Riekie van der Vyfer
DIETICIAN
PRACTICE NR: 8411506
021 863 0101 | riekievyver@lantic.net
Diabetes affects the body’s ability to make or properly use insulin. What is insulin?
Insulin is a hormone made by the pancreas and is often described as a key that unlocks the cell to allow sugar to enter so that it can be used or stored for energy. For most of your meals, sugar will be stored in your liver cells to be released between meals or when you are active. If your body does not produce enough insulin or your cells are resistant to the insulin, you might get big problems from eating food that is digested into sugar. That sugar might not get stored quickly and cause long term complications.
What, when and how much you eat can make a huge difference in your ability to control your blood sugar when you try to manage Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes. Dietitians empower you with knowledge about the foods that can affect your blood glucose levels. Considering your insulin regime, they will teach you about food quantities, the best food types and when to enjoy it.
Carbohydrate Counting (carb counting) is a meal planning tool that I personally love to teach to children and adults with Type 1 Diabetes. Carb counting is more flexible; you decide how much and when you want to eat. Carb counting can also bring tighter control, being more precise with how much insulin to inject for the carbohydrate on your plate so that you have better post meal readings.
People with Type 2 Diabetes are insulin resistant. Weight loss, especially around the waist, decreases the resistance and in some cases, even put Diabetes into remission.
Dietitians spend time learning about you and your habits to plan a healthy personalized plan to help with weight loss. Dietitians teach you to read food labels, give menu plans and recipes and help you to achieve weight loss goals.
A High cholesterol level and Hypertension is also a concern for people with Diabetes. Diabetes may lower your HDL (good) cholesterol, as well as increase your LDL (bad) cholesterol and trigliserides. This increases your risk of heart disease and stroke.
These diseases have certain dietary restrictions. Dietitians knows the recommendations for every specific disease and can help you by giving practical dietary guidelines.
People with type 1 Diabetes has no insulin in their body.
Losing weight and eating healthy is the one leg of a seat. The other three legs are medication, glucose monitoring and exercise. If one of these legs is not there, the chair falls over.
We at Winelands Diabetes Centre understands the importance of keeping the chair standing and we work together as a team to empower you to manage your condition.