Coke Challenge Hey guys, it's Michael
Kummer here. And for today's video, I've teamed up with Levels Health,
the brand behind the continuous glucose monitor that I'm using, and I've agreed to participate in
the Coke challenge. It's an experiment in which we'll find out how drinking Coke right before a
workout influences my blood sugar response in comparison to having a can of Coke,
regular Coke without working out, or just sitting on the couch for two hours and not moving at all.
But before we get started, make sure you subscribe to this channel and you
click on the little alert button, so you get notified when I do more crazy stuff like this.
So the hypothesis of this experiment is that if you work out by going for a 30-minute walk
or riding a bike for 30 minutes or doing something else that increases your heart rate, then your
blood sugar response to carbohydrates, in this case, high-fructose corn syrup, 39 whopping grams
of that is going to be different and lower then, if you have the same beverage without working out.
And so what I decided to do is on for the first part of the experiment, I would have a can of
Coke and then I would take my bike and ride it to work out. It takes me approximately 30 minutes
and then perform a CrossFit workout, starting with a strength portion where my heart rate
is not going to go up very far, followed by a metabolic conditioning where my heart rate is
likely going to increase significantly. And then I would ride my bike back home.
And so I'd like to find out and for this video, I have found out how my blood sugar is responding
to that. And then a couple of days later I'll do the same thing. I have a can of Coke roughly
at the same time without having eaten anything before, obviously, and see if my blood sugar
response is different. If it's higher. The assumption is that it will be significantly higher
than on the day where I worked out following the consumption of this sugar-loaded beverage. So
let's see how it goes. Let's start with day one, the day I worked out. All right. Test number one,
my first Coke in, I dunno, 10 years or so. And then I'm going to go for a 30 minute bike ride
followed by CrossFit workouts. So let's see how that impacts my blood glucose reading. So, cheers.
What a piss water. I don't know how people drink this. Holy S****. Like gasoline.
Well, I'm getting sick in my stomach.
It's like acid mixed with sugar.
I hope I'm not going to throw up during the workout.
Don't do this at home. Don't do this to yourself.
I don't know who makes this and who drinks this, seriously. Holy sh***.
I'm done with it, fortunately. All right, let's go for a bike ride
and let's see what my blood sugar does. Cheers.
All right. It's been two days since I had my first can of Coke. Today is the drink and
sit day. So we'll see how that my body or my glucose responds differently, actually
the first one, when I did a workout my glucose levels changed in a way that was unexpected,
but we do the post-mortem analysis then at the end, but let's see how this goes today.
And I can tell you I'm dreading drinking the second can. But here it goes.
I really don't understand why people drink this.
So let's see what my blood sugar does help. I'm not going to die. Otherwise that video would never
be finished. Alright I am finally done drinking Coke, and I don't think I will do that ever
again. That was absolutely awful. But the idea of this experiment was to confirm the hypothesis
that if you go for a walk or take a bike ride or do some other form of physical activity,
after consuming carbohydrates in this case, very unhealthy carbohydrates from high fructose corn
syrup in Coke, then your blood sugar response would be different, meaning that you should not
see such a dramatic spike in blood sugar. Whereas if you don't work out, if you don't
move at all, if you're just, you know, sitting on the couch or in an office chair, like I did.
Then your blood sugar response should be significantly higher and that wasn't necessarily
the case with me. And so let's do the following. Let's open up here, the Levels app. All right.
So I'm in here in the Levels app that is connected with my continuous glucose monitor
and we see that I have an activity response here. And so let's go first to the activity response on
Monday. Here is day one experiment. Number one, where I drank the Coke at, it
looks like here it's 7 51 in the morning. And then I immediately went for a bike ride,
took me about half an hour. And I biked at a pace of approximately 10 to 11 miles an hour.
So nothing crazy, but also not in a super slow. I was, you know, I was moving at a moderate pace.
So I started my cycling workout and I arrived at CrossFit here at
11, sorry, at 8:20 or so, and you can see my glucose went up to 172 milligrams per deciliter.
I think that's the highest glucose reading I've ever had since I've been tracking my blood sugar
with the Levels of continuous glucose monitor, so it went up significantly. And when I saw that,
I thought. Holy moly. I don't want to know how my glucose response would be
if I hadn't worked out. If I hadn't taken my bike for a ride for 30 minutes, but regardless
I arrived at CrossFit and I was super wired. I was like, you know, everyone was making fun
of me because it was talking a lot, in which I usually don't unless I'm in front of the camera.
I was moving. I couldn't stand still. I was, I was clearly under the influence
of a lot of sugar. And so, at 8:30 at my regular CrossFit routine started first doing some warmup,
doing some strength, training, some moderate lifting, nothing too crazy.
And then as you can see, my blood sugar went down from that point on
and it went down, down, down, down, down, down, down and down. And at
9:11, I think I started my next workout or I started the metabolic conditioning
part of the workout. So that was really high intensity. That was pretty intense. And so.
What I've noticed is I got my regular blood sugar response. So whenever I do high intensity
workouts, my body starts dumping glycogen to make glucose available for my muscles, you know,
et cetera. So that's a usual spike that ended actually peak that 155, so that's fairly normal.
What was unexpected was that my body would dump glycogen, despite having so much glucose around.
I mean, at this point, I guess my insulin had already responded and removed all of those,
all of that glucose. And then I guess it dumped it again. But I still would have expected a not that
much of a peak, but anyway, I peaked again and then I took the bike home for another 30 minutes.
Nothing happened there, nothing crazy. My blood sugar recovered, nicely, went all the
way down to 81. At which point at 1030, I had my first meal. Well, my second meal, if you
account for the can of Coke ahead, but I didn't crash. I thought that maybe
after that high, that I've never experienced in a long, long time, I would really feel it low.
I didn't. So that was great. And then you know, it looks like, or an indication that my body
was able to handle that glucose and just, you know, remove it and be fine without crashing.
And then I had my meal and, you know, I had a lot of honey with a meal and some fruits,
some berries from our garden and together with eggs and steak and bacon and some milk kefir.
And you can see that. I mean, that must've been also, I want to say 40-50 grams of carbs maybe.
And my blood sugar only went up to one 10, but you know, that's neither here nor there. That's
not part of the experiment here, but the point here is can of Coke with a workout resulted in
a significant blood sugar response. So let's go and compare this to,
and that's one of the things that I really like about the, the Levels app I can compare.
Different experiments or different zones, if you will, and see how they stack up. So now we pick
the Coke challenge rest day. I just did that this morning instead of the taste of Coke in my mouth.
And let's compare these two. Holy moly. Let's go to the absolute numbers. It looks a little
bit slightly less shocking, but nevertheless, you can see her at a total. The white line here
is today's experiment where I drank the can of Coke and set on my butt for two hours straight.
And my glucose just went up to, if we look at the, the high here to 139, it seems
like what's the highest, so my, my blood sugar increased only by 37 milligrams per deciliter.
That was sedentary that was not moving after the can of Coke. Whereas the first,
for the first experiment, when I rode my bike for 30 minutes and then worked out
my blood sugar spikes by 74 milligrams per deciliter. So what does that tell you?
Well, that tells you, or at least it tells me that for me, at least not on those
as part of this experiment, my body is not reacting to blood sugar any better, just
because I work out right after. And that's a very important realization because what it tells you is
that while it might be true for most people, that if they workout after consuming carbohydrates,
they will have a better blood sugar response. It might not be true for you. It looks like
it's not true for me either. And so that tells us that, you know, diet and nutrition can be a very
personalized or very, very personal kind of issue where not everyone responds exactly the same way.
And so that makes it really worthwhile, just slapping on a continuous blood glucose monitor,
at least for a couple of weeks to find out how your body responds to certain carbs, to exercise,
to stress to, you know, protein maybe et cetera. So it's very, very interesting.
And so I'm going to add links to the description below, so you can sign up for Levels Health
and I get one of those continuous blood glucose monitors, but the bottom line here really is that
you know, not everyone responds the same way. And regardless of how I responded, regardless
of how you respond, maybe I would never, ever encourage you to drink Coke. Not because I've seen
how my body reacts during the first experiment, but it's absolutely awful food or a food,
a food like substance or a beverage for that matter. That should not be part of anyone's diet.
It's just that bad. And next time I do an experiment like this and I will continue
maybe doing these with honey, maybe with bananas, or other fruits to see how my body
reacts. Maybe this was a fluke, maybe this was a one-time occurrence and my body does generally
respond better if I workout right after. But for this particular experiment,
I could not confirm the hypothesis, and so I guess if it's not always true, it's not a general truth.
And you know, you might be reacting differently. If you enjoy it as experiment, which I did from a
science perspective, not so much from a drinking piss water perspective, then give it a thumbs up.
If you didn't like it, this button seems to be working as well. But let me know any comments,
what I could have done better, maybe swearing less. Until next time.