Balancing your blood sugar is a very important part of your healing journey, as blood sugar swings (from high to low) are very stressful for the body.

Balancing your blood sugar will reduce inflammation in your body (mainly by reducing insulin, but also cortisol), stabilise your energy and your mood and allow you to last longer between each meal without being hungry, greatly reducing the need for snacking.

** There is something called the migrating motor complex (MMC) which sweeps bacteria and debris out of the small intestine between meals. If you need to snack constantly because your blood sugar is not stable, your body doesn't get a chance to 'clean up' the small intestine, which can lead to serious issues over time, such as small intestinal bacterial overgrowth , which we'll discuss in Phase 2 of the program. This is only one of the many reasons why balancing your blood sugar is so important to help you heal from gut issues.

SOME BASIC TERMINOLOGY

Blood sugar/blood glucose – Glucose is the form of sugar that is in our bloodstream.

Insulin – The pancreas secretes insulin, a hormone that shuttles glucose from the blood into body cells.

Insulin resistance – When we consume a large amount of refined carbs with very little fat and protein, our blood sugar spikes very high and the pancreas frantically overcompensates with insulin release. This overcompensation of insulin eventually causes insulin resistance, which leads to Type 2 Diabetes if poor dietary practices are continued. The good news, however, is that it can be reversed through a healthy diet that balances your blood sugar.

Glycogen – Glucose that doesn’t enter body cells is taken to the liver where it is converted to glycogen. This is a form of stored sugar that is broken down to stabilise blood sugar levels between meals and during the night. Stress and hormone dysfunction depletes our ability to store and release glycogen and this can contribute to blood sugar imbalance.

Hyperglycemia – Hyperglycemia is another term for high blood sugar. It is normal to have a small spike in blood sugar after a meal, but chronically high blood sugar causes severe health issues.

Hypoglycemia – Hypoglycemia is low blood sugar. Glycogen, the sugar stored in the liver, is responsible for raising blood sugar between meals and should prevent hypoglycemia. Stress and hormonal imbalances, however, reduce the body’s ability to store glycogen. Hypoglycemia can also occur after a high-carb, low-fat meal when excessive insulin pushes too much sugar into the cells.

THE BLOOD SUGAR ROLLER COASTER

Blood sugar is one of those factors that our bodies go to great lengths to keep within certain limits, because both high and low values are harmful. A rapid increase in blood sugar, or hyperglycemia, puts the body in a state of shock, prompting it to pump out lots of insulin very quickly to deal with the excessive glucose. As a result of this overproduction of insulin, about an hour later the person has a very low level of blood glucose, called hypoglycemia. The hyperglycemic phase produces a feeling of ‘high’, while the hypoglycemic phase makes you feel unwell, tired, shaky, headachy and irritable, and craving another hit of sugar.

This up and down blood glucose roller coaster is extremely harmful, which is why it is important to work on balancing your blood sugar.

Here’s what happens when we have take steps to balance blood sugar:

• The small amount of glucose from our meals, balanced with healthy proteins and fats, enters our blood slowly, and the pancreas responds by secreting a measured amount of insulin.
• Insulin shuttles the right amount of glucose into the cells and it's used for energy. There's no excess insulin running around in the bloodstream to promote inflammation.
• We avoid ‘sugar highs’ and ‘sugar lows’. We can easily go three hours or more between eating without experiencing sugar cravings or feeling shaky, irritable or tired.
• Stable blood sugar reduces inflammation and helps balance hormones.
• Stable blood sugar means less sugar or carb cravings.
• Believe it or not, once you break the sugar habit, you'll begin to taste the sweet flavours found in other foods like vegetables and nuts; you won’t feel deprived. Fruits will taste very sweet.

HOW TO BALANCE BLOOD SUGAR

1. CUT REFINED SUGARS OUT OF YOUR DIET ENTIRELY

Sugar is one of the most addictive substance on the planet... that's why it's added to practically all processed food. The first few days or weeks will be hard, but once you get passed it, it gets a lot easier as the cravings will dramatically reduce.

As you're working on cutting out refined sugar from your diet, it can be helpful to curb your cravings with a sugar alternative which doesn't affect blood sugar. Please note that we do NOT mean artificial sugar, which is a totally different thing — more on that below.

Here are a few popular sugar alternatives to try:

Lakanto

We love Lakanto as it looks and taste very similar to sugar and can be replaced as 1:1 in most recipes. However, it doesn't affect blood sugar and is not absorbed in the digestive tract, so has practically 0 calories. You can buy Lakanto on iherb, amazon, or even at your local health food shop or supermarket.

Lakanto is also available as a 'maple syrup'.

*Lakanto contains the sugar alcohol Erythritol, which can cause a bit of bloating in some people... so we recommend keeping your consumption to a minimum!

Stevia

Stevia is another popular natural sweetener, but many people (such as Gen) get an unpleasant bitter aftertaste from it. We recommend trying it and see if you like it!

Xilitol

Xilitol is a sugar alcohol, so just like lakanto, and can cause bloating and other gut symptoms if you consume too much. It's not as good as lakanto as a sugar replacement, but it's excellent to make ice cream!

Important note on sugar alternatives

Please note that we do NOT recommend simply replacing your sugar consumption with those sugar alternative, but rather use them as a transition while you're working on reducing cravings.

2. EAT PLENTY OF HEALTH FATS

Fat slows down the absorption of glucose into the bloodstream and prevents sugar highs and sugar crashes.

When you reduce carbs and sugar consumption and eat plenty of healthy fats, your body will slowly transition to being able to utilise fat for energy production, instead of relying solely on sugar.

If you're not able to go more than 2-3 hours without food, you're not using fat for energy production!

Choosing a healthy fat:

Avoid: corn oil, soybean oil, safflower oil and margarine. These are all highly processed and highly inflammatory.

Healthy fats: olive oil, coconut oil, butter, ghee, egg yolks, lard and tallow. If choosing animal fats, make sure it is from healthy animals, grass fed and organically raised. A good quality, organic sunflower oil can be used in the Supersafe and Safe diet or if you're sensitive to salicylates.

3. EAT FREQUENTLY WHILE BALANCING BLOOD SUGAR

If your blood sugar is out of balance or if you have adrenal dysfunction (read more here), it's best to eat every 2-3 hours to prevent a blood sugar drop. We recommend eating BEFORE you crash.

However, as your blood sugar control improves, slowly increase the time between meals. This will give you a great sense of freedom. Not needing to eat frequently also gives your body a break between meals (digesting food takes a lot of resources and energy), and this period of ‘fasting’ allows for a lot of healing to happen, and also allows the migrating motor complex to sweep bacteria out of your small intestine more efficiently.

4. EAT A HEALTHY BREAKFAST HIGH IN PROTEIN AND HEALTHY FATS

While you work on balancing blood sugar, we believe that a good healthy breakfast is very important. However, once your blood sugar is balanced, you might actually benefit from skipping breakfast.

Read more about breakfast here.

5. EAT PLENTY OF PROTEINS

Consume a healthy source of protein at each meal to balance your blood sugar. Although the quantity needed for each person is individual, approximately 20 to 25 grams with each meals is appropriate for most.

If you struggle to get enough protein in your diet, consider investing in a good quality protein powder. Go here for our recommendations.

6. OPTIMISE YOUR SLEEP

Sleep deprivation wreaks havoc on blood sugar. On the bright side, improving your sleep habits will go a long way to supporting healthy blood sugar levels. Even better news is that improving your blood sugar balance will also improve the quality of your sleep.

Sleep deprivation affects blood sugar in numerous ways. It affects cortisol levels, which greatly influence blood sugar balance. Inadequate sleep also drastically reduces glucose tolerance (making it more difficult for cells to uptake glucose, creating higher blood sugar).

Read more about optimising your sleep.

A NOTE ON ARTIFICIAL SUGAR

In an attempt to appease the insatiable desire for sweet, the food industry has created artificial sweets that are hundreds of times sweeter than sugar, but calorie-free. There are many issues with these artificial sweeteners:

• They send a sweet taste to the brain and never deliver any real energy. This drives an even stronger message of hunger and desire for sweet.
• Most are made of excitotoxins that over-stimulate, exhaust and deplete the nervous system.
• Some are made of small amounts of known carcinogens.
• Artificial sweeteners have been found to actually increase weight gain, as they disturb metabolic hormones like leptin and insulin.

Natural sweeteners such as Stevia, Lakanto and Xylitol are better in some ways because they have little or no effect on blood sugar.

However, we believe that beyond the effect on blood sugar, it is important to reduce our addiction to the sweet taste, and this means that even natural sugar should be kept to a minimum.

In doing so, they dull our ability to sense and be satisfied by the sweet taste of other food like vegetables.

Once your cravings have dramatically reduced, and your blood sugar is balanced, it's okay to enjoy the occasional treat such as a birthday cake. What you do every day is what will keep your body healthy, but it's important to also enjoy yourself freely once in a while ;-)

HELPFUL SUPPLEMENTS

If you have very strong sugar cravings or feel like you're struggling to balance your blood sugar, here are 2 supplements that can be very useful:

L-GLUTAMINE

An amino-acid that your brain can use as an emergency substitute fuel when your blood sugar level is too low. This stops the impulse to run to the sweets. It can stop carb cravings and get you feeling steady and even within 10 minutes. We recommend buying it in powder form. Any good health food shop should have it, or you can order online here.

L-glutamine is also very good to heal the gut lining, and can help lift your mood.

How to take it: Take from 500mg to 1500mg early morning, mid-morning and mid-afternoon and at bedtime if you tend to wake up in the night hungry. You can also take it whenever a strong sugar craving hits you. It's better taken between meals on an empty stomach.

*As with many supplements, negative reactions to l-glutamine can happen. If you don't feel better, or feel worst when taking it, stop taking it.

CHROMIUM

Helps to keep the blood sugar stable. If you feel hungry or tired after eating (reactive hypoglycemia), or feel like you need to eat constantly to keep your energy stable, this might be helpful for you.

How to take it: 200mcg with every meal + bed time.