Glycemic index explained. Coming right up.
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master
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you've probably heard of the term glycemic index but what is it and what's
really a good number to look for so first of all glycemic index is a
measurement of how quickly something that you eat turns into sugar and how
quickly it is absorbed into the bloodstream and results in increased
blood sugar levels so glycemic means sugar if you start looking for these
different values and you find all these different values then it's because
everyone is different and this is not some scientific standard it's a trial
and error you give one person some food you measure their blood glucose and you
see what happens and something completely different could happen in
another person so I wouldn't go looking too hard in investigating this because I
think it is of limited value but nevertheless it's a good idea to
understand conceptually another important factor is that we rarely eat
one food by itself so while I don't recommend a lot of baked potatoes it is
a big difference if you eat the baked potato dry and you scoop it out and
leave the skin behind you're going to have an astronomical glycemic index
whereas if you drench it in sour cream and put and butter now the butter and
sour cream is going to buffer the body's response it's going to make it absorb
slower and lower the glycemic index so the number is not a truth in itself but
it's a good thing to understand so when they make these measurements in people
they use blood glucose as the standard so glucose is pure sugar the way it
appears in the bloodstream so when they make these measurements
on people they use glucose as the reference because glucose is the form of
sugar that circulates in your blood it's the pure six carbon ring of sugar that's
the way that your body ultimately uses it once it's getting the blood stream so
if you take pure glucose which is the same thing as dextrose or grape sugar then that
number is a hundred by comparison sucrose or table sugar which is half
glucose and half fructose will rank at 68 because fructose is absorbed a whole
lot slower and therefore the number will be significantly less so then you look
at things like wheat bread and baked potatoes and french fries that some
people think are good complex carbohydrates and you find that they
raise your blood sugar more than if you were to take a bag of sugar and eat that
white crunchy stuff straight out of the bag with a spoon then you would raise it
at a number of 68 if you eat wheat bread baked potato or
french fry you raise it by over seventy five in some cases so when we talk about
sugar we don't just talk about pure sugar we talk about the things that turn
into sugar any carbohydrate at all anything from the plant kingdom is going
to turn into sugar some things turn into sugar almost immediately and some turn
very very slowly so if you look at asparagus spinach tomato broccoli those
are non starchy vegetables they have a lot of water a lot of fiber and a little
bit of sugar in them and the fiber slows things down so their glycemic index is
very low it's in the single digits so these are foods that even though they
are carbohydrates they're non starchy and you can eat these in any amount that
you want they're not going to screw you up and then for comparison obviously
which is never included in any glycemic index
table and it sort of makes sense but because they don't have any carbohydrate
in them so their glycemic index is close to zero but it's almost like they don't
know that people eat these things they only focus on the the grains and the
potatoes and the cereals but meat fish eggs are close to zero and glycemic
index again meaning you can eat as much as you like and not have any glycemic
any blood sugar responses so it's not entirely true because everything you eat
does impact blood sugar a little bit but it is very very limited so if you follow
our channel for a little while you know that we promote a diet of low
carbohydrate moderate protein and high fat such as a paleo or a keto diet and
then we focus on vegetables and meat and high quality fats all of which are very
very low on the glycemic index list generally a high glycemic index is
considered anything above 70 medium is considered 56 to 70 and a low glycemic
index is considered anything below 56 and anyone working with paleo or keto
and has some clinical experience of diet work and nutrition work would probably
agree that that's outrageous so these are not absolute guidelines but just to
give you an idea of where I think they should be I think a low glycemic index
is below 10 I think a medium would be 10 to 30 you'd get some semi starchy
vegetables in there and high would be anything over 30 those things will
impact your blood sugar significantly so just for fun to kind of put this in
perspective I would say that the thing that they call low I would call super
high what they call medium I would call crazy high and what they call high is
just pure sugar boom so realize that the
guidelines have been put together by the same people who promote the food pyramid
and that in this country we have an epidemic of diabetes and degenerative
problems that are just going completely out of control and it's not going to get
any better as long as we think that this is the guideline so thanks so much for
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