60 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar

by Dennis Pollock

  Teatime

  Teatime is associated with the British, and was traditionally served in the late afternoon with scones and jam, and sometimes various other sweet little cakes. The tea was usually served with milk and sugar, and the tea and pastries served as an antidote to the afternoon doldrums. Teatime also became a social affair, with ladies and gentlemen of means inviting other ladies and gentlemen of means over to their houses for “tea.” From there it spread throughout the populace.

  I have found that an altered form of teatime can be quite useful for those who struggle to keep their blood sugar under control. A few adjustments must be made. First of all, you will have to lose the scones and jam (of course). However there are all kinds of low-carb treats you can have with your tea that will barely budge your blood-sugar levels. Low-carb muffins are a great choice. My preferred food is one tiny sugar-free chocolate candy and some peanuts.

  The tea can be however you like it, provided you don’t load it with sugar. I enjoy my tea with heavy whipping cream and some stevia artificial sweetener. The combination of the tea and the little snack makes for a relaxing time.

  Actually, the practice for me started when I missed my connecting flight in London while on my way to Kenya. The airline offered me a free stay at a very nice local hotel while I waited about 12 hours for the next flight. I knew I had to choose between fretting and worrying about being late for my scheduled meetings, or just relaxing and enjoying the free room. I chose the latter. After getting settled I put on some enjoyable music, made myself tea, and had a marvelous time of relaxation.

  At this point you might be wondering, What does this have to do with my blood-sugar problem? Actually, it can be pretty helpful for you in this respect. First, between the low-carb snack and the tea with cream and stevia, there is very little to raise your blood sugar. Second, you will find it quite filling and satisfying, which relieves you from those between-meal hunger pains. And third, when you take this teatime around 4:30 or 5:00 p.m. and then eat a couple of hours later, you will not be nearly so likely to overeat at supper (or dinner, or whatever you like to call it).

  Often your worst struggle with high-carb foods will come at the supper table. By having teatime a couple of hours before supper, you can be more moderate in your portion sizes at the supper table. You will not be nearly so likely to devour mounds of rice or that huge biscuit as you would have been. Beyond these reasons, there is some evidence that tea actually improves blood-sugar levels to some degree.

  Of course working folks often don’t have the luxury of taking time off their jobs to sip tea at 4:30, but you can always have it as soon as you get home, and then delay your meal for a while. And be sure to put on some relaxing music while you sip your tea. Utter a few thanksgivings to God in between sips. It is a great way to unwind and soothe the soul. And soothed souls are much more likely to be self-controlled than unsoothed ones!

  32

  Don’t Be Gullible!

  When I was in college I went with some buddies to a carnival. Toward the end of our time there, a man in a booth offered me some free ring tosses. I thought I had nothing to lose (little did I know!) and took him up on his offer. He handed me several rings and instructed me to toss them at the soda bottles he had placed in the center of his booth. After tossing them he congratulated me and began to add up my “points.” According to him I had accumulated around 90 points and was nearly at the goal of 100, which would have enabled me to win a major prize. But of course I would need to pay for the next set of rings.

  I figured if I had gotten up to 90 with the first tosses, I could surely rack up another 10 with this next round. Afterward I was up to something like 96—still not enough to win anything but very, very close to that magic goal of 100. On top of this the operator told me this qualified me to win a second prize once I reached the 100 points, and he brought out a portable television (a lot bigger deal in those days that it would be today). Of course I would have to purchase some more rings, and this time they would cost more. I think you can figure out where this is going (I only wish I had figured it out then!). Eventually he cleaned me out of all the money in my wallet, and I was still without a single prize.

  As you walk through the grocery store, you should imagine slick carnival guys like this fellow calling out to you, “Come and buy! This food is just the ticket for a diabetic like you!” Of course these are not living and breathing people—they are brightly colored banners that shout at you, “Low-fat,” “fat-free,” “no sugar added,” “gluten-free,” and other such things. It’s not hard to be awed by these important-sounding proclamations and buy the product.

  We will consider some of these claims in a moment, but before we do let me give you the most basic and simple rule when deciding whether a food will work for you. The bottom line is the number of grams of carbs (minus the fiber) in the portion size that you will eat. When considering foods with claims of being natural, organic, fat-free, or anything else, your first response should be to go immediately to the nutrition information and find the net carbs. Anything approaching 30-plus grams of carbs in your real-life portion size is near to what you would get in a candy bar.

  When your blood sugar is rising, it is responding to the carbs—period! Your body doesn’t much care (blood-sugar-wise) whether those carbs came from raisins or a chocolate bar, whether from orange juice or from Coca-Cola, whether they originated from stone-ground wheat flour or the whitest white flour on the face of the planet. The total number of carbs you are ingesting is going to have a direct correlation to that discouraging high number that shows up on your blood-sugar monitor. Yes, complex carbohydrates may break down somewhat more slowly than simple carbs, but not that much more slowly. And you will still “pay the piper.”

  Let’s consider some of the slogans you need to take with the proverbial grain of salt:

  “Low-fat” or “fat-free”—Many years ago nutritionists and medical “experts” decided that a high-carb, low-fat diet was the sure way to stay healthy, lose weight, and get along with your mother-in-law. They pushed this diet rigorously and with all sincerity. Eat as much bread, rice, bagels, doughnuts, and Corn Flakes as you like. Just stay away from that dreadful meat, terrible cheese, those horrible fat-filled nuts, and those heart-clogging cholesterol-laden eggs! Americans naively assumed that since the experts said it, it must be so. The facts and the research did not bear this out, however. Not only did most not lose weight on such a diet, but diabetes has gone through the roof. Stuffing our mouths with starches and sugars while avoiding meat and eggs led to millions of people with worn-out pancreases and insulin-resistant bodies.

  Keep this in mind: most of the time when manufacturers reduce fat in a product, it means they have made up for it by increasing the sugar. If you take away the natural taste produced by the fat, the food tends to be bland and tasteless. The only way you’ll ever get anybody to eat it will be by ramping up the sugar. And sugar is far more your enemy than fat ever could be!

  “Gluten-free”—Gluten-free foods are necessary for people who are allergic to gluten, but for ordinary people, they serve no purpose. Some have supposed that gluten-free foods are especially good for diabetics. They are not. “Gluten-free” sounds sort of impressive, but if you look at the net carbs, most of the foods that boast of this are higher in net carbs than the wheat-based products. Unless you are allergic to gluten, the last thing you need to worry about is whether your carbs are coming from gluten foods or some other source. Carbs are carbs.

  “No sugar added”—Once I enjoyed some “no sugar added” ice cream without checking the net carbs. I didn’t realize that even without the added sugar, the ice cream was a significant source of carbs. A very high blood-sugar reading afterward convinced me of the error of my ways, and it motivated me to be more careful to check the carbs on foods rather than trusting the boasts on the package. Often you can find desserts such as pies and cakes that say “no sugar added.” What people fail to realize is that a pie or cake contains a tr
emendous amount of starch. That starch will turn to sugar in your body with blazing speed. A food does not have to taste sugary to be a source of sugar. “No sugar added” is better than “sugar added” (a label I’ve never seen)—but in itself it is not enough. Check the net carbs!

  “Cholesterol-free”—This may sound impressive, but in truth any food derived from any plant can boast of this. Doughnuts are cholesterol-free. Trix cereal is cholesterol-free. Almost every candy bar is cholesterol-free. You could kill yourself in a year’s time eating cholesterol-free foods. If I had to choose between a cholesterol-laden egg or a cholesterol-free doughnut, it would be a no-brainer. The egg is better for us in every possible way.

  The Inuit people, who traditionally lived on diets of fish and seal meat almost exclusively—foods high in fat and protein, loaded with cholesterol, and nearly totally carb-less—have been found to have far less heart disease and diabetes than the doughnut-stuffing, Cap’n Crunch–eating, Dr. Pepper–guzzling Americans. So don’t be too impressed with the “cholesterol-free” boast proudly displayed on some food package at your local grocery store. Any old bag of potato chips could say that!

  33

  Working Fruit into Your Diet

  When you grew up you probably heard the refrain many times: “Eat your fruits and vegetables.” There was pretty good logic in such advice. Fruits and vegetables have loads of vitamins in them—far more than you will find in meats, breads, or rice. “Fruits and vegetables” are said together so often that it almost seems as though they are one and the same. But for the diabetic they most certainly are not.

  Fruits are loaded with vitamins and they taste so good! But we all know the reason for that—they have a lot of natural sugar. It certainly is not necessary to eliminate them from our diets. In fact they should be a part of everyone’s diet, diabetic or otherwise. But those who struggle with high blood sugar have to be more discriminating than those who don’t. One aspect of this discrimination is to lean more toward the low-sugar fruits, like melons and berries. Another aspect is to eat them in meals where they will not “pile on” with other higher carb foods and do a number on your blood sugar.

  Being able to instantly identify the high-carb foods and keep them within healthy boundaries is vital. When you look over the various foods set out on your table your eyes should be able to quickly distinguish the potential troublemakers. Bread, rice, pasta, potatoes, corn—these are some of the basic high-carb foods you will want to greatly limit. A simple rule I have mentioned before is that no meal should contain two generous portions of these high-carb foods. If you are going to have bread, don’t have a potato also. If you want to indulge in corn on the cob, don’t have the mac and cheese as well.

  The ultimate goal is to keep your blood sugar from peaking any higher than about 145 (140 is better). If it takes pills to help you do this, use the pills. If it takes insulin, so be it. But you need to avoid the physical destruction that comes, albeit gradually, to men and women when their blood sugar is consistently too high, day after day, and year after year.

  Fruits are so bursting with health benefits and vitamins that it is worth taking the necessary precautions and doing a little testing. You’ll discover how many of them you can have, and in what sizes and types. And because there are so many excellent low-carb breads, muffins, and other foods, it is possible to eat meals that have very few non-fruit carbs and thus enable yourself to add some delicious and nutritious fruit to your diet without doing any damage.

  Because most fruits fall into the category of high-carb foods, they need to be eaten in meals where there are no other major sources of carbs. For most of us this means breakfast and lunch. At supper we usually end up eating bread or rice or some other higher-carb food that will lead us into trouble if we have, say, a bowl of grapes as well. For breakfast and lunch it is a fairly easy thing to craft meals that are quite low in carbs. Eggs, sausage, and a low-carb muffin will provide you very few carbs at breakfast. The same is true with low-carb pancakes and sausage, or a low-carb bagel half topped with an egg and slice of ham. With a little effort, it won’t take you too long to find breakfasts that are going to keep your pancreas and your blood-sugar monitor happy. In such meals, most folks can add a peach, or half of a banana or apple, or the fruit of your choice, and still stay within a desirable range when their blood sugar peaks.

  Notice the word half. Some fruits are simply too high in sugar and carbs for most of us to be able to eat a whole one, especially when they are of a large size. A large banana is probably going to have almost 30 grams of carbs—too many to be getting from one small food item at one sitting. On the other hand a small banana may only have 21 net carbs, which might be okay for some but not others. As we have been saying all along, let your blood-sugar monitor be your guide.

  Lunches can also be created to be very low in carbs and thus make room for fruit in them. Some examples might be a garden salad or some high-fiber beans (see chapter 29) over a very low-carb bread. In such cases you buy yourself the luxury of enjoying an orange or tangerine, a peach, a bowl of berries, or a slice of watermelon.

  Some fruits are clearly less problematic than others. A cup of papaya has less than half the carbs and sugar of a cup of mango. A medium peach has about half the carbs and sugar of a medium apple. A cup of raspberries has about one-twentieth of the carbs of a cup of seedless raisins! So as you add fruit to your meal, do it wisely and discerningly. Be aware of the sugar content of the particular fruit you are eating, and the size as well. And when you first experiment with fruit, be sure to check your blood-sugar peaks and see how your body is reacting.

  The good news is that many type 2 diabetics can eat fruit with their meals and keep their blood sugar under control without the need for medication or insulin. Type 1 diabetics can certainly eat fruit and keep their blood sugar in bounds as well, but there will be the need for the proper amount of insulin. The one thing no diabetic or even prediabetic should do is eat as much fruit as they want as often as they want. Exercise some moderation and self-control, and your body will thank you for it.

  34

  Think Outside the Box

  People are notoriously creatures of habit and culture, and the older we get the more we tend to plant ourselves in routines and habits that rarely vary. There is a certain amount of security and comfort in this. Doing as we have always done and living as we have always lived seems safe. It has worked for us thus far—why change?

  But when it comes to runaway blood sugar, your lifestyle and routines clearly haven’t worked very well for you thus far, since you are reading this book. “When it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” but when it is totally broken down and you are on the verge of self-destruction it’s time to make some serious changes. And this will involve thinking outside the box, doing new things, eating new foods, and adopting new habits and patterns.

  Be willing to be different! Do things in a way you haven’t before. Do things that others don’t, for the sake of your health. Here are a few simple examples to get you started, but don’t stop with these.

  The hamburger. Let’s start with this most American of all foods. The burger itself is no problem for diabetics. No carbs worth mentioning. The ketchup will add a few, but you can go a bit light with it and be fine. The cheese and lettuce—again no problem. No, the only problem with the hamburger is that fat and sassy bun. That’s where you are going to get most of your carbs, and that is what will produce those depressingly high numbers on your blood-sugar monitor. American traditions tell us exactly how a hamburger bun should look and what texture it should have. But here’s a news flash: the hamburger bun’s attributes weren’t given by God to Moses on Mount Sinai! We can do all sorts of things to improve the hamburger, blood-sugar-wise.

  For example, you can eat a hamburger on a low-carb waffle (see chapter 19). Yes, it will seem outlandish at first, but you will find that it’s actually pretty good. Or you can buy the round flat buns at the store that have about 8 net grams of carbs each and p
robably still keep your blood sugar in bounds. Or you can make all sorts of other substitutions. The point is, you will not be arrested by the hamburger police for saying no to that round plump bun saturated with blood-sugar-raising carbs!

  Strawberry shortcake is something that most Americans are accustomed to eating with strawberries piled inside those cute, spongy cakes that are hollowed out in the center. It hurts our sensibilities to eat strawberries on a square of bread or on something that isn’t yellow and spongy.

  But who says you can’t enjoy strawberries and whipped cream on some other type of bread—especially some form that won’t send your blood sugar through the roof? Most low-carb muffin mixes (as in chapter 16) baked in a small square pan can make a great-tasting “shortcake” that can be divided into quarters. No, they don’t look so cute, but when they are drenched with mashed juicy strawberries and topped with whipped cream, they do the job wonderfully.

  You can use low-carb waffles (see chapter 19) to make your own version of the Egg McMuffin. Two of the low-carb waffles will have around 6 grams of carbs. The two halves of an English muffin, however, will have around 27 grams of carbs. The savings here are tremendous and are well worth eating a little “outside the box.”

  Bringing your own snacks with you is another “out of the box” behavior. But it works great for filler purposes. For example, when people go to Starbucks or other coffee places they often like to have a little snack with their coffee. But nearly all snacks sold at coffeehouses are little more than loads of sugar combined with lots of starch—a diabetic’s nightmare.

  Of course you can just have the coffee, but sometimes I bring my own snack to go with my sugar-free, half-and-half French vanilla latte. My snack of choice is usually a handful of peanuts and a small, sugar-free chocolate candy (Russell Stover coconut, to be precise). Yes, it may well be that a few people have seen me pull the peanuts out of my pocket and wondered what I was doing. But who cares? If I want to enjoy my coffee with a low-carb snack, I’ll pay the price of looking a bit odd to one or two people who sit nearby. I sometimes bring a low-carb snack with me into McDonald’s as well, when I want a hamburger and need to replace the typical accompanying fries. Of course I could always get a salad, but sometimes I prefer my own substitution. When I am wearing a sport jacket with pockets I sometimes bring low-carb muffins into restaurants. (Women have it easier, and with a large purse can smuggle in entire dinners!)