Blood sugar regulation is much more than a metric for diabetes. It’s an important factor for everyone, but I especially love diving deeper into blood sugar with moms and with athletes because of the far reaching implications it has on energy levels, metabolism, and carbohydrate utilization.
Did you know that balanced blood sugar is part of the treatment plan for…
- under active thyroid/hypothyroidism/Hashimoto’s
- restoring gut health
- optimizing liver function
- increasing metabolism
- fueling daily activity
- adrenal fatigue/HPA Axis Dysfunction
- improving hormone function/balancing hormone levels
(And these things have nothing to do with diabetes or weight loss!)
Why Blood Sugar Matters
Balancing blood sugar means your body has a steady response to the foods you eat during the day and you don’t get big swings up or down based on what and when you eat. Blood sugar determines how you end up feeling and how much energy you have during the day. And don’t we all want a steady dose of energy all day long?
When we eat foods, they get broken down in our bloodstream and spike our blood sugar. Insulin is then released to pick up all the excess sugar and drops it off in our liver and our muscles to replenish our glycogen stores and give us energy. We NEED insulin. But we don’t want it floating around in our blood all day. This would mean that we are constantly storing energy, and our body cannot burn energy while we have insulin around storing up energy.
When our blood sugar crashes, our brains signal to our body to eat more. This usually happens when we haven’t eaten enough to store up enough energy at our last meal. Or it’s been so long since we last ate, that we burned through those energy stores.
The blood sugar rollercoaster of constant spikes and crashes is not doing our bodies any good. Just like we need cortisol spikes during the day, but we don’t want an entire day of high cortisol, we also need a steady dose of gentle blood sugar rises and drops. We need a balance.
Over time, our body gets desensitized to these spikes and we need more and more hits to have an effect. This leads to insulin resistance.
insulin resistance leads to a host of hormonal issues including:
- high cholesterol
- inflammation
- fatigue
- unwanted hair growth/loss
- hormonal acne
- high androgens
- high estrogen
- low progesterone
A Blood Sugar Case Study
Let’s talk about Amy.
Amy came to me with thyroid issues (subclinical, not diagnosed) and digestive issues that she took as normal for YEARS. She was 1 year postpartum, got “hangry” often, yet usually skipped breakfast or just had coffee in the morning, because she had a busy one year old toddling around.
She did orange theory and peloton workouts regularly and beat herself up if she missed a day. She had to always beat her high score and felt she needed the cardio and HIIT to lose the baby weight.
Amy was was scared to go out to eat because not sure what was good/didn’t trust herself around “bad” foods. The scale was creeping up not down and she was frustrated with herself for not being back to pre baby shape already.
The very first thing I had to help Amy with was her mindset around WHY she was doing all of these things. But the next foundational step after that was to look at her blood sugar regulation.
We ran an HTMA (hair tissue mineral analysis) and found that Amy had a slow 1 metabolic type with low thyroid function and low adrenal function. We could also see signs of blood sugar imbalances from her calcium/magnesium ratio. This just verified what was already suspected. Amy’s mineral status was depleted from prolonged periods of excess cortisol. Her body was stressed from high activity, not eating enough, and over time, this impacted her blood sugar and her overall metabolic rate.
Nutritional Considerations for Blood Sugar Regulation
Minerals play an important role in blood sugar utilization in the body.
Magnesium is involved in glucose metabolism & helps reduce the amount of insulin required to get glucose into the cell (PMID: 1531914). We want to get glucose into our cells with as little insulin as necessary. The more insulin that is needed means that our cells have become less sensitive and need more to perform the same actions as before. We need adequate magnesium to keep our cells sensitive to insulin.
Sodium is important because low salt diets lead to an increase in insulin resistance (PMID: 26839871). Sodium is not something to be feared or avoided. And yes, the source of sodium matters. As well as the amount of sodium in relation to magnesium and potassium. They work together.
And potassium is needed to help glucose get into the cell as well as help to convert glucose to glycogen for storage in the liver (PMID: 14981264). We want to get glucose out of our bloodstream and into our cells and into storage for later energy use.
So what did we do to help restore optimal blood sugar balance and increase Amy’s metabolism?
1. Focused on eating protein + healthy fat + fiber at each meal. Eating carbs alone is going to spike blood sugar pretty high. By eating carbohydrates alongside proteins and healthy fats we can slow that blood sugar spike and have longer, steady energy instead.
2. Prioritized eating every 4 hours – this meant Amy had to eat ENOUGH at each meal to keep her full in between meal times. Yes, snacks are great. But if we need a snack every 2 hours, it’s probably a sign that our meals aren’t sufficient enough to hold us over. The more we can eat at one time, the better. Remember, insulin is released when we eat, so if we are always eating, insulin is always in our blood stream storing up sugar for energy. Which means we can’t be USING that sugar for fuel until it’s done.
3. Increased mineral rich foods, particularly foods high in magnesium, potassium, and sodium.
4. Cut back on high intensity activity, and instead added more walking and weight bearing exercise. Strength training increases muscle mass which in turn increases our basal metabolic rate to help increase metabolism. And walking, particularly after meals, is an excellent way to start to utilize that energy we have just eaten and the body is trying to store. Which in turn lowers the insulin response.
I want you to notice that each of these things takes TIME to implement and see benefits from. These aren’t quick fix, see results in a week type changes. Any thing that you are going to do to benefit your health that will actually WORK long term is going to take time. Part of why we look at mindset first is to make sure that we can process this shift that is so opposite what diet culture has told us for years we need to be doing instead.
Are you ready to learn how to optimize your metabolism and balance your blood sugar for better energy and long term health? The best starting point to do this is with breakfast! This is exactly what is covered in the Blood Sugar Balanced Breakfasts masterclass. Specific, tangible, actionable steps to start your day right. Get more info and register HERE.
