60 Ways to Lower Your Blood Sugar

by Dennis Pollock

Nutritionist Dr. Jonny Bowden is quoted in a WebMD article about the concept of counting calories:

  People haven’t been counting calories forever (though some days it may feel as if you have). The idea became popular around the turn of the twentieth century, according to Jonny Bowden, PhD, CNS, a board-certified nutritionist and author of Unbiased Truth About What You Should Eat and Why. At that time, scientist Wilbur Atwater noticed that if you put food in a machine, called a “bomb calorimeter,” and burned it, you could measure the ash and heat to find out how much “energy” was released and therefore how much “energy” was in the food. The idea caught on, and people began counting calories—that is, calculating exactly how many calories were consumed when eating particular foods, and “burned” when engaging in different activities. “A spate of diet books in the early part of the century popularized the notion that it’s all about the calories—and it’s been with us ever since,” Bowden tells WebMD.23

  Knowledge about calories can be a useful tool in losing weight, which in turn can be a great help in getting your blood sugar under control. As valuable as it is to limit carbs and choose low-carb foods over their sugary, high-carb cousins, we cannot be so naïve as to think that calories are irrelevant. Many foods advertised as low-carb are in fact high-calorie. One of the reasons that people who go on low-carb diets lose so much weight initially is that, at first, they hardly know what they can eat. They have a big list of no-no’s, but a tiny list of yes-yes’s. So naturally their calorie intake drops drastically and they end up losing weight fast.

  If they stay low-carb very long they will, out of sheer desperation, begin to discover all sorts of low-carbs foods that will broaden their diet and even taste great. Nothing wrong with that. But sometimes in their newfound enthusiasm for their discovery of many great-tasting low-carb foods, they go hog wild (figuratively, and perhaps sometimes literally) and begin to overeat. The idea is, “It’s low-carb, so I don’t need to worry about calories or weight gain.” Wrong. Weight gain will always occur when your calories ingested exceed your calories burned. In such a situation, you have two choices: burn more calories or ingest less.

  If you find your weight falls easily into the normal range by eating a low-carb diet without ever counting calories, great! Keep on doing what you’re doing. But if you are still struggling with weight and find that excess pounds refuse to depart, it may be time to consider the calories you are taking in each day. Read the labels of the foods you are buying at the store. Check the calories and the portion size, and make sure you are staying in your target range.

  Thomas Giesecke, MD, writes, “For weight loss to occur, total calories ingested must be exceeded by total calories expended. Reduced total calories a day form the basis for diabetic diets with carb counting being integral to that.” This is a simple law of nature that cannot be circumvented or overcome.

  On certain commercials for weight-loss programs, individuals boast about how they lost weight and were still able to eat pizza, desserts, various sweets, and so forth. They are technically right. You can lose weight eating a diet of ice cream and pizza if you keep your portions small enough. Conversely, you can become overweight eating salads and brown rice—if you eat them in monstrous amounts. Said differently, 100 calories of pizza will have the same effect on your weight as 100 calories of cucumbers, just like a ten-pound bag of feathers will weigh exactly the same as a ten-pound bag of marbles.

  But although you can theoretically manage to lose weight eating all sorts of sugary foods, almost nobody would. You wouldn’t be able to limit yourself to the small portion sizes you would need to eat in order to keep your intake calories at a level where they would not exceed the calories you burn. Also, you would be losing the game nutritionally. And of course eating sugary foods would make your blood-sugar levels jump all over the place.

  In short, there are many tools at your disposal in your quest to overcome high blood sugar. Being cognizant of the calories in the foods you eat may well be a tremendous help in shedding that excess weight which can greatly improve your blood-sugar levels. The simple rule about calories is this:

  1. Eat more calories than you burn—gain weight.

  2. Eat fewer calories than you burn—lose weight.

  3. Eat about the same amount of calories as you burn—maintain weight.

  It’s not rocket science, but we do need to be reminded of this sometimes!

  56

  Vicious and Blessed Cycles

  Vicious cycles can be hard to escape. Consider the following:

  Susan has gained a lot of weight. She doesn’t find herself very attractive when she looks at herself in the mirror, which makes her depressed. As a result she tries to cheer herself up with the one thing that never fails to give her a boost: food. As she indulges in ice cream and doughnuts she gains more weight, which makes her more miserable. She makes ice cream and doughnuts the standard therapy for her depression and becomes heavier still. The more weight she gains, the more depressed she becomes. The more depressed she becomes, the more she eats. The more she eats, the more weight she gains…I’m sure you get the idea. She is caught in a vicious cycle.

  On the other hand there are blessed cycles. (Most folks call these virtuous cycles, but I like the word blessed!) Let’s say that Susan is able to cut down on her eating and loses a few pounds. She starts feeling really good about herself, which results in her not having the psychological need to snack so much. You can see where this is going.

  Diabetes and insulin resistance are all about a vicious cycle. Nowhere is the term “spiraling out of control” more appropriate than when a person with normal blood-sugar levels suddenly starts seeing their numbers rise higher and higher. What is happening here?

  Insulin resistance—the body’s inability to process insulin efficiently, which results in the pancreas being forced to produce more and more insulin to barely handle what it used to process with ease—will almost never remain static. The more insulin-resistant you become, the more your exhausted pancreas will dump prodigious amounts of insulin into your bloodstream. As noted elsewhere in this book, this in itself is a dangerous situation, even if your blood-sugar levels could somehow remain fairly normal (and they will for a while). But it will not last.

  And there is another factor involved in this vicious cycle that makes it even more dangerous. Not only do high levels of insulin increase insulin resistance, but they also play a role in your body’s gaining weight more easily. So the more your blood sugar rises, the more insulin resistance increases and the more weight you tend to gain—which heightens insulin resistance all the more. And all of this means your poor old pancreas must work all the harder to keep up. And it will at some point throw up the white flag of surrender. Then your blood-sugar levels will go up and up and up, and you will become a raging, full-scale, hard-core diabetic. This can happen with dizzying speed once your insulin resistance hits the “critical threshold.”

  The longer your body remains saturated with insulin, sometimes three, four, or five times the normal levels, the more immune your cells will be toward that insulin. In Beat Diabetes!, Margaret Blackstone writes,

  If you begin to overload your system with carbohydrates, your pancreas will respond by producing more insulin to cope with processing the carbohydrates. If you overload your system for years with carbs, your pancreas becomes stuck in an insulin overproduction mode. Concomitantly, your body becomes used to excessive amounts of insulin—you might even say inured—and more and more insulin becomes necessary to do the job of regulating blood glucose. Your cells become resistant to insulin. Whereas before the receptors on the cells needed only a small amount of insulin to keep blood sugar in the normal range, now they need more and more. The situation becomes chronic, and insulin resistance or hyperinsulinemia ensues. In much the same way as an alcoholic views liquor, your metabolism’s relationship with insulin becomes one of too much is not enough. Eventually all the insulin in the world can’t handle regulating glucose.24

&nb
sp; There is, however, a possibility—even a likelihood—of halting and even reversing this cycle. You probably have already figured it out. When you stop overdosing on the carbs, your pancreas stops flooding your system with massive doses of insulin. Your receptor cells, the ones responsible for converting glucose into energy, begin to “perk up.” They can actually recover much of their lost ability over time and become fairly efficient in processing carbohydrates again. In time you may well find that you can eat the same exact meal that used to cause your blood sugar to rise to 185, and discover that it now rises to a much more manageable 142. Same food, but a more efficient metabolism. You have entered the zone of the “blessed cycle.” Stay there!

  In short, do anything you can do to decrease insulin resistance so you can get off this terrible loop of ever-increasing blood sugar and demands for more and more insulin. Your primary weapon in this battle is to significantly reduce carb intake, not just for a time but for the rest of your days. Yes, there are other things you can do, but nothing works so well as carb reduction. Beyond that, exercise regularly as your doctor allows and get your weight to the proper level.

  What a simple and yet awesome thought it is that we can do something about our diabetes! In so many diseases and physical afflictions we have only two things to do: 1) go to the doctor and 2) hope everything works out. But with runaway blood sugar we can have a huge say in determining the outcome. Will this thing spoil our remaining years and eventually kill us, or will it be converted from a fearful monster into a little harmless puppy that can do little more than occasionally yap at our heels and remind us of its presence?

  57

  Doctors—the Good, the Bad, and the Uninformed

  When I first discovered I had serious blood-sugar issues I went into a research mode, reading all I could about diabetes and doing Internet searches using the phrase “reverse diabetes.” For a while things just seemed to get worse and worse. Finally I did what I should have done much sooner—I went to the doctor. But not having health insurance I went to a general practitioner rather than one specializing in diabetes, trying to save money. This doctor was nice and I’m sure she was well intentioned, but she didn’t seem to have a clue about what was really going on. She took out a list of questions and started asking me one after another, marking my answers. My fasting blood sugar was still in the normal range at that time, so this was the only other thing she knew to do.

  I told her of my ups and downs and how I would have the hypoglycemic episodes, one of which caused me to pass out after church on Sunday morning. She told me to eat more protein, which was helpful, but seemed nearly as clueless as I was about the cause of my problems. I have often thought of how much more help I could be to someone in a similar situation who came to me now and told me their symptoms, knowing what I know today. (I know, I’m not a doctor, but one can fantasize!) First, I would immediately insist they purchase a blood-sugar monitor and start monitoring their blood sugar like crazy. I would have them keep a journal of their numbers, both fasting blood sugar and post-meal blood sugar, writing down what was eaten at each meal. Then I would have them come back in a few weeks to look at the results together. But this doctor did none of this.

  Many years later I was at a general practitioner’s office again, though for a different reason. By then I had long since figured out the things I am sharing in this book, and my blood sugar was under control. As we talked she mentioned how good bananas were in providing potassium. I told her that I rarely ate bananas because of my blood-sugar problems, and I mentioned that a large banana had as much sugar as a candy bar. She looked at me quizzically and said, “Really?” It had never dawned on me that a doctor wouldn’t know this, but here was living proof.

  The point here is that doctors are not always the all-knowing, all-wise repositories of knowledge and truth that we sometimes think they are. This is not to suggest we can do without them—far from it. But we must remember that just like there are better and worse plumbers, and good and bad teachers, architects, and police officers, so there are some doctors who are far more knowledgeable and helpful than others. And in the area of diabetes it is critical that you get excellent medical advice and help. You cannot afford to settle for a mediocre doctor or worse. If you were going to have heart surgery you would want someone who is world-class. You should be no less discriminating about the physician who provides you diabetes counsel and monitors your progress. Get the best you can.

  If you encounter a dinosaur, run for your life and don’t look back! By “dinosaur,” I mean a doctor of the old-school type who still clings to the disastrous 1950s idea that diabetics need a high-carb, low-fat diet. There aren’t too many of them still around, but there are probably a few.

  You want a doctor who takes a positive, proactive approach to combating diabetes. Some doctors have decided that diabetes is going to get you eventually and there is not that much you can do but keep your blood-sugar levels from the uppermost limits. As long as you keep it under 190 or so, they are happy. Find a doctor who will work with you to help you bring your blood-sugar levels as close as is reasonably possible to a normal person’s.

  Remember that it is your life and your health that you are dealing with. It is not your doctor who will suffer from eye problems, kidney failure, and leg amputations if you don’t bring that blood sugar under control—it is you! You have every right to look for the best, and if the first doctor you go to doesn’t meet your standards, go to another. Don’t quit searching until you find someone who knows what they are doing, and makes it clear that they are eager to work with you. If at all possible find one who specializes in diabetes. And by all means get a doctor who has a positive attitude and encourages you to believe that you can win.

  Don’t stop until you have found a doctor you can trust. The saying goes, “The man who represents himself in court has a fool for a client.” Likewise the diabetic or prediabetic who tries to doctor himself…well, you get the idea!

  58

  Beware (Some) Diabetic Recipes

  We sometimes see booklets in the stores that give a few suggestions for diabetics and then pack in recipes for all kinds of delicious foods “safe for diabetics.” Far too often readers assume that safe really means safe, and get excited about this new collection of recipes to try. They follow the “experts,” but sadly it is often the blind leading the blind.

  In researching this book I picked up a couple of booklets like this, one by Prevention Guide and the other by Reader’s Digest. The Prevention booklet proudly sports the headline, “Reverse Diabetes Naturally” (with a tantalizing piece of chocolate cake on the cover), and the Reader’s Digest booklet leads with “Foods That Fight Diabetes.” Not to be too much of a Scrooge, I will admit that some of the recipes they give could be useful and are well worth trying. But others are terrible. This is pretty much par for the course in most diabetic recipe books. Don’t believe everything you read.

  The problem with many of these recipe books is that they start with all the wrong assumptions. They aren’t worried about what will send your blood sugar soaring; they are simply following a worn-out, patently false theory that says as long as you are eating whole-grain, low-fat foods, you are fine. Never mind that you are loading your body with carbs that will turn to sugar almost immediately. At least those carbs are coming from healthy, low-fat, whole-grain foods, and everybody knows that these are good for you—right? Wrong!

  As an example, the Reader’s Digest booklet contains a recipe for “Chicken and Broccoli Chapatis.” At the top of the recipe it gives you what I suppose is their justification for calling this a food for diabetics: “Chapatis are Indian breads made from whole-wheat flour and water, then baked on a dry griddle without any fat…” The accompanying picture looks delicious, for sure. And most of the ingredients are fine. But the “whole wheat, cooked without any fat” chapati is a nightmare for diabetics and brings the carb count up to 65 grams per serving. This is horrendous, and the Reader’s Digest folks ought to be prose
cuted for attempted murder. (Okay, I’m kidding, but surely they are committing some crime! Where are the low-carb police when you need them?)

  There are a number of low-carb desserts you can enjoy, but cake is not one of them. Don’t try to find a chocolate cake that has a few less calories than the regular one—give up on chocolate cake altogether. Even if the recipe doesn’t call for a single teaspoon of added sugar, those flour carbs are going to turn into sugar with lightning speed once they hit your stomach.

  Worse still is the “Rigatoni with Broccoli Rabe” recipe, which comes in at a whopping 98 grams of carbs per serving. If that doesn’t drive your blood sugar above 200 (and some of you closer to 300), nothing will. They also have a homemade hamburger (combining lean ground beef with turkey) recipe, which they justify because “our beef and bird version cuts saturated fat and has just a third of the usual calories.” They insist that you use whole-grain buns. Again we see the “carbs don’t really count as long as they come from whole-grain products” mentality. In terms of nutrition, whole grain is preferable to white, but in terms of diabetes and blood sugar, a carb is a carb is a carb. If you don’t believe that, just ask your blood-sugar monitor.

  The Prevention booklet is not quite so over the top, but some of its recipes are still far too high in carbs. The chocolate cake shown on the cover is titled “Double-Dipper Chocolate Delight.” I suppose they justify putting it in a booklet that says, “Outsmart Diabetes” because they call for whole-grain pastry flour rather than white, and use sugar-free chocolate fudge frosting rather than regular. A single slice of this cake still comes out at 40 grams of carbs per serving—better than most chocolate cakes, but still far too high. Add this 40-carb-gram dessert on top of their “whole wheat penne with shrimp” meal, containing 50 grams, and you are sending shock waves throughout your body, metabolically speaking.