Blood Sugar Explained Pt5 2/5 User Manual For Humans

we eat but how is it processed by the body and interestingly fat and protein

gets into the bloodstream very very slowly so fat and protein do not

contribute to weight gain unless you just completely totally stuff yourself

every day and so now we will talk about blood sugar and how it works so you have

a diagram here on slide eight and we want to see if we can illustrate this

here is the amount of blood sugar and here is a very narrow band and this is

right around a hundred milligrams of blood sugar per liter now what happens

in the body if your blood sugar goes significantly below or significantly

above we can get in what's called a diabetic coma you literally physically

get into a coma your brain stops working if you get very far outside of the zone

either above or below so that means this is where the body wants to be and when

anything gets far away from it it's an emergency it's life-threatening for the

body so this is very very high priority for the brain glucose blood sugar is the

primary fuel for the brain it can really only use it can use a little bit of

ketone bodies and so forth but glucose is really the only fuel that the brain

uses so it's very important for the brain to function for us to have a

normal level and again the brain stops functioning if we get above or below

so if we eat let's say that we are starting around the lower end of this

hundred and we get hungry and we eat a meal a hunter-gatherer meal we catch

ourselves a rabbit and we find some roots and some leafy greens and we make

ourselves a meal that medial is going to be digested because it's protein because

it's whole food lots of fiber good stuff it will be absorbed very slowly into the

bloodstream so over the next few hours the blood the blood sugar Rises very

very slowly and we'll say this is one hour two hours three hours four hours

now remember we have to use insulin to get the blood the sugar out of the blood

and into the cell because this is of no use to the body until we can get it into

the cell so now we secrete insulin the pancreas which sits right around here

releases insulin and the insulin takes the sugar out of the blood so once we

have a certain amount of insulin the blood sugar will start falling again and

it will go back down and then the body has some reserves so

the body can maintain it within this level for quite some time so this is

what the body wants this is what whole foods and real food and food with fiber

and protein and fat does but that's not what we eat anymore how much sugar do we

have in the bloodstream at any given time a hundred milligrams of blood sugar

per deciliter multiplied by the volume of blood that you have in your body

means that you have in your bloodstream at any given time five grams of sugar

that's it one teaspoon of sugar is all you want in your bloodstream at a time

that's all your brain can handle so going from the lower end of this to the

upper end of this is about a span of 20 milligrams of sugar that's one gram that

is how much your blood sugar can fluctuate before it becomes a reason for

your body to respond and change before it becomes an emergency if you will it's

not getting a little bit outside it's not really an emergency but the body

will respond it'll try to keep it within this level which is about 1 gram

difference so that's a fifth of a teaspoon and how much sugar is in a coke

40 okay so if you're going to can only fluctuate if you're not sure you can

fluctuate one gram and you dump in 40 grams of something that will be absorbed

in 15 minutes do you think that's a bit of a stress to the body because it's

never in the history of mankind has it been exposed to 40 grams of liquid sugar

that just goes rushing straight into the bloodstream so this is what happens with

real food now I'll just draw this now let's say that you have a cup

of coffee with a little sugar in it and you have donuts and a coca-cola or or or

apple juice for breakfast so now your blood sugar let's say that this is 100

200 300 400 your blood sugar can very very quickly get up to about three four

hundred and it will do it even faster than this it will it will happen in

15-20 minutes remember we said this is an emergency what has that what has to

happen what is the bulk body going to do about this emergency it's going to

release a lot of insulin exactly and because this is an emergency it's not

going to hold back it's going to dump all the insulin and can basically to try

to get this craziness under control so with this much insulin in the blood

stream assisting the sugar getting into the cells how quickly is the blood sugar

going to drop almost instantaneously it's going to drop as fast as it came up

so the blood sugar comes crashing down and then it gets to the normal level of

hundred do you think with this much insulin and going down at this rate do

you think it's going to stop smoothly right around a hundred a flat melt it's

going to keep going it's going to keep going and then eventually it will taper

off because now we have an emergency on the

other side so what is this called what's the name for this this place when your

blood sugar is really low hypoglycemia exactly what does it feel like when you

have hypoglycemia sluggish irritable cranky and what you get cravings why do

you get cravings because this is very unhealthy the brain doesn't work so the

brain says give me some fuel quickly and what's the fastest source more coca-cola

more sugar more starch more juice give me something quick so that I can come

back to life so then you have some other snack or a muffin or something and up it

goes and then it shoots back down and up and down this people who have

hypoglycemia they really cannot develop hypoglycemia without this mechanism this

is the cause of hypoglycemia it's the roller coaster the craziness of all

these swings in mud sugar okay so one more little footnote what happens to all

of these calories that you ingest it remember we said when they're ingested

into the bloodstream faster than you can burn it and then all this insulin shoves

them out into the cell but less than an hour has passed and in that hour you've

only burned about a hundred calories so the excess has to be converted to fat so

even though you've converted all these calories too fat you're still having

ratings because the reverse process is too slow and your body needs in brain it

needs this fuel fast it's going to tell you give me some more sugar give me some

more much sugar okay so this is the devastating roller coaster that's the

foundation of developing diabetes and virtually