We often hear about keeping our blood sugar balanced, avoiding spikes and dips to keep our energy consistent, but there’s a whole lot more to it than that. Blood sugar levels affect sleep, can elevate your heart rate, mess with your hormones (increases estrogen and lowers testosterone), affect your mood, and your ability to gain or lose weight.
I thought I would use this post to explain blood sugar in the body, what happens when it’s too high or too low, temporarily or consistently (disease state), how you can monitor it with tools and observance, and finally what I recently learned using a continuous glucose monitor (the results were enlightening!) that might also apply to you - or not - because we’re all different!
Glucose is a nutrient, not the enemy. We get most of our energy from glucose, either directly from the foods we eat, or after it’s converted to glycogen and stored in our liver, muscles and tissues where it can later be converted back to glucose when needed by the release of glucagon. You can also make energy without glucose, but it’s not as efficient for the body and creates oxidative stress pushing the body into a rapid aging process. We get glucose from sources like fibrous veggies which slowly release it into our bloodstream as our bodies break down the fiber, but also from fast sources like sugary drinks and foods, which hits us harder and faster. The latter source can really overload the system all at once and create problems.
Blood sugar and insulin teamwork
Healthy bodies can manage the sugar in our blood. There are receptors that alert the pancreas to start releasing insulin or glucagon to manage our blood sugar. When our blood sugar is too high, our pancreas secretes more insulin. When our blood sugar levels drop, our pancreas releases glucagon to raise them. This balance helps provide sufficient energy to the cells while preventing damage that can result from consistently high or low blood sugar levels.
Symptoms of imbalanced blood sugar
According to the American Diabetes Association chronically low blood sugar is referred to as Hypoglycemia. Symptoms include:
Feeling shaky
Being nervous or anxious
Sweating, chills and clamminess
Irritability or impatience
Confusion
Fast heartbeat
Feeling lightheaded or dizzy
Hunger
Nausea
Color draining from the skin (pallor)
Feeling sleepy
Feeling weak or having no energy
Blurred/impaired vision
Tingling or numbness in the lips, tongue, or cheeks
Headaches
Coordination problems, clumsiness
Nightmares or crying out during sleep
Seizures
The process from just feeling shaky, to life threatening symptoms, can be quick. If the blood sugar glucose continues to drop, the brain does not get enough glucose and stops functioning as it should. This can lead to blurred vision, difficulty concentrating, confused thinking, slurred speech, numbness, and drowsiness. If blood glucose stays low for too long, starving the brain of glucose, it may lead to seizures, coma, and very rarely death.
Chronic low blood sugar is more common with Type 1 Diabetes.
Hyperglycemia, or high blood sugar can include symptoms of frequent urination and thirst.
Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes symptoms include:
Urinating often
Feeling very thirsty
Feeling very hungry—even though you are eating
Extreme fatigue
Blurry vision
Cuts/bruises that are slow to heal
Weight loss—even though you are eating more (Type 1 only)
Tingling, pain, or numbness in the hands/feet (Type 2 only)
If you have any of the above symptoms, see a doctor to have your blood sugar tested. Unmanaged Diabetes can lead to heart and kidney disease, vision and limb loss.
How blood sugar becomes imbalanced
It’s not just about eating too much sugar for too long, because if that were the case all the kids I grew up with in the 70s who ate a steady diet of soda, candy, Hostess Cakes and Toaster Strudel on top of the sugary cereals would all have been sick. In a healthy body, we burn it off or store it as fat. So why does that mechanism stop working? Well it’s mostly our diets, but also our more sedentary lifestyle. We have more polyunsaturated oils (seed oils in processed foods and cooking) and meat in our diets than ever. These can lead to insulin resistance when the receptors get coated and stop functioning correctly leaving the sugar to continuously circulate in the blood. Harvard researchers released a study in October 2023 “that found that consumption of red meat, including processed and unprocessed red meat, was strongly associated with increased risk of type 2 diabetes. Participants who ate the most red meat had a 62% higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes compared to those who ate the least.” These foods also increase oxidative stress and inflammation because they’re high in Omega 6’s, and also increase cholesterol. But those are whole other issues to think about! :)
Causes of spikes and dips
Dips can be caused by not eating enough carbs, or a balanced meal of protein, fat and carbs. Drinking alcohol and working out before sleep can also cause blood sugar to drop dangerously low overnight.
Spikes can be caused by stress, both emotional and physical including colds or flu, too much caffeine, a high intensity interval workout (HIIT), too many carbs or too big a meal for one sitting.
Oh, and the less muscle mass you have, the greater your inability to efficiently dispose of glucose. So that’s another reason to get to the gym and build up your muscle!
So how do we know what’s going on in our bodies? A good thing to do is to test!
You can test your glucose with a simple finger prick device which will tell you how your body is reacting after an overnight fast, or a couple hours after you’ve eaten. A good fasted glucose level reading should be between 70-95. Your glucose level should return to this state within 2-3 hours of a meal. And if you follow Eastern medicine rules of leaving 3-4 hours between meals, this is not only better for your digestion, but also your blood sugar.
My experience with Theia and the Libre 3 CGM
A continuous glucose monitor (CGM) allows you to monitor your blood sugar without having to prick your finger every time. It’s completely painless to pop it onto the back of your arm and one monitor will last for two weeks. During this time you could almost forget about it unless the alarms or alerts start going off on your phone. Libre 3 supplied the CGM and the Theia app allowed me to track my meals and activities to see how I was doing.
However, even if you don’t have any diagnosed blood sugar imbalances, monitoring can still make you feel bad about that healthy food you thought you were eating. But the good news is that it allows you to correct what could be accumulating to harm you later. I wore it for a total 4 weeks with a week off in between. The first couple of weeks I just observed and didn’t make any adjustments, while the second week I played around with hacks I had learned about through my training.
What I learned that might work for you
Exercise before or after meals
The love of my life of foods - oatmeal - was not my friend. But it could be! When I ate it with my morning fruit smoothie, and then walked 20 feet to my desk and sat for 3 hours, I scored a low 35 and my blood sugar spiked as high as 185 and didn’t return to normal until 3+ hours later. BUT, if I did any kind of exercise before or after (including walking, yoga/pilates, or weight training), I scored a 70 and my blood sugar spiked to 150 and came back down within a couple of hours.
Three scoops of sorbet after Thanksgiving dinner shot me up over 200, but it quickly came down within 20 minutes, with 20 minutes of brisk walking to and from the subway.
Strenuous exercise like HIIT can create spikes based on the stressor on the body.
Some foods could also bring down blood sugar faster, including a greens powder drink or Pumpkin Spice Rishi Tea.
Reheated starches have lower and shorter spikes
Stuffed squash with quinoa and vegetables registered like oatmeal on the first day, but if I ate the other half the next day, it scored well with a lower high point, and faster return to normal.
Stress is not good for blood sugar
Scrolling on social media, watching Princess Diana die on “The Crown”, or responding to an angry email caused the spiking alarm to go off because my stress levels were high in those situations. Breathing exercises and getting up to making a cinnamon tea brought my levels back to normal range.
Chocolate can be good for you!
My 80% dark chocolate square after lunch didn’t create a blood sugar spike to my delight. Even two didn’t make a blip.
Food combining principles work
Mandarins after a meal would make the spike last longer than if I had the fruit before a meal. Fruit also negatively impacted my oatmeal scores. Fruit is best appreciated on its own for both digestion and blood sugar.
High blood sugar feels awful
When I had prolonged blood sugar highs, I became lethargic, lost motivation and direction, and sometimes felt depressed.
Low blood sugar also feels awful
I only experienced this with prolonged fasting (3 days), which is not ideal from my thin vata body type. I felt light headed, shakey, and sweaty.
If you have blood sugar issues, it’s possible you can reverse this with proper diet and lifestyle changes. If you don’t have issues, it’s a good idea to keep your eye on your markers with your GP/PCP by getting your Hemoglobin A1C tested every year which tracks blood sugar levels for the previous 3 months, and note if it’s going up or down. Your doctor won’t likely flag it to you until you’ve reached a disease state, but you can catch your own developing issues by staying conscious of how you’re feeling and what the numbers are telling you.