Regulating Blood Glucose During the season of Sugar Plum Fairies and Powdered Sugar Explosions!

I love the holiday season. I love eggnog & whiskey, I love holiday parties for the festive atmosphere, the friends, and the food. I love everything about Christmas cookies, baking them, sharing them and eating them. I don’t actually love the powdered sugar explosions, but it’s almost inevetible this time of year! While I believe it’s fine to indulge in the joys of the holiday season, I also believe that we can make some simple daily decisions around food and lifestyle that will help to minimize the negative effects of holiday consumption. By gaining the knowledge of sugar’s effects on our health, we are empowered to make better choices on how we choose to consume. So with that in mind, we start with overwhelming amount of information that points at sugar’s negative effects before giving you the tools to manage your own blood glucose.

The overconsumption of sugar is a near universal problem, affecting all age groups in both wealthy and impoverished nations. The consumption of simple sugars and processed foods has been linked to the increased incidence of metabolic syndrome and in 2011, the UN declared that chronic, non communicable diseases posed a greater risk to health than infectious disease, for the first time in human history (Lustig et al., 2012). If we consider that there is evidence that humans are programmed to seek out sugar, based on our historical need for fat stores, but that we never adapted to curbing these cravings based on the 24/7 availability of highly processed sugars,  it helps us understand why so many of us feel ‘addicted’ to sugar (DiNicolantonio & O’Keefe & Wilson, 2017). While this craving was helpful when sugar was only found in limited plant foods, during limited seasons, it can easily lead to overconsumption in a society where it is available year round and added to a large variety of food products.  While glucose is needed at the cellular level, the consumption of simple sugars is unnecessary for health in current society. For this reason, I believe it is important to regularly ‘check-in’ with yourself to evaluate your relationship with simple sugars.

The adverse effects of excess sugar are innumerable and continuing to emerge. At the most basic level, sugar not utilized as fuel will be stored as fat and there is a limit to which adipose tissue can expand before damage occurs to the adipocytes and toxicity results (Klaassen & Watkins, 2015, p. 408 & 405). In the 2012 article, The toxic truth about sugar, Lustig (et.al) discusses the emerging dangers of excess sugar consumption. Lustig outlines the evidence that fructose shares many of the toxic effects of excess alcohol consumption including liver toxicity. The authors go on to explain that sugar meets the same four criteria that justify the regulation of alcohol throughout society. These criteria are, “unavoidability, toxicity, potential for abuse and negative impact on society”(p. 28).

Specifically, the potential for abuse is a significant problem for anyone consuming a western diet or even living in modern society. The general population consumes added sugars in processed food products where they may not expect to find them. To make it even more difficult for the average consumer, sugar is referred to by over 50 different names on nutrition labels. According to Lustig (2012), sugar has a three fold capacity for addiction, affecting the hormones that are integral to feelings of hunger, satiety and the pleasure response (p. 28). Studies in rats have shown that sugar is more addictive than cocaine (DiNicolantonio et al., 2017). Over consumption of sugary and processed foods also has the potential to lead to nutritional deficits as the calories within these products do not often contain significant amounts of necessary and beneficial nutrients and phytonutrients. 

Learning to regulate blood sugar spikes, through food intake and lifestyle changes, is invaluable to long term, optimal health.  By keeping blood glucose at a more steady state, we also limit cravings for sugary & highly processed carbohydrate foods, thus creating a positive feedback loop rather than the negative feedback loop created from sugar spikes and sugar crashes, which can lead to insulin resistance. 

So, how do you regulate blood glucose levels? 1. Dietary intake 2. Exercise 3. Stress reduction.

Dietary Intake:

Clearly, the avoidance of processed sugar and processed carbohydrates is the best way to keep blood glucose levels steady, but as we head into the holiday season, I find it best to be realistic about the choices we will most likely make over the next month and a half.  

*Combine higher carbohydrate foods with high protein, high fiber and/or fat.

By eating a mixture of macronutrients, the entire meal or snack will be absorbed more slowly, thus limiting a spike in blood glucose.  What does this look like?  Let’s look at a few examples.

1. Swap a buttermilk pancake with maple syrup for a buckwheat pancake with almond butter and berries.  Or even adding almond butter and berries to the buttermilk pancake with maple syrup will create a lower spike in blood glucose.  While this may be counterintuitive from a calorie perspective, you are much less likely to be craving food an hour after breakfast, thus going longer before your next meal and consuming fewer calories and more nutrients in the long run.
2. When eating pasta or similar simple carbs, try to keep the carb to protein ratio at 1:1. 1 cup of spaghetti (40g carbs) and 4 oz of chicken (40g protein) with a homemade sauce that’s free of sugar will have a much lower effect on blood glucose than a large bowl of pasta without protein and a jarred sauce that will inevitably be high in added sugars.  Vegetarians can mix beans into their pasta dishes, but keep in mind that while beans add protein and fiber, they also add carbohydrates, so a smaller amount of pasta mixed with a larger amount of beans and veggies is needed. 
3. The Christmas cookie!  Try to enjoy your Christmas cookie directly after a meal (meaning you don’t overeat during the meal!).  In this way, the cookie is digested as part of a larger group of macronutrients.  Choosing the cookie that has nuts and/or oats  instead of icing will make a difference.  A small glass of whole milk will add additional sugars, but fat and protein as well.  
4. Try to have some home baked treats on hand to replace the cookies and candies that are around.  When baking, try mixing different flours (nut flours, buckwheat, oat, ect. ), using honey, molasses or maple syrup (these still count as sugars, but have more nutrient density than white sugar), and including fiber rich foods such as shredded coconut, shredded sweet potato, avocado, or bananas.  By creating a treat that has a greater ratio of nutrient dense foods to sugar/white flour, you will have a treat on hand that will not create the same blood sugar spike as the traditional holiday treats.
   1. I highly recommend the Run Fast, Eat Slow cookbooks by Elyse Kopecky and Shalene Flanegan for go-to nutrient dense treats (as well as for yummy sauces and easy nutrient dense meals).
5. A ¼ tsp of cinnamon a day has been shown to decrease overall blood glucose levels.

Exercise:

All forms of exercise help to lower blood glucose levels.  A combination of high intensity, low intensity and strength training throughout a given week is ideal, but if all you can make happen is brisk walk, then don’t let the desire for perfection prevent you from getting some exercise in.

Stress Reduction:

We all know that chronic stress is not good for us, but stress has a direct, negative correlation to blood glucose and insulin resistance. Reducing stress may be the most difficult change to make for many people.  While dietary intake and exercise have more specific actions, methods to reduce stress tend to be more individualized.  Hatha yoga has been used in studies to help reduce stress with positive effects on blood glucose stabilization, but it is not necessarily attainable for everyone.  Other stress reduction techniques to try include, meditation, journaling, grounding (time with bare feet outside), listening to music while doing nothing else, coloring or doodling, puzzles, laughing, or spending time with good friends.  

How about zero calorie sweeteners?

I suggest avoiding all zero calorie sweeteners.  It will take time to sort out which ones are dangerous, which are safe and what the long term effect of zero calorie sweeteners is.  I do grow stevia and enjoy using the leaves as an infusion in teas, but the process from leaf to white powder is not one that I trust.  If you would like to read more about artificial sweeteners, you can read this The Risk of Consuming Artificial Sweeteners, a blog post I wrote last spring.

I will be guiding a virtual program, Detoxing Sugar; Finding Your Personal Sugar Tolerance, in the New Year.  You can get additional information about the program at this link and scroll to Jan. 8. By following the above guidelines for regulating blood glucose levels, the transition to a sugar detox will be significantly easier and with fewer symptoms of sugar withdrawal.

Resources

DiNicolantonio, J. J., O’Keefe, J.,H., & Wilson, W. L. (2018). Sugar addiction: Is it real?

A narrative review. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 52(14), 910.

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bjsports-2017-097971

DiNicolantonio JJ,Lucan SC. The wrong white crystals: not salt but sugar as aetiological in

 hypertension and cardiometabolic disease.Open Heart 2014;1:e000167. 

doi:10.1136/openhrt-2014-000167

Klaassen, C.D. & Watkins III, J.B. (2015). Casarett & Doull’s:Essentials of

toxicology. New York: McGraw Hill Education.

Lustig, R., Schmidt, L. & Brindis, C. (2012). The toxic truth about sugar. Nature 482,

27–29. https://doi.org/10.1038/482027a.