How can balancing your blood sugar help your autoimmune condition?
Like many of you, I am getting back to my usual routine after a summer break. The most common pattern I see at this time of year is that the excitement and demands of a new routine mean that our eating habits can suffer, resulting in poor energy, fluctuating mood and most significantly, an increase in inflammation.
But what exactly is behind this? For most of us, it’s primarily because we are not balancing our blood sugar levels.
This is a key area in autoimmunity and one where we can often make a significant impact. The system that regulates blood sugar (glucose) control is commonly dysfunctional in autoimmunity.
Taking steps to improve your blood sugar balance can be one of the most impactful changes to make in autoimmunity. Yet few people know this.
Even those who do know about it are not sure how to implement it; often they think it simply refers to cutting back on sugar.
Our bodies like our blood sugar levels (the level of glucose in our blood) to remain within a very narrow range. Glucose is our fuel, and our bodies want to be able to rely on a steady supply.
To achieve this, sugars from our food need to be released steadily and slowly. If they are released too quickly, the supply will not last until the next meal.
You may recognise that feeling of a jittery sugar high swiftly followed by a slump, both in energy and mood. This pattern not only results in low energy and mood, but is actually extremely inflammatory.
The consequence of the sugars being released all in one go is that the body has to respond by producing huge amounts of insulin to redirect the sugar into the body’s cells.
The cells can become resistant to these high insulin levels over time, requiring the body to make even larger amounts of insulin to allow the glucose to be directed into the cells.
These high levels of insulin, if sustained over the long term, cause chronic inflammation, which exacerbates autoimmune conditions.
So how do we avoid having the sugars from our meal being released all at once?
Surprisingly, the solution is less about the sugars consumed and more about the foods we eat alongside them at that meal.
Foods that contain sugars are any that contain carbohydrates. A huge number diverse foods contain carbohydrates: vegetables, fruits, grains, legumes, soft drinks, pasta, biscuits, etc. The minimally processed foods containing carbohydrates are extremely useful to us and are an essential part of the diet. So the answer is not about excluding them, although you should consider cutting down on the highly processed foods, such as sweet, cakes, biscuits, sugary drinks, refined flours, pasta and rice, etc.
Instead our focus should be on combining these foods with other foods as part of a meal to slow down the release of sugars contained in them. Protein, healthy fats and fibre all significantly slow down the release.
This highlights why consuming our food as part of a meal, rather than snacking, is so important. The protein ( eg. meat, legumes or tofu), the fats (eg olive oil or oily fish), and the fibre (any unrefined plant foods), all serve to ensure the sugars from our foods are released slowly and do not contribute to inflammation.
Understanding how to balance a meal in this way can take some practice, and it is worth planning meals ahead initially to ensure they meet the criteria. Once you become used to it, you will be able to sense whether a meal is balanced or not by how you feel afterwards, nicely content, or jittery and unsettled.
The benefit of designing meals in this way is that they become more satisfying and reduce urges to snack on sugary foods between meals. Research also shows that when our bodies have access to a steady supply of sugar, we tend to make better decisions and feel calmer, so the downstream impact on other aspects of our lives can also be significant.
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