Your Doctor Is Wrong About Blood Sugar & Fasting

Hello Health Champions. We all know that when you eat food your blood sugar goes up,  

and when you don't eat your blood  sugar is supposed to come down.  

But for a lot of people the exact opposite seems  to be happening and if you've noticed this you're  

not alone. That when you're fasting your blood  sugar stays high even in a diabetic range,  

and it won't come down until you eat something.  This all seems very confusing and paradoxical,  

and it happens mostly to people who are insulin  resistant and who go on a diet of low carb  

and intermittent fasting. So today I want to talk  about what's really happening in the body, and if  

you have something to worry about or if you're  actually on the right track. Coming right up  

hey I'm Dr Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a  former Olympic decathlete, and if you want to  

truly master health by understanding how the  body really works make sure you subscribe hit  

that bell and turn on all the notifications  so you never miss a life saving video so blood  

glucose is how much sugar is in your bloodstream  at any given time and it's measured in milligrams  

per deciliter and a healthy level is to be between  80 to 120 so when you're fasting like overnight  

and between meals then a good level is going  to be in the 80 range then you eat something  

and now your blood sugar goes up because  the food gets from your digestive tract  

into the bloodstream blood sugar goes up and then  your body processes through and over a period of  

few to several hours your blood sugar comes down  again this is how it's supposed to happen but if  

you are insulin resistant and an extreme form of  insulin resistance is type 2 diabetic then your  

fasting levels are too high typically about 130 or  above but this could be two or three or 400 also  

and then when you eat something your blood sugar  goes way way up because your cells are resisting  

receiving that blood sugar out of the bloodstream  so it's difficult for the body to transition the  

food from the digestive tract through the  blood into the cells and therefore you get  

very high levels and they stay high they  come down very slowly but then we have this  

in-between pattern this paradoxical pattern where  people who start doing the right thing they want  

to reverse their insulin resistance and they  eat low carb and do intermittent fasting but  

their glucose doesn't change much it might come  down a few points or it's pretty much the same  

but then when they eat now their blood sugar comes  into a normal range dawn phenomenon is not the  

same thing as what we're talking about but it's  related and it can help us understand a little bit  

so when you are sleeping and you're getting ready  to wake up your body produces some hormones to  

get you ready for the day so it releases  a little bit extra cortisol and adrenaline  

and glucagon and growth hormone and this is to  raise blood sugar to help you make more energy  

and the adrenaline and growth hormone is there to  arouse you to get you ready for the day to get you  

from sleeping to awake and as a result if you're  insulin sensitive there's supposed to be a slight  

increase but if you're insulin sensitive it's so  small it's barely noticeable however if you're  

insulin resistant now these same small hormone  boosts is going to look like a dramatic increase  

in blood glucose levels because even a  small change is going to show up bigger  

when you're insulin resistant we also have  to understand a little bit about insulin and  

the levels so insulin is the hormone that takes  glucose from the bloodstream and into the cells  

so if you're fasting you're going to have a low  insulin level because it just needs to be enough  

to support that basic level of glucose and a  healthy level would be between two and five  

then when you eat something now you put food in  the body the food has to get into the bloodstream  

and insulin has to help it through the bloodstream  and into the cell in a matter of hours and now  

it produces extra insulin and you're going to see  levels of about 50. that's still a healthy level  

but if you're very insulin resistant like a type  2 diabetic now first of all you have a higher  

glucose level but on top of that your cells are  resistant to the action of insulin so your body  

makes a whole lot more insulin it might be sitting  at 25 units even at a baseline that's typically  

the cut off for type 2 diabetes but then when you  eat something it might shoot all the way up to 150  

but even with these huge amounts of insulin it's  still not enough to bring the glucose into a  

normal level and that's what insulin resistance is  and a lot of times we hear that in type 2 diabetes  

they give you insulin because you're not making  enough well that's the wrong way to look at it  

because you're already making five to eight times  more fasting and a whole lot more after a meal so  

you're making a lot of insulin the problem  is you've pushed your body into an imbalance  

by stuffing it full of carbohydrate and sugar all  the time and then in our paradoxical example here  

again people are frustrated because they want  their glucose they want their fasting glucose to  

get into a healthy level and the thing to focus on  though is the fact that when you eat the insulin  

is actually working the insulin helps you get  into the normal range now the question is then why  

does it stay so high before we eat i often  talk about how intelligent the body is that  

there is a reason for everything it does so we  want to think of really high blood sugar as an  

emergency that a healthy level is just going about  business as usual but when we go from a hundred  

units or so 100 milligrams up to two and three and  four and five hundred this is an emergency this is  

very very dangerous this is what causes micro  vessel disease and blindness neuropathy kidney  

failure swelling so this is something that's  very very different from everyday business  

everyday operations now let's talk about a concept  that usually is a huge surprise to people the  

difference between a blood sugar level and a blood  sugar amount difference between levels in the  

blood and amounts of carbohydrate so if you have  a level of 80 milligrams per deciliter how much  

blood sugar do you actually have circulating and  most people are shocked you have about 2.4 grams  

of glucose because we multiply out this 80  milligrams times 50 deciliters which is 5 liters  

that's the average amount of blood in a person  but then we take into account the fact that only  

60 percent of the blood is liquid the rest of  it is solid cells the red blood cells we come  

up with about 2.4 grams that is less than half a  teaspoon of sugar a tiny tiny amount that's all  

that you have circulating in your body at any  given time that's what all this talk is about  

it's that tiny tiny amount and if you are insulin  resistant if you're pre-diabetic now that number  

jumps to a whopping 3.6 so it doesn't seem like  a whole lot but it makes a big difference that  

if you go from a half a teaspoon to three  quarter teaspoon now you have years and years of  

adaptation to insulin resistance to create that  difference and if you're a full-blown diabetic  

now you might have a full teaspoon of sugar  circulating so we're talking small amounts now  

let's expand this and understand the difference  with amount if you're eating low carb let's say  

that you're at a healthy level you're maintaining  you're eating 25 grams of carbs in a day  

divided by 24 hours is rounded off to about  one gram per hour so you have half a teaspoon  

circulating and every hour you use up a gram and  you put in one more gram so that's a continuous  

replenishment just a tiny tiny bit one gram per  hour from the food that you eat that's not a whole  

lot it's not an emergency it doesn't take a whole  lot for the body to do that and if you're insulin  

resistant and you've gone low carb then we use the  same number one gram per hour if you are diabetic  

and you're still following the general guidelines  of eating plenty of whole grains and pasta  

and you're eating 300 grams now that's 12 grams  per hour so if we represent this graphically then  

you have this much in your bloodstream at any  given time and every hour you have to pass this  

much through your bloodstream and into the cells  but now let's expand this idea this is a fasting  

situation this is continuous what's what's going  on but what about when you eat something now we  

have to mobilize some resources so you have a  meal if you're low carb let's say you're eating  

twice a day then those 25 grams would be about 12  grams per meal so if we represent that graphically  

we're talking that amount relative to that amount  so this is how much you have at any given time  

and then in one big lump you're introducing  this much which is five times more 500 percent  

so even though it's a lot more it's not a big  deal it's still a small amount the body is not  

going to panic it does just fine with that and  if you're low carb with some insulin resistance  

then that represents three and a half times 350  percent so again not a big deal to process through  

that but if you're diabetic and you're following  the general guidelines and you're still eating  

tons of carbohydrates three to four hundred grams  of carbohydrate you're eating three meals a day  

then each meal of a hundred grams would represent  twenty times two thousand percent even though you  

already have more blood sugar to deal with you're  adding an enormous amount it's a mountain of  

carbohydrates and this is not easy for the body to  work through now let's put all this together and  

think of it as a receiving department at a company  and we'll look at these three cases again we're  

having the insulin sensitive so 2.4 plus 1 gram  plus 12 grams twice a day so this is like you're  

getting a couple of letters and then twice a  day they drop off a box and a single person can  

can handle that no problem same thing in the  second example just a little bit of traffic  

no big deal but what if we have this third  scenario where we're already a little bit stressed  

this is sort of a normal workload but then several  times a day they drop off a couple of containers  

now they got to get on the phones they got to call  in the extra help they got to call in the temps  

it's an emergency and if we think about it this  way that in the type 2 diabetic case this is how  

much we're working on every hour that's the  baseline amount of insulin but then we get  

the containers we get the emergency and we call  in all the help we can but we still can't get it  

handled we still can't process through everything  that we need to process through so therefore  

basically the whole operation is failing however  in this paradoxical example that so many people  

are frustrated about what we have to understand  is this high fasting level is not an emergency  

there is not enough incentive for the body to do  something about this because things are working  

it's like sure there's a couple of letters over  there but we'll deal with them later because  

we're not getting overwhelmed so this one gram an  hour represents a lower level of insulin and even  

though you're still insulin resistant this low  amount of carbohydrate is allowing the body to  

reduce insulin production and to become less  insulin resistant and therefore once you eat  

something now this work force gets to work and  it has no problem at all processing through  

and getting the job done so now they  find out that well there were a couple  

of letters sitting here on the shelf but now  once we got to work let's take care of those  

letters also and get the job done and now you're  getting back into the normal range so that's the  

key to understand that it looks like this is a  high level but it's not a large amount of glucose  

and the intelligent body doesn't treat this as an  emergency it knows that things are under control  

and you're very much moving in the right  direction does that mean we shouldn't even bother  

measuring glucose well i don't think it should be  your primary concern don't measure it too closely  

and expect it to change and base your success and  your expectations based on that because it could  

be very frustrating but use it as a tool to learn  it's a great tool to see how your body responds to  

different foods if you eat certain thing and your  blood sugar goes up well now you learn something  

you can also use it to watch general trends  see how your blood sugar changes over weeks  

and months but don't worry too much about what  it does on a day-to-day or hour-to-hour basis  

instead you watch you get some blood work from  time to time and you watch your a1c which is  

your three to four month average glucose you  measure your fasting insulin which hardly  

anyone does but it's your best indicator  of a long-term trend for insulin resistance  

you measure things like triglycerides and VLDL  very low density lipoprotein and you measure total  

to HDL cholesterol ratios and you don't get too  hung up on any one of these but you get a baseline  

and you learn what the bigger picture means so  that you can understand the trend so you can see  

that you're going in the right direction because  all of these put together are indicators of what's  

happening if you enjoyed this video and you'd like  to learn more about how the body really works that  

one's going to be great one for you next thank  you so much for watching I'll see you next time