You tell anyone that you are trying cut down on your carbohydrates and an obvious question is posed “Are you dieting?” This is usually associated with dieting for weight loss. However, following low-carb diet plans does not necessarily mean following a weight loss one. Implementing a low-carb diet into your regular meal plan helps you in more than one ways in living a healthy life.

Why do you have to follow a low-carb diet? The benefits eating foods that are low in carbohydrates is multi-fold. Some of these aid in improving diabetes control, lowering HbA1c, reducing severe hypos, keeping you more energetic through the day, reducing cravings for sweets and snacks, and also in enhancing the ability to think and thereby lowers the overall of developing long-term health complications.

Lowering HbA1c, in fact, means reducing several other health risks. Studies show that diabetic patients can cut microvascular complications like retinopathy, neuropathy, and diabetic nephropathy by 25% thereby ensuring good health of the eyes, nerves, and the kidneys. People suffering from type-2 diabetes can greatly reduce the chances of suffering from cataracts, heart failures, amputations, or peripheral vascular disease-related deaths with just an improvement of just 1% in HbA1c. While low-carb diet plans enable people with type-2 diabetes to get their blood sugar levels into a non-diabetic range without any medication, those with type-1 have can also have more stable blood sugar levels thereby bettering the condition.

While all the benefits of reducing the carbohydrate intake are widely spoken about, there are a few things to keep in mind before you start your diet regime. Make sure you consult your doctor to take precautions to prevent hypos before implementing a low-carb diet plan if you are on any kind of medication like insulin, sulphonylureas, or glinides for reducing the blood sugar levels (that cause hypoglycemia) before cutting down the supply of carbohydrates. A low-carb diet plan is not advised for those who are pregnant or are planning pregnancy as the safety of cutting down certain foods in pregnancy is still unclear. Sudden reduction in carbohydrates supply to the body can result in problems like fatigue, brain fog, headaches, constipation or other possible deficiencies in nutrients.