Ways to prevent or reduce blood sugar surges....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 9-15-2009

Yesterday, we posted on several ways you can boost your immune system even while you get older. We also did a related post last Friday.

We ended with this:

“7. Go very easy on sugar when you eat it; don’t eat it often; don’t use other kinds of sweeteners such as high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners or refined grains or foods that contain them and get regular exercise, including some vigorous exercise without overdoing it when you are well.

Eating sugar and blood sugar surges tend to directly turn down your immune system.

That’s one the main reasons why diabetics have trouble throwing off infections.

Sugar and related foods such as refined grains cause blood sugar surges. Artificial sweeteners are likely bad for you directly AND they cause sugar cravings that cause most people to wind up eating more sugar and related foods. Exercise, particularly regular and vigorous exercise helps burn blood sugar directly & helps your insulin control it normally instead of ineffectively.

In fact, there are enough ways to prevent or reduce blood sugar surges, our post tomorrow will be about them.”

As you can see this section of yesterday’s post lists many of the ways to do that.

1. Sugars, high fructose corn syrup, and refined grains and many starchy foods, such as white potatoes and rice produce blood sugar surges. That’s particularly true if you don’t eat food with health OK protein, health OK fats or oils, and foods that contain fiber at the same time to buffer the effect. Artificial sweeteners are likely bad for you directly AND they cause sugar cravings that cause most people to wind up eating more sugar and related foods.

So, one of the most effective ways to prevent or stop blood sugar surges avoid eating foods or processed pseudo foods that contain these things. That specifically means to avoid ever drinking soft drinks, for example.

So, the best way to avoid blood sugar surges is to come as close as you can to not eating or drinking these things. You don’t have to put out the fire if you don’t light it in the first place.

Of course this puts a priority on eating health OK protein foods such as nuts, beef fed only grass, eggs from truly free range, pasture fed chickens, and wild caught fish; eating health OK oils from nuts, extra virgin olive oil, and avocadoes, truly large amounts of several kinds of nonstarchy vegetables, some whole grain foods if you aren’t trying to lose fat weight, and some whole fruit -- for most or all of your food.

These are the foods that humans evolved to eat and thrive when they did. Like it or not, your body is set to eat that way too.

2. Muffle the effect if you do occasionally eat things that cause blood sugar surges otherwise.

For example, if you eat raisins, which even though they have some fiber have enough concentrated sugars to boost blood sugar, eat some pecans at the same time. The pecans contain health OK oils, health OK protein, and fiber. So the combination produces far lower blood sugar spiking than eating just the raisins. It even tastes good. Or in other words, the combination of the high glycemic raisins with the very low glycemic pecans produces a moderate glycemic effect.

If very occasionally you eat apple pie, make sure it has plenty of cinnamon or add some to your piece. They tested the glycemic effect of apple pie expecting it to be high and found it was quite moderate & then found the cinnamon in the pie filling was the cause.

Or, if you want to have some croutons made from refined grain flour in your salad, be sure to add some extra virgin olive oil and some vinegar to the salad as the dressing and some chopped boiled egg or shrimp, or feta cheese.

The health OK oil in the extra virgin olive oil, the fiber in the greens, and the protein in the chopped boiled egg or shrimp or feta cheese are all low glycemic foods. And the vinegar slows the emptying of your stomach which has a proven lowering & slowing effect on the resulting increase in blood sugar.

3. Increase your body’s ability to handle it when you do boost your blood sugar temporarily.

Having adequate chromium and magnesium in your system has this health effect and others. So, you can increase your body’s ability to handle sugars without bad health effects by taking 400 to 600 mg a day of magnesium and 200 to 400 mcg of chromium polynicotinate.

But the most effective way to help your body handle sugars and other high glycemic foods is to get enough exercise.

One way to do it is to go on a walk, just after eating. That’s pretty straightforward since you then actually use the additional blood sugar somewhat as it tries to build up, the build up is less. You actually directly lower your blood sugar by doing so.

The other way to do it is to do some vigorous exercise most days of the week and do it every week. One study even found that 2 minutes of vigorous exercise two or three times a week worked. Things like 5 minutes three times a week of jumping rope and 20 minutes of strength training twice a week with a day of rest in between also work. These things dramatically improve your body’s response to insulin, so when your body acts to damp down and use the blood sugar that surges in and to lower your blood sugar to safe levels, the insulin does the job.

Totally sedentary people develop insulin resistance so this effect of insulin happens far less or even not at all. Then insulin levels and blood sugar tend to surge easily and stay too high.

And, THAT tends to cause type 2 diabetes and virtually always causes you to gain excess fat.


So, if you want to keep your immune system strong; avoid type 2 diabetes and drugs for it; and avoid or reverse being too fat, do as many of these things as you can to prevent or lower excessive blood sugar surges.