It might not be quite as glamorous as superfood Buddha bowls or aerial yoga, but managing blood sugar is a crucial, oft overlooked, facet of optimum health
The chances are that, other than knowing that the energy lull which inevitably kicks in after you’ve gone to town on those red velvet cupcakes is down to a ‘sugar rush’, your grasp of blood sugar management is lacking. No shade from us if that’s the case: unless you’re one of the 3.9 million people in the UK living with diabetes, it’s unlikely you’ll have learned the ins and outs of monitoring or managing your blood sugar level. But it pays to know the nitty gritty, not least because your body’s levels of blood sugar influence pretty much all bodily functions, both positively and negatively.
‘Blood sugar’ refers to the amount of glucose circulating in the blood at any given time. ‘Glucose is the smallest unit of sugar that is produced from the digestion of carbohydrates,’ explains Rachel Hampson, nutritional therapist and vice-chair at the Institute for Optimum Nutrition. ‘Transported in the blood, it’s taken in by the body’s cells and used to make energy, which is essential not just for muscular movement and activity, but also for all the biochemical and hormonal pathways in the body.’ Levels for a healthy adult should sit somewhere between 4mmol/L and 5.4mmol/L fasting (that is, on an empty stomach) or up to 7.8mmol/L after eating, according to Diabetes UK. These millimoles are equivalent to 1/1000th of a mole; a unit used by scientists to measure molecules.
Levels are obviously impacted when you take in carbohydrates, but there’s no hard and fast rule around what amount it takes to constitute a significant change. ‘People’s blood sugar response to different types of carbohydrate can vary quite significantly depending on metabolism, genetic make-up, stress levels, sleep patterns and even the microbes living in the gut,’ explains Hampson. A ‘spike’ is roughly defined by scientists as a sudden increase of more than 1.7mmol/L of glucose in your blood. A ‘crash’ is when the total amount of glucose in your bloodstream falls below 3.9mmol/L.
It isn’t only food that nudges the dial; sleep and stress also play a big role. Research published in the American Journal Of Physiology: Endocrinology And Metabolism found clocking less than six hours of sleep could ‘significantly’ elevate your glucose levels by the following morning. The jury’s out on exactly why, but it’s thought to be linked to sleep’s connection to cortisol. ‘This hormone – triggered by any kind of stressor – promotes the release of glucose, particularly from glycogen stores in the liver,’ says Hampson.
Tip the balance
‘Historically, the scientific and medical community thought that unless you’d been diagnosed with pre-diabetes or diabetes, your glucose l
