- Are you rarely wide awake within 15 minutes of rising?
- Do you need tea, coffee, a cigarette or something sweet to get you going in the morning?
- Do you crave chocolate, sweet foods, bread, cereal or pasta?
- Do you often have energy slumps during the day or after meals?
- Do you crave something sweet or a stimulant after meals?
- Do you often have mood swings or difficulty in concentrating?
- Do you get dizzy or irritable if you go six hours without food?
- Do you find you overreact to stress?
- Is you energy now less than it used to be?
- Do you feel too tired to exercise?
- Are you gaining weight, and finding it hard to lose, even though you're not noticeably eating more or exercising less?
- Are you losing weight, and find it hard to gain?
- Do you get thirsty, and pee a lot - especially at night?
- Do you get blurred vision?
- Do you get genital itching or frequent thrush?
If you answered yes to:
Less than 4: your blood-sugar balance is reasonably good. The ideal is to have no 'yes' answers.
4 to 9: you have the indications of a potential blood-sugar problem and need to take action.
10 or more: you have a major blood-sugar problem. The last four questions, particularly, are potential indicators of undiagnosed diabetes. I recommend you go to your doctor or practice nurse and get your blood-sugar levels checked.
The perfect diet for diabetes prevention - please click this link to go to the nutrition section with this feature and relevant recipes.
Normally the amount of glucose in your blood is kept within a healthy range by a set of hormones. Insulin is the one involved in lowering blood-sugar, whereas three other hormones - glucagon, cortisol and adrenalin - help counterbalance the effect of insulin and raise blood sugar if it is falling rapidly or when it is low.
After a meal, the carbohydrates that you have eaten are broken down into the simplest sugar, glucose, which is absorbed from the gut into your bloodstream. hen specific cells in the pancreas, called beta cells, begin to pump out insulin, whose job it is to clear the glucose away, stashing it in the muscles where it provides instant energy, or in fat cells, where it is stored. As part of this system, glucose is stored and released by the liver.
If this system goes wrong and your blood-sugar levels start skyrocketing, it's for one of two reasons: either you are not making enough insulin, or the insulin you produce isn't doing its job. Both of these are most commonly the result of a combination of genetic predisposition, a lack of physical activity, chronic stress and over-loading your bloodstream with glucose, over and over again, until your cells either become 'resistant' to insulin or just can't produce enough any more.
Glucose overload will happen if you're eating lots of refined carbohydrates-say, cornflakes, white bread, white pasta, cakes and biscuits. Eating a big bowl of refined cereal or a large portion of refined pasta, for instance, will cause sudden peaks of blood glucose, triggering the release of extra insulin to deal with it. As this is 'fast-release' carbohydrate, you'll then experience a sudden slump. Eating refined carbs at every meal puts you on a blood-sugar rollercoaster.
Eventually, you can develop type 2 diabetes.
Caught before it has done to much damage, type 2 diabetes should be a fairly straightforward disorder to treat. The remedy is to simply eat and follow a lifestyle that stabilizes your blood-sugar levels and restores insulin sensitivity.
Action points for balancing your blood sugar
- Supplement the 'energy' nutrients (vitamin C and B's, plus chromium, which help turn food into energy)
- Exercise every day
- Follow a low-glycaemic load (GL) diet (see nutrition section)
- Graze rather than gorge, eating three meals and two snacks a day.
- Eat carbs with an equal amount of protein
- Avoid sugar
- Avoid caffeine
- Don't smoke
- Minimise alcohol
How is your blood sugar balance?