Blood Sugar Balance…
When our blood sugar is off balance, wellness isn’t maintainable.
Blood sugar levels are on the rise with already 50 percent of adults living in the United States today have diabetes or pre-diabetes. Even more have some other type of health problem related to blood sugar imbalance or insulin resistance, such as PCOS or metabolic syndrome.
Blood Sugar Balance Basics
You probably already know that what you eat directly affects your blood sugar. The formula: The more sugar you eat, whether it is in the form of carbohydrates, artificial sweeteners, sugar, or fruit, the more likely your blood sugar is to be elevated. When you eat a food high in carbohydrates, especially without much fiber or fat, that food is quickly converted into glucose in your bloodstream, triggering the release of insulin to take the sugar out of your blood and send it to where you can use it, like in your muscles, or in short-term storage in your liver. The issue is you only need so much glucose and if you eat a lot of sugar-rich and carb-rich foods all the time, your insulin may have trouble keeping up to use this glucose and as a result your blood sugar may stay too high for too long. This puts you on the path to diabetes and other metabolic health problems.
The Microbiome’s Impact
Your gut controls almost all aspects of your health, including your blood sugar. Many of the same foods that are good for you help to increase the beneficial microbes in your microbiome, are often the same foods that keep blood sugar well balanced. Opposing foods that damage our microbes are often blood sugar spiking. For example, artificial sweeteners have been shown to contribute to poor microbiome health and bacterial imbalances in the gut – specifically in ways that impair blood sugar control!
Because of the link between these two systems, focusing on healing your gut and optimising your microbiome should also help to rebalance your blood sugar.
I focus on the Microbiome’s importance during pillar 2 of my programme.
Living A Glucose Friendly Life
What is glucose?
Glucose is our bodies preferred source and energy and comes in the form of food. Glucose can be simply translated into being any food that tastes sweet or starchy.
Not all sources are equal
Even though many foods high in sugar and starch are not the most beneficial to us, not all forms of glucose are harmful and in healthy forms, quantities and combinations, can be incredibly beneficial for us and our energy production. For example a pastry from your local bakery contains a high amount of sugar and starch and will likely spike blood sugar levels, opposed to a sweet potato served with a source of protein, will not impact our blood sugar negatively. Its about what and how we eat these sources of glucose opposed to cutting them out all together.
Lowering glucose spikes with ease
Simple switches and hacks are easy to implement to reduce blood sugar spikes, you do not have to cut glucose out or stop enjoying the foods you love. I teach these principles in my programme as part of pillar 3’s process.