Swing High, Swing Low

As well as preventing blood sugar from shooting too high, it is also important to stop it dipping too low!

This happens after eating sugary or over-processed foods when the pancreas has removed the sugar from the blood stream. But it also happens if we don’t eat the right food at regular intervals. It may sound healthy to under-eat, but this puts pressure on our adrenal glands as they try to support us by mobilising stored sugar. Lots of people burn themselves out this way and probably three-quarters of the population have some level of adrenal exhaustion. You don’t ever need to go hungry and you should certainly never feel faint or ill through lack of food.

A friend of mine whose husband was pre-diabetic was finding that his blood sugar was always too high after eating breakfast, even though he was eating a sensible, sugar-free meal. I suggested that she try giving him supper before bed of low-glycaemic foods (see page 16 in my book) such as oatcakes and nut butter. Almost instantly his blood sugar levels stabilised.

A similar effect has been noted in tests on diabetics – those who skipped breakfast were found to have higher blood sugar levels after lunch. If we don’t eat sufficient food regularly, the body releases stored sugar in response to this stress, but because it doesn’t know if the stress is caused by lack of food or if it needs enough energy to run a marathon, it releases lots of sugar just in case. If we ran the marathon, this sugar would be used for energy but for most individuals, the sugar just remains in the blood stream.