When we think of blood sugar problems, we often think only of diabetes. It’s true, Type 1 and type 2 diabetes means blood sugar metabolism is impaired.
However, most people don’t know that millions of non-diabetic Americans are suffering from blood sugar swings everyday that lead to low energy and even bigger problems down the road. In fact, when I realized that my blood sugar was totally out of whack and took the nutritional steps to fix it, my energy went through the roof!
Blood sugar 101
Before we can talk about how to track and fix poor blood sugar control, it’s imperative to understand the basics.
When we eat carbs, they are broken down into the monosaccharides glucose, fructose and galactose. Eventually, this is all turned into glucose because that is the form of sugar our cells can use to produce energy.
After we eat carbohydrates like rice, corn, fruit, beans, sweets, etc., the glucose is absorbed through the intestinal cells and released on the other side into the bloodstream. This increases blood sugar levels.
If everything is working well, insulin will be released from the pancreas and together insulin and glucose will travel throughout the bloodstream being delivered to cells. The insulin tells the cells to let glucose in by docking on receptors on the cells’ surface. Glucose is then taken in by the cell and put through the Krebs cycle and the electron transport chain to generate cellular energy called ATP. This leaves you feeling energized and reduces the sugar within the bloodstream.
If there is extra sugar in the bloodstream that the cells can’t use, the liver stores some of it in liver and muscle cells as glycogen (which looks like a branched tree of glucose) and packages excess glucose as triglycerides and stores it in your fat cells (often around the midsection).
In a highly functioning body, if fuel is low, it can break the stored glycogen down for energy and eventually tap into the fat reserves if needed.
When blood sugar becomes a problem
There are a few ways that this process gets high-jacked and your health begins to suffer. The most basic problem happens when a person consumes more carbohydrates than the body requires to meet its fueling needs. An example of this would be drinking a soda and sitting down on the couch. In essence, you’ve given your body a ton of energy that hits the bloodstream FAST because soda does not need much digestive power. Instead of burning that fuel by engaging in activity, you are sedentary and the body has to deal with a spike in blood sugar.
If this type of spike happens regularly, it leads to too much circulating insulin and puts the body in an inflammatory state. This can lead to symptoms like fatigue, pain, agitation, poor focus and much more.
But that’s not it. Remember that your cells have receptors for insulin. The insulin fits in like a puzzle piece. Over time, if your body is in a state of inflammation whether that’s caused by high blood sugar or something unrelated, the receptors on the cells can become damaged. When glucose hits the bloodstream and insulin is produced, the insulin is not recognized by the cells. The cells are starving for glucose (energy) but the glucose can’t get in because the insulin can’t dock on the receptor. This means low energy and high blood sugar. This is a vicious cycle that leads to fatigue and sugar cravings. The body is starving even though plenty of fuel is available.
Other blood sugar imbalance can occur when the body over-responds to glucose by pumping out too much insulin. This can mean a blood sugar spike when the high-carb meal is consumed and then once the glucose is taken out of the bloodstream too quickly or at too high a volume, blood sugar plummets and an energy roller coaster ensues.
Why blood sugar balance falls apart
There is no simple answer here. Your body can lose its ability to balance blood sugar for a variety of reasons. A poor diet is the most obvious, but other factors include latent infections, poor digestion, toxic overload, autoimmunity, sleep apnea, chronic steroid use, microbiome, chronic stress and more. Often, it’s a combination of many of these factors.
The blood sugar remedy
Recent research has dispelled the myth that all people respond the same to carbohydrates in regards to blood sugar regulation. My conventional dietetics education trained us that we could balance a person’s blood sugar by choosing foods low on the glycemic index, but that is just false. The truth is that while one person might get a blood sugar spike from rice, another may handle rice just fine but spike from oats. Each person’s glucose response is endlessly individual. So, how do you figure out if poor blood sugar balance is behind your symptoms or fatigue?