How to Keep Your Blood Sugar From Spiking
Here is a very important secret to weight loss:
When you eat fats and proteins, your body goes into a fat burning
mode. This is simply how the human body works. However, if you then consume
a carbohydrate that raises your blood sugar significantly, insulin
production is turned on and once that insulin hits your blood
stream, your body immediately switches from its fat burning mode to
its fat storing mode.
Even more important than weight loss concerns is
that this has one huge effect on your
cardiovascular system.
Losing weight is secondary to keeping from having
a major heart attack. Am I right or am I right?
Let me explain what’s going on here. Glucose in
your blood stream causes inflammation; the type of inflammation that
is often called “obesity related inflammation,” the type of
inflammation underpinning most of our major degenerative illnesses,
especially diabetes and atherosclerosis.
Now, the interesting thing here is that it might
just be this inflammation that turns on your insulin. Think about it: since the discovery of insulin it has always been
thought that the glucose in the blood signals the pancreas to pump
insulin into the system. Since we know now that glucose causes
inflammation, it could actually be the inflammation that signals the
pancreas to do its job.
It’s surely something to think about, but not too
hard since it could take another fifty years for medical science to determine the
answer. (The answer might already be known and I've not run across
it...yet.)
Insulin is anti-inflammatory. You start the fire
and insulin puts it out. A recent study at the University of Buffalo
discovered this:
UB Study Shows Strong Effect of Insulin,
Glucose on Inflammation.
They also discovered that the inflammation comes
quicker and lasts longer in type one diabetics than it does in type
two diabetics.
An even earlier study, in 2010, showed that women
who ate the most high-glycemic carbs have more than twice the risk
of heart disease as women who ate the least:
Eating the Wrong Kind of Carbohydrates
Increases Heart Disease Risk
For some reason, they did not find the same
association in men, but I’m sure that’s fodder for later studies.
So, we start a fire, we put out the fire, what’s
the problem?
Here’s the problem: insulin resistance.
If you are overweight, your fat cells can’t take
the presence of insulin for too long. They have to turn off the insulin response
or they will die. So sugar stays in the blood longer than insulin and
there you have your inflammation.
Another form of insulin resistance doesn’t care
whether you’re fat or not, only that you’ve had too much sugar in
your blood stream for too darn long; in this case insulin receptor
cells become resistant to insulin, sugar is not allowed into the
cells so it stays in the bloodstream, and there you have your
inflammation again.
So, before you go off and read our article on
Chronic Inflammation
again and load up on supplements to fight inflammation, let's focus
on how to eat to keep our
blood sugar from spiking.
This article and process of keeping the blood
sugar from spiking is very close to our article on keeping from
creating AGE's in the body. Much of what we
will point out here has already been covered elsewhere at this site.
This article just puts it all together.
Before we begin, I must point out that there is a
time when you do want to spike your blood sugar, and that is right
after a very intense workout, especially a workout that "really"
stressed your muscles (like weight lifting). The glucose will go directly where it
is needed; right to your muscles.
First off: DIGESTION. Whatever you can do to slow
digestion will keep your blood sugar from spiking.
Now get this: you’d think that the better your
digestion the quicker the process, but that’s wrong. The better your
digestion, the longer the process.
If you add acid (betaine hydrochloride) to your
meals, you slow digestion. If you drink water with a slice of lemon
(acid) you will slow digestion. If you drink lemonade (acid) you
will slow digestion. Additionally, if you take enzymes, your
digestion will slow. Enzymes insure that more enzymatic reactions
take place which will thus take longer. (After years of research, I
have found the best enzymes on the market and I've joined their
affiliate program. It's
BioTrust's AbsorbMax. I take them with each meal.
However, be careful with the BioTrust company; they will
fill up your inbox with junk mail and send you to sites that want to
take your money. You have been warned. I love "some" of their
products, just don't like their money making schemes.)
One way to add acid to your meal is by taking a
shot of apple cider vinegar with a meal. However, I recall a
newsletter in which I talked about “The Pickle Cure.”
Prior to a meal, eat a nice sized pickle. Long
story short, it was discovered that it was the acetic acid in the
pickles that slowed the release of sugar into the blood stream. Now,
acetic acid is found in all vinegars, but I prefer my pickles to be
made with apple cider vinegar because most all other vinegars are
catabolic, while apple cider vinegar is anabolic. Catabolism is a
breaking down; anabolism is a building up.
It’s that time of year to pickle (as I write
this), so why not take
a look at our Health Pickle Recipes and
create a batch to last you through the winter. Additionally, check
out the newest pickle there, A Taste of India. The spices in it also
keep blood sugar from spiking.
Another way to get your apple cider vinegar is
via capsules.
Now Foods has a great little capsule that you can take
with you for when you go out.
There are two other ways to slow digestion and
that is with fiber or with resistant starch.
There is a great difference between drinking a fruit juice and
eating the fruit. The fruit has fiber, but the juice none. This is
why studies show that women who drink a glass of orange juice for
breakfast have a 20% greater chance of becoming diabetic than women
who don't. There are many ways to get your fiber; beans being one of
them because there are so many different beans on the market. The
only ones to avoid are Boston Baked Beans which are full of sugar.
In case you don't recall what we've told you
about resistant starch (you can click on the link above to read the
article) here are some highlights:
-
eat rice at room temperature.
-
undercook pasta two or three minutes
-
eat potatoes cold
-
cook up slices of sweet potatoes and keep
them stored in the fridge.
Cinnamon: In
our book Bypassing Bypass we mention cinnamon right up front. It’s
famous for keeping blood sugar from spiking. Whether taken with
meals or used as a spice in your meal, you can’t go wrong with a bit
of cinnamon. Cinnamon is probably the best known spice for
maintaining blood sugar, and so I separated it from the crowd below.
I always have on hand
Now Foods Cinnamon Bark Caps .
I trust NOW foods. When it comes to cinnamon, much of it on the
market is just sawdust. Below, we go deeper into this issue.
Spices: Cumin, turmeric, and
fenugreek all are hypoglycemic and will
keep your blood sugar from spiking. Cumin is both a Mideast and
Mexican spice, turmeric is Ayurvedic.
To increase the bioavailability of turmeric, add some black pepper.
Fenugreek might be a spice, but it's powerful and many cannot take
it. It is best to take fenugreek before a meal in a capsule, though
we have created a recipe called
Indian Buttered Chicken (that has received a lot of praise) that
uses fenugreek. Oh, and men: fenugreek helps boost testosterone
levels naturally.
Tienchi Ginseng

(also known as Panax
notoginseng and San Qi): This actually
helps a dieter in two ways. First it hypoglycemic, meaning it not
only keeps your blood sugar from spiking, it just plain keeps it
low. It also increases leptin sensitivity. Caution should be used
with Tienchi because it is also a blood thinner and will break up
blood clots. Pregnant women MUST AVOID tienchi as it cannot tell the
difference between a blood clot and a tiny embryo. Additionally, if
you are having surgery anytime in the future, it’s best to go off it
long before the surgery.
Svetol®: This is the famous green coffee
extract that is the rage of all the weight loss doctors on
television. The article has a link to the cheapest Svetol® on the
web.
Fish Oils(EPA): In a very
recent study,
it was discovered that EPA (Eicosapentaenoic acid), one of the
fatty acids found in fish oils, improved both insulin sensitivity
and blood sugar levels in people diagnosed with type two diabetes.
My personal favorites, when it comes to fish oils, are the
NOW Tri-3D Omega Softgels and NOW Krill Oil. If you go to that
site (link) just search for NOW KRILL and you'll find it. Eating
wild salmon two or three times a week isn't a bad idea either. I
have friends in Alaska who eat wild salmon five times a week. And
one more way to get your EPA is in our new
Fish Oil Mayonnaise recipe.
Berberine:
This is a substance
I've just discovered myself. Berberine comes from Traditional
Chinese Medicine, but unlike most extracts, it's extracted from a
number of anti-diabetic plants. It's an anti-inflammatory, is
hypoglycemic (lowers blood sugar), is hypolipidemic (lowers blood
lipids [fats] especially LDL), and improves digestions while acting
synergistically with anti-depressants. It lowers blood sugar so
well, that your blood sugar can drop too low if used with the others
above. So you will want to be careful. It also seems to interact
with enzymes affecting the metabolism of drugs, so be careful if you
are on a prescription. I would normally point you to one of our
affiliate programs to get Berberine, but they are all over
overpriced. You'll want to order from Swanson, as I do:
Berberine.
Ecklonia Cava Extract (ECE):
Though many tell you that Seanol™ is the same thing, it is not. ECE
is manufactured by one company only and they keep perfecting their
extraction process. Our friends at
Simply the Best are
the American distributors (because of a scoop we published in our
newsletter when the company in Canada started up). ECE has been
shown to benefit patients with metabolic syndrome, syndrome X,
or diabetes. ECE has shown to drop blood sugar quickly, and even if
you cheat on your diet, blood sugar quickly normalizes.
Grapefruit: better than a short
piece here, I've created an entire page dedicated to the
Grapefruit.
One more thing: If you are
insulin resistant, you are leptin resistant and vice versa.
Cutting leptin resistance affects insulin resistance. It has been
found that inflammation causes leptin resistance; or as the studies
show, increased C-Reactive Protein leads to leptin resistance. The
product
Cardia-7 cuts CRP 50% and increases leptin sensitivity.
Hippocrates, the father of medicine,
claimed walking to be the healthiest exercise:
After a meal, take a walk. It's
the best thing you can do for your body after a meal for many, many
reasons; and take it from someone whose knee was injured, I miss my after-meal walks.
Walking aids digestion. And as we
said earlier, when digestion is done right, it takes longer.
Walking kicks your fat burning in
gear. Let's say it's your evening meal. Your body knows what time of
day it is. It thinks it's time to rest and so it also thinks it's
time to store away those calories you just consumed. When you start
walking, your body says, "Hey, wait a minute. I'd better start
burning these calories."
Since digestion is such a huge process, all other
processes go on break during digestion. This is one of the reasons
fasting is such a powerfully healing act; the body can focus on
healing rather than digesting. So taking a walk, since it's helping
digestion along, allows your immune system to bulk up, and get some
of the nutrition it needs right away.
So, to sum up this wonderful exercise (after a
meal), you are aiding digestion, reducing inflammation, supporting
immune response, preventing injuries, and helping you to sleep at
night. And get this, studies show that walking prevents Alzheimer's.
Sugars: Good & Bad
Agave Nectar ─ is mostly fructose but doesn't raise blood sugar or
spike insulin. However, it creates many AGEs and has been linked to liver damage.
If you don't know what AGEs are, go here:
AGEs.
Alcohol Sugars ─ xylitol, sorbitol, and
erythritol do not raise blood sugar
and do not cause AGEs.
Artificial Sweeteners ─ aspartame, sucralose, saccharin, etc.,
were thought to not raise blood sugar, but recent studies now
dispute that. Additionally, the side effects are numerous including
weight gain and hunger.
Corn Syrup ─ raises blood sugar and spikes insulin; also creates
AGE
Fructose ─ doesn't raise blood sugar or spike insulin,
creates
very many AGEs and has been linked to liver damage; The most
interesting side effect is that you're still hungry after consuming
it and it can encourage you to find other sugars to feel full.
Glucose ─ raises blood sugar and spikes insulin and
creates AGEs.
Honey ─ is half fructose and half glucose, raises blood sugar,
spikes insulin, creates many AGEs and may damage liver
HFCS ─ is high fructose corn syrup, raises blood sugar and spikes
insulin, creates many AGEs and has been linked to liver damage
Stevia ─ is a sweet protein
that doesn't raise blood sugar or create
AGEs.
Sucrose ─ raises blood sugar, spikes insulin, creates AGEs, and
has been linked to liver damage
And Now For the Downside
After reading the initial publication of this
article, a reader wrote to me asking if there was a dosage for
cinnamon (to get the most out of it) and if I knew that a lot of
people were calling most cinnamon “sawdust.”
It didn’t take me long to find the original
cinnamon study, but I
also found one of those “videos” by one of my affiliate programs.
I’m embarrassed to support these people at times because they go on
and on wasting my time telling me how important they are and how
much better their opinion is than anyone else’s.
They also tend to exaggerate. They mention the
study saying that to get the same results they got in the study,
you’d have to take 12 capsules (TWELVE CAPSULES!!!) daily. I almost
expected them to say that the only real benefit to that many
capsules of cinnamon would be great smelling farts.
The study, not designed very well, used 1, 3, or
6 grams (12 500 mg caps) in the experimental group, and a placebo in
the control group. They did not break down the results in the
experimental group by the amounts, but said that they just got good
results: “all three levels of cinnamon reduced the mean fasting
serum glucose (18-29%), triglyceride (23-30%), LDL cholesterol
(7-27%), and total cholesterol (12-26%) levels; . . . .” [http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/14633804]
The
“go-ahead-waste-my-time-showing-me-how-freaking-important-you-think-you-are
video” also warned me that most cinnamon is SAWDUST.
Duh.
Did they know that cinnamon comes from tree bark?
If you grind up tree bark, (duh) you get sawdust.
Yes, there is sawdust and there is sawdust. The
thing that most people don’t get is that your spices (to get a great
shelf life) have been modified. One way of modifying them is
irradiation. Your spices aren’t going to pass on any health benefits
when they’re modified; all the goodness goes out leaving only the
taste.
Also, there are different forms of cinnamon from
different plants. The one thing they got right was that it seems
that Cinnamomum cassia is the best form, the one used in the
studies.
NOW Foods Cinnamon is Cinnamomum cassia. The
“standard” dosage is 2 capsules a day, a little over 1 gram of
cinnamon. If I were diabetic, I’d take twice this.
Exercise: We all know how exercise is good for
us, but the video tells me that to get the blood sugar benefits I
have to exercise for at least an hour because the study they found
that lowered blood sugar levels had their study participants
exercise for an hour. More bull.
In my book, Rapid Safe Weight Loss, I teach three
different forms of High Intensity Exercises. Everyone who’s read the
book, worked the program, and contacted me, has thanked me for all
of these because they didn’t have an hour a day to exercise and they
burned calories up to 36 hours after they stopped. If done right,
under a half hour of these high intensity exercises get you more
benefits than jogging for three hours while burns more calories.
Here’s the program where I learned
everything I needed to know about Interval Training:
Pace Program.
(It just works.)
Alpha Lipoic Acid
I have been taking ALA and L-Carnitine together
daily for years. It’s just been recently that I learned about ALA’s
connection to blood sugar. Now the video told me that I have to take
R-ALA because it’s so much more bioavailable. It’s also three times
more expensive. One solution to the bioavailability problem is “take
more.”
ALA is first, a powerful antioxidant that is
actually made in your body and is found (if you’re not deficient) in
every cell in the body where it helps take glucose and turn this
basic sugar into energy. Studies show that when you combine ALA with
L-Carnitine (or Acetyl L- Carnitine), this whole energy business
taking place in the mitochondria of your cells becomes just more
efficient. In fact, the combination of ALA, L-carnitine, and biotin
is quite possibly the best combination of supplements to make the
energy usage in every cell in your body ultra efficient. Then there
are the other things these things do that are mentioned elsewhere in
this web site. This is just one great combination of supplements.
The dosage of ALA is simple. 100 mgs is
perfect for most, but 200 per day, one capsule with two of your
daily meals meals, is best if you’re trying to reverse your type two
diabetes. Here’s a great article on
ALA.
Having told you all this (along with all you know
from above) I should tell you about a product; an expensive product,
but taking it daily can keep you from buying up a bunch of
supplements and taking all of them daily.
It’s from the BioTrust people, so expect a lot of
BS in your inbox; and expect a bunch of long winded sales pitches.
The product, however, is a good product and it can help you, not
only, keep from becoming diabetic, if you are already diabetic, this
supplement with a bit of exercise can help you reverse it in less
than three months.
Just know that you’ve been warned. The product is
IC-5™. Here’s the page: (http://mnwelldir.biotrust.com/Shop.asp),
but the product Leptiburn is a waste of time. There are much cheaper
ways of boosting leptin levels and increasing leptin sensitivity.
The products I like best from these people are
Vinegar & Honey
We’ve mentioned this little combination at times
in the past, but now we must tell you how well this combo works for
your blood sugar.
Legend has it that both George Washington and
Napoleon gave this mixture to their soldiers before battle. Honey is
one food that can never go bad. It’s been found in the tombs of the
pharos and was still edible.
The best honey is local honey. If you have
allergies, many will see them fall away within minutes of taking
this recipe.
The recipe is simple: 1 tablespoon of honey and 1
tablespoon of apple cider vinegar. Take this first thing in the
morning. It really helps to stabilize blood sugar and helps fight
insulin resistance.
Here is a little article on this
combination.
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