10 Harmful BLOOD SUGAR MYTHS Your Doctor Still Believes

Hello Health Champions. Today we're going to  talk about 10 harmful blood sugar myths that  

most doctors still believe. The first one is  that blood sugar from carbohydrates would be  

our primary source of energy. That your body  depends and can't function without this energy  

source. So here's how it really works that if you  eat 80% of your calories as carbohydrate then 80  

percent of your energy will also come from dietary  carbohydrates, whereas if you only ate 10% of  

your calories from carbohydrates then 10% of your  energy would come from dietary carbohydrates. It's  

as simple as that there is no rocket science here  however if your body is metabolically flexible  

then it can switch from one energy source to  another whereas if you've trained it to only  

use one such as carbohydrate then it might have  a hard time switching back and forth but even if  

you eat 80% of your calories from carbohydrate  you're still probably only going to get about  

50 percent of your energy from blood sugar and  the reason is that Sugar can turn into fat for  

storage so if you eat carbohydrates you raise your  blood sugar whatever you don't use in this moment  

has to be stored as glycogen or converted into  fat so a lot of the carbs you eat will get first  

turned into fat and then we use that energy from  fat but what we have to realize is that equation  

can't go the other way we can turn sugar to  fat but we can can't turn fat to Sugar we do  

not have the enzymes as humans to do that now  this is truth with slight modification because  

you can't turn fat to Sugar but the way that we  store fat the way we store most of the energy on  

our bodies is as triglycerides so we store those  fatty acids the fat on a backbone of glycerol and  

that glycerol does turn into glucose into blood  sugar and that accounts for about five percent of  

all the energy that you store as fat so we can't  turn fat to Sugar but we still have a few percent  

of carbohydrates stored in that fat so to speak so  in terms of blood sugar being the most important  

energy source that's a big myth because fat is a  better energy source it runs clean and it provides  

very very stable energy that's why we store our  extra energy on the body as fat myth number two  

is that the brain can only use glucose for energy  that it has no other energy sources and that's  

simply not true but I can see where people might  start thinking that because on a high carb diet  

if you get most of your calories from carbohydrate  then you will have pretty much 100% of the brain's  

energy from glucose but a lot of people will  now jump to the conclusion that that means the  

glucose is the preferred fuel because it uses  it first and it's the other way around it's the  

exact opposite that glucose is an emergency  when we have something called hyperglycemia  

meaning blood sugar that is too high that is  an emergency a very high level can put you into  

a coma so if we just ate a bunch of carbs and  absorbed all that glucose and it wouldn't take  

very much even because on average you have about  three to four grams of glucose as blood sugar so  

if you increase that tenfold that means you ate  30 to 40 grams of carbohydrate you absorbed it  

but your body didn't bother dealing with it to  get it out of there you would have a blood sugar  

in the range of a thousand and you would be in  a coma so we can have hyperglycemia which is  

an emergency we could also have hyperlipidemia  or hyper proteinemia which is high fat or high  

protein but those are not emergencies there is no  necessary hormone for the body to release to deal  

immediately short term with high lipids or high  protein but if we have high glucose that is an  

emergency and we have to deal with that right now  and that's why in the first few minutes of eating  

glucose or carbohydrate we will have a response in  the form of insulin to deal with that glucose and  

that's why we use it first if on the other hand  you do a low carb diet you do ketosis or just low  

carb now you'll have only about 25 percent of your  energy to the brain coming from glucose of course  

it's a sliding scale it's going to start at 100%  and work its way down as you eat less carbs as  

your body starts burning more fat and producing  some ketones but there's some good evidence that  

the brain doesn't even need that much glucose  because they've done done some studies where  

they had people who fasted for a few days so  they're fat adapted they're well into producing  

ketones at a healthy level which is about three  to four millimoles and these people they injected  

them with insulin to try to push the glucose down  artificially and see what would happen to see if  

they could induce some neurological symptoms of  hypoglycemia but they injected them with insulin  

and they got their glucose down as low as 9 which  is about 10 percent of a normal level but even at  

only 10 percent glucose the brain was doing just  fine they had no symptoms at all of hypoglycemia  

so what that means is the brain was probably at  that point running at 90 percent of its energy  

from ketones so chances are the brain doesn't need  glucose at all it just uses it if it's available  

and normally we would never get as low as 9 or  10 in blood glucose because the body will always  

have some carbohydrate floating around anyway  like I mentioned fat is stored together with  

some glycerol that will turn into glucose so we're  always going to have some glucose sitting around  

and that's probably why it levels off around 25  percent but here's the problem when we're told  

over and over that carbohydrate is the foundation  of our energy production now we start believing  

other things as well such as that if you don't  eat a breakfast if you don't eat carbohydrates  

on a regular basis if you don't top off your  blood sugar now you won't have any brain energy  

you won't have any Focus you can't concentrate  if your kids don't eat cereal for breakfast they  

won't make it to lunch then get bad grades and so  on so all these different myths they're easy to  

believe because when we eat this way we also  develop a carb dependency that means you eat  

some carbohydrates and then your blood sugar goes  up the insulin brings it back down but now as soon  

as it's low you fill it back up so your body  learns that there's every two hours every so  

often there's going to be some new carbohydrate  so now you start depending on that type of energy  

delivery and now if you miss a meal or if you  skip a meal or if you cut back dramatically on  

your carbohydrates now your body won't know where  to get the energy from because you trained it into  

only using carbohydrates and blood glucose now if  you were to quit cold turkey like you'd just go  

on a fast or you just go straight into keto what's  going to happen is your body is not going to have  

its usual fuel source its usual energy source  so you're going to feel really lousy for about  

two to three days while the body shifts around  its metabolic pathways from carbohydrate to fat  

and it starts making some ketones and then you  will be totally fine but most people never get  

through the two to three days because they're  afraid that something is wrong now another way  

better than cold turkey I believe is just cut down  the carbs by maybe 10 percent per day or every  

few days and now your body will transition much  more smoothly and you won't have these bad days  

so because the brain does have multiple fuels then  that is also a myth myth number three is that this  

blood sugar is only a problem as we age any again  it's easy to see where this comes from because the  

majority of people over 65 have poor blood sugar  handling or or even diabetic but it doesn't mean  

it doesn't start earlier and because of so many  different factors that we didn't have a hundred  

years ago such as an abundance of processed foods  we have guidelines that tell us to eat almost all  

carbohydrates we have more sedentary Lifestyles  we live more with computers we're busier we don't  

move we don't go outside and we have more snacks  there's more snack availability plus we're told  

that we have to eat them to top off our blood  sugar and some other relatively new factors like  

seed oils that promote insulin resistance and  metabolic disease as well as overeating because  

everything has chemical additives and chemical  flavorings that trick the brain into eating more  

than we normally should so for all these reasons  it doesn't take so long to break your metabolism  

anymore and as a result we're seeing metabolic  disease blood sugar problems type 2 diabetes going  

further and further down in ages until we have  it a lot in the teens and even in pre-teens so  

type 2 diabetes used to be called adult onset  diabetes but that's not so much the case even  

though it mostly affects the elderly it it more  and more it's affecting all ages so again it's a  

myth that we shouldn't worry about it till we're  older myth number four is that all different types  

of sugar are pretty much the same they affect the  blood sugar the same way so there's two issues we  

have to understand here one is the glycemic  index which is basically a measurement of how  

quickly something that we eat raises blood sugar  and then related to that is glycemic load which  

basically just says how much of that thing are you  eating and anything that drives up blood sugar is  

going to create an insulin response and over time  create insulin resistance and once we have insulin  

resistance that means the body is resisting the  action of insulin which is to help the glucose  

into the cells so with insulin resistance the  sugar can't get out of the bloodstream as well  

and now blood sugar levels rise and insulin levels  rise because the body thinks it has to produce  

more and more insulin to handle this glucose  that the cells don't want anymore but there's  

also a second mechanism that has to do with a  fatty liver a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease  

and that's a different mechanism but it turns  out to be even stronger in terms of producing  

insulin resistance and metabolic disease and here  is why sugars affect the body very differently so  

if we start off with what's called a disaccharide  which means that there are two glucose molecules  

linked up with the bond so it monosaccharide  would be just one ring two rings would be a  

disaccharide and if both of these are glucose then  this is something we call maltose that's the name  

of that sugar and this has a glycemic index of  a hundred and five so that's interesting that  

one of these which goes out almost instantly has  a glycemic index of a hundred but when they're  

linked up then for some reason in the body that  produces an even higher glycemic index and even  

faster blood sugar response so where does maltose  come from is that something we eat a lot well if  

you've heard of starch if you've heard of complex  carbohydrates that is what that is if we link  

these rings together glucose by glucose if we link  them by the hundreds or by the thousands they're  

called starch and as soon as you eat that rice or  that bread you start chopping off little units of  

these huge chains and this happens very quickly in  terms of minutes and when we chop off a two ring  

unit that's called maltose this is exactly what  we're getting and we have a glycemic response  

that's very very high from this but we don't have  to change a whole lot if this ring stays the same  

but this ring becomes something called galactose  now this sugar is called lactose so the first ring  

is the same that's glucose but the second ring  is different instead of glucose it's something  

called galactose now this blood sugar response  slows down dramatically we're down to 45 which  

is much much slower so it's still a sugar and we  shouldn't overload on lactose either especially if  

we're sensitive to lactose if we don't have the  enzyme to break it down but this sugar is very  

very different even though on the surface it looks  very similar the next sugar is the one we really  

want to understand so if we have this same first  ring being glucose but the second ring is fructose  

now this is table sugar sucrose and the problem  here is that this fructose behaves very very  

differently the glucose in all of these will tend  to raise blood sugar but to different degrees  

however this fructose does not raise blood sugar  very much but it has the same effect on the liver  

pretty much really close as what alcohol does  because fructose and alcohol can only be processed  

by the liver so the tendency to overload the  liver is very very high so if you drink a half  

a bottle of whiskey every day then that alcohol is  basically going to plug up the liver but the same  

thing happens if you drink a bunch of sugar if  you eat sugar if you drink sugar if you eat high  

fructose corn syrup or drink high fructose corn  syrup the same thing happens because this fructose  

is going to overload your liver it's going to  create a non-alcoholic fatty liver disease and  

move your whole metabolic disease toward insulin  resistance so these are called disaccharides and  

we can't absorb these the way they are we need to  break this bond with an enzyme and maltase lactase  

sucrase however once we have broken it now these  are called monosaccharides so again if we break  

these so they're floating around by themselves  now they're monosaccharides and now we basically  

have what's called high fructose corn syrup and  if we have glucose by itself the glycemic index  

is a hundred if we have fructose by itself it is  about 25 and that's why sucrose or table sugar  

has a glycemic index of 65 it kind of sits in the  middle however high fructose corn syrup because  

these are floating around freely we don't have  to break that Bond first so this gets out even  

faster and the glucose goes straight into the  bloodstream at a number 100 and the fructose goes  

to the liver and clogs it up so basically from an  insulin resistance and Liver Health standpoint we  

need to understand that glucose is bad because it  drives insulin but fructose is worse now fructose  

exists in table sugar and in high fructose  corn syrup and also in all fruits and in all  

juices but it doesn't exist in starch so if you  eat rice or potato it doesn't get in from there  

and also in milk it's a different sugar so we  don't get fructose from those and that's why  

we need to be especially careful with things that  come with table sugar high fructose corn syrup and  

from fruit and especially juices so how bad these  are depends on how much fructose they have so  

most high fructose corn syrup is about 55 percent  fructose that's why it's called high but it starts  

already at 42 so that's not really high fructose  that's kind of low fructose corn syrup but it's  

still bad because you have the glucose to raise  blood sugar and you have the fructose to clog the  

liver and this can go all the way up to 90 percent  of fructose and then there are natural things like  

honey and even though honey has some benefits and  it has some other things in there it basically  

can consists entirely of glucose and fructose so  it has about four parts fructose to three parts  

glucose on average it depends on what kind of bees  make it and where they reside and so forth but  

for all intents and purposes honey is just a high  fructose syrup that's what it is in terms of blood  

sugar now that's not all bad because the glycemic  index of Honey is really low and if you're insulin  

sensitive if you don't need to avoid carbohydrates  very strictly then honey would be a better source  

of sugar because it's natural because it has a  very low glycemic index and if you're not insulin  

resistant then a small amount of fructose is not  going to hurt you it hurts you when the doses  

start becoming toxic which Unfortunately they have  become for most of the population and another very  

common misconception is agave which is basically  Cactus syrup they make tequila from that and Agave  

is another high fructose syrup it can go anywhere  from about 55 percent and all the way up to 90  

percent so even though again the glycemic index  is relatively low if you are insulin resistant if  

you have a fatty liver then this is the last thing  that you want so again sugars are very different  

so this is clearly a myth myth number five is  that orange juice would somehow be healthy and  

a good food for diabetics and people with blood  sugar handling problems because it's natural well  

if you understand what we talked about that it  doesn't matter if it occurs naturally in the food  

or if it's in white sugar once we turn it into  juice that that juice that sugar is available  

just as fast or faster than sugar you understand  that it doesn't matter if it's added sugar or not  

it's still that same sugar and juices have 50  percent glucose 50 fructose it's going to give  

or take plus minus five percent depending on the  fruit but these are basically all the sugars that  

are in there you're getting glucose and fructose  no matter what so that is another huge myth number  

six is that small frequent meals would help blood  sugar now I guess you could say that's true if by  

that you mean that it helps raise blood sugar but  of course that's the last thing that you want so  

what this really does what frequent meals do is  that they perpetuate a dependence on carbohydrate  

and they perpetuate unstable blood sugar blood  sugar roller coaster and again it's not rocket  

science that if you have if you eat something and  it raises blood sugar and then you release some  

insulin and it brings it down and then you trained  your body to eat carbohydrate every couple hours  

then every time your blood sugar drops a little  bit you're going to get hungry you're going to  

get a craving because you trained your body into  doing that and if you eat small frequent meals  

then your blood sugar is going to go like this  throughout the day and every time blood sugar is  

down you're going to reinforce this dependency  on carbohydrates you're going to want to have  

something to eat all the time that your blood  sugar drops a little bit and along those lines  

we also often hear that it is dangerous it's bad  for you or even dangerous to skip a meal or to do  

some fasting because then what would happen is you  couldn't function apparently when your blood sugar  

dropped a little bit it and I get it that's why  there are so few humans left on the planet because  

every time that they had a pizza party and they  forgot to save some for the morning after then  

they just wiped out they didn't have any energy  when they woke up so they couldn't go and find  

more food and I'm joking of course we've function  often even better when we start breaking down some  

fat and making some ketones very often the mind  and the Brain sharpens so that we can be more  

effective in going out and finding that food now  they do have a slight point there is one category  

of people where it can be dangerous to skip a  meal and that is if you are on insulin therapy  

so this would be primarily a type 1 diabetic so if  you're on an insulin pump for example that dishes  

out insulin so you eat something and the insulin  pump on automatically kicks out insulin but then  

you don't eat again and it kicks out some more  insulin now that blood sugar could hit dangerously  

low levels because you're not fat adapted you  don't have any ketones so now when the blood  

sugar goes low you become truly hypoglycemic and  you can go into a coma because of low blood sugar  

theoretically that could happen to a type  2 diabetic but it would be much much harder  

because even if you're on insulin you already have  too much insulin so adding a little bit more isn't  

going to make a dramatic difference because  your cells are so resistant to that insulin  

so you might drop down a little bit below what  you're used to but it would probably not reach  

dangerous levels so that's another myth small  frequent meals help perpetuate the imbalance  

and the problem myth number seven is that complex  carbohydrates help control blood sugar now let's  

look at a few different foods if we compare sugar  white bread and whole wheat bread because we hear  

all the time that sugar is terrible you should  limit that white Bread's not so great but whole  

wheat is the best thing that you could eat you  should eat as much brown rice and whole wheat  

bread and complex carbs as possible but let's  see how they actually impact blood sugar so sugar  

table sugar sucrose has a glycemic index of  65. white bread is quite a bit worse meaning  

it raises blood sugar faster at 75 and then whole  wheat which is supposed to be so much better is  

74. so like just over one percent better which  is minuscule so from a blood sugar perspective  

there is no difference there is no significant  difference yes one has a little bit of fiber  

it has a few more minerals and vitamins but if  we're looking to handle and control blood sugar  

there really is no difference and yet these  recommendations are on every official site  

every list every agency that you can find and so  often it's that we can't get away from the idea  

of what we're supposed to eat and we think that  what we've been eating for the last 30 years is  

what it has to be it has to be all this bread and  pasta and rice and processed foods and so on but  

very often it's simply that wheat whole wheat is  a little better than something else so yeah it is  

insignificantly better than white bread and sure  I would agree that it's better than jelly beans  

it is better than Coca-Cola it is better than  Donuts but it doesn't make it good but we need  

to eat are things like meat and nuts and eggs and  low starch vegetables leafy greens avocados and  

things like that because their glycemic index runs  in the single digits or in the teens so those are  

foods that truly will control blood sugar but you  have to shift your mind and understand that you  

can actually eat those things that's what our  ancestors used to eat myth number seven better  

than does not mean good myth number eight is that  protein does not affect blood sugar so we have to  

understand what the purpose of protein is first of  all it can only do two things and number one is to  

become become a building block as you want to make  new tissues as you wear out different body parts  

and you make new cells then protein is needed for  those replacement parts but anything that doesn't  

become tissue any protein you eat that does not  turn into building blocks and tissue is excess  

it's extra it's left over and it will be turned  into glucose you can't store protein other than in  

the tissue so if it doesn't become tissue it will  become glucose now this is very very insignificant  

amount and speed compared to eating sugar or  carbohydrate but we still need to point it out to  

understand that this is how it works and therefore  if you're really really trying to be strict with  

a protein with with your blood sugar then you  should not eat excess protein you should not  

load up on protein just because you think it has  zero impact and you know this to be true because  

on your blood test is something called BUN blood  urea nitrogen and this nitrogen is the residue  

from the protein as we turn the amino acid into  glucose there's a nitrogen residue that ends up  

in the bloodstream so if you eat a huge excess of  protein then your bun is going to go up but the  

next thing to understand is that most protein in  nature comes packaged with fat so a lot of people  

who eat carnivore they understand this people only  eat animal products they don't necessarily eat all  

that much protein so if you for example if you  eat a juicy steak or some ground beef that has  

what they call 80 lean 20 fat then the calorie  distribution is actually 27 of calories from  

protein and 73 from fat so even someone who is  carnivore that you think they often tell you  

and and people often think that they eat nothing  but protein and yet it's almost three quarters  

of their energy from fat which is a good stable  fuel source so even eating nothing but meat these  

people probably still don't overload or don't  overload very much on protein so it's a myth  

that protein has no impact on blood sugar but the  impact is not very large unless you were to eat  

huge amounts if you really try to focus on getting  a lot of protein from lean sources like chicken  

breast now it is quite easy to overload on protein  and then we get into the medical handling of these  

issues and this is where we really need to  understand how harmful these myths are myth  

number nine is the type 2 diabetes would be best  detected and managed by measuring glucose and A1C  

so what does that mean if we'd run a very common  blood test glucose is on virtually every blood  

test and I think it should be then the lab range  says it should be between 70 to 100 milligrams per  

deciliter which for the average person means you  have about three to four grams of glucose floating  

around in your bloodstream at any given time and  not as common but it is getting pretty common and  

something that absolutely need to be on a blood  test is hemoglobin A1c which they say should be  

below 5 0.7 and hemoglobin A1c is simply a protein  in your red blood cell in your hemoglobin and the  

more sugar that you have in the bloodstream  at any given time the more sugar is going to  

stick to that protein in the red blood cell and  the average red blood cell lives about a hundred  

days so by measuring how much sugar is stuck as a  percentage we get a rough estimate a pretty good  

estimate of what the glucose is over a hundred day  period and both of these are very inexpensive and  

simple I think they should be on every blood  test but glucose fluctuates all the time and  

we don't get a whole lot of information from it  A1C is a much better marker but still has huge  

limitations which we'll talk about in a second now  I believe that a healthy glucose should be more so  

in the 80s I think by the time you're creeping  up toward 100 there's already an issue and if  

you're doing fasting or a ketogenic diet then it's  okay for it to drop below the 80s your A1C I think  

should be below 5.4 5.3 somewhere around that  by the time it's 5.7 you're already very close  

to pre-diabetic and you have some significant  momentum going in the wrong direction so those  

two need to be on every blood test but here's why  it's a grave mistake to rely on those two alone  

let's say that you start off with a normal  blood glucose and then while you are healthy  

it takes a certain amount of insulin which  is also a healthy level to control that  

and then let's say that a few years go by and you  check it again and your glucose is normal once  

more but if they only measure glucose and A1C  then they're going to get the glucose which is  

instantaneous they're going to get the A1C which  is a hundred day average but here's the point  

both of those markers glucose and A1C are  controlled variables the body works very very  

hard at keeping it down like we've talked about  throughout here high blood sugar is an emergency  

the body starts counteracting it within minutes  because it's dangerous if you were to absorb  

that entire meal of carbohydrate even if it's  just 30 40 grams and you did not get any blood  

sugar out you would be in a coma before that meal  was absorbed so sugar blood sugar is a controlled  

variable so let's say that five years later it  the blood sugar is still controlled at that level  

but it takes two to three times more insulin  to control it now if we only measure glucose  

in A1C we won't find it but if we measure insulin  we'll see hey this is this is changing something  

is increasing here we wait another five years  glucose is still normal it's probably still  

right in in this range right here but now that  insulin is up five-fold so the point here is that  

because it's controlled we can't notice a  difference we can't find anything on that  

marker until the body has failed to control  it so the basically the whole system has to be  

broken your carbohydrate tolerance machine has to  break before we can see any changes on those two  

markers so then five years later again now we see  that it's gone over a hundred so it's gone from  

let's say 90 to 120 and now your A1C is probably  around six and your insulin is probably Sky High  

so if we understand you can't measure  you can't rely on a marker on a variable  

that is so tightly regulated because  glucose is going to change like this  

and only change when the body fails whereas if we  measure insulin which is the thing controlling it  

we're going to see an almost linear change so this  is a huge and harmful myth and perhaps one of my  

biggest pet peeves with anything about diabetes  and blood sugar handling and myth number 10 is  

equally harmful and a grave mistake and that says  that all we have to do to treat diabetes and blood  

sugar problems is to control the blood sugar but  blood sugar is not one problem it's two problems  

that one obviously is the high blood sugar but the  second one is the high insulin and when we have  

chronically High insulin we have what's called  insulin resistance the insulin isn't working so  

the body makes more the cells are resisting so  the body makes even more and so on and so on and  

this leads to metabolic disease metabolic syndrome  and this is the number one cause of all the things  

that kill people 95 of degenerative disease is  related to these factors so we have cardiovascular  

disease we have stroke we have dementia cancer  high blood pressure and the list goes on and on  

and it is about insulin resistance and metabolic  disease but here's why this myth number 10 is so  

dangerous as we become more insulin resistant over  time the insulin increases until we get to a point  

where the cells are so insulin resistant that even  this huge amount of insulin doesn't keep the blood  

sugar under control so the thinking now is the  body isn't making enough insulin let's add some  

more so even though your body has all this insulin  produced by itself they add exogenously they  

inject it so now when you add even more insulin  then for a while you will control blood glucose  

you have the desired effect of lowering blood  glucose a little bit so you're handling problem  

number one to a degree but the other problem is  that you are increasing insulin resistance the  

bigger problem you're making it worse by adding  this additional insulin these people already  

have too much insulin and we're adding more so  we're making them sicker we're lowering their  

blood glucose at the expense of their health  so the better solution and the only solution is  

to address the root cause and the root cause is  that you have eaten more carbohydrate than your  

body can tolerate that doesn't mean you ate more  carbohydrate than the next guy it just means you  

ate too much for you you broke your carbohydrate  tolerance machine and if we cut back on the sugar  

and the carbohydrate and the frequency of meals  and all the things that raise insulin now we will  

address both of these we will lower both the  blood glucose and the insulin resistance and  

if you think that sounds too simple to just  lower carbs and address the root cause then  

you're in good company most people never give  that a try because they've heard too many of  

these myths and they haven't met enough people  or they it seems too far-fetched that you could  

fix it by yourself that easily now realize  it doesn't work a hundred percent but it  

works probably around 95 to 98% and if I were you  then I would take those odds and run with it and  

give it a try you see what happens and then you  learn as much as you can about this if you happen  

to be in the few percent where it doesn't solve it  then you really need to understand why and figure  

out what's going on. And for those of you who  want to dive a little deeper in figuring out how  

to catch things early, I've created a blood work  course and you can find some more information on  

that down below. If you enjoyed this video you're  going to love that one and if you truly want to  

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