Beating Diabetes

For diabetics the choice of food really can be a matter of life and death. Diabetes affects people of all ages and both sexes and can cause blindness, kidney failure and gangrene of the hands and feet if left untreated. Diet is one of the most important ways of controlling diabetes, and a vegetarian lifestyle with its emphasis on low fat, high carbohydrate and high fibre foods is particularly suitable.

This common disease, which affects more than 30 million people worldwide leaves the body unable to process food properly. Usually, most of the food we eat is digested and converted to glucose, a sugar which is carried by the blood to all cells in the body and used for energy. The hormone insulin then helps glucose pass into cells. But diabetics are unable to control the amount of glucose in their blood because the mechanism which converts sugar to energy does not work properly. Insulin is either absent, present in insufficient quantities or ineffective. As a result glucose builds up in the bloodstream and leads to problems such as weakness, inability to concentrate, loss of co-ordination and blurred vision. If the balance of food and insulin isn't right diabetics can have a "hypo", which means their blood sugar levels are too low. If not corrected this can lead to coma and even death.

Although the two types of diabetes cannot be cured, they can be treated through diet, tablets, injections of insulin, or a combination of the three. A diabetic diet has to be low in fat (especially saturated fat), high in carbohydrate, and high in fibre. Diabetics have to pay very strict attention to their diet and ensure they eat regular meals which include a wide variety of foods such as wholemeal bread, jacket potatoes, beans and lentils. Instead of counting calories they have to count carbohydrates and ensure that at least half of their food is made up of complex carbohydrates.

Some vegetarian diabetics have reported such improvements to their health on a meat-free diet that they have had to inject less insulin. On a purely psychological level, vegetarianism enables many diabetics to feel for perhaps the first time that they, and not the disease, are in control of their lives.

Suzanne Umpleby, an 18-year-old student from Harrogate, was diagnosed as diabetic from the age of 15. "I felt very thirsty and tired while on a school holiday" she recalls. "When we came back I went to see a doctor who took blood tests and confirmed I was diabetic."

Suzanne become vegetarian almost immediately afterwards. "I'd been gradually cutting out meat anyway, and becoming vegetarian made me feel better about myself," she says. "My doctor had no problems with me becoming vegetarian. A diabetic diet is low in fat and high in fibre and my vegetarian diet accommodates that well."

As a student, Suzanne quite often eats convenience food out of packets because she doesn't have a lot of time to cook. She finds eating out as a diabetic even more difticult than being simply vegetarian. "My friends at college can easily find something vegetarian at the snack bar but it's usually sweet food such as biscuits or chocolate which I have to avoid," she explains.

Another potential problem faced by vegetarian diabetics is the ethical dilemma of injecting themselves with life-giving insulin which has been derived from animals. "I was really glad that they managed to develop a synthetic form of insulin just at about the same time that I was diagnosed as diabetic," says Suzanne.

Nick Bamforth, 22, a lawyer from London, was diagnosed as diabetic at the age of 14. He became vegetarian about a year later "out of principle", but he experienced unforeseen benefits. "I feel I probably eat a healthier diet now I'm vegetarian," he says. "Doctors say diabetics should eat more brown rice, wholemeal flour, etc, because they face potential heart problems later on in life, but most vegetarians eat a lot of that kind of food anyway.

Nick has to follow a strict daily routine, having to inject insulin before each meal, remembering to eat regularly and to pay attention to what he eats. The dose of insulin he takes before each meal depends on the amount of carbohydrates he intends to eat. "Diabetes substantially reduces what I can eat especially sweet foods," he explains. "And as I need to eat a certain amount of carbohydrates with each meal I end up eating a lot of pulses. I know I rely too much on dairy products, which aren't good far you in large quantities. But there's something of a stark choice between over-concentrating on dairy products and eating tons of pulses."

In the first few years after being diagnosed as diabetic, Nick had to weigh all his food carefully to ensure he got the balance of carbohydrates right, but now he finds it is largely instinctive and he can judge quantities well. At first Nick's parents also had problems devising a range of vegetarian foods he could eat that weren't too stodgy.

"When I became vegetarian it was a bit worrying because there was very little guidance or literature about what diabetics could eat," remembers Nick. "So I'm encouraged to see what The Vegetarian Society is doing to help vegetarian diabetics. It's also helped as more people generally have become vegetarian. Information is widely available, there are many more cookbooks specifically for vegetarians and there's also greater choice when eating out and buying food."  

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