PMS: HEALTHY DIET - MORE ABOUT CARBOHYDRATES
There are two types of carbohydrates - complex and simple.
Complex carbohydrates These are foods such as wholemeal bread, brown rice, wholegrain breakfast cereals, oats, potato, rye. They tend to be cereals in their natural state before processing. These foods take quite a long time for the body to break down into glucose -which is the form of energy the body needs - so they provide us with a steady flow of glucose over several hours. This helps to iron out any highs and lows of blood sugar.
Simple carbohydrates These include the refined foods such as white flour, sugar, honey, sweets, cakes, biscuits, white rice. They are very quickly digested by the body so they produce a rush of sugar into the bloodstream. To respond to this rush the body produces a large amount of insulin - a hormone that helps the liver to store the excess sugar from the blood.
Insulin quickly lowers the blood sugar. But often too much insulin is produced which means that too much sugar is taken out of the blood. Instead of going back to normal after eating a sugary snack the blood sugar will actually end up lower than before. So then the body is forced to produce adrenalin to get back some of the sugar from the liver and bring the blood sugar level back to normal.
Often you will feel the urge to eat some more sugary food to help the blood sugar back to normal. Then you are caught in a vicious circle of eating sugary food, feeling irritable and headachy because your blood sugar has dropped, eating more sugary food, feeling irritable and soon.
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