Blood Sugar - Why it matters
I’m sure by now you’ve heard the buzz about blood sugar. 🐝 Maybe you’ve been sucked in by a CGM ad, or maybe you assumed the conversation doesn't apply to you because you don't have diabetes. 🤷♀️
While I am not going to tell you that blood sugar is the only thing that matters, there is tremendous value in understanding more about how to keep your blood sugar stable, and why it even matters. ⭐️ And, sneak peak, it doesn’t have to involve removing all sugar from your life! 🙌
Let’s start with why you should even care about balancing your blood sugar. 👇
When we talk about blood sugar we are referring to circulating glucose in your bloodstream. It is the primary source of fuel for your body’s cells - which means we want some glucose in our blood stream at all times! 🕓
When our blood sugar goes too high or too low, it essentially triggers an alarm system in our body. 🚨 When blood sugar is too high, the pancreas is signaled to release insulin, which helps get glucose back into the cells where it should be. When blood sugar is too low, the pancreas and adrenal glands play a big role in helping to increase glucose in the bloodstream. 🎟️
In the moment, this alarm system is helpful for re-establishing balance. 🧘♀️ However, when the alarm goes off too often, your blood sugar can be on a bit of a rollercoaster, affecting a number of systems. 🎢 Sex hormones, thyroid hormones, hormones that regulate appetite, lipid metabolism, and organ function can all be affected by fluctuating blood sugar.
The more your blood sugar varies in a day, the more insulin resistant you become. 📈 This means that your insulin doesn't respond as quickly or as efficiently as it should. And this is where we really see issues. In addition to diabetes, insulin resistance is linked to a number of health conditions. Check out the slides for how it develops.
In practice, insulin resistance and repeated blood sugar swings leads to these symptoms:
Mood swings
Excess androgen production, PCOS, Irritability, Acne
Delayed ovulation, missing periods, irregular cycles
Weight loss resistance
Increased or insatiable cravings, Hanger
Fatigue, Headaches, or Brain Fog after eating
Poor or Disrupted sleep
Shakiness
Excessive thirst
Blood Sugar - what affects it
The first thing to know is that food is far from the only thing that will spike your blood sugar.❗️Remember that alarm system from last week? Glucose is increased in your bloodstream to help you deal with threats (internal or external) - many of which have nothing to do with what you are eating. 🍽️ I think this is particularly important because as soon as we start talking about blood sugar people get a little crazy and start pulling all sugar, including natural glucose, from their diet. And that does not have to be the answer! 🙅♀️
There are a number of ‘alarms’ for your body that might cause your body to increase blood glucose, independent of food, including:
🚨Stress - triggers the adrenals to release hormones cortisol and adrenaline, both of which increase glucose in the bloodstream and inhibit insulin’s effects
🚨Exercise - blood glucose increases in order to help your brain and limbs function during exercise (exercise can also lower blood sugar by increasing uptake into muscle)
🚨Poor sleep - research has shown blood glucose is much more variable after a night of poor sleep
🚨Infection or illness - particularly those driven by fever and inflammation
🚨Time of day - this is hugely variable from person to person, but often you will find the same foods will affect you differently at different points in the day, largely due to natural changes in cortisol and hormones
Additionally, these physical factors affect how quickly your body takes up glucose and moves it into the cells and muscles where it belongs:
⚡️Amount of lean body tissues, or skeletal muscle which is particularly effective at utilizing glucose even when you are not moving
⚡️Sex hormone production, where you are in your cycle (females), and hormone imbalances (such as PCOS)
⚡️Amount of adipose tissue (body fat) which can interfere with insulin signaling
⚡️Liver & digestive health which affects glucose absorption and processing
And yes, food too. All carbohydrates will spike your blood sugar to some extent but there a few things that can affect how intense the spike is, including
🌱Which carbs you consume (which is different for each of us)
🌱The order in which you eat the food groups / types of food in your meal
🌱How much protein and fat you have with the carb
🌱How much fiber is in the carb
🌱How processed the carb is (more refined typically means faster glucose spike)
Hopefully now you can see that there are so many avenues you can take to support balanced blood sugar. 💪
Blood Sugar - How to support it?
Now that we know there are quite a few things that affect blood sugar, let’s talk about how to keep it stable and minimize insulin resistance. 📉
As you saw from my last post, there are THREE main categories that are worth paying attention to in order to help your body better stabilize blood glucose:
Physical & Physiological Factors 🧘♀️
Environment & Behavioral Factors 💤
Food Factors 🍎
Physical and Physiological Factors
⚡️Amount of lean body tissues, or skeletal muscle
⚡️Hormones
⚡️Amount of adipose tissue
⚡️Liver & digestive health
⚡️Infection
So what to do about it?
Physical Factors
⚡️Lift heavy things! Muscle has more insulin receptors than other tissue and is one of the most efficient organs at utilizing glucose. What’s more, having more muscle means less adipose tissue, which can release cytokines that interfere with insulin signaling. Find a program (I’m an @evlofittness fan) or a trainer and start incorporating more resistance training in your routine. I find more resistance training and less cardio is the ticket for improved health markers.
⚡️Know your cycle & get hormone support. SOOO many women are walking around with NO clue about how their body works, where they are in their menstrual cycle, and how their hormones work. It’s sad that most of us were never taught about this incredibly amazing system. Most women are more insulin sensitive (meaning our blood sugar is naturally more stable) in our follicular phase - which is the first half of your cycle, and less so in our luteal phase (which is the last half of your cycle). What’s more, conditions like PCOS make you naturally more insulin resistant so it can be incredibly helpful to work with a practitioner for managing both blood sugar and hormones.
⚡️Address gut issues & support your digestive health. Digestion plays a critical role in blood sugar because it is so intimately involved in both the breakdown and absorption of glucose. What’s more, we know that certain gut bacteria affect blood sugar balance differently and both pancreatic and liver health play a role in managing blood sugar. Digestive health isn’t always obvious so it’s worth working with someone to understand your digestive system better and how you can support it. And until then, start by taking a few deep breaths before you eat and chewing your food more than you think to better support your digestive health. It can be helpful to minimize alcohol and highly processed foods as two starting points for better digestive health.
Behavioral Factors
⚡️Support your nervous system. Your autonomic nervous system (ANS) is the part of your body that interprets and responds to possible stressors, triggering a cascade of events. One of the main ways your ANS supports you is by increasing blood glucose so that you can think and move. This means that sometimes your blood sugar might go up (or down) because of the way your brain perceives the world! No, the goal is not to remove stress altogether, but to find ways that you can support your ANS in feeling less overwhelmed. This could include creating more margins in your day, saying “no” more often, doing breathwork, spending more time outside, or even physical support, like massage.
⚡️Move your body - but not too much! I talked last week about the value of muscle mass for BS balance. It’s huge. Strength & resistance training can help build muscle which will naturally make you more insulin sensitive. However, overtraining is a huge stressor for many of you and will cause more fluctuations in BS. Make sure you are doing more strength than cardio, and incorporating rest days in your week. Bonus points for moving your body after a meal which can make a huge difference in how efficiently you use that glucose!
⚡️Go to bed. That’s right, get off your phone and go to sleep. I know some of you don’t have as much control over this, and life happens. But the more often you can get good quality sleep, the better your body will respond to BS. There are lots of studies to show that a poor night of sleep will automatically set you up on a BS rollercoaster, independent of food!
⚡️Drink water. No, you don’t have to guzzle 100+oz, but aim for 1/2 your body weight in ounces. Use fruit or herbs for more flavor if that helps. And sparkling water counts!
⚡️Eat during daylight hours. Our bodies don't necessarily treat food any differently at 10pm than they do 10am. But, because of circadian rhythm hormones (things like melatonin, cortisol, glucagon and insulin), our bodies will respond differently to blood glucose at different points in the day. This is hugely variable from person to person, but most of us are more insulin sensitive during the middle of the day and less so after the sun has gone down.
Food Factors
🌱Which carbs you consume (which is different for each of us)
🌱The order in which you eat the food groups / types of food in your meal
🌱How much protein and fat you have with the carb
🌱How much fiber is in the carb
🌱How processed the carb is (more refined typically means faster glucose spike)
⚡️Focus on Fiber. Prioritize starchy vegetables, fruit, and legumes over grains and sweets. This doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy all foods, but when possible choose fruit, legumes, and starchy veggies like sweet potatoes, white potatoes, winter squash, and beets as your primary carbs. Because of their rich fiber content, these typically are digested more slowly, minimizing the glucose spike.
⚡️Never have a naked carb! That’s right, whether it’s fruit, a glass of wine, crackers, dessert, or candy, Always have your carbohydrates with fat and/or protein. Ideally both and more than the amount of carb you are eating, but any bit will help.
⚡️Did you know the order in which you eat can affect blood glucose?! Start your meal with your protein (or non starchy veggie if you prefer) and this will help slow down the absorption of glucose causing less of a spike. No, you don’t have to eat like a toddler and finish one part of your meal at a time but try to have a few bites of the protein before digging into your carb.
⚡️Minimize processed carbs, as much as possible. Typically processed carbs have less fiber and more simple sugars - this means that they will be digested and converted into glucose faster than whole food forms of carbohydrates.
Now that you’ve learned what affects blood sugar, why it matters, and how to support balanced blood sugar, what is one way you will focus on improving your blood sugar this week?