every so often.

Breeze 2 User

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I don't know about in this situation, but using vinegar to help with a sore throat and cough, they recommend using apple cider vinegar because it is better for you and has more healing properties. Take that for what it's worth.

Hi Everyone: Your comments are just great and encourage us newbees. I was told by friends soooo many years ago, the best diet is a diabetic diet. And over the years diets for me never worked to lose the weight. The old thing about deprivation while on the diet was somewhat fine, long as the individual wanted to work at it. But the minute you went back to the old eating patterns, the weight would pile on. So the advise of following the diabetic diet was a method of having a balanced diet but cutting down on things not good for the system. And perhaps if I had followed that idea I would not be diagnosed now. You know the old 20/20. If we could have the wisdom we learned but go back to a younger age. Ha!!!!!!!! Well now we need to do something about it for the sake of our health. Shanny, in Canada we measure our count on our meters at a lower number. I am techno challenged so I do not know the terminolgy but I have stayed at 7.whatever. That is good for me at this point but I know that is still high of course. I will see what the Doctor has to say tomorrow, as I assume after all my tests he will put me on more meds. and ernestly talk to me about my diet and activities.(Exercise) As you said it will be up to me to test my system and put the basics to work for me as well. Other than my weight, I had no symptoms that I recognized, to say I should have gone for testing before now. But about 3 months back my head Doctor sent me for blood tests and said maybe I should talk to my GP about a raised glucose count. My GP said to me maybe in 3 months I would have diabetes, or maybe not. What was I to say about that. Then now he gives me my yearly Phsysical, and finds I now have diabetes 2. I could shake him, but then as you say it was ultimately up to me to do something about it, instead of relying on my GP to give the word to act now. I honestly think the way the system is there is no prevention advice. The medical establishment waits till there is a problem with health and then tries to deal with it then.
Thanks for you comments and experience. Until next time. Babbs.