The first question that people ask me is, is diabetes a disease or is it a mess? What do you think is the answer? Well, I’ll tell you the answer.  If diabetes is not controlled, then it starts biting you literally. It can affect your eyes, kidneys, heart, and feet. In fact, we say from the head to the toe can be affected by diabetes. 

 

Teaching Diet Using the Healthy Plate Concept

I find the simplest way to teach people about diet is to learn about the plate concept that you are seeing here, in the healthy plate concept.. Now you got the other half.

In that half divide it into two quarters, and one quarter as you can see here is reserved for. When you have such a high carbohydrate load it’s very difficult to prevent diabetes and it’s also very difficult to control diabetes, so people all the time talk about, “Oh I’ll reduce my carbohydrate, my diabetes will go away.” For how long will you reduce your carbohydrate? [Music]

Diabetes: Disorder or Disease?

Hello everyone, I am Dr. V. Mohan, and I’ll be speaking in a series of videos, all that you need to know about diabetes.It can either be a disorder or it can be a disease, and is left to you to decide how you want to make diabetes. If you just have a little bit of high sugar in your blood, and this is reversible, or it can be controlled, it’s not going to do any harm to you at all, then why call it a disease?

It’s just a simple disorder, and your whole life you can just keep diabetes as just like your friend, and it’s just a simple disorder, and it’s not going to affect you in any way. But diabetes is like a tiger. Now what’s a comparison between diabetes and a tiger, you may ask.

Diabetes is like that. As long as you keep it under control, you really don’t have to worry about it, and you don’t even have to call it a disease. It’s a simple disorder. But if you don’t look after diabetes, if diabetes is not controlled, then it starts biting you literally.

 

Types of Diabetes

In fact, you will be surprised to know that insulin itself was discovered only 100 years ago, and before that if any child in the world had type 1 diabetes they simply died within 2 months, 3 months, maximum 1 year. Insulin changed all that and gave a new life to children with type 1 diabetes.

Today children with type 1 diabetes can live even up to 80, 90 years. My oldest patient is almost 90 years old and had it when that person was a child. But if we don’t qualify which type of diabetes we are talking about, we are invariably talking about the second type of diabetes.

Which is called type 2 diabetes. In fact type 2 diabetes is almost 90–95 percent of all the types of diabetes that we see in the world, so if you don’t qualify when you talk about diabetes we are talking about type 2 diabetes.

Focus on Diet and Indian Food Habits

In this video I’m going to spend time on diet, what you can eat, what you should try to limit, and what perhaps you can avoid completely. There is nothing which is totally forbidden, but it is better to avoid certain dietary items.

And very often people ask me what are the Indian diets which are good and what are the Indian diets which are not so good. Now one of the problems with any Indian diet, whether North India, South India, East India, West India, Central India, or the North East of India, that really doesn’t matter.

The main problem in the Indian diet vis-a-vis diabetes, type 2 diabetes, is the carbohydrate content. We all eat too much carbohydrate, whether it is dosa and idli in the south or chapati or puri in the north.

 

Healthy Plate Concept for Diabetes

What you can see here is a thali or a plate, and the way we normally eat is shown here, where you fill the plate with a lot of rice, like a mountain of rice as we call it.

And then we have in South India, for example, we’ll have rice and sambar, then rice and rasam, then rice and curd, and then some other rice item for dessert also, so we are eating rice, rice, rice all the time.

So it turns out that 70 to 75 percent of our entire diet comes from carbohydrates. When you have such a high carbohydrate load it’s very difficult to prevent diabetes and it’s also very difficult to control diabetes.

So the first thing that you should do is to follow the healthy plate concept which I have shown here. In the healthy plate concept .

Protein in Indian Diet

Now you got the other half. In that half divide it into two quarters, and one quarter as you can see here is reserved for protein.

And that is what Indians don’t take, particularly in South India. The protein intake, and therefore the fiber intake, is very low. Now where do you get the protein from?

I would prefer the protein to come from vegetable sources like Bengal gram, green gram, black gram, rajma, soya, mushroom. All these constitute very good vegetable protein.

They’re very healthy, they don’t have any fat, they give you a lot of nutrients, and they give you a lot of fiber, so vegetable protein is superior to animal protein, and a lot of data to support this.

Non-Vegetarian Protein

However, for a staunch non-vegetarian, if they come and tell me, “Doc, you’re telling me not to eat sugar, now you’re telling me to give up non-vegetal, this is too much, I can’t, it’s not worth being a diabetic, or not worth living,” you know, that’s what they say.

Such strict non-vegetarians. So it’s not that non-veg should not be taken. 

Portion Control of Protein and Carbohydrates

So if you have taken that one egg you cannot take cholesterol in any other form, whereas if you take the egg white, the zero cholesterol, it gives you a lot of protein.

So you can have your fat in other forms. Okay, so if you are taking one egg then that is fine, you have the egg white and the yellow.

But the advantage of taking egg white is that you can have four egg whites or five egg whites because there’s zero cholesterol and you’re increasing your protein intake.

So that second quarter of the plate is reserved for protein. Now you have got the last quarter, that is where your carbohydrate should come in.

Continuing Preferred Carbohydrates

Now there is no need just because you live in the south and your rice is being eaten to change to chapati. That used to be the old teaching in my father’s days.

When you know you have rice, change it to chapati, then you won’t eat much. In the north, oh you like chapati, so you stop that and take rice.

You know what actually happens? When you tell them to eat chapati they’ll eat eight chapatis thinking chapati only, no I’m not taking rice.

Additional Items: Curd and Milk

Of course you can add one or two more things. You have a bowl of curd, for example, there are probiotics in it. If you have a glass of milk then it gives you a lot of calcium and protein.

So these are things which you can add on, but this plate principle, the healthy principle, every person with diabetes should know.

Brown Rice and Millets

Now people also more recently have started asking me, instead of rice, can I white rice, can I take brown rice? We have done a lot of research on this.

At least eight, ten papers are published on this. Brown rice is very good. There’s no doubt that brown rice is healthier.

It has more B complex, it has more fiber, the sugar doesn’t go up that much, the glycemic index, or the propensity to increase the sugar, is much less if you take brown rice.

All that is true, but people hate it. When they see the brown, “I can’t take this, it smells, it doesn’t cook properly, I have a problem digesting it.”

It doesn’t stay in the shop for long, it gets rancid, it’s costly, it’s not available, why should I be taking this?

Well, if you have access to brown rice and you like it, take it. Otherwise cut down the white rice and you can still enjoy the rice that you want to take.

There is no need to change. What about millets? Of course millets are very good.

In fact, in the ancient days people used to eat millets and they’re very, very healthy, no doubt about it.

Millets are making a comeback. The government is also promoting millets in a big way, but here is a twist in the tail.

Fruits for Diabetes

Again you can classify fruits into different types. There are fruits which have a high glycemic index.

The moment you eat the fruit sugar shoots up. There are fruits which you take, there is only a gentle increase in the sugar.

Low glycemic index or medium glycemic index. Use those fruits.But if you take banana, or if you take mangoes, unfortunately mangoes are so popular, especially in the season.

And I’ve got a full video explaining when to eat mango, how to eat mango, and why a person with diabetes can take mango.

But you can’t just take as much mango as you want. Your sugar is definitely going to go up.

And therefore fruits are good for people without diabetes. You can take three, four, five fruits a day.

Oils for Cooking

Now again different people have different tastes.

In Kerala they will say, “Oh, we are used to coconut oil.” In Chennai we use gingelly oil or groundnut oil.

In the east and some parts of the north mustard oil is used. If you go and tell them, “No, no, for diabetes now you change your oil,” they’ll hate it.

They won’t enjoy their food. So again whichever oil you’re using, continue that oil, but use only limited quantities.

Don’t take huge quantities. Whatever is needed for cooking, that oil, continuous oil that you are taking.

Functional Foods and Superfoods

Finally, I want to talk about some functional foods or foods which are considered superfoods.

Now there is a lot of hype about this, a lot of attention in the media, newspapers about different things.

They’re certainly not bad for diabetes and may be even good for diabetes, but that’s all they are.

Don’t hype them to say that they’re a cure for diabetes.

I’ve seen things saying that you take turmeric and your diabetes will go away.

You know, nothing is so easy in life. I wish it was.

Then I’ll just be making turmeric and giving it to all my patients and saying that’s enough, don’t come to me, just take turmeric.

It’s not so easy. So diabetes reversal, diabetes control needs lifelong effort.

It needs a lot of attention from you. It needs a lot of discipline, but it’s doable.

Myths About Diet and Diabetes

So people all the time talk about, “Oh, I’ll reduce my carbohydrate, my diabetes will go away.”

For how long will you reduce your carbohydrate? They even go to zero carbohydrates, keto diet, all kinds of fancy things they try to reduce weight.

Because the media and so many organizations are telling them, “Oh, your diabetes will go, your diet is going.”

In fact there are people who say don’t go to a diabetologist, they’ll just keep on giving you medicine.

Come to us, we are the saviors, we will get rid of your diabetes, you know, and you won’t have to work for all the diabetes to close the clinic.

I wish that was true. I will become a nephrologist or I will become a cardiologist.

That’s what I am dreaming of, that diabetes goes away.

In fact I used to joke and say I have a diabetes hospital.

I used to say one day my grandson or great-grandson must take people around and say this is a museum where we used to have a disease called diabetes.

That is my dream.

Diabetes must Lifelong debate

So I’m not saying all of you become diabetic, come to me and I’ll treat you.

I am not saying that. I am saying diabetes will go away, but is it easy?

Is it a magic wand like Harry Potter, you know, just waving his wand and diabetes goes away?

I wish it was, and we have such a wand, please tell me.

I will also buy it and use it to treat my diabetic patients.

So if you look after your diet, if you exercise regularly, if you take your medicines properly, if you sleep well.

And on each of these I’ll be making a series of videos which you will be watching soon.

And if you do regular monitoring, look after your glucose levels either with a glucometer or with a patch which will tell you continuous glucose monitoring.

And most importantly keeping in touch with your doctor, because things change in your body.

Because what happens is that today your kidney function may be normal, tomorrow, heaven forbid, your kidney function changes, it worsens.

Then the entire treatment will have to be changed.

Warning Against Self-Medication

So these media people who keep saying and on social media people can not go to doctors.

You can Google and get your medicine and take it yourself.

Well best of luck to you if you believe in that, but there’s a danger associated with it.

All of us didn’t study medicine for so many years.

We can also learn Google.

I can teach my grandson to Google better and become a Google doctor.

I wish life was so easy. It is not so. Look after yourself.

It is my hope and prayer that all of you live up to 100 years without any complications.

But for that, as the main theme of today is on diet, I would say diet plays a very important role.

Conclusion and Channel Information

I hope you enjoyed this article where we talked quite extensively about diet.

You will find in my channel many other articles related to other aspects of diet.

About exercise, about lifestyle, about sleep.

About do’s and don’ts that a person with diabetes should do.

So I do hope you will watch the other articles  in this channel. Thank you.