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What Do Small Meals Do For Your Blood Sugar Levels?

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If you are a Type 2 diabetic, small is beautiful. Small meals make controlling blood sugar levels much, much easier. The reason is timing. The longer the gap between a previous meal or snack and dinner, for instance, the larger the meal ends up being.

Type 2 diabetes, at least at first, is largely a disease of timing. The pancreas makes packets of pro-insulin that it stores for use when needed. One of the times insulin is needed is when the stomach and intestines complete the digestion of carbohydrates into sugar. The pancreas then 'pops the packets' and releases insulin to help cells all over the body absorb the sugar as it goes into your bloodstream.

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If you are in the early stages of Type 2 diabetes, however, the pancreas cannot convert pro-insulin into insulin fast enough to keep up with your blood sugar levels. Cells protect themselves from becoming flooded with sugar by deactivating some of the portal sites where insulin could actually do it's work. Then your blood sugar levels start to rise.

It makes sense that the bigger the meal, the larger the number of calories eaten from carbohydrates, fat and protein, and the higher the blood levels of those nutrients will be after the 'large meal'. Large meals also zap you of your after-meal energy.

If you eat a large meal, blood sugar levels rise even more. Your pancreas has to work harder, longer to get blood sugar levels back down, and the rest of your body does not help. Cells in other parts of your body become more and more resistant to insulin and the pancreas has to work harder and harder each and every time you eat.

That is, unless you eat less. When you eat small meals, your pancreas has more of a chance to release insulin to keep your blood sugar levels down, and your cells don't have to protect themselves by becoming insulin-resistant.

The secret is, however, that you don't have to eat small meals more often. You really can manage with small meals. You won't starve! Eating lots of small meals, however, is not a whole lot different from eating a few large ones.

Be kind to your pancreas. Don't give it too much work to do. Eat 5 to 6 small meals per day, eating something every three or four hours... fewer calories, few carbs, and fewer grams of fat. Your blood sugar levels will be more balanced throughout the day and if you do this long enough... and that is usually long enough to lose about 7 per cent of your total weight, you may find that you are a former Type 2 diabetic in remission.

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And now I would like you to claim your Free E-Book when you visit Answers to Your Questions.

You will then have access to information diabetics have requested over recent months.

Beverleigh Piepers RN... the Diabetes Detective.
http://drugfreetype2diabetes.com/blog

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