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Mindful eating can get you off insulin

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Mindful eating, not dieting, is the new fad among diabetics, who are massively benefiting from the practice that was once explained in Buddhism.

Eating everything, but in careful portions, impacted 38-year-old Sahil Sharma in a big way. Sahil was a diabetic for the past ten years. After his sugar levels shot up alarmingly, he also suffered a heart attack earlier this year. "He had to undergo a triple bypass surgery to set his cardiac condition right. He had abnormally high levels of sugar touching 300 mg/dl and was in a bad shape," said Dr Roshani Sanghani, endocrinologist at PD Hinduja Hospital in Mahim. Dr Sanghani is a practitioner of 'mindful eating,' a programme started by US-based Dr Michelle May in 1999.

Mindful eating requires a diabetic patient to maintain a log of every food item that is consumed by them. Sahil made an active effort to understand the effects sugar would have on his body and started understanding which food to eat. This change had a miraculous result. A person who was earlier taking five injections or 150 units of insulin everyday was completely off it after ten years. "I reduced from four chappatis to two and did not stop sweets altogether but reduced their intake. These little changes helped me go off insulin," said Sahil.

Type 2 diabetes, which is triggered by a sedentary lifestyle and bad eating habits, is hitting Indians at a much younger age group of between 18 years to 30 years. A study conducted by Lifespan, a chain of private clinics, covering over 10,000 persons, revealed that 24 per cent diabetics are below the age of 40.

This can be reversed by mindful eating, though it requires the patient to check their blood sugar levels thrice a day. This worked wonders for 54-year-old Sunil Pednekar, who was taken off insulin within a month of mindful eating. "My blood sugar levels were tipping at 340 mg/dl. This is when I started eating mindfully. I realized that eating two chapatis was leading to an increase in blood levels. I reduced it to one chappati and the sugar levels dropped. I tried this for a small portion of sweets and realized that eating lesser quantities of sweets occasionally would not have any effect on the sugar. So I enjoy my fewer portions better now," says an elated Pednekar. Diabetes is becoming rampant in the younger age group (between 20 to 40 years) because of sedentary lifestyle, say doctors.

"In India, the major reason for such high prevalence of the disease is lack of awareness and lack of preventive measures. Education becomes extremely important in such cases, especially with diabetes being one of the health maladies on the rise due to current lifestyles. The cases we have received since inception in Mumbai have shown a steady rise in number and percentage, by about 20 per cent," said Dr Nalini Shah, endocrinologist at Global Hospital in Parel.

How to practice mindful eating
Log in every thing that you eat in a diary
Check blood sugar levels three times a day
Observe which food items increase or decrease blood sugar levels
Tweak your diet instead of cutting out food items altogether from your diet

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