Hello Health Champions. We all know that when you eat food your blood sugar goes up,
and when you don't eat your blood sugar is supposed to come down.
But for a lot of people the exact opposite seems to be happening and if you've noticed this you're
not alone. That when you're fasting your blood sugar stays high even in a diabetic range,
and it won't come down until you eat something. This all seems very confusing and paradoxical,
and it happens mostly to people who are insulin resistant and who go on a diet of low carb
and intermittent fasting. So today I want to talk about what's really happening in the body, and if
you have something to worry about or if you're actually on the right track. Coming right up
hey I'm Dr Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete, and if you want to
truly master health by understanding how the body really works make sure you subscribe hit
that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life saving video so blood
glucose is how much sugar is in your bloodstream at any given time and it's measured in milligrams
per deciliter and a healthy level is to be between 80 to 120 so when you're fasting like overnight
and between meals then a good level is going to be in the 80 range then you eat something
and now your blood sugar goes up because the food gets from your digestive tract
into the bloodstream blood sugar goes up and then your body processes through and over a period of
few to several hours your blood sugar comes down again this is how it's supposed to happen but if
you are insulin resistant and an extreme form of insulin resistance is type 2 diabetic then your
fasting levels are too high typically about 130 or above but this could be two or three or 400 also
and then when you eat something your blood sugar goes way way up because your cells are resisting
receiving that blood sugar out of the bloodstream so it's difficult for the body to transition the
food from the digestive tract through the blood into the cells and therefore you get
very high levels and they stay high they come down very slowly but then we have this
in-between pattern this paradoxical pattern where people who start doing the right thing they want
to reverse their insulin resistance and they eat low carb and do intermittent fasting but
their glucose doesn't change much it might come down a few points or it's pretty much the same
but then when they eat now their blood sugar comes into a normal range dawn phenomenon is not the
same thing as what we're talking about but it's related and it can help us understand a little bit
so when you are sleeping and you're getting ready to wake up your body produces some hormones to
get you ready for the day so it releases a little bit extra cortisol and adrenaline
and glucagon and growth hormone and this is to raise blood sugar to help you make more energy
and the adrenaline and growth hormone is there to arouse you to get you ready for the day to get you
from sleeping to awake and as a result if you're insulin sensitive there's supposed to be a slight
increase but if you're insulin sensitive it's so small it's barely noticeable however if you're
insulin resistant now these same small hormone boosts is going to look like a dramatic increase
in blood glucose levels because even a small change is going to show up bigger
when you're insulin resistant we also have to understand a little bit about insulin and
the levels so insulin is the hormone that takes glucose from the bloodstream and into the cells
so if you're fasting you're going to have a low insulin level because it just needs to be enough
to support that basic level of glucose and a healthy level would be between two and five
then when you eat something now you put food in the body the food has to get into the bloodstream
and insulin has to help it through the bloodstream and into the cell in a matter of hours and now
it produces extra insulin and you're going to see levels of about 50. that's still a healthy level
but if you're very insulin resistant like a type 2 diabetic now first of all you have a higher
glucose level but on top of that your cells are resistant to the action of insulin so your body
makes a whole lot more insulin it might be sitting at 25 units even at a baseline that's typically
the cut off for type 2 diabetes but then when you eat something it might shoot all the way up to 150
but even with these huge amounts of insulin it's still not enough to bring the glucose into a
normal level and that's what insulin resistance is and a lot of times we hear that in type 2 diabetes
they give you insulin because you're not making enough well that's the wrong way to look at it
because you're already making five to eight times more fasting and a whole lot more after a meal so
you're making a lot of insulin the problem is you've pushed your body into an imbalance
by stuffing it full of carbohydrate and sugar all the time and then in our paradoxical example here
again people are frustrated because they want their glucose they want their fasting glucose to
get into a healthy level and the thing to focus on though is the fact that when you eat the insulin
is actually working the insulin helps you get into the normal range now the question is then why
does it stay so high before we eat i often talk about how intelligent the body is that
there is a reason for everything it does so we want to think of really high blood sugar as an
emergency that a healthy level is just going about business as usual but when we go from a hundred
units or so 100 milligrams up to two and three and four and five hundred this is an emergency this is
very very dangerous this is what causes micro vessel disease and blindness neuropathy kidney
failure swelling so this is something that's very very different from everyday business
everyday operations now let's talk about a concept that usually is a huge surprise to people the
difference between a blood sugar level and a blood sugar amount difference between levels in the
blood and amounts of carbohydrate so if you have a level of 80 milligrams per deciliter how much
blood sugar do you actually have circulating and most people are shocked you have about 2.4 grams
of glucose because we multiply out this 80 milligrams times 50 deciliters which is 5 liters
that's the average amount of blood in a person but then we take into account the fact that only
60 percent of the blood is liquid the rest of it is solid cells the red blood cells we come
up with about 2.4 grams that is less than half a teaspoon of sugar a tiny tiny amount that's all
that you have circulating in your body at any given time that's what all this talk is about
it's that tiny tiny amount and if you are insulin resistant if you're pre-diabetic now that number
jumps to a whopping 3.6 so it doesn't seem like a whole lot but it makes a big difference that
if you go from a half a teaspoon to three quarter teaspoon now you have years and years of
adaptation to insulin resistance to create that difference and if you're a full-blown diabetic
now you might have a full teaspoon of sugar circulating so we're talking small amounts now
let's expand this and understand the difference with amount if you're eating low carb let's say
that you're at a healthy level you're maintaining you're eating 25 grams of carbs in a day
divided by 24 hours is rounded off to about one gram per hour so you have half a teaspoon
circulating and every hour you use up a gram and you put in one more gram so that's a continuous
replenishment just a tiny tiny bit one gram per hour from the food that you eat that's not a whole
lot it's not an emergency it doesn't take a whole lot for the body to do that and if you're insulin
resistant and you've gone low carb then we use the same number one gram per hour if you are diabetic
and you're still following the general guidelines of eating plenty of whole grains and pasta
and you're eating 300 grams now that's 12 grams per hour so if we represent this graphically then
you have this much in your bloodstream at any given time and every hour you have to pass this
much through your bloodstream and into the cells but now let's expand this idea this is a fasting
situation this is continuous what's what's going on but what about when you eat something now we
have to mobilize some resources so you have a meal if you're low carb let's say you're eating
twice a day then those 25 grams would be about 12 grams per meal so if we represent that graphically
we're talking that amount relative to that amount so this is how much you have at any given time
and then in one big lump you're introducing this much which is five times more 500 percent
so even though it's a lot more it's not a big deal it's still a small amount the body is not
going to panic it does just fine with that and if you're low carb with some insulin resistance
then that represents three and a half times 350 percent so again not a big deal to process through
that but if you're diabetic and you're following the general guidelines and you're still eating
tons of carbohydrates three to four hundred grams of carbohydrate you're eating three meals a day
then each meal of a hundred grams would represent twenty times two thousand percent even though you
already have more blood sugar to deal with you're adding an enormous amount it's a mountain of
carbohydrates and this is not easy for the body to work through now let's put all this together and
think of it as a receiving department at a company and we'll look at these three cases again we're
having the insulin sensitive so 2.4 plus 1 gram plus 12 grams twice a day so this is like you're
getting a couple of letters and then twice a day they drop off a box and a single person can
can handle that no problem same thing in the second example just a little bit of traffic
no big deal but what if we have this third scenario where we're already a little bit stressed
this is sort of a normal workload but then several times a day they drop off a couple of containers
now they got to get on the phones they got to call in the extra help they got to call in the temps
it's an emergency and if we think about it this way that in the type 2 diabetic case this is how
much we're working on every hour that's the baseline amount of insulin but then we get
the containers we get the emergency and we call in all the help we can but we still can't get it
handled we still can't process through everything that we need to process through so therefore
basically the whole operation is failing however in this paradoxical example that so many people
are frustrated about what we have to understand is this high fasting level is not an emergency
there is not enough incentive for the body to do something about this because things are working
it's like sure there's a couple of letters over there but we'll deal with them later because
we're not getting overwhelmed so this one gram an hour represents a lower level of insulin and even
though you're still insulin resistant this low amount of carbohydrate is allowing the body to
reduce insulin production and to become less insulin resistant and therefore once you eat
something now this work force gets to work and it has no problem at all processing through
and getting the job done so now they find out that well there were a couple
of letters sitting here on the shelf but now once we got to work let's take care of those
letters also and get the job done and now you're getting back into the normal range so that's the
key to understand that it looks like this is a high level but it's not a large amount of glucose
and the intelligent body doesn't treat this as an emergency it knows that things are under control
and you're very much moving in the right direction does that mean we shouldn't even bother
measuring glucose well i don't think it should be your primary concern don't measure it too closely
and expect it to change and base your success and your expectations based on that because it could
be very frustrating but use it as a tool to learn it's a great tool to see how your body responds to
different foods if you eat certain thing and your blood sugar goes up well now you learn something
you can also use it to watch general trends see how your blood sugar changes over weeks
and months but don't worry too much about what it does on a day-to-day or hour-to-hour basis
instead you watch you get some blood work from time to time and you watch your a1c which is
your three to four month average glucose you measure your fasting insulin which hardly
anyone does but it's your best indicator of a long-term trend for insulin resistance
you measure things like triglycerides and VLDL very low density lipoprotein and you measure total
to HDL cholesterol ratios and you don't get too hung up on any one of these but you get a baseline
and you learn what the bigger picture means so that you can understand the trend so you can see
that you're going in the right direction because all of these put together are indicators of what's
happening if you enjoyed this video and you'd like to learn more about how the body really works that
one's going to be great one for you next thank you so much for watching I'll see you next time