#1 Absolute Best Way To Lower Blood Sugar

Hello Health Champions today we're going to talk  about the best way to lower blood sugar and the  

first thing we have to understand is of course  what is normal blood sugar what are we trying  

to accomplish here and the traditional view the  recommendations are that a normal blood sugar when  

you're fasting meaning when you haven't eaten any  food for about 12 hours should be between 70 and  

100 and I can basically agree with those numbers  I think we need to tighten it up a little bit and  

I'll talk about that but I can basically agree  with that then they talk about impaired glucose  

regulation and that's when you're a little insulin  resistant and you may be pre-diabetic and now your  

fasting glucose would be 101 to 125 if you are  a type 2 diabetic then it's gone a little bit  

further and your fasting glucose is 126 and up but  we also want to understand a little bit more about  

the Dynamics how quickly does glucose go up after  we eat and how long does it take for it to come  

down and how long should it take so basically what  they're saying is that 30 minutes or so whenever  

you have your Peak which could be 30 maybe a  little bit longer depending on what you eat  

you should not get over 170 to 200 and I think  that's an absolutely crazy range I'm going to talk  

about that but I believe that most of those people  who get their glucose that high they're eating  

garbage they're eating processed carbohydrates  and they are already insulin resistant they should  

not get that high they're saying that if you are  insulin resistant pre-diabetic then it could get  

190 to 230 and if you're a type 2 diabetic it  would get to 220 to 300. so those would be the  

highest numbers and then we want to look at after  it's starting to come down two to three hours  

later when the body has had some time to process  this then they want the normal people if you're  

healthy have good glucose regulation they say it  should be 120 to 140. so basically anything that  

comes down under 140 would be normal if you are  impaired insulin resistant then it would be 140  

to 190 and if you type 2 diabetic then it wouldn't  get under 200 within that time frame because when  

you're insulin resistant the insulin is very poor  in getting that glucose out of the bloodstream but  

I believe that a lot of the people included in the  normal category here are not all that healthy so  

it's not really normal it's just common and we  have to keep in mind that 88 of the population  

have some degree of insulin resistance so when  we're talking about optimal numbers then those  

ranges are going to get much tighter I believe  a fasting number should be about 80 to 90 and  

I think if you're doing a long-term fast or if  you're on keto then it's okay to be a good bit  

lower than the 80 also I think if you're doing  a three day fast I think you can get into the 50  

fees and that's still perfectly normal because  when you're making more ketones you don't need  

that much blood glucose but the next one is  where the numbers are really different from  

the standard numbers because I believe that even  after a meal you should stay between 90 to 110  

and if you probably have noticed this if you're  eating low carb if you're doing keto then your  

numbers probably don't change much at all and for  some people who have noticed the dawn phenomenon  

they might wake up with a little bit higher blood  sugar that stays High until they eat and then it  

actually comes down and if you're eating whole  food and you're not eating a bunch of processed  

carbs then you're probably going to notice that  there's very very little change and then two to  

three hours later you're probably going to find  that you're back on a baseline so these huge  

shifts I do not think are normal or healthy and  I want to look at it one more way here that if  

we look at it graphically then what they call  normal is with blood sugar almost doubling and  

again I think that's because people are eating a  lot of junk they're eating a lot of sugar and they  

have been told that most of their food most of  their caloric intake should be from carbohydrate  

and they're told that complex carbohydrates are  good for them but they actually are nothing but  

sugar in a different form which we'll talk about  in a second if you're a bit insulin resistant then  

the graph would shift up a little bit the yellow  if you're a diabetic it would shift even higher  

but again the huge difference is where I believe  the optimal numbers should be almost a flat line  

if you eat real food there really should not  be much difference at all the next question we  

want to ask is what causes high blood sugar and  of course that has a lot to do with if we eat  

something food intake but what we eat plays a huge  role so carbohydrates tend to raise blood sugar  

much much more many many times more especially  processed carbohydrates and the worst form of  

carbohydrates are called sugar and high fructose  corn syrup they're very similar but high fructose  

corn syrup is even worse because it has more  fructose which clogs up the liver which we'll  

talk about and it is also even faster in getting  into the bloodstream and affecting blood sugar but  

the next one we want to understand properly and  that's called starch because we hear so much about  

carbohydrates being necessary and sugar is bad but  complex carbohydrates are supposed to be good so  

that is a huge myth so not everyone needs to avoid  carbohydrates so strictly but if you are insulin  

resistant then you need to eat less carbohydrates  and there is no difference in how these  

carbohydrates affect blood sugar and the starches  will turn into glucose almost instantaneously  

so here's what we need to understand about  carbohydrates and glucose that glucose is a ring  

it has six carbons in it and that is the molecule  that swims around in the bloodstream that we call  

blood sugar most of the carbohydrates that we eat  are simply glucose linked together and if we link  

hundreds of these together then it's called starch  so once we get that into the body as soon as you  

put it into the mouth there is an enzyme called  amylase salivary amylase that starts breaking  

up these bonds so it's going to chop off these two  by two and then a little bit later we chop them up  

one by one and now they are free to get into the  bloodstream and this is why starches like potato  

and rice and bread will raise blood sugar very  very quickly even faster than white sugar itself  

now the reason that sugar is worse is that sugar  has the glucose ring just like starch does but  

then the second ring is a little bit different  it is called fructose it still has six carbons  

but it's shaped a little differently configured  a little bit differently so the only place that  

fructose can be processed is in the liver so  one we have these glucose they get chopped up  

they become blood glucose and they can be used by  every cell in the body but with the sugar there's  

50 percent glucose and 50 fructose so if you  eat a hundred grams of sugar you're gonna have  

50 grams of glucose that can be used by every cell  in the body if you eat a hundred grams of starch  

there's a hundred grams of glucose that can be  used by every cell in the body but this fructose  

if you eat 100 grams of sugar there's 50 grams of  fructose that can only be processed by the liver  

and the liver is a lot smaller than the rest of  your body so these 50 grams has to be processed  

by three pounds of liver tissue they have to  try to metabolize that and repackage it so  

what happens is whatever the liver can't use  when it gets overloaded gets turned into fat  

and that is the number one cause of fatty liver  so when you hear people talk about non-alcoholic  

fatty liver disease that is caused by fructose  it used to be only alcoholics could get fatty  

liver almost all the cases of fatty liver was  called afld alcoholic fatty liver disease but  

today the vast majority of fatty liver is caused  by fructose so it's non-alcoholic so this is why  

starches are bad if your carbohydrate intolerant  if you have an impaired ability to deal with  

carbohydrates then starches are bad but sugar is  worse because the glucose portion will raise blood  

sugar but then the fructose portion will clog up  the liver and once that liver is clogged up that  

liver is insulin resistant and that kind of sets  the tone for the rest of the body so carbohydrates  

have by far the greatest impact on blood sugar but  protein also has some impact on blood sugar and  

the reason is that protein can be converted into  glucose down the line now protein the purpose of  

protein is to build tissue as we have cells and  tissue that wears out there is a turnover and the  

old ones get broken down and we have to have new  protein to build up the new ones so most of the  

protein is intended to become tissue but if we eat  more protein than what we need then the rest of it  

the excess gets turned into glucose because we  can't store protein protein becomes tissue there  

is no storage system for protein other than what  naturally occurs in the bone and the muscles and  

the skin and so forth and whatever we don't use  for tissue is left over and that gets turned in  

to glucose now that is the better version of of  carbohydrate so glucose is better than fructose so  

protein gets turned into glucose it cannot become  fructose and clog up the liver so the impact is  

slight compared to carbohydrates and then we have  fat and fat will also affect glucose a little bit  

indirectly so the fat itself the fatty acids can  not ever become glucose or fructose it cannot turn  

into a carbohydrate however the way that animals  like humans and the animals that we eat for food  

the way that they store fat is as triglycerides  and that means that there's three fatty acids  

connected to a glitter glycerol backbone and  this glycerol backbone is about five percent  

of the calories in the fat that's stored and that  glycerol can be turned in to glucose but again it  

happens down the road it happens to a smaller  degree and it happens very very slowly so that  

is why when we eat a high fat low carb diet that  the impact on blood sugar is almost zero and if we  

look at it visually in terms of carbohydrates  affecting blood glucose that would look like  

this big Arrow the protein would look like a much  smaller arrow and the fat Arrow we can barely see  

so if we want to put some numbers then this would  be about 70 to 100 the protein would be in the  

teens so 10 to 15 maybe 20 and fat would be single  digits low low single digits when we eat those  

by themselves so in the short term the greatest  impact on blood sugar is the type of foods that  

we eat but in the long term the greatest impact is  on how the different types of foods affect insulin  

so the second factor that affects blood sugar is  insulin resistance and here's how that works when  

you eat food like we said especially carbohydrate  then your blood glucose will increase because this  

food that you just ate has to be absorbed into  the bloodstream and pass through the bloodstream  

into the cells and the thing that helps that makes  this blood glucose get from the bloodstream into  

the cell is called insulin and if we have the  higher the blood glucose we have the higher the  

insulin response if we have mostly fat in the  diet then blood glucose barely goes up at all  

and we barely have to have an insulin response  if we drink high fructose corn syrup in a soda  

then our blood glucose is going to go through  the roof very quickly and then the insulin has  

to be very high in response to that so in a sense  this insulin is pushing or even forcing the blood  

glucose out of the bloodstream and into the cell  and this is a good thing because that what needs  

to happen however if we do that every day like if  we did it once a month then it wouldn't be a big  

deal but once we start doing it on a regular basis  now the cells start to resist having that Sugar  

forced into the cell they're saying we've got  a good amount we keep getting more and more but  

there's a limit we we've had it please back off  stop pushing sugar in so the cells become insulin  

resistant over time and we'll talk a little bit  more about this that that doesn't happen overnight  

but now that the cells are insulin resistant  they're resisting the action of insulin which is  

to get the blood sugar out of the bloodstream when  the cells are insulin resistant now the insulin  

isn't working anymore so we get higher blood sugar  so now we're stuck in a loop where higher blood  

sugar leads to more insulin which leads to more  insulin resistance which leads to higher blood  

sugar and so on and so on and anything that raises  blood sugar will contribute to this Loop but like  

we said there are a couple of things that are even  worse so sugar is 50 percent fructose so the sugar  

will increase blood glucose will increase insulin  but the fructose like we said it will tend to  

clog up it will tend to overwhelm the liver and  cause insulin resistance by a different mechanism  

so carbs causes blood sugar causes insulin but  fructose is kind of the last nail in the coffin if  

you will and again we need to understand that the  insulin response is proportional to the increase  

in blood glucose and just like carbohydrates cause  the greatest increase in blood glucose they also  

cause the greatest insulin response protein is  much less and fat is almost zero and then there's  

some good news and some bad news so it takes a  long time to break it what does that mean what  

are we breaking well think of your body as a  machine that has a certain capacity to process  

things and one of those things is carbohydrates  and depending on our lifestyle and what we eat  

we will tend to wear out that machine and a lot  of that is going to be genetically determined so  

some people might have this much capacity before  the machine machine wears out and some people  

might have this much but it's still the lifestyle  that wears it out and then once that machine is  

broken then you have what's called a carbohydrate  intolerance your body just doesn't know what to do  

with carbohydrates it doesn't have the Machinery  in place to process it and this way of thinking  

is very poorly understood because a lot of people  will say but I didn't change anything I had my my  

I ate the same stuff my blood sugar was good for  20 years and then all of a sudden it went crazy  

and I was diagnosed with diabetes so what we need  to understand is that the flaw in the traditional  

way of diagnosing and looking at blood sugar is  that we're only measuring blood sugar we're not  

measuring the thing controlling blood sugar and  blood sugar is a very tightly controlled variable  

because it's super important for for the brain to  function to keep the blood sugar in that narrow  

range if it gets too high the brain suffers  it gets inflamed we can even get into a coma  

if it gets too low we can also get into a coma so  the glucose it's super important to keep it tight  

and therefore it is very tightly controlled and  if we have stable blood sugar and we eat whole  

food then it doesn't take much effort it doesn't  take much insulin to keep the blood sugar in that  

range so let's say that we start off in year one  and we have a certain amount of glucose and at  

the same time it takes an equal or a comparable  proportional amount of insulin to control that so  

we have a certain amount of insulin and we have a  certain amount of glucose and we're healthy we're  

in Balance we're insulin sensitive but then time  goes on time March is on and a few years later  

we go in we get the measurements and glucose is  still good but insulin has doubled so now the  

body has to work twice as hard at controlling  at regulating and keeping that glucose in that  

tight range and if we only measure glucose then  we'll never find out but if we measure insulin  

we see hey you know it's something's changing  the cells are becoming more insulin resistant  

so the body has to work harder so then time  goes on and a few years later now it takes four  

times as much it's doubled again and still the  glucose level is about the same and then finally  

the machine breaks and this might be 20 years  down the road you can break it faster with lots  

and lots of soda there are even kids that get this  but for the most part we're talking decades for  

this to develop and now we might have insulin  levels that are way way up so if you notice  

the glucose is a controlled variable so it only  changes when the machine has broken or is about  

to break when the system is very very resistant  but if we measure insulin then we see that it's a  

more linear function so we can pick that up much  much sooner so that's the good and the bad news  

the good news is that it takes a long long time to  break it the bad news is that if we don't measure  

the right things then we discover it 20 years too  late and another piece of good news is that even  

if it takes this long to break it it's a whole  lot faster to heal it if it takes 20 years to  

break it you can probably reverse most of that in  just a few months now that doesn't mean that it's  

completely reversed it means it's under control  and it's moving in the right direction action but  

when you have this much momentum the body has  certain set points and certain memories and it  

might take a good while to reverse that momentum  and get truly back to Baseline so now that we  

understand the mechanisms we understand what sugar  is we understand what starch is we understand how  

insulin works and the different mechanisms now we  can stop listening to The Standard guidelines of  

eating low-fat and high carb because that's going  to make the problem worse it may work for a person  

who is athletic and young and insulin sensitive  but if you are insulin resistant and you follow  

the guidelines for how to eat you will get worse  it will move you from pre-diabetes to diabetes  

so the number one thing we want to do when we're  going to lower blood sugar is to understand that  

it's primarily about insulin because insulin  resistance will drive up the blood sugar once  

you are in insulin resistant you don't have the  capacity to regulate blood sugar and carbohydrate  

so you have to cut them way back but it is  primarily about lowering the insulin so the body  

can get back to balance and the most important  thing if you want to lower your insulin is to stop  

eating sugar because sugar is 50 percent fructose  50 glucose the glucose will raise blood sugar and  

drive insulin and the fructose will cause insulin  resistance by clogging up the liver and causing  

a fatty liver and the next thing we want to do  is to reduce overall carbohydrates because all  

carbohydrates turn into sugar when we break down  the carbohydrates the plant food the starches they  

turn into sugar they drive up blood sugar but that  doesn't mean you can't eat any plant food or any  

carbohydrates I believe that you should eat a lot  of plant plant food you just have to know which  

ones to eat and what you want to eat a lot of are  leafy greens and non-starchy vegetables because if  

you eat things like broccoli and cauliflower and  leafy greens now they're mostly water they'll have  

two to three to four percent carbohydrate which  is mostly sugar but because there's so much water  

and there's some Fiber that Sugar which is a very  small amount also gets absorbed very slowly so you  

can be on a ketogenic diet and eat many many cups  of non-starchy vegetables and leafy greens the  

carbohydrates that cause the problems are the high  starch so we're talking about grains potatoes corn  

etc those are the ones you want to avoid but you  can have a lot of non-starchy vegetables and step  

number four would be to eat fewer meals that's  going to help tremendously because what you're  

trying to do is to lower insulin so one thing  you can do is to eat foods that stimulate less  

insulin but when you're fasting when you eat no  food then there is no additional insulin there's  

just like a trickle of insulin for your Baseline  blood sugar but you're not putting any new food in  

so there's no need for a mass effort to produce  insulin another thing you can do to help out is  

gentle exercise and you do want it to be gentle a  lot of people are confused here because they think  

it's all about calories and they think if you  burn off the blood sugar with intense exercise  

then you'll bring it down faster but that's not  true because when you do intense exercise then  

you also produce cortisol which raises blood  sugar because with intense exercise your body  

is kind of in a state of urgency and it's going  to try to bring up the blood sugar with breaking  

down glycogen with making new glucose through  gluconeogenesis but when you do gentle exercise  

now what's going to happen is you're going to  burn mostly fat because with gentle with a low  

Baseline you can provide enough oxygen and when  you can provide enough oxygen you burn primarily  

fat you're still going to burn through some of the  glucose and it will help bring down the glucose  

but you still want to stay in fat burning and  what happens then is that the muscles basically  

act like sponges they're going to suck up the  glucose from the bloodstream because when a muscle  

is exercising it doesn't need insulin a muscle at  rest requires insulin to get the glucose into the  

muscle but when it's working those floodgates  those portals open up anyway and what happens  

with intense exercise is that you're not using  more fat but you're switching to more glucose you  

always burn a combination of both but with gentle  exercise it's more fat with intense exercise it's  

more glucose and what happens then is that you  create a need for the body as you're burning  

through more glucose the body will make more  glucose and because you put it in that sense of  

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