Taking supplements as a Diabetic

Taking supplements as a Diabetic: Managing the Complications

As a diabetic, you face a unique set of challenges.  Diabetes itself rarely kills people—but those nasty complications that come with it, like heart disease and blindness, can certainly make life difficult.  That is where eating healthy, exercise, and taking the right vitamins and herbal supplements comes in. But which vitamins and how much do you need?  To battle the complications of diabetes, the addition of Vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, chromium and B-complex supplements can improve a diabetics overall health considerably.

Vitamin C has been shown to prevent the sugar inside cells from converting to sorbitol, a sugar alcohol that cells can neither burn for energy nor move out.  Sorbitol buildup has been implicated in diabetes-related eye, nerve, and kidney damage.  Vitamin E is key for diabetics due to its role in helping to prevent heart disease.  Vitamin E supplements are the only way to achieve the level of antioxidant protection necessary for diabetics—even the best food sources like nut and seed oils do not provide the large amounts needed.

Magnesium offers a laundry list of potential benefits for diabetes, including the body producing more insulin and better clearing sugar from the bloodstream.  Chromium has been linked to lower blood levels of sugar, insulin, triglycerides, and total cholesterol and higher levels of heart-healthy HDL cholesterol.  Finally, the B-complex vitamins—these vitamins are used by your body to convert sugar and starches to energy.  Shortages of these vitamins can cause all sorts of problems, including glucose intolerance (abnormally high rise in blood sugar after eating) and impaired secretion of insulin and glucagon—both of which are essential in regulating blood sugar levels.

If you have diabetes and you want to try any of the above referenced supplementations, you should do so only under your doctor or nutritionist’s guidance and supervision.  Your doctor may need to adjust your insulin dosage as your blood sugar level drops.