Hypoglycemia, metabolic syndrome, prediabetes, and diabetes are all disorders of the blood sugar regulating mechanism. Although hypoglycemia is low blood sugar, and diabetes by definition is high blood sugar, these four ailments are actually a pathway from the least harmful and most easily controlled condition to the most serious.
How blood sugar control works
To understand these conditions, it’s important to understand how blood sugar control works when it’s working properly. If you eat anything that contains or is converted to glucose (sugar) in the body, the pancreas puts out insulin to counteract it, with the goal of keeping blood sugar stable. If concentrated sugar is eaten, the pancreas quickly puts out a large amount of insulin. However, doing this puts a load on the pancreas, which can start to malfunction over time. Other things such as low adrenal function can also cause the blood sugar control system to malfunction.
Hypoglycemia
Hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, is caused by an inconsistent oversupply of insulin or an under-supply of adrenaline, especially if you have been eating a diet high in sugar. This can cause fatigue, shakiness, headaches, dizziness, brain fog, mood swings, insomnia, indecisiveness, and hunger, especially sugar cravings.
The sugar cravings make sense: just as insulin counteracts sugar, sugar counteracts an oversupply of insulin, and your body wants to restore that balance as quickly as possible by directing you to eat sugar or carbohydrates. For this reason, someone who is having hypoglycemia symptoms may think that a candy bar or glass of juice is the way to combat them. These concentrated sources of sugar work in the short run, but can make the problem worse in the long run. The last thing you want is to exhaust the pancreas and adrenals still further, which sugar will do.
What causes hypoglycemia?
There are a number of causes of hypoglycemia other than eating too much sugar and overstimulating the pancreas:
- Fungus can contribute to hypoglycemia, or low blood sugar, by taking sugar that is needed by your cells.
- As mentioned, there is a connection with adrenal health. Stress hormones can trigger the body’s tendency to release too much insulin.
- Caffeine stimulates the sympathetic nervous system, which can lead to increased insulin levels. This may explain why so many coffee drinkers want something sweet, like a pastry or donut, with their coffee.
- Hypoglycemia is often associated with food allergies, so keep these under control as well.
- Nutritional deficiencies – see the next topic
What can help hypoglycemia?
The cause of your hypoglycemia should be identified and addressed.
Control of hypoglycemia is almost exclusively dietary. Although hypoglycemia is in some ways the opposite of diabetes, the dietary recommendations are essentially the same since in both cases the goal is to stabilize insulin and sugar levels. Eat complex carbohydrates and fiber along with protein, and avoid sweets and refined foods. Frequent small, high protein meals help modulate insulin swings and control hypoglycemia.
Chromium picolinate and spirulina will also help stabilize blood sugar. Vanadium is used in sugar metabolism and regulation and can help with hypoglycemia.
Low blood sugar is partly high insulin, partly low adrenals. Life Solubles, sold at CAM, has chromium and vanadium to help insulin work; potassium smoothes out adrenals.
Metabolic syndrome
Metabolic syndrome, also called insulin resistance, is the next stage along the pathway to diabetes. With metabolic syndrome, the cells become resistant to the effects of insulin. Instead of the insulin allowing the glucose into the cells where it is needed, it remains in the bloodstream. The sugar, unable to enter the cells, is diverted to fat storage (triglycerides). The pancreas keeps pumping out more and more insulin until it starts becoming exhausted, at which point sugar starts accumulating in the blood and spilling over into the urine, the definition of type 2 diabetes.
A symptom of metabolic syndrome is weight gain, especially in the abdominal area. Other symptoms are fatigue, oversensitivity to stress due to the adrenal connection, and heart disease. Triglycerides and cholesterol levels start going up.
Inflammation such as that caused by toxins, allergy, and leaky gut can lead to insulin resistance and metabolic syndrome.
Prediabetes
Prediabetes is metabolic syndrome taken a step further, in which measures of blood sugar start showing abnormalities. One of the two most important measures are fasting blood glucose, which should be 70-90 mcg/dl; with prediabetes the level is over 100, and levels over 130 are getting into the diabetic range. Even more important is a test called A1C, which is essentially the average level of blood sugar over the past three months. Normal is less than 5.6, and 4.6-5.2 is even better. 5.7-6.5 is prediabetes, and over 6.5 is diabetes.
Keep in mind that abnormal blood tests can take years or even decades to show up, but the damage is being done long before that point.
Diabetes
First of all, there are two types of diabetes, type 1 and type 2. Type 1, also called juvenile diabetes, usually shows up in children and is an autoimmune disease in which the pancreas is attacked and stops producing insulin. Lifetime insulin injections are necessary and consequences for not keeping blood sugar in balance can be rapidly fatal.
The large majority of those with diabetes have type 2 diabetes, in which the exhausted pancreas simply can’t put out enough insulin and blood sugar builds up. Although early type 2 diabetes can sometimes be managed with a strict diet, insulin injections are often necessary along with a low-carb, no-sugar diet.
Diabetes can lead to a number of complications, from neuropathy (pain) to vision impairment to heart and blood vessel problems. Sugar is truly harmful to the body, even more so when it builds up as with diabetes. Earlier symptoms of diabetes are fatigue, increased thirst and urination, and blurred vision.
Watch out for artificial sweeteners
As harmful as sugar is, don’t think that using artificial sweeteners will take care of the problem, whether or not you are diabetic. In fact, they can make matters worse. Not only are most artificial sweeteners toxic in themselves, but their sweet taste tries to stimulate the pancreas to put out more insulin. The additional insulin, if the pancreas is still capable of producing it, stimulates hunger, especially for sweets. A number of studies are showing that these artificially sweetened products can actually contribute to the ailments they are designed to prevent by substituting for sugar: type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome, obesity, high blood pressure, and heart attacks. Artificial sweeteners have even been shown to be addictive.
So avoid both sugar and artificial sweeteners. Even if your blood sugar regulation appears to be working just fine, you want to keep it that way, and if it’s not working well, that’s all the more reason to avoid these substances.
