 Hey guys, today we are going to talk about rice, the enemy of diabetics. Now, I'm Dr. Ahmed Ergin and I'm an endocrinologist, diabetologist, diabetes education specialist, you name it, see tons of patients every day, deal with them every day, love them. They love rice. I love them. They love rice. Sometimes it creates a conflict. So, I found some solutions for you guys. Let's get started. Alright guys, so everybody loves rice, almost everybody. You know, it's very rare to find somebody who says, oh god, you know, doc, you know, I hate rice, you know, don't have to, you don't have to talk to him about that. That doesn't happen. And some people will say, oh, I don't eat rice. Well, guess what? They lie. So, I'm just kidding. Or they hide information. Let's put it nicely. But the bottom line is, rice tastes good. I mean, everybody loves rice. Now, personally, of course, I'm not a diabetic. I hope when I say, of course, I can be diabetic. It's not that, you know, I don't have to be, but I'm not diabetic, but definitely I have to watch my own carbs myself. Otherwise, guess what happens? I have diabetes in my family. A lot of people do. And if you just live your life freely without any concern, caution, you can be there and join the rest of your family. Now, what do I do? Personally, I don't eat rice and everything, you know, but I love the rice alternatives too. And when I eat rice, I keep my portion very small, not going on heavy on the rice. And I'm very active, so it doesn't bother me. Like, if you're an active person, even when you're diabetic, if you change your lifestyle, you're working out, you're running every day or bicycling, whatever you do, the carbs are not going to affect you as much because your body is burning. At the only time you have problems with carbs, you're eating carbs and you're sitting on it. That's the problem with people, especially in America. We don't even get out of our cars to grab something. You know, everything is not drive through, tend to COVID-19, nice even worse, nobody goes anywhere. Everybody is sitting at their home. If they want to go eat, they just go drive through, they're eating their cars. What do you expect to happen, right? But there are rice alternatives now. Rice versus brown rice is something that a lot of people ask questions about. Well, to be honest with you, brown rice versus rice doesn't make a huge difference. You know, like the regular rice has a glycemic index of 80. So, it tends to spike your blood sugar and rice is something kind of dense. So, glycemic load is high with that. Remember, we always give this watermelon example where, you know, watermelon has a very high glycemic index, which can spike your blood sugar, but the carbohydrate in one portion is small because it's mostly water, right? If something has a lot of fiber and water in it, it's unlikely to spike your blood sugar, although they're sweet, just like the watermelon. If you're having one slice of watermelon, that shouldn't be a huge deal. But with the rice or anything heavy like bread that's dense, you can tell it's like, you know, mass without much water in it, definitely can spike your blood sugar. So, the rice, for example, and the glycemic index is up there is up to like 80 or so with the regular rice. And brown rice is around 68, 65, 68, something like that. And a lot of people doesn't understand what the glycemic index is about. So, basically, what we are doing here, you know, when they do glycemic index studies, they give 50 grams of sugar to someone, and they compare that 50 grams of something else, whatever that is, in this case, like rice maybe, and then see how much the blood sugar spikes, right? So, you don't have to sit down and, you know, re-experiment everything, so that's why they have these guidelines. And this is on a regular individual, you may be a little different, but it's a good thing for you to compare. So, for example, regular glucose, like pure sugar, that's 100, that's the gold standard. Now, if the rice is spiking your blood sugar, if the glycemic index is 80, that means that it is close to pure sugar and only 20% less than the sugar. So, it will spike your blood sugar. Even the glycemic index of things like that are down to 50, that doesn't mean that it's not going to spike your blood sugar. It can. If you have no insulin in your body, or if you're super insulin resistant, anything can spike your blood sugar, even with the low glycemic index, but it shouldn't be as bad as something that has high glycemic index, right? So, in this case, you know, you can say that, okay, well, rice will spike my blood sugar, because the glycemic index is up there at 80. We typically recommend, you know, below 45, 50 glycemic index if you want to have carbs. The brown rice is up there, too. You know, 65, 68 is really not that great. Now, what are the other alternatives? And again, you can find a lot of things that I'm going to talk today down in the link below. I have an affiliate link, so if you purchase those products from Amazon or anything else in that regard, I will get a tiny commission, and I'm not really after that, but if you're going to purchase it anyways, you can definitely support us. I don't mind that. So, having said that, let's move on to what are the other things that you can do. Still enjoy the rice taste and feeling, but don't let your blood sugar high. There are a couple of things. Now, if you are really looking for rice rice, the best thing you can do, the number one thing that you can try is shiitake rice. There's sometimes called miracle rice. Again, you can find this on Amazon in the link below, but that has no carbs whatsoever, so you can eat. It's like a free food. And if you want to put your food or anything on top of your rice, that shiitake rice will be great, and most people don't even realize that it's not real rice. So, that's number one. Now, it doesn't have any taste, by the way, by itself. It goes with the taste of whatever you put on it. So, that's a good thing. Now, if you are looking for a different taste and some nutty flavor, you can definitely go for something like barley. There's something called pearl barley. You know, that has a lot of fiber in it and some protein in it as well. It takes a little longer time to cook. For things like that, there are high in fiber, these grains that are typically very high in fiber that may take longer time to cook. The problem with the rice, yeah, you can cook it in 10 minutes, and that's because they rip off all their fibers and stuff before it comes to your table. That's why brown rice is a little bit better, but still not that great. But things like pearl barley is minimally processed, and you can use just barley. You know, that's not processed barley as well. You just need to use a pressure cooker that, you know, gets the job done fast, otherwise it may take you a long time. Same thing with the oats, right? If you don't use a pressure cooker, that's going to take an hour versus sometimes my wife will make that great steel cut oatmeal in five minutes in pressure cooker. I'm like, that's great. You know, what else can I ask for? Before I forget, I want to also mention the glycemic index of barley, which is 28. Again, that doesn't mean that it's free food, but it means that it's going to spike your blood sugar much less compared to the rice, which has a glycemic index of 80. So pearl barley is another one, quinoa. Quinoa is a great glycemic index. It goes down to 50, and it tastes great. It's an acquired taste. It goes well with a lot of things. So definitely give it a try to quinoa as well. By the way, remember, I had a video about worse vegetables, and there I was like basically smashing potato. Potato can have a glycemic index of 110. That's like the worst thing ever. So let's move on to rice cauliflower. So if you're a fan of cauliflower and if you like that already, you can just buy the cauliflower rice and that has like a super low glycemic index and super low carbs. That is something else you can consider instead of rice. And again, if you have these things in your kitchen in your hand and you easy access, then you will make it. So as of today, go buy these things. And sometimes the reason I'm giving you the Amazon link also is you may hate Amazon. It's a big capitalism thing, and it kills the small businesses sometimes. That's all true, but at the same time, it's a good thing that they created this super convenient thing where a lot of things you cannot find in a store, you can find an Amazon. It's in your door in two days. I mean, I'm guilty as charged. I use Amazon a lot myself, but all these things, it's just in your fingertips. You can just buy it, have it ready, try it, make sure you have good recipes. YouTube has a lot of recipes for these different rices. So make sure you check them out and have a nice meal. Try that tonight. Give me your comments. Tell me how it felt, how you liked. Not everybody is going to like everything, but give it a try and whatever it takes to keep your blood sugar down. Remember, try different things. You don't have to be even a diabetic. I try shiitake rice myself. I try shiitake noodles myself, and that's perfectly okay. You don't even have to be a diabetic. So just be open to different tastes. These things are eaten, consumed in Asia, in different parts of the world. Why not? Give it a try. You don't have to travel all the way to China to try these things, or Taiwan, whatever. Give me your comments. Make sure you share this video and have a great day, guys. We'll talk to you in the next one. Remember, we have a lot of videos that are all about diabetes and overall health. So watch them, educate yourself, and be empowered. Talk to you later.