Blood Sugar, Diet, and Diabetes

Blood sugar rises every time you eat. Ever heard the term “hangry”? (a combination of hungry and angry for anyone who’s never come across this term before, which is used to describe a state of crankiness brought on by low blood sugar. The reason you feel better after eating is your low blood sugar state was corrected.

There’s a lot to discuss about "hanger", but that’s for another time.

If everything is working correctly, and you are eating in a balanced, healthy way, blood sugar will rise, but not have a crazy spike, and the body will release a hormone called insulin which is the “key” that allows the sugar to enter into cells where it can be used as energy.

Unfortunately, the way we eat can stress the body’s natural response, cause wildly fluctuating blood sugar levels, and, over time, lead to issues such as diabetes.

Some foods will cause a spike in blood sugar. These include sugary foods, and really any food high in refined carbohydrates like white breads, pastries, many cereals, and white rice. The reason is that carbohydrates alone, in the absence of fiber, fat, and protein, are digested quite quickly and the resulting sugars are released (also quickly) into the blood stream causing a spike in blood sugar. In response to this flood of sugar, the pancreas releases a flood of insulin to get the sugar into the cells. This causes a sharp drop in blood sugar which makes you sleepy, tired, hungry, and cranky. You will most likely crave something to elevate you blood sugar again, and if you reach for something carb heavy, which many snacks are, and which you are very likely craving, as it will raise your blood sugar and temporarily make you feel better, you will just repeat that cycle and your blood sugar levels look like this roller coaster

The problem with this cycle is that eventually, the cells can become resistant to insulin. Now, when blood sugar rises, it stays high because the cells no longer "listen" to the insulin which was supposed to be they key that opened them to let the sugar in. Now blood sugar stays high. This is where pre-diabetes or even full on diabetes can start.

Sometime we know we are making unhealthy choices. We eat cake, cookies, candy and other sugary or refined foods because we like them, though we are aware they might not be a great choice.

Other times though, we do damage without even realizing it. When we buy whole wheat bread, we might think we are making good choices, but did you know that unless it says 100 per cent whole wheat, there is a good chance that only a fraction of the flour that went into that bread is whole wheat? Check the ingredients. By law, manufactures are required to list ingredients in order of quantity. If it is really whole wheat, there should ONLY be whole wheat flour (or another WHOLE grain flour) listed. A lot of the time you will see that whole wheat flour is only one of the flours used, and it may be very far down the list of ingredients.

Sugar is another sneaky one. Often you will see 2 or 3 different kinds of sugar listed. If you combined all these different sugars, they would be the main ingredient in the food, and have to be listed first, but because they are separated, each category of sugar is a smaller amount and cab be listed further down the ingredient list.

Then there are things like white rice. Rice, in it’s unrefined form contains a fair amount of fiber and a little bit of fat and protein. The fiber is enough that it would slow digestion and in turn slow the release of sugar into the bloodstream. White rice, which has been stripped of the fiber, is digested very quickly which will very definitely cause a spike in blood sugar. If rice is a staple of your diet, and you are eating exclusively white rice, it might be worth considering switching to brown, or, if you really don’t like brown rice, take a good hard look at what else you are eating and be sure that everything else is as balanced as possible, and maybe reduce the amount of rice you consume and replace it with something else that contains the components you are missing/

As a registered holistic nutritionist, I really, really, do recommend a whole foods diet. We, as a group, do not recommend fragmenting things, for example, eating white bread, then supplementing with some sort of fiber. HOWEVER, if you are absolutely not going to stop, for example, making white rice a staple of your diet, then getting fiber from an outside source may be necessary, and making sure that there is enough protein and fiber in the big rice heavy meal to make sure you aren’t going to spike your blood sugar and cause a yoyo effect could be an absolutely necessary precaution.

If you have a history of diabetes in your family, prevention becomes even more important. The good news is that this is something that can be controlled and even prevented with lifestyle modification. Like everything else though, it's much easier to prevent something than to reverse it, so starting early is key.

What else can you do to minimize the risk of developing lifestyle related health problems? Be sure you know exactly what you are eating, and be sure you are making conscious choices about what you put in your body. If you decide you are going to eat a pastry, that's great, enjoy the pastry. I'm not a huge advocate of cutting out all enjoyable foods, largely because I think it's unsustainable and makes you miserable, but what you can stop is the accidental consumption of unhealthy products just because you didn't know they were unhealthy. Start reading labels on packaged foods, and, while you are at it, I'd suggest cutting down on packaged foods all together. If all of this seems overwhelming and confusing, get the help of a professional who can break it down into manageable portions until it is not longer scary. That's what we are here for.