A lot of people are confused about glycemic index versus glycemic load, so
today we're gonna explain. Stay tuned
Hey I'm Dr. Ekberg with Wellness For Life and if you'd like to truly master
health by understanding how the body really works make sure that you
subscribe and hit that notification bell so that you don't miss anything. So a lot
of patients come in and they talk about glycemic index and glycemic load because
in our office we talk a lot about carbohydrates and
how you want to try to reduce overall carbohydrates for most people to get
healthy and then they read around and they find glycemic index and ask what's
that all about so here's how it works glycemic index is a measurement of how
quickly something that you eat gets digested and turned into blood sugar or
glycemic means sugar so if you eat something with a lot of sugar that's
readily accessible it's gonna get into your bloodstream faster and have a
higher glycemic index if you eat something with no carbohydrates then it
will raise your glycemic index very very slightly or not at all so now here's the
part that we have to clarify as we go through this the official guidelines are
that a high glycemic index is above 70 a medium glycemic index is 56 to 70 and a
low glycemic index is lower than 56 so how do they come up with these numbers
well they're all relative to glucose so pure glucose or grape sugar or dextrose
it's the same thing is the index of 100 that's the reference so based on that
reference sucrose or pure white table sugar is 68 so that's absorbed slower
because it's a component it's combination of glucose and fructose now
when we look at wheat bread that some people say is a
flex carbohydrate and therefore absorb slowly we find that wheat bread is
absorbed faster it turns into sugar in your body faster than pure table sugar
and then some people argue that oh well then table sugar isn't so bad after all
well it's all relative and we're going to talk about how how pure table sugar
is a really bad idea and how wheat bread is even worse then you look at corn so
corn on the cob has a glycemic index of 55 so according to this scale that looks
like a virtual health food and spaghetti a complex carbohydrate is 44 so again is
that a health food they say that well bless emic index isn't such a good
measurement because it doesn't tell you it doesn't give you the impact it
doesn't give you an idea of how much total impact or volume it has to raise
your blood sugar because some things have like glucose or table sugar you're
not gonna eat a half a pound at a time not most of us I hope you might have two
teaspoons so that would give it 10 grams of carbs and then you multiply the
glycemic index by the number of carbs and you end up with the glycemic load so
now you have a measurement of how much not just how quickly with a certain
amount enter your bloodstream but how much of an impact does it have on your
overall blood sugar then they say that a glycemic load a high glycemic load per
serving is over 20 a medium load is 11 to 20 and a low glycemic load is less
than 11 so now it looks like glucose and table sugar are really good because
they're less than 11 and we find out the wheat bread is high because it's 20 and
corn on the cob and spaghetti or somewhere in between they're medium and
then they also say that you should try to keep
your glycemic load your total glycemic load the total impact of each meal each
serving they should add up to less than 120 and then they say that you're okay
but in my mind this is just crazy and I don't know where they get these numbers
but I suspect that these are the same people that also think that the food
pyramid is a good idea that say that 8 to 11 servings of grains every day is
what humans should have and if we look at the total number of carbs here if we
eat the recommended 60% of calories from carbs on a 2,000 calorie diet that comes
out to 300 grams of carbs and that in my mind is what's going to cause or
contribute to diabetes very quickly so far those are the official guidelines
the high medium low glycemic load the high medium low glycemic index so if
you're on a carb on a low carb diet if you're talking about paleo if you're
talking about keto or or close to it what are some real-world numbers that we
want to look at in comparison virtually all of the glycemic indices that you see
are on grains and processed foods and things like that because meat and egg
and cheese and so on have virtually no carbohydrates they're not considered to
even have a glycemic index even if they do have a slight response in insulin
they're considered a zero glycemic index food and therefore it's very difficult
to find numbers they might have a slow a low single number less than 10 but we're
just going to sort of ignore those for now and just let's say that they're very
very low and then when we look at the number of carbs per serving of meat egg
and cheese we find that they are zero zero-zero so in a keto diet this is what
we want to look for we want to eat foods that are basically zero or close to it
and in that category we also find non starchy vegetables full fat dairy and
some berries such as raspberries strawberries and blueberries and in a
serving you'll get anywhere from one to five grams of carbs of not from non
starchy vegetables you get between zero and ten from dairy depending on if it's
butter or cream versus regular yogurt or milk and with berries you get five to
ten grams but also these foods have very low glycemic indices so for meat and egg
and cheese we get zero glycemic load meaning you can eat as much as you
wanted those all day long and not have any impact whatsoever and the non
starchy vegetables full fat dairy and berries you can still have servings and
stay between one and two in the glycemic load from the people who study and are
of similar opinions the people have done the studied the research on low
carbohydrate diets on insulin resistance and overall health
generally feel that you want to try if you're healthy and you want to try to
stay that way you should probably consume somewhere
around 70 grams of carbs per day or less and if you are insulin resistant or you
have an inflammatory problem or some kind of degenerative condition that
you're trying to reverse you should probably try to keep it between 20 and
50 at least long enough that you can recover and reverse some of those
conditions so when we look at the glycemic load 120 again is a crazy high
number we want to try to stick below 20 if we're healthy and want to stay that
way and probably between 4 to 10 if we're trying to reverse some condition
so which one is better well I would recommend that you just
count carbs you count net carbs you take the total carbs you subtract the fiber
that gives you the net carbs and you're trying to keep those in a low range it
really just kind of complicates things too looking at glycemic index and
glycemic loads especially since the official guidelines are sort of
outrageous you get a very very good idea you don't have to complicate things so
much if you just count net carbs and you keep them low then you're gonna be okay
I hope this explanation has been helpful if you have any questions suggestions
experiences let me know post your comments down below and I'll do my very
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