It's not in your head, it's in your blood.
Week 2 of the Circulation Series: All about blood sugar
There are only a handful of medications that require more than one nurse to sign off on in the hospital. Insulin is one of them.
Even fentanyl only requires one nurse. But insulin, the hormone that regulates glucose in the bloodstream, needs two.
The reason I am mentioning this is to call attention to the important role glucose (which is mainly derived from dietary carbohydrates) plays in our physiology, and how CRITICAL it is for us to care about our glucose levels.
Glucose regulation is EVERYTHING when it comes to a healthy bloodstream. It is quite literally life or death.
You may already be aware of the risk of amputations in uncontrolled diabetes, because elevated blood sugar damages nerves and blood vessels over time.
Nerves regulate blood pressure and blood flow to organs. Damaged nerves lead to impaired blood flow–and ultimately, a lack of blood flow can cause tissue death.
Ok so if too much sugar is bad, does this mean go keto?
*SCREAMS IN DIETITIAN*: NO.
One study found that those who followed a keto style high protein, low carb diet were approximately 400% more likely to have severe COVID-19.
In addition, this same study found that plant-based individuals were 73% less likely to get severe COVID-19, and pescatarians were 53% less likely.
I am guessing this is largely due to fiber (a type of carbohydrate) being the basis of immunity and disease prevention. (Our plant based friends tend to rely heavily on fiber-rich proteins like legumes, grains, and soy.)
The answer to the age old question of “are carbohydrates good or bad” is that carbohydrates aren’t just good, they are essential. We literally REQUIRE glucose to live, and derive glucose most easily from carbohydrates.
All that being said, it is a bit of a goldilocks situation. We don’t want glucose to be too high OR too low; our bodies like it just right.
Let’s take a two minute biology break.
We are really good at digesting carbohydrates. Like, REALLY GOOD. Of all the three macronutrients (carbs, fat, and protein), carbs are the fastest at leaving the stomach and entering the bloodstream.
If you are an athlete of any kind, you might be familiar with eating gummy bears on a race, or squeezing a quick tube of “energy gu” into your mouth while riding a long distance on your bike. Both of these items are primarily made out of sugar. This is because we are SO DARN QUICK at digesting it. Just moments after you eat the gu or the gummy bears, you’ll feel an energy surge, which really comes in handy during moments of heavy exertion.
However, for the most part, when we are just going about our days casually, we don’t really want this quick energy spike.
If we were just sitting at our sedentary desk job and decided to eat the gummy bears, what would happen is we’d get that same energy surge, but our bodies wouldn’t use it.
Instead, the sugar would elevate our blood glucose (which we know can damage the blood vessels and nerves) and trigger the pancreas to produce lots of insulin at once to bring the sugar from the bloodstream into the cells. We would then experience an ENERGY CRASH.
(Remember in the beginning of the article when I told you how insulin was a two-nurse ordeal? Our bodies HATE being too low in blood sugar. Low blood sugar is –physiologically speaking– one of the most dangerous things that can happen.)
Ideally, we want to ride a nice steady flow of blood sugar all day long. You want to be on the lazy river of blood sugar, not the tower of terror.
Getting back to the biology lesson.
We digest protein the second quickest, and we digest fat the slowest.
And we actually cannot digest fiber at all- it passes through the body undigested and feeds our good gut bacteria instead. The good gut bacteria then produce acetate and butyrate— which is the basis of a healthy immune system.
This is why to maintain a steady blood sugar (and improve circulation), it is helpful to eat fiber-rich carbohydrates, and pair carbohydrates with fat and protein to slow down the absorption of sugar into the bloodstream.
You can see for example why our bodies LOVE legumes. While they are carbohydrates, they are rich in fiber and protein, so we digest the sugars nice and slow and get a nice pleasant flow of energy all day long. Beans give big lazy river energy.
Long COVID is slowly materializing in the literature to be a vascular disorder, marked by energetic crashes and chronic fatigue.
Have I sold you on the importance of blood sugar management yet?
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