Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar

by Jessie Inchauspé

inflammation—one of the processes set off by glucose spikes—can cause holes in the gut lining, so that toxins that aren’t supposed to get through do (this is what leads to leaky gut). This in turn leads to food allergies and other autoimmune diseases, such as Crohn’s disease and rheumatoid arthritis.

What’s more, we’re discovering that gut health is linked to mental health—unhealthy microbiomes can contribute to mood disorders.

We now know that it’s a specific type of cholesterol (LDL pattern B) as well as inflammation that drive heart disease.

First, glucose and fructose: The lining of our blood vessels is made of cells. Heart disease starts when plaque accumulates underneath that lining. These cells are particularly vulnerable to mitochondrial stress—and glucose and fructose spikes lead to oxidative stress. As a result, these cells suffer and lose their smooth shape.

The lining of the vessels becomes bumpy, and fat particles get stuck more easily along the uneven surface.

Second, insulin: When our levels of insulin are too high, our liver starts producing LDL pattern B. This is a small, dense kind of cholesterol that creeps along the edges o...

Finally, if and when that cholesterol is oxidized—which happens the more glucose, fructose, and insulin are present—it lodges under the lining of our blood vessels and sticks there. Plaque builds up and obstructs the flow, and this is how heart disease starts.

Nine out of ten doctors still measure total LDL cholesterol to diagnose heart disease and prescribe statins if it’s too high. But what’s important is LDL pattern B and inflammation.

statins

Medication that reduces fats

Doctors can better measure heart disease risk by looking at what’s called the triglycerides-to-HDL ratio (which tells us about the presence of the small, dense LDL pattern B), and C-reactive protein (which tells us about inflammation levels).

If your insulin is out of whack, your body isn’t too keen on reproducing, because it suggests that you aren’t healthy.

One in eight women experience it, and when they do, their ovaries become burdened with cysts and no longer ovulate.

PCOS is a disease caused by too much insulin. The more insulin that is present, the more PCOS symptoms.

Why? Because insulin tells the ovaries to produce more testosterone (the male sex hormone). On top of that, with too much insulin, the natural conversion from male to female hormones that usually takes place is hampered—which leads to even more testosterone in the body. Because of the excess testosterone, women suffering from PCOS display masculine traits: hair in places where they don’t want hair (such as the chin), ba...

When insulin levels have been high for a long time, our cells start becoming resistant to insulin. Insulin resistance is the root cause of type 2 diabetes: liver, muscle, and fat cells need larger and larger quantities of insulin to take up the same amount of glucose. Eventually, the system doesn’t work anymore. Glucose is no longer stored away as glycogen, even though our pancreas produces growing quantities of insulin. The result is that the glucose levels in our body are increased for good.

over many years, every glucose spike you experience will contribute to worsening your insulin resistance and raising the overall baseline glucose level in your body.

The common (but misguided) method of treating type 2 diabetes is to give the patient more insulin. This brings the glucose levels down temporarily by forcing the fat cells—that large storage container—to open (and make them put on weight). A vicious cycle is created, where higher and higher doses of insulin are administered and the patient’s weight goes up and up, but the root problem of high insulin levels isn’t addressed. Adding extra insulin helps type 2 diabetics in the short term, bringing their levels down after eating, but in the long term worsens the condition.

type 2 diabetes is an inflammatory disease—more inflammation, a process set off by gluco...

It makes sense, therefore, that a diet that reduces our intake of glucose and therefore our production of insulin, wo...

To protect us from fructose, just as it does with alcohol, the liver turns fructose into fat, thereby removing it from the bloodstream. But when we repeatedly eat things high in fructose, our liver itself becomes fatty—which happens with alcohol, too.

To reverse the condition, the liver needs a break so that it depletes its excess fat reserves. The solution to this is to lower our fructose levels and prevent further fructose spikes—which happens naturally when we flatten our glucose curves (because fructose and glucose go hand in hand in food).

when glycation transforms a molecule of collagen, it makes it less flexible. Collagen is needed to repair wounds, as well as make healthy skin, nails, and hair. Broken collagen leads to sagging skin and wrinkles.

It turns out that how we eat our food has a powerful effect on our glucose curves.

Two meals consisting of the same foods (and therefore the same nutrients and the same calories) can have vastly different impacts on our body depending on how their components are eaten.

What is the right order? It’s fiber first, protein and fat second, starches and sugars last.

According to the researchers, the effect of this sequencing is comparable to the effects of diabetes medications that are prescribed to diabetics to lower their glucose spikes.

The explanation for this surprising effect has to do with how our digestive system works. In order to visualize it, think of your stomach as a sink and your small intestine as the pipe below it. Anything you eat lands in your sink, then flows through to your pipe, where it is broken down and absorbed into your bloodstream. Every minute, on average, about three calories’ worth of food trickles through from sink to pipe. (This process is called gastric emptying.)

If starches or sugars are the first thing to hit your stomach, they get to your small intestine very quickly. There, they are broken down into glucose molecules, which then make it through to the bloodstream very quickly. That creates a glucose spike.

you eat the pasta first, then the broccoli. The pasta, which is a starch, turns into glucose as it is quickly digested. The broccoli then “sits” on top of the pasta and waits its turn to go through the pipe.

Begin by munching on the broccoli. Broccoli is a vegetable, and vegetables contain plenty of fiber. As we’ve seen, fiber isn’t broken down into glucose by our digestive system. Instead, it goes through from sink to pipe to… sewage, slowly and unchanged.

Fiber has three superpowers: First, it reduces the action of alpha-amylase, the enzyme that breaks starch down into glucose molecules. Second, it slows down gastric emptying: when fiber is present, food trickles from sink to pipe more slowly. Finally, it creates a viscous mesh in the small intestine; this mesh makes it harder for glucose to make it through to the bloodstream. Through these mechanisms, fiber slows down the breakdown and absorption of any glucose that lands in the sink after it; the result is that fiber flattens our glucose curves.

Any starch or sugar that we eat after fiber will have a reduced effect on our body. We’ll get the same pleasure from eating it but with fewer consequences.

Now enter protein and fat. Protein is found in meat, fish, eggs, dairy, nuts, beans, and legumes. Foods that contain protein often contain fat, too, and fat is also found on its own in foods such as butter, oils, and avocados.

the bad fat that we should avoid is found in hydrogenated and refined cooking oils such as canola, corn, cottonseed, soybean, safflower, su...

Eating carbs after everything else is the best move.

less insulin helps us return to fat-burning mode more quickly,

what bothered Bernadette most was her poor energy level.

Her brain sent a well-meaning, but incorrect, alert: We’re low on energy, we need to eat something. She looked for a chocolate bar and promptly ate it. The chocolate bar caused her glucose levels to shoot right back up, after which they soon came falling down again. A wild roller-coaster ride.

There’s a scientific explanation for this improvement in her hunger: the Cornell research team showed that if we eat our food in the wrong order (starches and sugars first), ghrelin, our hunger hormone, returns to premeal levels after just two hours. If we eat our food in the right order (starches and sugars last), ghrelin stays suppressed for much longer. (They didn’t measure past three hours, but looking at the trends, I think it fair to say that it stays down for five to six hours.)

I thought fruit was supposed to be eaten alone, otherwise it rots in our stomach? A question I am often asked when I talk about this hack involves fruit. I categorize fruits in the “sugars” category, because although they contain fiber, they are made up mostly of glucose, fructose, and sucrose—aka sugars. Therefore they should be eaten last. But people ask, “Doesn’t eating fruit last cause it to rot in the stomach?” The short answer is no.

As it turns out, there is no evidence supporting this. Rotting happens when bacteria lodges on food and starts digesting that food to fuel its own growth. The white and green specks you see on a strawberry you’ve left too long in the fridge are bacteria growing. First off, rotting takes days or weeks to happen. It can’t happen in a few hours, which is about how long it takes for fruit to be digested. Second, our stomach is an acidic environment (pH 1–2), and any environment with a pH below 4 prevents bacterial overgrowth (and therefore rotting). Nothing can rot in the stomach, and in fact, the stomach, together with the esophagus, is the place where there are the fewest bacteria in our entire digestive tract.

This plant-made substance is incredibly important to us: it fuels the good bacteria in our gut, strengthens our microbiome, lowers our cholesterol levels, and makes sure everything runs smoothly. One of the reasons a diet high in fruit and vegetables is healthy is because of the fiber it provides.

fiber is also good for our glucose levels for several reasons, notably because it creates a viscous mesh in our intestine. The mesh slows down and reduces the absorption of molecules from food across the intestinal lining. What does this mean for our glucose curves? First, that we absorb fewer calories (we’ll talk about calories in the next hack). Second, with fiber in our system, any absorption of glucose or fructose molecules is lessened.

here’s what you’re looking for if you want to enjoy some while flattening your curves: skip the loaves that claim to contain “whole grain,” which often don’t have much more fiber than their traditional “white” counterparts. Buy bread that is dark and dense, made from rye with a sourdough starter. It’s traditionally German and usually called seed bread or pumpernickel. Those contain the most fiber.

I’ve found that the sweet spot is a one-to-one ratio to the carbs you’ll eat after. My favorite: two cups of spinach, five jarred artichoke hearts, vinegar, and olive oil. My little brother’s go-to: one big raw carrot, sliced, with hummus (not technically green but still vegetable-based, which is what we’re looking for). You’ll find more ideas later in this hack.

With a flatter curve, we stay full longer and avoid the glucose dip that leads to cravings a few hours later.

She still ate her usual bowl of pasta after, but now something different was happening in her body: She went from a forceful delivery of glucose to a gentle one. The spike was less pronounced, and the crash that followed was smaller.

two hours is around the time it takes for fiber to go through our stomach and the top part of our small intestine.

What qualifies as a green starter? Any vegetable qualifies, from roasted asparagus to coleslaw to grilled zucchini and grated carrots. We’re talking artichokes, arugula, broccoli, brussels sprouts, eggplant, lettuce, pea shoots, and tomatoes, and also pulses, beans, and viscous foods such as natto (a Japanese food made from soybeans)—the more, the better. Incidentally, you can eat them either raw or cooked. But skip juiced or mashed preparations, because the fiber in them is either missing (in the case of a juice) or blitzed to oblivion (in the case of a mash). Soup is another story. Do you remember my answer to my mother when she calls me from the grocery store to ask if a food is “good” or “bad”? The answer is relative—and soup is a perfect example of this. Soup is a great dish—it contains plenty of nutrients and vitamins, it’s filling, and it’s one of the healthiest starters you can order at a restaurant. But it’s not healthier than eating a whole vegetable. Beware of store-bought soups, too: they are often mostly potatoes, which breaks down into starch, and lots of added sugar.

One hundred calories of fructose, 100 calories of glucose, 100 calories of protein, and 100 calories of fat may release the same amount of heat when they burn, but they have vastly different effects on your body. Why? Because they are different molecules.