The Glycemic Index and Antiaging

The glycemic index is a measurement of how fast a particular food raises your blood glucose levels (blood sugar). This is one of the most important considerations for eating in an antiaging plan, and especially for preventing diabetes.

The index is used in conjunction with diabetic testing to help manage the diet of people with diabetes.

The scale used for the glycemic index is different than what is used for diabetes testing.

Foods are rated on a scale from 1 to 100, with 1 being the lowest and 100 the highest. They are tested alone, rather than in combination, so the resultant scale reflects the effect of that food alone, rather than how it would be when consumed in a meal.

Visit this link for a list of foods and their ranking

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How is it used?

The index is used primarily to help nutritionists and diabetes educators create guidelines for people who are seeking to lower their blood glucose levels for things like preventing diabetes or managing diabetes if they already have it.

However, you do not have to be a diabetic to benefit from this information, as a diet that restricts high glycemic carbohydrates is a good nutritional strategy for helping to prevent a number of health concerns from cellular glycation to chronic inflammation.

When choosing your foods just use the glycemic index as a guide to help you make the choices that reflect the best compromise between taste and health benefits. Keeping your blood glucose levels low should always be one of your top priorities for healthy eating.

Glucose,Inflammation and Heart Disease

Elevated blood glucose levels can lead to chronic inflammation by increasing certain proteins called “cytokines” which cause a response from the immune system. This can lead to a build up of immune system cells that damage your cardiovascular system leading to degenerative changes that increase your risk of heart disease.

For many years this link between inflammation and heart disease was not understood. Cardiovascular disease was blamed on intake of saturated fats, and people were encouraged to eat a diet that was low in fat and high in carbohydrates. In retrospect this has shown to be wrong!

Many of the popular diet books now make reference to the glycemic index as an important tool in lowering blood sugar and eating an anti inflammation diet. This emphasis on low glycemic eating is a cornerstone of all effective diets.

Researchers are now aware of the link between high blood glucose levels and heart disease, as well as a number of other health problems, collectively referred to as “metabolic syndrome or syndrome x.”

It is vitally important for anyone concerned about heart disease to eat an anti inflammation diet to prevent the many problems that chronic inflammation can cause for the cardiovascular system.

Relevance to antiaging

The health care industry tends to focus on treatment rather than prevention, and so people who are presumed healthy are not encouraged to do things like using the glycemic index to lower their blood glucose levels.

However this strategy is one of the cornerstones of health for the person who is interested in antiaging. Preventing diabetes is extremely important because diabetes will cause you to age at a faster rate than normal.

On my page about lean body mass, I reflected on the role that muscle has in helping keep blood sugar under control. This is a key concept in antiaging, and one that you should really focus on.

Increasing your lean muscle mass can result in increasing your sensitivity to insulin so that the amount of insulin your pancreas supplies is more effective in lowering blood glucose levels.

Insulin levels are a key factor in longevity as has been seen in recent research. The Baltimore Study,has shown a correlation between high sensitivity to insulin and long life span.

With all that is currently known about the importance of lowering blood glucose levels inflammation and heart disease and preventing diabetes, the glycemic index has become a very valuable tool to use for formulating an effective antiaging diet.