7 Reasons Normal Blood Sugar Could Rob You Of Your Health

Normal blood sugar levels what does that mean? and is it the best thing to measure

if you're trying to figure out if your insulin resistant or if you're moving

closer to diabetes or not? traditionally in the medical field they have been

looking at blood glucose as the only or the primary determinant to see if you've

meet the criteria for diabetes or not in this video we're going to look at seven

reasons on why it can be very misleading why it can be basically totally missing

the point of what you're trying to achieve if you only look at it glucose

coming right up blood sugar and insulin resistance is very very important it may

be the single most important factor in trying to avoid disease but we're often

looking at the wrong thing insulin resistance is affecting the majority of

the Western population if you look around you at any given day and anyone

that you see with some love handles or a belly or being overweight in general it

is probably insulin resistance at work there but does sugar really measure

insulin resistance that's what we're going to talk about so first of all

though let's look at the traditional criteria for if you have insulin

resistance and diabetes normal blood sugar fasting blood glucose that means

that you don't eat anything after dinner and then you go you sleep through the

night and in the morning typically you go and have your lab work done so they

draw the blood when you haven't eaten for at least 12 hours wouldn't have to

be in the morning but that typically works the best and normal means that

your blood glucose your fasting blood glucose is less than a hundred

milligrams per deciliter and I'm of the opinion that that's still getting a

little bit too high I think optimal is somewhere between 70

to 90 and if you're fasting or if you're in ketosis then it could go a whole lot

lower that it could get probably into the low

60s or even upper 50s without being a problem because you have ketones as an

alternative fuel but typically we want to think of it 70 to 90 pre-diabetic

would be anything over a hundred but below 125 and then diabetic would be

anything over 125 so then we're looking all set the corresponding these days

they are looking at A1c and we've done videos on that to explain exactly what

A1c is A1c is a better measurement than simply fasting glucose because it

measures an average glucose over a few months so if you are in the optimal

range that means that your a1c is going to be somewhere around 5 again it could

be four point five five point three somewhere in there

normal official criteria is anything below five point seven but in my opinion

your bit you've been slipping for quite a while if you're at five point seven

pre-diabetic would be anything over five point seven but below six point five and

anything diabetic would be over six point five then the a1c indicates what

the average glucose is so if you have a fasting glucose of 70 to 90 the a1c

indicates that your average glucose is probably around a hundred that means

when you eat your Blue Coast goes up and then in between meals it goes down so

your average ends up around a hundred even though your fasting is about

seventy to ninety so the average glucose for a normal person would be about 120

and for pre-diabetic it would be 120 to 140 and a diabetic it would be over 140

and once the dams break so to speak once the system crashes then this 140 could

go way way way high it could get two three four five hundred even this person

who was pre-diabetic all the way up until a hundred and twenty five so they

were going from a hundred they were ideally inching their way up and at 1:24

and a half they were still pre-diabetic they were almost healthy but then all of

a sudden it's over 125 and now they're sick why is there a dividing line is

there just like ok healthy healthy healthy healthy and then all of a sudden

sick or is this a process that takes a long long long long time so this is what

we have to understand that functional disease takes a long time to develop

it's different if you have a trauma if you have a symptom if you have pain

because you fell down the stairs then you're hurting because you fell down the

stairs but if your knees start hurting overtime from arthritis that's a

functional problem it's a degeneration the body took awhile to get there so we

want to think of this sort of like a battery that perfect health would be

when you have like a hundred percent health a hundred percent function the

battery is is fully charged and then as the battery starts to wear out as it

starts discharging as it starts doing work then it has less and less reserve

capacity and eventually it reaches a point where we start having symptoms so

in terms of a battery that would be if you have like a leaf blower or something

that is quite demanding that it's battery driven all of a sudden the

battery isn't strong enough to power it at full speed it starts slowing down it

starts fading and the body it's the same thing that once the body starts fading

all of a sudden we start having symptoms and disease but this didn't happen

overnight it takes a while to get there so one example would be heart disease so

you're happily moving along through life and your function is decreasing it might

take 10 20 30 years and then all of a sudden you have a heart attack that's

the first so is the question then is were you

healthy the day before the heart attack or did the disease start the moment you

had a heart attack well the answer is obvious that it was a

process it didn't start overnight it didn't happen instantly

diabetes and insulin resistance and glucose works the same way so let's take

a look at at a hypothetical example so these are numbers that could illustrate

what could happen I'm not saying that it would take this long or that these would

be the exact numbers but this is something that could happen everyone's

different so just bear that in mind so let's say that we have a healthy normal

person in year one and they go and they have some lab work done and their blood

glucose their fasting blood glucose is 90 and their a1c is 5.3 and then they

measure their insulin their fasting insulin and the fasting insulin is three

units so that's a healthy level I've drawn them the same size because this

indicates that this person is very insulin sensitive there's a balance

between the glucose and the insulin so insulin is a storage hormone and if we

have balance between glucose and insulin that means that there is time balance

between feeding and burning that we're allowing the body enough time to store

something but then to allow enough time to burn that fuel so that we're in

balance and we're ready for the next meal but when we eat a whole lot of

carbs and we eat too often then the body doesn't have time to burn things between

meals and we start storing too much and now the cells start to become insulin

resistant the cells don't want so much fuel they start resisting so now the

body has to try harder to get the glucose out of the bloodstream and into

the cell we fast forward a few years and this could

two three four five years and we measure again so now this person measures

fasting glucose and it's at ninety so it looks great perfect no problem

healthy lifestyle right a1c has come up one point but hey what's what's a point

what's a tenth of a point and we don't pay much attention to it unless we also

measure insulin because now we're seeing that it takes twice as much insulin that

is insulin now is six so even though the blood glucose the fasting blood glucose

is the same and it appears that nothing changed we have become quite insulin

resistance because it takes twice as much insulin to get the job done the

body is still coping the body is still adapting managing to control the blood

sugar but it takes twice as much insulin to do it and we are well on our way

toward insulin resistance but if we only measure glucose we would never know fast

forward another five years now we the blood glucose has come up to 93 so hey

three points no big deal it looks about the same it's within the margin of error

A1c has come up another tenth of a point no big deal it's starting to creep

along but it's such a small change that we don't really think about it

but if we measure insulin the fasting insulin now is nine so it takes three

times as much work to keep the glucose where it is another five years forward

now blood glucose is 95 A1c is five point eight so it's starting to creep up

but nothing significant we're still well in our way the glucose indicates that we

are normal the a1c indicates that we might be just barely pre-diabetic and

they they'll tell you all just exercise a little bit more loose some weight

whatever but no one's really worried however your

insulin now is 15 and it takes five times as much insulin to get the job

done so your body is working harder and harder and harder it's adapting it's

changing its inner-workings to get the job done the pancreas has to work a

whole lot harder but it doesn't show up on the glucose yet five more years

twenty years down the road now we're starting to see now this person is

officially pre-diabetic blood glucose is 120 is in the pre-diabetic range the a1c

is on the border of diabetes rather than just pre-diabetes so now they're

starting to get concerned now they're saying hey you might want to get more

serious about this but of course the official guidelines tell you to eat more

carbs and more sugar and less fat eat more low-fat dairy and they tell you

that sugar is not so bad just don't eat the white refined stuff but you can have

plenty of sugar from your your bread and your fruit and your dairy products then

five more years and now the glucose has really shot through the roof now the

fasting glucose is a hundred and eighty the a1c is twelve so it's like the dam

breaks the it there's nothing holding it back and the insulin might be even

higher or it might be the same if the body has sort of reached a plateau where

it can't make any more insulin or where the cells are just so insulin resistant

that the body is pushing out insulin but the cells are not accepting it so now

the glucose shoots through the roof so let's talk about why this is such a bad

idea well first of all measuring glucose does not measure insulin resistance as

we can see the glucose stays pretty much the same but the thing that we're

concerned with the the factor the variable that drives

metabolic syndrome that drives cardiovascular disease is the insulin

the blood sugar can be a problem but what drives the disease is the insulin

and we're missing that when we're just measuring the glucose so the second

problem with only measuring glucose is that the change in glucose is not linear

it's not a little bit after one year and a little more after two years it is

delayed because the body works very very hard at controlling at dampening the

effect so the change of glucose has a flat curve to start with and then it

accelerates very quickly as the system is failing insulin on the other hand is

developing pretty much at a in a linear fashion so as the cells become insulin

resistant very very slowly year after year the insulin increases gradually so

we have a good idea by the degree of insulin how much insulin resistance

there is glucose does not give us that feedback reason number three is related

to that but it's that glucose does not measure the progression if we monitor

something if we get regular blood tests if we get health checks

we'd like for that health checks to give us feedback on how we're doing but

because this line is flat then we're not getting any sort of idea on if this is

better or worse than five years ago it doesn't measure any of the progression

and as functional disease and degeneration progresses we need to start

measuring functional markers not disease markers reason number four is that by

the time we have a significant change in glucose it is too late I mean in a way

it's never too late because the body can always recover but we've already we

missed preventing it we're way way way into the disease

process and we have this strange idea of what prevention is to me prevention

means to keep something from happening but a lot of the prevention that is

being done is simply finding it early prevention is when you make the body

work so well that you never get the disease but finding it early is not

prevention that finding it early just is finding it early this means that you

already have it and it's better to find it early than finding it late but you

already got it so we can't do prevention by measuring this reason number five is

that measuring glucose only can give us a false sense of security we go get our

health checks and we want to see how we're doing but measuring glucose makes

us think that were healthy when we could be 10 15 years into the disease process

reason number six we could waste decades of precious life and precious health so

if we start understanding this model where would you rather be would you

rather be at a hundred percent or would you rather be at 51 percent okay even if

you don't have a symptom at 51 percent you'd much rather be at a hundred

because it means you have more health reserves same thing with this scale if

you had a way of figuring something out in year one why would you wait why would

you want to wait to year 20 you could lose decades and you could make it

impossible or that much harder to recover from it in reason number seven

that glucose can be a poor measurement poor indicator of what's actually

happening is something called a dawn phenomenon so I did a separate video

with more detail but just real brief don't phenomenon is the fact that you

have certain hormones in your body that peak right before you get up in the

morning so they boost your blood sugar to get you ready for your day they wake

you up basic and if your insulin-resistant like if

you have been a pre-diabetic or diabetic if you're very insulin resistant then

the blood sugar rises but the cells are resistant so the increase in blood sugar

tends to be larger okay that's what the dawn effect dawn phenomenon is but now

let's say that you start doing the right thing that you start doing keto you

start doing low carb you start fasting you're doing all the right things and if

you're fasting you basically stop putting carbohydrates into your body

there is no need there's no urgency for the body to get it out of the

bloodstream because the body senses hey in the morning because of the dawn

phenomenon my blood sugar went up a little bit but there's only a gram or

two so there is no alarm there is no crisis so the body doesn't work very

hard at lowering it because it knows that it's not a big deal so now while

you're doing the exact right thing while you're reversing this your blood sugar

could stay a little bit high in the morning and give the false impression

that you're very insulin resistant even though you are working to reverse it so

these seven reasons are why it can be very misleading very confusing not give

you the the true picture of what's happening in your body if you just

measure glucose does that mean yet you shouldn't measure glucose oh absolutely

you can measure it but do it on a regular basis I have a blood measuring

kit and I think it's fun to see what it is in the morning and to see how much it

rises or doesn't rise after you eat a healthy meal high in protein and fat so

you can use it on a regular basis to monitor to learn but if that all you're

doing if you're only measuring glucose as your health check once a year or

every six months then it's pretty much a waste of time

so it's not a bad thing but don't rely on it as your sole measurement of what's

going on if you truly want to understand your insulin resistance if it's

progressing or reversing then you want to measure insulin and I've done some

videos called Homa-IR where I explain in detail how that works and how you can

figure out your insulin resistance score if you're new to the channel and you

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see you in the next video thanks for watching