A Day in the Life of Your Low Blood Sugar
When I was a Nutritional Therapist in the ’80s and ’90s, I spent a lot of time helping clients to raise their blood sugar. This is still relevant today as even those people with diabetes and high blood sugar started with and probably still do have low blood sugar at times. The answer is to raise the blood sugar to an optimum range without it becoming too high or dropping too low. This is easy to achieve through dietary changes.
Morning
Difficulty getting going – need tea, coffee or a cigarette to start the day
Wake with a muzzy head or headache
Feel sick or nauseous first thing
Not hungry for breakfast
Feel negative or depressed first thing
Feel bad all day after a lie-in
Feel hungrier for breakfast after a large, late evening meal
Mid-Morning
Cravings for tea, coffee, cigarettes, biscuits, toast, etc
Difficulty concentrating
Feeling tired
Headache or muzzy head
Lunchtime
Feel tired after eating lunch
Shaky, trembly, dizzy if lunch is missed or late
Mid-Afternoon
Mood changes – feeling negative, can’t be bothered, irritable or depressed
Feel tired, yawning
Headache or muzzy head
Difficulty concentrating, forgetful
Better with deadlines to meet
Evening
Snacking while preparing food
Don’t feel full after evening meal
Need something sweet to end the evening meal
Tired after eating
Fall asleep when sitting down
Wanting to nibble all evening
Night time
Panic attacks, palpitations, sweating
Hunger in the middle of the night
Waking in the night with a busy mind
Hot flushes
Raising the blood sugar by means of diet involves eating sufficient of the right kind of food at regular intervals. I recommend my patients eat six times per day (Cooking Without has suggested eating regimes). By raising the blood sugar, the body not only obtains sufficient energy to detoxify and heal but low blood sugar symptoms (such as those above) start to disappear and the individual feels good while the body is healing.
Most of my patients feel between 50-90% better within three weeks just by changing their diets. However, that isn’t the end of the story as these people would need to stay with the diet and always eat six times per day in order to stay well. In order that more flexibility can be obtained, the answer is to detoxify the body of any physical, mental or emotional toxicity. Obviously, diet goes a long way towards achieving this detoxification but other aids can speed the process such as raising the mineral status of the body using supplementation, or counselling to help remove emotional toxicity. This is where seeing a qualified therapist is useful but the foundations of a good detoxifying diet will assist any other therapy to work more successfully.
Raising the blood sugar by means of diet means that pressure is taken off the liver and adrenal glands. The liver is our back-up support as far as blood sugar is concerned. The liver should provide a release of blood sugar if food has not been eaten or if extra energy is needed. However, most people’s livers these days are struggling to cope with a backlog of toxicity and are more likely to say “forget it, I’ve got too much to do”, rather than act as a back-up support. Until the body has been detoxified and its mineral status is good, the liver cannot be expected to provide a good blood sugar releasing service. If the liver is struggling to cope providing a back-up service, and the individual is not eating six times per day, then the only other place the body can get energy from is the adrenal glands.
The adrenal glands supply an emergency supply of blood sugar. They are there for that flight or fight response. Think of it like the money that one puts in the building society for rainy day. It won’t last long if we keep dipping into it each day. The same applies to the adrenal glands – they soon run out of reserves if we use them each day instead of feeding ourselves properly and obtaining our energy from suitable food. People however soon learn ways of kicking the adrenal glands to provide an extra surge of blood sugar. This may sound like a good idea, but eventually the adrenal glands stop responding and we have a permanent state of fatigue. Most individuals these days go round with adrenal glands which are exhausted and they too are exhausted. An extreme example of adrenal exhaustion is the condition of Chronic Fatigue (ME). Blood pressure can be a good indicator of adrenal exhaustion – it is always low when the adrenal glands are tiring.