"Can Vinegar Help with Blood Sugar Control?"
A double blind placebo-controlled randomized study found
that body weight and belly fat
were significantly reduced adding just a single tablespoon of vinegar
to one’s daily diet, but is there any benefit
to vinegar consumption if you’re not overweight?
Well, their triglycerides normalized,
and on the two tablespoons a day dose,
there was a dip in blood pressure,
but those effects may have just been because
of the weight loss.
Other than taste, is there any benefit
to normal weight individuals
sprinkling vinegar on their salads?
What about vinegar for blood sugar control?
If you feed people massive amount of sugar
a half a cup of table sugar,
as their blood sugars spike,
their artery function can become impaired
and the higher the blood sugars go
the more the arteries take a hit.
There’s a drug, though, that can block sugar absorption
and by blunting the blood sugar spike with the drug
you can prevent the arterial dysfunction,
demonstrating that it’s probably good for your heart
if you don’t have big blood sugar spikes after meals
and indeed how high your blood sugars spike
after a meal is a predictor for cardiovascular mortality.
So do people who eat lots of high glycemic foods
like sugary foods and refined grains
tend to have more heart attacks and strokes?
Yes.
And they appear more likely to get diabetes,
but maybe people who eat lots frosted flakes and Wonderbread
also have other bad dietary habits.
The diets that have been put to the test
in randomized controlled trials
and proven to prevent diabetes
are the ones focusing on cutting down on saturated fat
and ramping up the consumption of fiber-rich whole plant foods
such as fruits, vegetables, and whole grains
without specific regard to lower or higher glycemic loads.
The drug has been put to the test, though,
and blunting one’s mealtime blood sugar spikes
does seem to reduce the risk of developing diabetes,
as well as reduce the risk of heart attacks
and high blood pressure.
So is there any way to prevent these blood sugar spikes
without having to take drugs?
Well, one way would be to not sit down to a half cup of sugar!
Yes, the drug can slow the progression of your atherosclerosis.
Instead of the arteries going to your brain
narrowing this fast, on the drug,
they only narrow this fast.
But wouldn’t it be better to eat a diet that actually
reverses heart disease? Reverses diabetes?
The healthiest diet to prevent the meal-related blood sugar
and fat spikes, the oxidation and inflammation,
is a diet centered around whole plant foods.
But what if you really want a bagel?
Instead of spreading drugs on it,
spreading on some almond butter may help blunt
the blood sugar spike from refined carbs.
Another option, is to dip your baguette in some balsamic vinegar.
The consumption of vinegar with meals
is evidently used as a home remedy for diabetes
before drugs came along,
but it wasn’t put to the test until 1988.
After all, how much money can you make from vinegar?
According to the vinegar institute,
millions of dollars, but a single diabetes drug,
like Rezulin, can pull in billions;
before it was pulled from the market
for killing too many people by shutting down their livers.
The drug company still made off like a bandit
having to pay out less than a billion
to the grieving families for covering up the danger.
No liver failure from a peanut butter schmeared bagel though,
cutting the blood sugar response in half,
and the same with vinegar;
if you chug down four teaspoons of apple cider vinegar
diluted in water, you get that same blunting of the spike,
and you get the additional advantage over the nuts
of lowering insulin levels in the blood,
something peanut butter apparently can’t do,
but presumably better than a bagel with lox,
as fish causes triple the insulin response,
or red wine, which also increases insulin level,
but not as much as fish,
and also shoots up triglycerides,
though dealcoholized red wine,
non-alcoholic wine doesn’t have the same problem.
What about vinegar?
Not only may a tablespoon a day tend to improve cholesterol
and triglycerides over time,
vinegar can drop triglycerides
within an hour of a meal,
along with decreasing blood sugars and the insulin spike,
potentially offering the best of all worlds.