Milk

Milk will not help you to lower your blood sugar. But it is a useful food in balancing blood sugar levels, and if used right, can help you avoid extremes.

Milk is a good source of many nutrients that diabetics are often low on. Two servings of milk products daily can help to insure that you get adequate amounts of a variety of vitamins and minerals which are essential for good health.

Milk is counted as a carbohydrate. It also contains some protein. Fat content depends on what type of milk or milk product you choose.

The carbohydrates in milk are absorbed a little more slowly than sugar carbs, and for some people, can help maintain higher blood sugar levels for longer. This can be a problem if your blood sugar is still volatile and uncontrolled - milk products can delay the lowering of your values back to normal after a meal. But if you are prone to hypoglycemia, milk can be a valuable food in avoiding dangerous lows. It all depends on how you use it.

You can use milk in other forms as well. Many cheeses have insignificant amounts of carbohydrate, so you may be able to use them when you cannot use milk. The benefits of cheeses are different than milk though, because fats and protein absorb differently than carbohydrate, and where milk is primarily carbohydrate, cheese is primarily protein and fat.

Yogurt may also be used, which is counted in the same way fresh milk is. The major benefit is that it contains acidophilous, which in addition to the benefits from acidophilous directly (read the page on the topic), may help some people who are mildly lactose intolerant to be able to use milk without problems. What I love about yogurt is, you can either buy a smoothie (Dannon sugarfree ones are very good), or make a quick smoothie that can contain all the elements of a meal, and can be consumed very quickly.

When I was pregnant with my daughter Sidney, I had trouble maintaining my blood sugar levels through the night. I had high blood sugar during the day if I was not careful, but at night my blood sugar would bottom out if I did not have a snack in the middle of the night. I was too tired to want to fix anything, and did not want to have to chew and manage a sandwich, so I made up a yogurt smoothie before I went to bed, and kept it in a cooler beside my bed. I could drink it rapidly in the middle of the night when I woke from hunger, and then sleep well through the rest of the night. Milk contains components which encourage sleep as well, so it worked nicely.
 

Most meal replacement drinks have milk in them, because it provides a good starting place for balance. We also add milk powder to a few of our recipes to enhance nutritional content, and to help balance out the ingredients.

Milk can be an irritant to colitis, so if it flares up on you 12-24 hours after drinking milk, you may need to find another means of getting the nutrients in it.

Written by Laura Wheeler, Owner of Firelight Business Enterprises, Inc.