Health Hotline Magazine | November 2019

Su rvi ve the Holiday

MAINTAINING HEALTHY BLOOD SUGAR BALANCE THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS AND BEYOND

BY SUZANNE BOOTHBY

The season of indulgence is here. For some, it may start with furtive sneaks into your kid’s Halloween stash, for others it starts with the first pumpkin spice latte of the season, but it can quickly snowball, and before you know it, you’re saying yes to every sweet thing in sight. The barrage of sugar isn’t good for anyone, but for someone who struggles with type-2 diabetes, or any type of blood sugar imbalance, this time of year can be especially challenging. More than 30 million Americans have type-2 diabetes and another 84 million have prediabetes, a precursor to the disease, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—that’s close to half the population. 1 Poor blood sugar control is clearly a common problem in this country. While the numbers are staggering, the good news is that you can maintain healthy blood sugar balance with food and supplementation—even through the season of indulgence. FOR BLOOD SUGAR BALANCE, BALANCING MACRONUTRIENTS IS KEY The simplest thing you can do to support healthy blood sugar balance is to shift your ratio of macronutrients so that you are eating a lower carb diet. You can do this by shifting the base of your diet from high-carb foods to lower carb foods. High-carb foods include grains—both whole and refined—legumes, starchy vegetables like potatoes, sweet potatoes, and carrots, and high-glycemic fruits. Lower carb foods include non-starchy vegetables and low-glycemic fruits like berries, apples, and pears. If the majority of your

carbohydrate intake is from the lower carb group, with a limited amount (one to two servings a day) from the higher carb group, you will make the shift to a lower carb diet, a way of eating that is proven to maintain stable blood sugar balance. Most of us eat an excessive amount of carbohydrates—more than our bodies need, or can handle, which causes dramatic spikes in glucose and insulin. When you eat grain-based carbs, starchy vegetables, or high-glycemic fruit, they are rapidly converted to glucose, which our bodies are fine-tuned to clear out of the bloodstream because it can cause major damage to the body. The pancreas releases insulin, a hormone that directs the cells to absorb the glucose to burn as energy; but once the cells are full, insulin tells the body to convert and store the excess glucose as fat. When you are constantly filling up on a lot of starchy vegetables, grain-based carbs, and/or high-glycemic fruits, the pancreas continues to pump out insulin, but cells that are already overloaded with glucose start to become resistant to insulin’s signal, so the glucose remains in the bloodstream, causing even more insulin to be released (remember, insulin’s job is to clear excess glucose out of the bloodstream), making cells even more insulin resistant. Then, in addition to having excess circulating blood glucose, you also have high levels of insulin, damaging in its own right. Overt ime, if this dietary pattern is not broken, insulin resistance develops, and eventually, full-blown type-2 diabetes.

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