Episode 17
Low Blood Sugar IS Stress
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Transcript
Welcome back to the Fully Nourished podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Ash, Functional Nutritionist and Integrative Health Coach, coming to you with a scientific and spiritual exploration of what it looks like to awaken our feminine radiance by becoming deeply and fully nourished in a world that wants to dull us down. You ready?
As a reminder, everything in this podcast is for education and inspiration only and is not intended as medical advice. Please talk to the appropriate professional when necessary, and please use common sense before making any changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Today's episode is all about blood sugar, but probably in a way you haven't heard it talked about before. And that's saying a lot because you know that I have talked about blood sugar so many times in the past couple of years. But I'm talking about energy and fueling differently nowadays. I wouldn't say that I have changed my work, I would just say that my work has expanded. But I think a lot of people are seeing it as I'm completely changing everything about Jessica Ash Wellness. And that's just not true. I'm just expanding on the work. I'm hoping that the people that stick around are the ones that truly are ready for the energetic expansion and are wanting to go deeper, or their bodies are inviting them to go deeper.
But, I was inspired to do this episode on this topic, because I got a comment this week or this past week on one of my reels. I was talking about how fear can induce a stress response. I really liked the feedback I got because it kind of reminded me that it's important to go back to the basics. And sometimes we need to hear something again and again and again, to really get it. And I think there's a lot of people wondering how what my work looked like previously fits in with the new work. And to be honest, I just kind of needed a break from talking about physiology. I've talked about physiology, blood sugar, physiology and hormones of the cycle, you know, over and over again for many years. And so as I have come back from my hermit chapter, I needed a creative project that allowed me to just share what I had learned. I knew that it was going to change throughout the years.
That's why I love a podcast because it can become anything that it wants to be. We can take it season by season. I'm starting to realize that after this season, we're like, yes, we are into feminine energy. And yes, we are into the nervous system. But then how does it fit together into the physiology? I totally get it, don't worry, it's coming. I can only go so fast. But I'm really focused on this podcast, just being something that is really fun creatively, because I think that's gonna lead to the best type of content. That's why I'm continually choosing topics that I just love and that I'm inspired about and that I'm studying that week. And I'm really loving.
This week, I have been, well actually, for the past six weeks or so I've been heavily diving into cell salts and tissue salts. I talked about this a little bit on Instagram recently. And it has led me down this massive rabbit hole of a guy named George Kerry's work. He talks so much about how cell salts and tissue salts integrate with physiology and also align with the zodiac. There's just a lot of complexity and math to it, which is actually crazy. I'm continually getting my mind blown by this work. And so I'll be in the rabbit hole of homeopathic cell salts for the near future. But I'm working on something very special coming in November, something that so many of you have been waiting for. And so if that's something you're interested in hearing more about, make sure you're on the Sunday email list because I send an email every Sunday. We usually do a deep dive on some type of topic. It's really fun. It sometimes coincides with what I'm talking about on the podcast, or I'm talking about on Instagram, but sometimes it's just completely random. I think that's why people love it so much.
But me and the Jessica Ash Wellness team work relentlessly to make sure that we're not constantly shoving things down your throat. We really want our content to reflect our message, which is we're not trying to stress you out. We're not trying to give you information overload. We're trying to balance the right amount of information and inspiration and also making sure that you know what products we have available without just overwhelming the crap out of you. But whenever there's a new launch or sale calls or anything like that, it's important to make sure that you are aware of it. Sometimes we miss things in our email inbox. So there will be some emails coming in the next couple of weeks, just letting you know and giving you the heads up. And if you're interested in learning more about what's coming, make sure you are signed up. But with that being said, let's dive in.
Stress and Low Blood Sugar
I really appreciate the person who left this comment on my Instagram. It was on one of my reels, it has opened up a great conversation and will be the foundation of this whole episode. With that being said, I'm going to read the comment.
“I'm wondering how many stressed people are just having low blood sugar? And I don't mean to say that doesn't feel like fear. It's cortisol activated, but I don't think being less afraid is the solution. If that's the case, less low blood sugar is certainly the only thing that has made a difference for me. No amount of therapy, perspective change or meditation, etc, etc, could change the body's response to having cortisol activated. And I'm curious, why isn't this something you talk more about? I'm all for a more authentic life, less fear-based that you speak more on these days. But isn't it easier for people to get there if they know the connection between low blood sugar and cortisol and don't have low blood sugar?”
For those of you that maybe didn't read along or need a quick summary, pretty much what this person is saying is that their stress was solved by managing their blood sugar and no amount of therapy or other modalities helped them manage their fear, or obsessive thoughts. And they're asking, pretty much if everyone knew about low blood sugar, wouldn't this solve the fear problem? I liked these questions, because they make me think, and they're often things that I've already thought about really deeply. Well, you guys don't really know about my work. And some of you do, especially the loyal OG followers that have been around for a really long time. I am very particular about what I share on social media, social media is like 1%, of the whole of my work. I do that on purpose. Because I am well aware, you just cannot educate on all things on these little squares on Instagram, or now we're so used to short form content that we want everything handed to us all the time, spoon fed to us in these small little snippets of information. It's like we want the whole picture and the whole story, but give it to me in 90 seconds, please. I wish life and learning and awakening really worked that way.
As much as we're probably shifting to the shorter forms of content, we're becoming more used to being spoon fed, I would say, information. We're becoming more aware of the impact that inflammation is having on us. I think, at the end of the day, the body is so massively complex that people try to simplify it for the sake of being able to share information about it. There's about 1% of the body that we really even understand. It's that mysterious, and it's that vast, I have learned along the way as I've studied and deeply gone down certain rabbit holes about physiology is that I will never be able to stop learning, I will never run out of things to learn about the body, I will never stop seeing the body in new ways. And for me, healing and physiology, it's more of like a diamond that I've mentioned this before, where you look at it from many different facets, and everyone's looking at the same diamond. We're all like, oh my gosh, this is what I see. And everyone else is like, this is what I see. And people are getting caught up in arguing like, Well, no, it looks like this. And the other person's like, No, it looks like this. And in reality, we're all looking at the same diamond. We're just looking at it from a different facet. And so it appears to be a bit different from us.
But at the end of the day, what I have recognized, I've been able to zoom out for a while and see the forest from the trees. What I realized is that a lot of times nature is complex. And it operates in these aims, where it is this and that. So instead of being black or white, it's black and white. And it makes it kind of hard to simplify because it isn't simple. That's what makes science kind of funny to me is that science really is based on understanding and proving. So if you can't understand it, or you can't prove it or your puny little human brain can't wrap your mind around it, then it must not be true. But I think Walt Whitman said it best in his poetry where he said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well that I contradict myself.”
If you believe that everything around you is in motion, everything that kind of has this force behind it is the product of a creator, and everything is held together by this universe or one verse. Then this force can do whatever the hell it wants, and it can contradict itself because it is the thing that makes the rules. I don't really have to understand every part of it to just relish and enjoy and study as much of it as I can. That's a long way of saying that a lot of times we sometimes get lost in the weeds. And something that applies to us so heavily, may not apply to somebody else in the same way. And that's okay. Does that mean you guys are super different? Possibly or it could just mean that you're both looking at different facets of the same diamond.
There's no denying that low blood sugar, in answer to this question, is a huge component of stress. Many people are stuck in fight or flight because they're under fueled. I think a lot of the wellness influencers out there, or people that are on these very restrictive diets don't really understand how undernourished they are, they don't understand how in need of glucose they actually are. There are signs right, they're kind of secretly binging on ice cream, or they can't stop eating nut butters, because the only calorically dense thing in their diet. Or maybe they can't stop thinking about dessert. And so they're constantly trying to healthify dessert, and they're just able to make a business out of it.
But at the end of the day, so many of us are stuck in a stress response because we have low blood sugar. But what my work has led me to is exploring deeper because there are so many women that begin to nourish their bodies and actually are manually balancing their blood sugar or they're providing their body with enough glucose and enough fuel. And as much healing that has brought them, as much balance as that has brought them, as much healing as focusing on minerals and focusing on getting enough protein and getting enough carbohydrate and exercising appropriately has helped them, there's this level that they feel like they haven't met. Or they'll say, a lot of times it will be the question we'll be posed at, I've been able to balance my cycles, and I've been able to get pregnant and I've been able to sleep better and I feel so much better, my moods are better but up. But that is why these “buts,” these “but XYZ” things are still happening. But I can't get out of a fight or flight state. But I can't get out of a stress response, which is what's leading my work to go deeper.
I'm starting to explore the many facets of the body. And it has led me to focus on things that are more on the energetic level, because I recognize now that the pro metabolic diet or a bioenergetic approach to nutrition, what is happening is that there's a level of energetic expansion happening, which I've talked about in episode two, and episode three of this season, if you're wanting to check it out. Quite frankly, my work before, how I spoke about physiology before, it was so masculine in physical terms. It doesn't only just bore me now to talk about it. And so I'm not going to talk about it that way anymore. That also just feels like incomplete work to me now. It's just as important. It's just as foundational. It's just as life changing and groundbreaking. But I feel that we as a space are we as a community are we as a group are shifting, we're expanding now.
I feel like when I first got into this space, I was one of the only ones. I mean, you could put on one hand or two hands talking about these concepts. And now this community in this niche has grown so much. They're kind of waiting for the next step because there's always pace setters and trendsetters in a specific industry. And in the bioenergetic pro metabolic niche, it's a kind of a small niche still, and the niche has been waiting for a while for somebody to step up and do something new. And I have seen the need and the call and I'm heeding the call. If we want to be weird about it like that.
There's no denying that low blood sugar is a huge component of stress. But we need to go deeper. And remember that there is an energetic component to all physical matter. Of course, understanding our blood sugar and managing our blood sugar can be a huge foundational aspect of bringing balance to the body and bumping the body out of these survival based eating patterns. These eating patterns like intermittent fasting and low carb which are so popular right now can often induce a lot of stress response in somebody who is in desperate need of glucose and somebody whose central nervous system is under so much stress and pressure and not feeling properly. Again and again we are shown the evidence right in front of us but it does lead to a physiological downfall. We will constantly feel these underlying feelings of stress and urgency and fear will feel like time is going by so fast and we never have enough time for anything and we're always in a rush. Life will feel hard and it will feel overwhelming and will feel demanding and there will be very little sweetness because really at the end of the day blood sugar is a representation of the sweetness of life and it is physically and literally the sweet sugar within our lifeforce or our blood. It is very difficult to have a satisfying and fulfilling life without having sweetness. And it will feel stressful and it will feel out of control because you won't really be able to experience all that life has to offer you, the sweetness of life will be taken away from your cells.
The Physiology of Blood Sugar Balance
And so for the sake of reminding us of the physiology and the importance of having regular feedings of glucose throughout our day, or in an appropriate manner that works for us and an appropriate amount, let's talk about the physiology behind making sure our blood sugar is balanced and managed. And this is not going to sound very much like all of the influencers out there that are telling you to wear continuous glucose monitors and keep your blood sugar within a certain range. This is going to feel different. And that is my hope. We need a little bit more of different out there. So when it comes to balancing our blood sugar, and we have to remember that every single cell in our body utilizes glucose to generate energy. Remember that we are energy converters, right? So you can take physical matter, we can break it down into its individual components. And then we can utilize the individual components to actually generate our own type of energy. This is often referred to as the ATP that the mitochondria create.
But if you think about the process without super over pathologizing, it's kind of a magical process. And so much of our metabolic processes, which I think of the metabolism as equal to our generation of energy, the cornerstone of the metabolic process is really the liver. You know, the livers often thought about almost as a filter, and it kind of is right, it does take things out of the bloodstream, and then neutralize them and shift them and get them to where they need to go. But it's so much more than just a filter, you know, it's kind of a battery pack. It's a storage unit of nutrients. And it's a complex chemistry lab, because it's constantly going through these biochemical processes to break down and neutralize toxins so that they can be removed from the body. And when I say toxins, I'm not just talking about the ones that we are exposed to. I'm also talking about the ones that our bodies create, the metabolic waste that our own bodies create, when under excessive amounts of stress, or honestly, just when they're doing their regular metabolic processes.
The liver does 500 jobs that we know of or that can be kind of quantified in the scientific sphere. One of those jobs is to creating a steady stream of glucose or sweetness or sugar into the bloodstream to keep the cells fueled in a really balanced way when we aren't eating. Another really important job that it does in the generation of energy is it helps convert T4 which is one of the main thyroid hormones that our thyroid creates and secretes. And the liver is able to convert about 80% of the T4 in our body into the more active form T3. T3 impacts every single cell in our body and its use of energy. It is the place in our throat that is pushing and pulsing this deep hum or this deep vibrational energy throughout our whole body. The liver also stores up a bunch of nutrients and directs them where they need to go in the body so it can pull them out into the bloodstream whenever necessary for any of the cells that are in need.
It can also make bile which is a very important detoxification compound. Not only does bile keep our small intestine clear of bacteria, fungi, other pathogens, but also it helps us absorb fat soluble vitamins that are in our food and helps with our digestion of fat. It's an emulsifier so it actually really helps kind of scrub and keep the small intestine really nice and clean. The liver really is constantly filtering the blood and it's constantly breaking down toxins, chemicals, hormones into their less volatile forms, to be excreted in the colon, you know via our bowel movements, through the skin, through the lungs, through the kidneys, through the lymph.
And then beyond the physiology I love looking at the more traditional forms of medicine and kind of their view of these organs. I see how in traditional Chinese medicine, the liver is the organ that is responsible for a smooth flow of emotions. Interestingly enough, it is thought in TCM to be what is responsible for the smooth flow of blood and Qi, which is their word for that lifeforce energy that we are talking about. Even more fascinating, when the liver is struggling, in a lot of traditional forms of medicine like TCM and Ayurveda, it's thought that an unhealthy liver will drive a lot of anger and bitterness. Interesting that that kind of is almost the opposite of sweetness. So fundamentally, a really healthy functioning liver is going to be able to store a good amount of glycogen and can usually store about 100 grams of glycogen, which is the storage form of glucose. So liver glycogen at any point can be converted back into glucose and secreted into the bloodstream to provide any of the cells or the body fuel. To give you a reference, 100 grams of glycogen is about 400 calories worth of carbs or about 100 grams of carbohydrate. And this is enough glucose to keep ourselves fueled. Let's say we weren't eating, you know, we were going a long period without eating. Our cells can remain fueled from this liver glycogen for about eight to 20 hours, depending on what we're doing. So if we're just lying there, like a vegetable, it's gonna be very different than if we're out, you know, running 20 miles. But the sad fact nowadays is that most women are not getting enough steady glucose or their body is under so much stress their body is utilizing the stored glycogen faster than it can take it in and store it.
And there are many factors that impact our liver's ability to store up enough glucose. This is why so many people these days are struggling with poor blood sugar control is because our livers are not fueled properly, they require enough glucose to function. But they also require enough glucose to store so that we can maintain and manage our blood sugar while we're not eating. So healthy livers that are getting enough glucose regularly can store that much glycogen - 100 grams - but a lot of people don't have healthy livers right now. And so they're finding it harder and harder to maintain that level of stored glucose.
A lot of people will ask me, well, what about muscle glycogen, you know, because our muscle tissue can actually store up a lot of glycogen as well. It's very metabolically active tissue. But as much as our muscles store, they store about 400 grams of glucose when they're full size, or about 1600 calories worth of glycogen. But they don't have the ability to turn that glycogen into glucose and secret it into the bloodstream, like the liver does. Muscle tissue stores glycogen for its own fuel to keep it fed. Because muscle tissue is very metabolically active, it requires a lot of fuel to maintain. And the body knows this. So it kind of has its own system for having these muscles that self fuel themselves. It actually doesn't take that long to deplete muscle glycogen, it can take about 90 to 120 minutes of moderate exercise to deplete all of our muscle glycogen or most of it. So a lot of us kind of overestimate how much glycogen our muscles are storing. They have a huge capacity to store enough glucose if a woman is eating enough, but most women, let's be honest, are not eating enough.
And if we are eating we are often trying to avoid carbohydrates, or really being conscious about our carbohydrates, not recognizing that getting enough in a balanced manner is actually super therapeutic for just our whole system. In general, the most important organ that needs to be fueled for having a powerful metabolism is our liver. And we don't often practice biologically appropriate nourishment, we're not eating consistently, we're not eating in a stable way, we're not balancing or anchoring our blood sugar and trying to eat in a more consistent pattern or frequent pattern that works for us, we're kind of afraid of food, we try to eat the least amount we can, or we're just not in tune with our body's needs.
The Importance of Breakfast
And we have this kind of lack of focus on breakfast right now in the health space, which I think is really hurting women. Because we're not really intentionally replenishing our glycogen stores after our evening fast, which is what we're doing every single night while we're sleeping. We have an evening fast every single night from the last time that we eat for the day till that morning meal. And so many women are not placing enough importance on breakfast or they're drinking coffee right when they wake up. And so this can end up further depleting our glycogen stores if we have any glycogen left, because remember, a healthy liver is going to store about 100 grams, enough to keep us fueled for about eight to 20 hours depending on our bodies and what we're doing. So with the lack of emphasis on breakfast and intentionally fueling for breakfast, and then on top of that not intentionally fueling for exercise, you know, a lot of women do not intentionally replenish their carbohydrates after exercise. And this activity really forces the body to have to compensate because it does need glucose. It needs fuel, it needs it to generate energy. And we'll talk about the most important system in the body that needs energy in just a second.
When the body doesn't get enough of this fuel, then it's forced to pick and choose how to use glucose strategically. So it's going to start cutting corners that we don't want it to cut, or it's going to start making its own and we're going to talk about why we don't want that to happen in a second. The highest consumer of glucose and our body is hands down our central nervous system, our brain spinal cord and then the generating nerves are actually I'd say the protruding nerves that go into all of our systems, but primarily the enteric nervous system, which is spread throughout our whole digestive tract. A lot of people don't realize that there are more neurons in the digestive tract in the intestines and throughout than there are in the brain and the spinal cord, the brain literally lives within the gut. And so even though the CNS or the central nervous system makes up only about 2% of our body weight, it actually is responsible for over 20% of our glucose consumption. We use about 5.6 grams of glucose per minute for every 100 grams of our brain tissue, or neurotransmitters are neurons, because of their high amount of mitochondria. Remember, the mitochondria use glucose to generate our cell gasoline, aka ATP, right? They are generating this special energy called ATP. The mitochondria are largely intolerant to low blood sugar, especially the ones in the neurons. And our neurotransmitters like dopamine and serotonin, they are very responsive to drops in blood sugar, or having chronically low blood sugar.
The Brain and Blood Sugar
There is this huge misconception right now I think it's partially because of the low carb sphere, maybe the Keto sphere, that a lot of people will say your brain runs on ketones, your brain runs on fat, your brain is mostly made of fat, blah, blah, blah. But the biggest misconception that's going around right now is that the brain can use fat for fuel. This is only partial truth, because there are many areas of the brain and central nervous system that can only use glucose for fuel. So only the survival areas of our brain, you can use ketones, which is why you see people on a keto diet or a low carb diet, they tend to be less concerned with certain aspects of life.
They're very focused. And a lot of people will say that when they're in ketosis, they'll feel a lot of focus and mental clarity. But I always bring up what are you mentally clear on? What are you focused on? Because a lot of times, it's this kind of masculine energy, this very action-oriented energy, very focused. But there's not a lot of space for beauty and love and emotion and all of the soft, slow, sweet things that make life so great. There tends to be the seriousness that overcomes somebody that is stuck in ketosis. And the reason why is because the brain is having to now conserve glucose. So, certain areas of the brain will fire a lot less, or will utilize a lot less energy, because when somebody is forcing their body to run on fat, there's still an amount of glucose that's needed for the brain to function. And so that glucose is primarily going to need to be generated by the body, which we'll talk about why we don't want that to happen in a second. And it's very energetically expensive, and metabolically expensive for the body to stay in that state.
I should be clear, because there are some tissues in the body that do prefer burning free fatty acids, like muscle tissue at rest, for example. You know, there's some tissues that do switch back and forth between glucose and fat. But for the brain and central nervous system, it really is about that quick firing fuel. And that is what glucose provides. Most people's brains alone are going to use about 110 to 145 grams of carbohydrate per day. So what happens when someone is not intaking enough carbohydrates or enough glucose? This is the part of the conversation when we start to talk about how, when we're not in taking enough of something, the body is going to utilize its own structure to generate energy.
This is where, remember that structure and energy, as we talked about this whole season, are really intricately intertwined. You can't separate one from the other. To me, I look at it, as you know, the liquid form of water, or frozen water or ice, right? Ice and liquid water are the same, but one is ice and one is liquid water, but they are both water. And so oftentimes you might hurt hear the words catabolic hormones or anabolic hormones. Really all this means is anabolic hormones are constructive in nature. They use energy to build things up. And then catabolic hormones are catalysts of breakdown. They will cannibalize or sometimes I think of it as “cannibalize” our own structure to create energy. So one builds and one breaks down. There are a few hormones that actually can be both at the same time, both anabolic and catabolic, and that is what progesterone does, interestingly enough, but hormones like insulin and estrogen and testosterone are anabolic in nature. They will build things up. And then hormones like adrenaline and cortisol are more catabolic. They will break things down, break tissues down.
There's no good or bad in the body, right, there just is and so it's always good to have harmony of both because we need to be building tissue as much as we need to be breaking it down and creating space for new tissue. But keep in mind that hormones are really the ways that our cells communicate to each other on how to respond to our body's environment. And so anabolic hormones will protect us from catabolic ones, and vice versa. We don't want too much growth. And we also don't want too much breakdown. So this is why we want balance or harmony or rhythm of our hormones, we don't want to manipulate them and shift them and say, Well, my hormone is low and I need to bring it up or my hormone is high, and I need to bring it down. We need to look beyond that and say, what is the body doing? What is the body trying to compensate for?
Introducing Glucagon
So many people right now in the metabolic space are so focused on insulin, right? Like insulin, insulin, insulin, you don't want to have too much insulin. But really, even though you've probably heard insulin a lot, I am curious if you've actually heard of glucagon, because insulin is our blood sugar lowering hormone. It really acts kind of as a key to allow sugar into the cell. And if the cell is really responsive to insulin, well, then our cells will be very good at allowing the sweetness in, right. But a lot of people don't know that insulin is the opposite of glucagon. And glucagon is our catabolic blood sugar raising hormone. And it is often under talked about. When everyone's so focused in on insulin, they forget that glucagon can be just as devastating to have chronically high if not more devastating. Because glucagon, it's really an unsung hero in a way, right?
This is why hormones are neither good nor bad, they just are. It's responsible for managing our blood sugar when there's no food involved. So when we're fasting, when we're exercising, whenever there's no food involved, glucagon is probably at play somewhere. It's why we can go 10 hours without eating and still have high blood sugars. You know, I get that question all the time. Why are my blood sugar so high when I wake up, I didn't eat anything for 14 hours. And this is why: we can generate our own glucose. Because glucagon often works with adrenaline and cortisol to keep us alive when our blood sugar drops too low. And it is what is responsible for turning glycogen into glucose, that stored form of glucose, into a usable source of fuel. It, along with adrenaline, will drive a process that's called gluconeogenesis. In short, gluconeogenesis is really the process of the body breaking down its own tissue, it's eating ourselves alive. It is a process that the liver will go through to break down specifically all of our tissues, but usually starts with our muscle tissue. And it's how our body makes sure we can generate enough glucose to survive when there's not enough glucose in the body.
So once the liver is depleted of glycogen, like we talked about, our livers can only store so much glycogen, then adrenaline and glucagon can both act upon the cells to either release free fatty acids from the fat cells, or amino acids from anywhere in the body. So this is why a lot of times when we're under massive amounts of stress, we're under eating, or going long periods without eating or running on coffee, we're eating sporadically, we'll often see our muscle tissue tend to disintegrate, but we'll often see atrophy and other areas, our skin, our liver, our intestines. We'll start to see that we're really poor detoxifiers, our digestion is really poor, our skin is rapidly aging. Even if we're not overweight, we'll kind of start to look more skinny-fat because our body is actually displacing muscle with fat. And this is because our body is really good at creating its own glucose when necessary. It will either break down our fat tissue, or it will break down our other tissues, and it will turn fat or amino acids or proteins into glucose for the brain. So gluconeogenesis is really a backup system. But this is the reason why so many low carb proponents or keto proponents will be like, “you don't need glucose, you make your own.” And it's like, yeah, you do make your own glucose, but at what expense? Especially for those people that are really heavy exercisers or who have a lot of stress on their central nervous system, or who are healing huge amounts of trauma or emotional issues or working through spiritual issues. Remember that our central nervous system is a huge consumer of glucose. And if we're putting demand on it, and we're not eating enough carbohydrate, that energy has to come from somewhere.
Gluconeogenesis and being in a chronic place where you're constantly generating your own glucose is a backup system. It's a survival state and the reliance on it to supply your brain's glucose is metabolically destructive, hands down. It's okay to lean on our backup systems once in a while. That's what they're there for, or seasonally within reason, you know, replenishing our carbohydrates in a very intentional way, but people are very reckless with relying on their livers to provide their brains glucose. And so it really drives me bonkers when carbs get all the blame for raising insulin because there's so many different aspects to insulin.
The Many Aspects of Insulin
Cortisol and adrenaline have a huge impact on insulin. And protein actually has a huge insulin response as well. That's why protein lowers blood sugar so well by its stimulation of insulin. This is why some people who eat too much protein without eating enough carbohydrates are actually constantly putting themselves into a hypoglycemic state. I've been seeing this a lot with carnivores lately, so many are coming out of me like, “I have low blood sugar, chronically low blood sugar,” and I'm like, oh, that's not going to be fun when you start to recognize that it's causing a chain reaction. Because long term high protein, low carb diets do stimulate catabolic hormones, which is why people tend to lose weight so fast, but also lose that subcutaneous fat layer under their skin. It's why they often lose hair, it's often why they can feel really frazzled, very masculine, very serious, and a bunch of other hormonal issues often will take place. And this is why so regularly, when you see people rely on these types of diets to lose a huge amount of weight, they tend to gain it all back when they eat carbohydrates again, because their metabolism was already dysfunctional to begin with. That's why they were feeling so crappy. That's probably why they decided to pursue that type of diet. But instead of fixing the metabolic underlying causes, they just kind of catered to metabolism, those already preferentially burning fat because it wasn't burning glucose well, and here we are.
So while protein lowers blood sugar, or lowers blood glucose, carbs tend to raise it. And this is not bad, as you've been taught to believe. It's actually natural and normal for our blood sugar to raise after a meal, gradually raise and then as our bodies and our cells accept the sweetness, accept the glucose, then the blood sugar will kind of start to slowly fall and then your hunger will start to set in at some point. You'll start to gradually get more and more hungry as your body provides you an opportunity to provide it with some more fuel. Insulin is one of the key components that allows the cells to utilize this glucose. And it assures that sugar from the bloodstream into the cell. Insulin is not a bad hormone, there is no such thing as a bad hormone. Problems just start to arise when there are disruptions in how we respond to glucose and insulin. Right?
So keto proponents and low carb proponents would say that just cut carbs if you have a problem with them. I think there should be a more nuanced approach to that. Everyone has a different need for carbohydrates, depending on their activity level, their personality, the stress their central nervous system is under, there's so many factors there, the season that they're in, if they’re a man or a woman. But the only thing that cutting carbs completely usually fixes is just the lab test, it doesn't actually usually bring balance to the underlying physiology and all the ways that a person is after. And it definitely doesn't ensure that your body is using glucose better.
In fact, a lot of people find that their bodies use glucose worse after high fat, low carb diets. So I do understand the physiology behind blood sugar. But I think there's more to the story. You know, when we start to talk about carb intolerance and carb tolerance, which we're seeing so many people intolerant, carbohydrates are poor utilizers of glucose, which is why we're seeing so many metabolic issues. A lot of people don't recognize how much our stress and our state of being, the spirit that we're in, really impacts our utilization of food. If we think of blood sugar as the sweetness of life, it's going to be very difficult to accept the sweetness of life when you're running from an angry bear. When you are scared for your life, whether that be of toxins or something else that's going to happen. These overarching fears that we have, it can be very difficult to accept glucose, but glucose can also help us react and respond to what's going on in our environment appropriately. So it's a give and take, it's a cycle. It's a never ending cycle. You don't know where one ends and the other begins. It's just as important to get enough glucose in the diet, as it is to be aware of our surroundings, and our energetic environment.
You know, we can totally play around with different sources of carbs, different amounts of carbs, different fats and proteins and change our diet. I am so passionate about it that I've made a career out of nourishment and nourishing the body appropriately. But there are many other factors that are going to really impact our utilization of carbohydrates. There are a lot of factors, this includes our intake of animal protein and the digestion of that protein, it's going to be determined by our stomach acid levels, and our digestive enzyme output. Also, our animal fat intake, we need a good amount of these really saturated and monounsaturated fatty acids. And a lot of us are getting so many polyunsaturated fatty acids, that our fatty acids are remaining in this constant imbalance.
Also, our mineral status, you know, calcium, magnesium, potassium, sodium all impact our blood sugar regulation and our ability to accept the sweetness into ourselves. Because minerals are conductors of energy, they allow electricity and consciousness and energy to flow throughout the body by being suspended in the water that is within our body and within ourselves. And they are a part of allowing the cells to accept sugar into themselves, you know, our stress levels are going to absolutely impact how we utilize glucose. If our cortisol and adrenaline is all over the place, and we're constantly in a state of fight or flight or even freeze, we're not going to tolerate the sweetness of life, or glucose very well. Our exercise is going to make a big difference in our carbohydrate tolerance, our sleep, our recovery, and our hormone balance.
No More Demonizing Carbs
But at the end of the day, we cannot demonize carbohydrates. We can't demonize glucose. But we also can't start to see that glucose is the end all be all. I think for a lot of people, it is the beginning of sorts. I think that people do go about healing their nervous system, going back to the question that was asked at the beginning, where the person that was asking the question, was saying that no amount of therapy, prospective change, or meditation, etc, etc, could change the body's response to having cortisol activated. Certainly, it's the only thing that has made a difference for me. And I agree that no one is going to really respond to these nervous system healing modalities, if they aren't under-fueled, if they're not fueled, because they're not getting the sweetness of life, they're not able to utilize the sweetness of life. So there's only a level of consciousness or awareness that can take place. But like I said before, the mind, body and spirit are really one. It's like ice and water. They're both the same, right? They're all water, but they're different forms, and they all impact each other. And so I think people do go about healing in the wrong order. They focus solely on the physical, or they focus solely on the spiritual, and they forget that it's one and the same.
Our structure and our energy are intertwined, and you can't separate them. It's impossible. Resetting our physiological stress patterns and nervous system patterns is going to be nearly impossible without being nourished, without being fueled at the cellular level, without having the actual physical energy that's required, because our body is both physical and energetic or spiritual. It operates on two different planes. But on the flip side, to answer your question, I don't think that glucose and managing our blood sugar and our nutrition and our supplements are enough, I think they kind of operate on parallels. And sometimes we're focused way too much on one that we forget to focus enough on the other, and we hit a wall and wait for the other one to catch up. And then we do the same thing, like if we focus too much on the mental nervous system, emotional, spiritual, and we forget that the physical is important, oh, we're gonna hit a wall. And we're going to wait for our support of our physical body to catch up so they can't progress or they can't expand without each other.
I think this is why so many people kind of are hitting a wall, whether they are just focused solely on the nervous system solely on the emotional solely on the spiritual, they forget that it's so intertwined with the physical, it's impossible to heal one without the other because the thing that is generating these neural pathways and the patterns of behavioral patterns that we are kind of stuck in or that we have started and kind of keep playing over and over again, those things are very physical, they're mineral patterns, they are cellular patterns that need to shift as well on the physical plane. But we're going to wrap this up just for this episode, and we're going to continue this conversation, and then next episode for part two, and we're going to talk about action steps. And we're going to talk about some deeper layers to what happens as we begin to nourish and as we begin to balance our glucose.
Episode Links
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Episode 2: My Health Hourney & having a Meaningful Nutrition Philosophy
Episode 3: Energy is Everything: An Introduction to Bioenergetics
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