Download: Blood Sugar Balancing Diet

Keeping your blood sugar balanced and stable is critical for sustained energy, for health, and for living to a ripe old age. If your blood sugar falls too low, you become hungry, tired, light-headed, irritable, and may have difficulty thinking clearly. If your blood sugar becomes too high it can cause brain damage and even coma. In fact, your brain, under normal conditions, will use nothing but glucose (blood sugar) for energy. If glucose gets to low or too high, it’s your brain that suffers first. Not surprisingly, Nature has evolved a complex web of hormonal controls designed to keep your blood sugar within a narrow range, regardless of whether you eat too much or not enough. Yet these balancing mechanisms can be overwhelmed when you chronically eating too much, too little, or the wrong kinds of foods. It’s important for you to understand how your body balances its energy reserves and how diet can help or harm the process.

            Three major hormones play a role in balancing blood sugar. Insulin, probably the best known of these hormones, is the “hormone of plenty”. It is released when your blood sugar levels rise after eating a meal. Insulin tells the cells of the body that there are plenty of nutrients available in the blood stream. Insulin conveys the message that it is now time to replenish energy reserves (as ATP), build new proteins, repair cells, and create entirely new cells to promote tissue repair throughout the body. Any excess energy from the meal you just ate will be stored as long-term energy reserves – perhaps better known to you as fat.

            If you haven’t eaten for more than 3 or 4 hours, your blood sugar levels begin to fall since the carbohydrates from the meal have been used up. If the fall in blood sugar is gradual, then insulin is slowly replaced by the hormone glucagon that stimulates your liver to begin releasing stored glucose (glycogen) into the blood stream, and for most people there is enough glucose stored in the liver to last about 12 hours. After 12 hours, if you still haven’t eaten, the body will begin to convert large amounts of muscle protein (amino acids) into glucose. And after 24 hours of no dietary carbohydrate, the body will stop using proteins to maintain blood sugar levels and begin to use fats for energy instead in a process known as ketosis. It is this process of ketosis and rapid fat burning that The Low-Carb Diet (see separate handout) manipulates for rapid weight loss and rapid detoxification. While The Low-Carb diet may help you to lose unwanted fat in the short term and may help you to remove unwanted toxins rapidly, life without carbohydrates is hardly a joyful one. Carbohydrates give us an intense sense of pleasure: think of biting into a rich piece of rich chocolate cake with ice cream, or a spoonful of creamy mashed potatoes.  Thia is the main reason carbohydrates are both popular and popularly abused. Carbs are pleasurable and provide the best source of energy for you when used in moderation.

            A third hormone will also become involved when blood sugar levels drop, especially if they drop rapidly. That hormone is cortisol, your body’s main stress hormone. Cortisol acts to raise the blood sugar quickly – raising the blood sugar is the body’s universal response to stress. That’s why so many people “self-medicate” with sweets when they are stressed. The only problem with sweets though is that they raise the blood sugar temporarily but what goes up must come down, and the crash is worse than the initial problem, causing more cortisol to be released.

Your blood sugar levels drop rapidly especially after you eat lots of sugar, sweets, or starches (like bread or potatoes). Eating these foods initially causes a rapid rise in your blood sugar level, but of course your body responds to that rapid rise by rapidly releasing large amounts of insulin to counteract the high levels of blood sugar (which is toxic if not used). Your liver and muscle cells, driven by insulin rapidly take up the sugar in your blood stream causing your blood sugar levels to take a nose dive. Within an hour or two your blood sugar is lower than before you ate anything. You may be light headed or dizzy, but you will certainly start to feel very hungry again. At this point most people will eat and begin the roller coaster ride all over again, consuming large amounts of sugar or starch, causing blood sugar levels to begin their rapid ascent once again.

There are three big problems with eating lots of sugar, sweets, and starches.

1. Your energy levels are never balanced: you’re either soaring or crashing, up or down, manic or exhausted.
2. You will gain lots of weight (fat), especially around your middle (while it’s often called a “beer belly”, it could just as accurately be called a “bread belly” or a “sugar belly”).
3. This type of eating and weight gain is associated with obesity, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, Alzheimer’s disease, and many types of cancer.

            Fortunately, a blood sugar balancing diet is easily achievable with a few dietary changes on your part. Scientists have classified foods in terms of their Glycemic Load, which is basically a measure of how much of a rise in blood sugar will result when you eat a single serving of a particular food. Those foods with a lower glycemic load are much healthier for you than those with a higher glycemic load. As you can imagine, using glycemic load for healthier eating is not a black and white world. Foods should not be thought of as absolutely good or bad but more or less helpful in your journey towards balancing blood sugar and achieving optimal health. Everyone needs an occasional treat now and then. Life is meant to be a joy and a blessing. Of what use is better health if in pursuit of it we find a vastly deprived life?

            The B vitamins (B1, B2, B3, B5, and B6) are critical for energy production and balance. B6 is critical for maintaining proper blood sugar levels. You use active B6 to release stored glucose (glycogen) from the liver, for converting protein (amino acids) into sugar, and for releasing fats for energy. People without adequate activated B6 often feel light headed or dizzy about 3 hours after a meal, since this is when the body begins to run out of glucose from the meal and begins to release stored glucose. Energy levels and ability to concentrate may drop off dramatically after about 3 hours. The mineral magnesium is also critical. A multivitamin and mineral supplement is critical for maintaining blood glucose and energy production levels. More than half of all people do not even get the RDA for B vitamins and magnesium. If low blood sugar symptoms are prevalent, it is usually helpful to take active B6, also known as pyridoxal-5-phosphate.

            Active B6 has many other functions in the body, including detoxification. Most women who experience low blood sugar when skipping a meal also have pre-menstrual syndrome (PMS or PMT) since the efficient removal of progesterone and estrogen from the body require active B6 and magnesium. The first therapy for PMS is active B6 and magnesium (and stretching and exercise) – it’s effective in more than 90% of women with PMS.

Download the full Blood Sugar Balancing Diet here.