Why a Balanced Blood Sugar is Crucial to Your Health

Having a balanced blood sugar will have a huge impact on your overall health and wellness. When it comes to stress we put on our bodies, there are 4 main areas that we look at. They are biological/chemical, emotional, physical, and spiritual. Blood sugar that is not balanced can and will affect all these areas over time. The main area of concern and where it all begins is biological and chemical stress. The #1 thing you can do that will have the biggest and most impressive impact on decreasing this stress that we put on our bodies is to keep your blood sugar balanced. Let’s take a look at what blood sugar is and how it affects your overall health and wellness.

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What is Blood Sugar?

Blood Sugar is the concentration of blood glucose in our blood. Our preferred source of energy is Glucose. When there is too much or too little in our blood, it will trigger a significant stress response. Let’s take a look at the process that happens when you eat to understand better the process and important work that glucose has. When the body requires energy, an important hormone called ghrelin is released. This hormone triggers the body to start looking for nourishment. Once we provide our bodies with nourishment, the process of digestion takes place, and glucose is eventually absorbed via the small intestine. This is where glucose enters the bloodstream. The bloodstream transports the glucose to all of the cells.

The challenges come up when the cells are not able to utilize the glucose. When the cell doesn’t utilize it, we end up with too much in our bloodstream. If this is frequently occurring, or if prolonged, it will damage your nerves, blood vessels, and organs and ultimately lead to adult-onset diabetes or diabetes type 2. The way that your cell utilizes blood glucose is determined primarily by the hormone insulin. Let’s have a closer look at what insulin is and the important role it plays in our bodies.

What is Insulin?

When it comes to a balanced blood sugar level,  the key component insulin, an important hormone produced and released by the pancreas. You may not think much about insulin unless you have diabetes, but this may be the single most important hormone in the body. It is so important, in fact, that if your hormones were a symphony, insulin would be the conductor. Along with cortisol, this hormone can be considered the foundation of how all other hormones interact. Hormones are all part of our endocrine system, and you can think of them as a very intricate designed messaging web where important communications travel throughout the body. This web is very closely connected with our nervous system and will sometimes be referred to as the neuroendocrine system.

The pancreas is part of the endocrine system and is responsible for producing and secreting insulin. When blood sugar increases, the pancreas releases insulin. Insulin’s job is to decrease blood sugar levels.  It then attaches to a receptor on our cells. You can think of receptors as a seat on a bus. Once insulin gets a seat on the cell, it then unlocks a “door” so that glucose can pass into the cell, where it will be converted into energy.

Let’s Talk Sugar

You don’t think I can write this article without talking about processed sugar, do you? This can otherwise be known as sucrose but comes in many other name forms, as well. Because it can be disguised in a name, most people consume more than they think they do.  I mean, let’s face it, it dominates our food supply and is found in everything from crackers to bread to ketchup and salad dressing. It is even found in our toothpaste. Because processed sugar has no fiber, vitamins, or minerals, our bodies will pull these nutrients from our reserves when eating high sugar diets.

If you can think of drawing money from a savings account, but there is none there, what’s going to happen? You will have a deficit. Well, when we consume a diet that is high in sugar, our body will be in a deficit of these important nutrients. Your body needs these to function properly, so guess what? Your body doesn’t function properly and can lead to all kinds of health problems.

Furthermore, when our body is so used to burning these empty calories for energy, it loses its ability to burn the right calories for energy. Until we can take the sugar out and retrain the body to do so, it will burn the empty calories first, which is quite literally a waste of your body’s energy. It is no wonder we are a society that is tired, drained, in a fog, and overweight.

A Word About Carbs

There are essentially 3 types of carbs. Each of them have very different effects on the body.

Simple Carbs– These carbs have a simple chemical structure. They break down in the body very quickly and provide a burst of energy. But then, the crash follows. The reason this crash happens is that they are absorbed and digested very quickly. Examples of simple sugars or carbs are lactose, fructose, and maltose. In other words, You want to limit white potatoes, sweets, white flour bread, and baked goods.

Complex carbs- these take the body a bit longer to break down, giving a more even and slow energy source. This will not give you a quick burst, followed by a crash. Examples of these carbs are quinoa, brown rice, beans, legumes, and veggies. These carbs will often provide the body with vitamins, minerals, and fiber.

Fiber– this does not provide energy; however, fiber helps move food through the digestive tract, making it essential for intestinal health, as it increases the absorption of essential micronutrients.  Examples of high fiber carbs are;  whole grains, sweet and purple potatoes, fruits, starchy veggies, beans, nuts, and seeds. You want to limit white potatoes, sweets, white flour bread, and baked goods.

Even though complex carbs are a better choice than simple carbs when balancing your blood sugar, you must be cautious about the quality. Complex carbs, when refined and processed, lose their natural vitamins, minerals, and fiber. So when they deplete the body of these important nutrients, our body then breaks it down as a simple carb. That means it will cause that quick rush, then the big crash, just as simple carbs do. An example of a complex carb turned simple would be a whole wheat bagel. The wheat has gone through a refining process, stripping it away of its natural nutrients, so the bagel will no longer act as a complex carb.

The Blood Sugar Roller Coaster

So, this balancing of blood sugar and insulin sounds like a great system, right? Well, it would be, except most people have spent their lifetime eating bagels, crackers, white bread, processed carbs, and processed sugars. In doing so, this balancing act has been fine-tuned almost to perform too well. When we have a diet like this, the pancreas ends up sending out too much insulin. This will make our blood sugar dip way down, where we experience a blood sugar crash.

You know the feeling; shaky, foggy, fatigued. What do we do then? We reach for that caffeinated beverage or that sweet dessert to give us that quick burst that we are craving. Our blood sugar goes up and spikes again, only to crash again. Our body craves the sugar because it is trying to find balance. It wants to have that nice slight dip and dive like in a nice rolling hill.

 Instead, we are providing causing the extreme thrill ride of that roller coaster. Each time your blood sugar spikes up, the brain is alerted, “danger,” and simultaneously sends out the message to the pancreas to make insulin; “do it now!!”. The pancreas obliges and sends out a bunch, because well, there’s a danger, of course. One way or the other, the glucose is taken out of the bloodstream and then you crash.

This never-ending cycle causes a great deal of stress on the body, specifically biological and chemical stress. This is keeping our stress response turned on, which is extremely bad for our health. You can read more about why in this article here.

Physiological Complications

The body will always try to do the right thing, but when it is acting on perceived danger, the long-term effects can, quite literally, be deadly. Some physiological complications that a constant blood sugar roller coaster has on your health would be:

• Depression and anxiety– there is research out there that reports blood sugar balance is often the biggest factor in mood disorders. This makes sense, as the brain runs on glucose for function. The more imbalanced your blood sugar, the more imbalanced your mood. This up and down cycle can wreak havoc on your serotonin levels.
• Cancer– European studies have shown that there is an increased cancer risk in women with high blood sugar levels, specifically of the pancreas, urinary tract, skin, womb, and breast cancer under women of the age 49. (1)
• Heart Disease– Over time, high blood sugar can damage blood vessels and the nerves that control your heart. Having prediabetes and diabetes highly increases this risk.
• Diabetes– This may be the more obvious one, but most people walking around pre-diabetic have no idea. Their fasting levels of blood sugar may be normal, but any other time of the day may be astronomical. According to Dr. Mark Hyman, author of the “Blood Sugar Solution,” pre-diabetes really isn’t pre- anything. It is just as dangerous because it drives our biggest killers: heart attacks, strokes, cancer, dementia, and more. These things will kill us before you are ever able to reach the full-blown diabetes diagnosis.

When our bodies experience continuous huge dips and rises in blood sugar, we put ourselves on this wild roller coaster ride. As I mentioned, glucose is the body’s preferred source of energy. We will also utilize protein and amino acids for energy, but again, glucose comes first. In addition, there is a difference in how our bodies break down certain sources of glucose, as we covered above.

Blood Sugar Balance and Weight Loss

Like insulin, glucose finds a seat on the cell before it is allowed inside the cell through that door unlocked by insulin. If there is too much glucose in the bloodstream, there may not be enough seats on the cells to accommodate all glucose levels. Where does the access glucose go? First, it gets stored in the liver and muscles, where it is converted to glycogen. This is basically short-term storage. When all of these reserves are full (all the seats are taken), the body will store excess glucose as lipids and fatty acids.

This is the long-term storage and will not be converted back into glucose once it gets here unless the body goes through ketogenesis, which only occurs when the body perceives it in a starvation state. This long-term storage is fat and typically will be around the middle. Are there inches and pounds that you cannot get rid of, no matter what you do? There’s a good chance it is due to imbalanced blood sugar.

Insulin Resistance

When this blood sugar roller coaster continues, and we continue diets high in sugar and refined carbohydrates, our cells will slowly become resistant to the effects of insulin. As a result, we will require more and more insulin to keep our blood sugar levels balanced. Remember, our body is doing exactly what it is supposed to. We are just not doing what we are supposed to. We were not created to eat this way. When our cells become “numb” to insulin, this is known as insulin resistance. As this problem worsens, our body will lose muscle and gain more fat while we begin to age more rapidly.

Furthermore, systemic inflammation occurs. Insulin resistance is a phenomenon that leads to heart disease, dementia, rapid aging, strokes, and cancer. If you were to have a high insulin level, this would be the first sign that there is an issue. Unfortunately, doctors do not commonly perform this blood test.

Signs and Symptoms of Blood Sugar Imbalance

How do you know what your blood sugar level might be without testing your blood glucose? Here are a few physical cues that you may experience at either end of the spectrum.

High Blood Sugar levels-

• Hyper activeness
• Anxiousness
• Increased thirst
• Headache
• Abdominal Pain

Low Blood Sugar levels-

• Brain Fog
• Difficulty Concentrating
• Excess sweating
• Impatience
• Irritability
• Nervousness
• Heart Palpitations
• Light Headedness
• Nausea
• Fatigue
• Moodiness

Keeping The Balance

Balancing your blood sugar is at the top of the list of the most important ways you can be on the road to better health and wellness. By reducing this biological and chemical stress put on your body every day, you can help your body heal and build a healthy, strong foundation to enjoy a good quality of life for years to come. In addition, this one step can alleviate even the most complicated health challenges.

Interested in learning more about positive habit change so that you can start living your best vibrant life? Book a FREE Discovery Session with Tess RN today!

References

1. https://www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20070227/high-blood-sugar-linked-cancer-risk
2. “The Blood Sugar Solution”; pg 28;  Mark Hyman MD