Yervand Kondrahjian | Staff Writer
Some of the greatest struggles that come with diabetes is a controlled diet. However, this is not possible without understanding some biological and physiological concepts that help in identifying the foods consumed, such as the glycemic response and index. The rate of glucose entry into the blood, the amount absorbed, the rate of glucose disappearance from the blood due to tissue uptake, and hepatic control of glucose release all play a role in the normal physiological phenomenon known as the Glycemic Response (GR), which occurs after eating.
Carbohydrate-rich foods affect the GR in a variety of ways. Some cause blood glucose concentrations to rise quickly followed by a fall just as quickly, while others cause blood glucose levels to rise slowly and fall slowly. In 1981, the Glycemic Index (GI) was developed as a tool to help patients with diabetes choose their diet wisely.
GI provides details on the GR that might be anticipated when a person eats a certain amount of a meal that contains a set number of carbohydrates (usually 50 g) over a two-hour period. The GR in this case is the rise in blood glucose levels after eating. The GR of the food is represented as a percentage of the GR of a reference food, which is typically a glucose solution or white bread. This is how the GI value is really expressed:
The amount of food ingested greatly influences how much GR is produced; for example, if a lot of a food with a low or high GI is consumed, the GR will be high, and if a little bit of a food with a low or high GI is taken, the GR will be low. In order to estimate the GR, the idea of the glycemic load (GL), which considers the GI and the amount of readily available carbohydrate in a serving of food, was developed.
Foods have been categorized by GI into low (GI 55), medium (GI 56-69), and high (GI 70) categories and by GL into low (GL 10), medium (GL 11–19), and high (GL 20) categories in order to apply the ideas. The GI and GL categorization systems were created randomly in that they have nothing to do with the food’s nutrient content or any risk factors for developing chronic diseases as a result of ingesting it.
Although there was initial excitement, it is still unknown how the glycemic index (GI), glycemic response (GR), and disease prevention relate to one another. Since the advent of the GI and GL ideas, a lot of research has been done to determine how these notions relate to health and disease. The findings for many studies point to a hazy correlation between GI/GR and the course of the disease.
The link between GI/GR and illness outcomes is weak, even in observational research. Therefore, it is doubtful that a food’s or diet’s GI is related to the risk of contracting a disease or other aspects of health. It may be more fruitful for research to inform dietary advice if people are interested in eating patterns as predictors of health benefits.
The validity of GI and GL as therapeutic guides for these purposes is still up for debate, even though several studies have focused on GI and GL to determine the rates of digestion and absorption of various carbohydrate sources and are widely used. This is also used to measure the rates at which dietary carbohydrates are hydrolyzed in the digestive system and absorbed into the bloodstream with the intention of managing or preventing type 2 diabetes. Nonetheless, such concepts cannot be disregarded while discussing the problems and solutions for diabetes.