The sugar disaster: is your blood sugar wreaking havoc with your body. Does it affect your mood at different times of the day, causing highs and lows enough to drive you crazy? How are your energy levels? Do they fluctuate as well?
And what about your weight? Sugar has contributed to the high rates of overweight and obesity in America that are now pretty much out of control. Finally, has your blood sugar levels already made you sick?
Here’s what’s hard to understand. We need sugar in our blood at all times. It fuels our muscles and our brain. BUT.. we don’t need sugar in everything we eat and drink. High sugar drinks should be limited – check out how much sugar is in Coke and other soda pop.
The sugar should come from the healthy foods that we eat – low glycemic foods that release sugar into your blood stream at a slower rate than high glycemic foods. High glycemic foods flood your body with “fast sugar” that dramatically raises your insulin levels and, over time, sets you up for developing diabetes and other diseases.
You should research high and low glycemic foods so that you can get educated and include more foods with a low glycemic index. Below are 2 resources, though you can find a great deal more information if you do your own research online. Foods are assigned a GI (glycemic index) score to help you make healthy choices.
Glycemic Index of Foods
Harvard List of 100 Common Foods
Glycemic Index of Foods from the American Diabetes Association
If you have impaired fasting glucose or impaired glucose tolerance, you are pre-diabetic. This means that the sugar levels in your body are not at the normal range and you are at a higher risk of getting diabetes.
The Centers for Disease Control estimated in 2011 that about 79 million Americans, or 35% of the population, are pre-diabetic. That’s a lot of people who have some work to do if they want to reduce their chances of being diabetic at some point and for the rest of their lives.
If you are pre-diabetic you might not know that your blood sugar is too high. You may have no symptoms, and yet most of you will get full-blown type 2 diabetes or face an increased risk of having a heart attack or stroke.
The good news is that you can reduce your risk of developing diabetes by getting your blood sugar to a normal level. The Diabetes Prevention Program Outcomes Study (DPPOS) proved this.
What scientific research and doctors tell us is that we should not be overweight if we want to keep a healthy blood sugar. And if you are overweight, you need to lose weight through a healthy diet and regular exercise.
Learning which foods raise your blood sugar is helpful so that you can reduce or eliminate those foods in your diet. As we stated earlier, low glycemic is a word you should become familiar with because low glycemic foods help balance your blood glucose levels (see links above).
There are medications to control blood sugar. Your doctor will discuss those with you if you need them.
All-natural supplements for normal glucose metabolism
Natural supplements that target blood sugar regulation are also available to provide support for normal glucose metabolism. They can help your body transport glucose into your cells and utilize blood sugar more effectively to be able to retain normal blood sugar levels.
The Shaklee brand, #1 Natural Nutrition Company in America, combines banaba leaf extract, chromium, magnesium, vanadium, zinc, taurine and alpha lipoic acid – minerals, botanicals and powerful antioxidants – to help your body regulate blood glucose. They are formulated together in a vegetarian capsule to help you retain normal blood sugar levels that is essential to long term health and wellness.
To learn more, visit Glucose Regulation Complex.