Lisa, it's perfectly reasonable you are confused as the general advice does conflict with many people's experiences of how best to deal with their diabetes. Rest assured that you CAN still have bread (best to make it multigrain or oatmeal, some people find 'Burgen' linseed bread is the best of all), and you can still have other carbohydrates. As you say, the lower the GI, the better, as this will release its glucose more slowly into the bloodstream and thus avoid the 'spikes' that less-friendly GI foods can (like white bread).
The argument goes that carbs convert more readily to glucose and therefore, by restricting them you are putting less strain on your pancreas to produce insulin to 'cover' them. But people have varying degrees of sensitivity to different foods, and this is what you can only discover for yourself - and only testing the effects will give you a high degree of accuracy in assessing this.
Therefore, some people are extremly low-carb, maybe 60-80 grams per day. Others find a good balance is at 140 grams per day, and yet others find they can happily indulge in 250 grams of the 'right' kind of carbs for them. This is why no single diet sheet or generalised advice can fit all people.
Of course, there are many people who are not prepared to learn for themselves and are happy to follow the general advice given to them by thier GP, nurse or dietician. In these cases, at least some of the potential harm can be mitigated by preventing such people from eating completely the wrong foods.
I hope I have managed to clarify the issue for you. It is more complex than we are first led to believe, but then again, the human body is an astonishingly complex thing!🙂
