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Special Episode #2: Food & Blood Sugar

Blood Sugar Basics

Your blood sugar affects how tired you are, your productivity, and your moods.  This is 1000x more true for those with diabetes.

Hypoglycemia = Low blood sugar

3 main energy sources in your food

Carbohydrates are some complex form of sugar that your body can turn into glucose very quickly.  Glucose is the main form of sugar that your body uses for energy.  Because your liver is very efficient in this process, you can get a blood sugar spike (sugar high) and then you crash after it’s over.  Insulin is the key to the door to let the glucose in your cells.

Fats can be turned into sugar by your liver is your glucose stores are depleted.  So, this can affect your blood sugar levels, although it’s less of an impact that carbohydrates.  Insulin has another job – fat storage.  If there’s a lot of fat, the insulin is being used up storing fat rather than allowing glucose into cells.

Proteins are promoted as a counterbalance to the carbs.  It causes a traffic jam in the absorption and metabolism processes that allows the sugars into the blood stream much slower.  The liver does have a process called gluconeogenesis (the creation of new sugar) where it can make sugar out of protein, but it’s a last resort.

Other things in your food

There is some evidence that shows caffeine causes temporary insulin resistance while it’s in the body.  You still get an “energized” feeling b/c caffeine increases the heart rate but the energy usage is not very efficient because the glucose is not being used well.

Alcohol can drop your blood sugar initially, especially if it’s consumed on an empty stomach.  When the liver is steadily detoxing the alcohol out of your bloodstream, the replenishment of the glucose supply slows down.  This contributes to what make you feel sleepy after drinking alcohol.  On the flip side, it will increase your blood sugar because 1) alcohol is usually mixed in a sugary drink (i.e. cocktails) and 2) alcohol is distilled from “high carb” sources (grapes, wheat, barley, rye, corn, etc).

Any changes to eating habits need to be exactly that – new habits.  It can’t just be a program that you do once without permanent change.  If you’re cutting out all or most of one of the 3 main energy sources, you have to make sure you keep up with your caloric needs.

Calorie Math

1 g of Fat = 9 calories

1 g of Carb = 4 calories

1 g of Protein = 3 calories

Calories are calories when it comes it energy, so the other nutrients from your foods are a more important to consider when choosing what to eat.

There are lots of things your body would have to adjust to when changing eating habits (digestion adjustments, for one) and 30 days may not be enough to get it “normalized”.

JDRF

The Nashville chapter of JDRF is having their annual One Walk on September 24th. Friend of the show and previous guest, Rachel Mayo has been #T1D for over 10 years and she is passionate about the cutting edge research and support JDRF provides for people and their families. Her goal is for her team to raise $5000, you can contribute!

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Music Credit: “Radio Martini” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)  Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/


Insulin is not bad [Show Notes]

An image of a hand underling the word "DIABETES" in red marker. All Type 1 diabetics and many Type 2 diabetics depend on insulin to stay alive.

The Bottom Line

Without insulin, you would die!

Some Basics

Sugar scrub = sugar + water (+/- essential oils)
– a good exfoliant to remove dead skin

Your tiniest capillaries are so small that red blood cells can barely squeeze through one at a time.  So, if the fluid around the red blood cell is full of sugar, it’s like that sugar scrub on your skin.

And that extra sugar can damage the capillaries in your eyes, finger tips, toes, and organs.

The cells in your body require glucose to do their jobs.  

Insulin

Insulin is the only key that will let the glucose in.  No key means no glucose.  No glucose means no energy.  And no energy eventually means death.

Insulin is also responsible for fat storage.

If you don’t eat the sugars, the body will use the fat stores on your body for energy.  But if you don’t consume energy sources (by being on a specific diet) AND your energy stores are depleted, your body will break down the proteins (aka muscles of your body) to make energy.  Your brain (and other organs in your body don’t want you to die).

Sugars and fats you eat gets turned into glucose.  Insulin opens the doors to allow the cells to use the glucose.  If there’s extra glucose around, insulin tells the liver to link it together to form glycogen and store it for later.  If the glycogen storage is full, insulin tells the liver to turn the glucose into triglycerides (think clogged arteries and growing fat deposits).

Free glucose is the easiest and fastest to use.  But during times that you’re not actively consuming sugars (like when you’re sleeping), your body is still working and that’s when glycogen can be used to provide glucose.

How much sugar in a day?  

It’s always different for different people.  The goal is having a level blood sugar as much of the day as possible.  The rule of complex carbs being better than simple carbs is true, because it takes your body longer to break down and use complex carbs.  While simple carbs usually dump a whole log of glucose in your blood stream at one time.  And natural sugars are better than processed sugars because processed sugars tend to be more concentrated.

Your body has an easier time utilizing nutrients and supplements that look more like itself over ones that are synthesized in lab.

Holla!

Rachel Mayo is my diabetes hero!

Find her at:

Callback

T1D vs T2D

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Liver Lesson #2: Metabolism [Show Notes]

Review

Liver – have one.

Lobule – yep!

A colored sketch of a liver lobule with labeled parts.

Liver makes bile, helps digest fat in the intestines. Gallbladder? Holds bile until your intestines need bile.

3 main energy sources:  Carbohydrates, Fats, Proteins

Intestines absorb them into the blood and send them to the liver.

Basics of Metabolism

Metabolism = change

This type of change happens for 2 reasons:

  1. To make something useful
  2. To make something safe

What’s water got to do with it?

  • Your blood is made of water
  • Liver preforms hydrolysis on carbohydrates (using water to dissolve it into tiny bits of sugar = glucose)

Carbohydrate Metabolism

Glucose is the main form of sugar that your body uses for energy.

Sugars are the easiest to turn into energy so that gets used first.  So low carb diets force the body to go after fats, which are the next easiest.  If you’re eating low fat as well, then the body will burn the fat deposits on the body.  Weight loss!

Fat Metabolism

The liver breaks down the fatty acids to make cholesterol (which is not always bad).  Cholesterol is used in your cells walls to keep them fluid and slippery.  Cholesterol is also used to make bile (think “like dissolves like”).  If there’s any extra fatty acids the liver performs gluconeogenesis (gluco = glucose, neo = new, genesis = creation). It basically creating glucose out of anything that contains Carbon.

This is why fats are bad for Type 2 Diabetics as well as sugar.

Protein Metabolism

Protein is the hardest, but can still provide energy.  Proteins are made up of amino acids.  Amino = Nitrogen, acid = carbon.  The nitrogen is relatively useless, so the liver turns it into urea, that gets sent out and filtered by the kidneys.  The part with the carbon can be turned into glucose (gluconeogenesis again).

One of the intermediate steps of the urea production is ammonia.  There is actually a blood test that can be done to test the ammonia-urea balance (BUN = Blood Urea Nitrogen), and if this is out of balance, it indicates a problem.  This test may indicate that your body is metabolizing your own muscles.  This can also be a sign of starvation or other nutritional imbalance.  You need your muscles, you don’t want to metabolize your muscles.

Your body generally needs fully intact amino acids to build, rebuild, and heal muscles.  Proteins and amino acids have a life span, so your body is constantly rebuilding and replacing with fresh supply.  Athletes require higher protein diets than most because of this process.

Take Away

Glucose and fats aren’t inherently bad, it’s more about the amounts of each that get consumed and float around your body.

Your liver can be very efficient and metabolizing the foods you eat.

Your body gets fat deposits because the body is saturated with enough fatty acids that it needs, so any extra gets packed up and shipped around the body to be stored until later.

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