 Hello everyone, this is Dr. Ahmed Ergin. Today I'm going to talk to you about bananas for diabetics. Now I get this question commonly in my practice whether a diabetic patient can eat banana or not. It's everybody's favorite and the answer is yes and no. So actually bananas are not necessarily bad for you and I'll explain to you why. Let's get started. Okay guys so let's get started. So basically the bananas are right around 30 grams of carbs depending on how big they are. So if it is small banana you can consider like a 20-22 grams. If it is a large banana you are taking around 30 grams. Now not every carbohydrate or starch is created equally right? So that's based on their glycemic index. So the glycemic index of a banana is right around 50 which is not bad. Below 55 glycemic index is very acceptable. And the problem is how do you really tolerate that 30 grams of carbohydrate with a fairly moderate glycemic index food? So you would know your body. If you're a type 1 diabetic and a banana is your breakfast and you know that you take insulin for your carbohydrates or you have to and you know that you are actually let's say you're taking one unit for 10 grams of carbs and you're having a large banana that's three units. You take it you're fine. Not a big deal. That total of 120 calories is not going to make or break anything right? But on the other hand if you're having banana as a dessert on top of already 60 grams of carbohydrates that you had at lunch or dinner and you're having banana on top of that of course it's going to increase your carbohydrate load. Even if it is a low glycemic index food or moderate glycemic index food it does not necessarily mean that it's not going to spike your blood sugar. It may spike your blood sugar and then how much it spikes your blood sugar depends on your insulin resistance as well. So you can test it yourself. So you can for example make a very quick test for yourself. You can get up in the morning let's say your blood sugar is 130 and you can have that banana without having anything else and check in one hour and take your medications if your medications and see what happens with that banana because the same banana although yes banana is a better fruit than watermelon because watermelon is a glycemic index of almost 80 which spikes your blood sugar way faster than a banana. So banana is still fairly good fruit for diabetes but again is not totally innocent. So individually it can still spike your blood sugar if you're insulin resistant or if you're not taking enough medications to be able to make the insulin to be able to take care of that carbohydrate that comes with the banana. So everybody is going to be different so that's why people get always confused because their friend eat the same thing or their neighbor eats the same thing their blood sugars are okay theirs are not they say everything I put to my mouth increases my blood sugar well that's because you're a different individual you're in different medications your lifestyle is different your insulin resistance is different so I think overall I would say the bottom line is the bananas are okay as long as it does not spike your blood sugar as fast or as as much as you would like to see more than you would like to see. So again as I said as a general rule rule of thumb it is an okay fruit small banana is not going to hurt you but then that's around 20-30 grams of carbs so if you're in a low carbohydrate diet you may want to think about that because on a low carbohydrate diet you may want to go below 45 or 30 grams per meal and then that banana will throw you off right away that means that if you're having that banana you're not having anything else any other carbohydrate in that in that meal so you have to just keep an eye on total carbohydrates but if you are an athlete and you need to go and run a couple miles and you have diabetes guess what you better have that banana so it's different from person to person but if you're a coach potato and you're not really doing anything you're like 300 pounds that banana will spike your blood sugar because you're insulin resistant. Now if you're going to take a walk after that you can maybe you know get that banana and go for a walk or do some exercise but again it depends on the individual and it's best to see it for yourself. See you in the next video guys.