Our lives and bodies rely a lot more than we realize on the “Goldilocks” principle.
We need enough of something – many things – but not too much.
Just enough.
Blood sugar is a great example. We need the glucose we extract from food to burn in our muscles for energy – so we can move, function, and just plain live.
But when blood sugar is too high for too long, it’s destructive. It can increase your risk for:
* Vascular disease
* Kidney disease
* Nerve damage
* Dementia
* Eye problems
Excess blood sugar is tough on both your veins and arteries and your nerves.
When your blood sugar is chronically too high, you could be diagnosed with diabetes or prediabetes.
If your fasting blood sugar is 126 mg/dl or higher on two separate blood glucose tests, you’re diabetic.
(Under 100 mg = “normal” and 101 to 125 = prediabetes.)
Another good test for blood sugar is the A1C. It’s a measure of how much sugar your blood has been exposed to over the past two to three months.
A 6.5% A1C score on two separate tests indicates diabetes.
(Under 5.7% is “normal.” From 5.7% o 6.4% is prediabetes.)
In practice, “prediabetes” is basically an early stage of diabetes. If you’re prediabetic, you’re already on the road to diabetes and need to make lifestyle changes to prevent further deterioration of your blood vessels, and to lower insulin resistance.
Remember: we require glucose to provide energy for our cells. We get it from food. Our body is supposed to transport it from our digestive organs to every cell in our body.
Glucose is NOT supposed to just indefinitely hang around in your blood. The whole point is to get it into your cells to provide energy.
The problem diabetics have is that, because they have so much insulin resistance, too much of the sugar they eat just hangs around in their blood vessels, creating the above list of health problems.
Diabetes is a Massive Medical Problem Around the World
It’s the fastest-growing disease in both China and India – and many smaller countries as well.
In the United States, around 11% of adults have Type II diabetes. About 38% have prediabetes. Add those figures. They indicate half the adult population of this country has chronic excess blood sugar.
Because insulin resistance and subsequent diabetes are so closely associated with other unhealthy conditions, such as obesity, diabetes tends to be a “gateway” disease to heart problems and cancer.
People with uncontrolled diabetes and who also manage not to die of a heart attack or cancer, can go blind, develop constant neuritis – pain in their nerves – and eventually require amputation of a foot.
Obviously, you don’t want to let it get that far.
What’s Insulin Resistance?
Insulin is the hormone that tells your cells to accept glucose from your blood, so it can be turned into energy by your cells.
Insulin resistance is simply your cells resisting orders from insulin to take in sugar from your blood.
So far, medical science doesn’t seem to agree on any one specific cause.
Insulin resistance is highly correlated with such factors as:
* Increasing age
* Obesity
* High triglyceride levels
* Atherosclerosis – hardening of arteries
* Hypertension – high blood pressure
* Low levels of physical activity
* High consumption of energy-rich foods, especially high in saturated fat
Some blame it exclusively on eating too many carbohydrates. Some on saturated fat.
Therefore, if you’re dealing with high blood sugar, you want to make a lot of lifestyle changes, to eat more unprocessed foods instead of processed flours and sugars – and to consume less saturated fat.
You’ll also want to get a lot more exercise on a near-daily basis – plus quit smoking plus sleep eight hours every night.
Those are just the basics, though. You’ll also want to try anything healthy that will lower your average blood sugar level.
Beyond The Basics
1. Cinnamon
Cinnamon is a spice we all recognize, and usually associate with sweetness. For controlling blood sugar, however, you should NOT mix the spice with sugar, as people do when – for example – making cinnamon toast.
Only the spice cinnamon can help you – NOT additional sugar, or cinnamon rolls.
Cinnamon contains polyphenols that help activate the glucose detection systems of our cells. When cells are better at detecting glucose, they’re better at removing it from your blood and burning it themselves (which is the idea).
In one study of people with elevated blood sugar levels, half were given 500 mg of a water-soluble extract of cinnamon every day. The other half – the control group – received a placebo.
After two months, the half taking the cinnamon demonstrated:
* Improved insulin sensitivity
* Lower fasting insulin and glucose
* Lower LDL (“bad”) and total cholesterol
2. Shilajit
This herb has been used medicinally in India for centuries, including to manage diabetes.
One clinical trial tested the effectiveness of shilajit on a group of diabetics. They took 500 mg of shilajit two times daily.
After three months, the diabetics who took the shilajit showed greater improvement in their blood sugar levels than the control group.
3. Many more plant compounds
Cinnamon may be the most powerful way to reduce insulin resistance, but many phytochemicals may also help lower it. One study from 2019 found that perhaps as many as 900+ plant compounds may help.
You get them by eating plenty of fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and legumes. Also, use lots of spices, including cumin, turmeric, basil, rosemary, dill, garlic, parsley, fennel, nutmeg, fenugreek and oregano.
Your blood sugar will go up after a meal. But if you eat a lot of antioxidants and phytonutrients in your meal – that is, unprocessed plant foods – they blunt that spike.
Unprocessed plant foods contain not only antioxidants but lots of fiber. Fiber slows down your digestion, which also slows down the rate at which glucose is shuttled into your blood.
Therefore, eating meals high in unprocessed plant foods blunts the damage you get from a high spike of blood sugar.
https://www.niddk.nih.gov/health-information/diabetes/overview/what-is-diabetes/prediabetes-insulin-resistance
https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/diabetes/diagnosis-treatment/drc-20371451
https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/22206-insulin-resistance
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15297079/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5688834/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26615402/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6891552/
