Balancing your blood sugar
It is important to try and maintain your blood sugar at a fairly consistent level. If your blood sugar levels fluctuate a lot, then it can lead to feelings of fatigue and ultimately the possibility of developing late onset diabetes.
Sugar is insidious. You may not add sugar to your food, however if you buy any pre-prepared food, it may have “hidden” sugar. Look out for glucose, maltose, lactose and fructose which are all names for sugar. Also avoid products which contain high fructose corn syrup. Look at the label before you buy a product, if sugar is near the top of the list, then don’t buy.
Sugar: Pure, white and deadly! Sugar acts like a poison on your system. As a food source it has been stripped of all its proteins, vitamins and minerals leaving a simple, refined carbohydrate.
Without the natural constituents of protein, vitamins and minerals your body cannot properly metabolise the refined sugar. This leads to the accumulation of acid in the brain and nervous system and the abnormal sugars accumulate in your red blood cells which interferes with cell respiration. Simply put, the cells cannot get enough oxygen to survive and function properly and in time will die off, this leads to degenerative disease.
Regular intake of sugar leads to an acidic state in your body. This leads to calcium being leached from bones and teeth to correct the acid imbalance. Excess sugar is stored in the liver. When its stores are filled the excess sugar is then stored as fatty acids in your most inactive areas ie the stomach, bottom, breast and thighs. When your fat stores in these areas are full, fatty acids are then distributed around your organs, leading to slowing down of organ function and degeneration.
If you feel you must sweeten food and drinks then use Xylitol, which is a natural plant based sweetener and weight for weight, it’s 9 times sweeter than sugar. It has the added benefit of actually promoting the health of your teeth and gums.
It is available under the brand names of Total Sweet and Xylobrit from good health food stores. Some artificial sweeteners have been found by researchers to be neuro-toxic, that is they can damage the brain and the nervous system. Most people take artificial sweeteners because they believe it will help them to lose weight by avoiding adding sugar to their food or drinks. However, artificial sweeteners cause havoc in your system.
Whenever you eat something sweet such as a carbohydrate or sugar, your body releases insulin to regulate your blood sugar level and transport excess sugar to fat cells for storage. Your body doesn’t know that artificial sweeteners are just chemicals with no nutritional value and the sugary taste prompts it to release insulin. However, when the food containing the sweetener arrives in the small intestine, messages are sent to your brain to say “you lied to me, there’s no nutrition in this food”. Your brain then sends out messages instructing you to eat more because your nutritional needs have not been satisfied!
Look out for hidden sugar and sweeteners in breakfast cereals, baked beans, bread, canned drinks, sauces, yogurt, fruit juices, readymade meals and cereal bars. Also be aware that alcohol acts like a simple sugar and is absorbed directly into the bloodstream from the stomach.
Glycaemic Index and Glycaemic Load
A few years back, the new yardstick in nutrition was the Glycaemic Index of foods. Known as the GI Factor, this is a direct measure of how fast foods release their sugar content into your bloodstream. The theory was that high GI foods which released their sugar quickly had a negative effect on your blood sugar balance. Whereas, eating low GI foods keeps your blood sugar stable and is consistent with good energy levels. Eating high GI foods equates with fluctuating energy and moods, weight gain and risk of diabetes and heart disease.
However, the problem with only looking at the GI value of a food gives information about the quality of the sugar, but nothing about the quantity of sugar.
(When we talk about sugar content you need to bear in mind that all carbohydrates are broken down by the body into the simple sugar, glucose, to provide fuel for the cells.) Wholegrains, for example, such as wholemeal pasta, rice and breads, are rich in slow-releasing sugars. Most fruits are rich in slow-releasing fructose - fruit sugar. Sweets and sweet foods contain fast-releasing sucrose or glucose which shoot the blood sugar up too quickly giving us that subsequent slump.
So far, so good. But where the GI measure falls down is that it doesn’t take into account the quantity of sugar in a food. For instance a French baguette has a GI value of 95. White rice has a GI value of 72. Both of these are consistent with them being refined carbohydrate foods rather than wholegrain foods.
However, watermelon has a GI value of 72 which would make you think that it should be avoided. But, a 120gm slice of watermelon contains only 6gm of fast releasing sugar!
It’s no longer enough to look just at the GI value of a food. We must look at both quality and quantity of sugar in a food, then we can get a realistic assessment of the effect on our blood glucose level.
This is where the Glycaemic Load comes in. Commonly referred to as the GL value of a food, it takes a measure of the amount of sugar in a food and how fast that sugar will release into your bloodstream.
Just to give you some comparisons:-
A bowl of porridge oats has a GL value of 2 whereas a similar size bowl of cornflakes has a GL value of 21!
Half an apple has a GL value of 3, a banana has a GLvalue of 12.
Once you get familiar with the GL value of foods, you can start to plan your eating so that you make sure your blood sugar levels stay even throughout the day. This will mean that your body does not have to constantly juggle the amount of sugar in the bloodstream and your energy levels stay stable through the day.
A full discussion of the GL value of foods and planning meals is outside the scope of this book. However, if you want to enjoy consistent high levels of energy, maintain your ideal weight, lose weight if you need to and generally feel better in yourself, you might wish to visit the Diet for Health and Wellbeing programme when it is released in 2012.
In the meantime the Health and Wellbeing Newsletter contains tried and tested low GL recipes.