11: What you need to know about high and low blood sugar and sleep

Episode Transcript:

Welcome to the why you can't sleep podcast. If you struggle to sleep and you've tried what seems like everything, you are in the right place. There are imbalances in your body that are keeping you awake, and you're going to learn what they are in this show. Now, let's kick off this episode with an inspiring success story from one of my clients who has significantly improved their sleep by correcting the underlying health issues that were causing their insomnia.

"Well, what I really am liked about working with you is it's all based on data. Well, I check in with my doctor every six months. We have been years. A number of things came up in your tests he didn't test for. We didn't know that one of the most important was insulin resistance."

Hello, everyone. Today I want to talk all about blood, blood sugar and how this can affect your sleep, because this is probably a piece of the puzzle for you. I know it was for me. Even after I addressed the parasite, I had the hormone imbalance, the copper toxicity. I wasn't sleeping consistently all the time until I started intermittent fasting, which helped regulate my blood sugar. Now, I'm not going to actually recommend intermittent fasting for most of you. If you aren't sleeping, that's really stressful on your body. It's just adding another stress.

And so that's probably not going to be helpful. But I will talk about what I recommend for blood sugar in this episode. And I just want you to know this can be an issue for you, even if you are a healthy weight and you eat healthy and you don't eat a lot of sugar and things like that. Sometimes we are genetically more predisposed to having blood sugar issues. A lot of times, sleeping or not sleeping well affects our body's ability to regulate glucose or blood sugar because that happens while we're sleeping. So a lot of times, those of us with sleep issues need extra support here because our body isn't able to do it naturally to stabilize our blood sugar, even if we are eating really well. And so this can definitely be a piece of the puzzle, something to look at. So today I'm going to tell you about what markers to look for on your blood work.

We're going to talk about what optimal blood sugar levels are before and after eating and how to test for that if you think this is an issue for you. And I'm also going to give you some hacks and some supplements that will help stabilize growth. Blood sugar. Now, I did a previous episode about a year ago, so episode 46 I talked about what you need to know about blood sugar and sleep. So I talked about how blood sugar affects sleep and some of the signs of blood sugar issues, as well as insulin resistance. So if you haven't listened to that, I suggest going back and listening to episode 46 there. But I will tell you really briefly about how our blood sugar levels do affect sleep, because whenever our blood sugar levels drop too low, then our body releases cortisol, because cortisol literally gives us energy by putting glucose into the cells. And so if your blood sugar drops too low in the middle of the night, your blood, your body's going to release cortisol, and that's going to wake you up, right? Right.

Because cortisol is stimulating, that gives us energy. It makes our mind race. It raises our body temperature and blood pressure and heart rate, so it pretty much puts us in this alert state. So we don't want our body releasing cortisol at night. So the way for a knot to get too low at night is to make sure that it's stable throughout the day. So that's what we're going to be talking about today. Now, when it comes to blood work, you might already have some clues from your doctor's blood work. And first of all, I will say that a lot of labs will say that less than 100 for fasting glucose is fine, is normal, quote unquote.

I'm looking for more optimal levels. So that's in everything I do as a functional medicine practitioner, that's what I've been trained to look for. There's a big difference between normal, which is really just the average of the people taking the test in most cases, and optimal, which is what people's levels are when they are in good health without any symptoms. I've learned that fasting glucose should be between 75 and 90, and that anything above 90 isn't actually ideal. Even though your lab work might say, if you're at 93, that that's fine. I like to see it under 90 or 90 or under as much as possible. Your insulin, ideally, should be between one and five. So if you get that tested, that's what you want to look for.

And then your hdb, a one c, should be between 4.5 and 5.2%. So those are the clues you can look for on your blood work to start. Now, if you think that blood sugar is an issue for you, you might want to start testing it. And so you can do this in a few different ways. So you can buy an inexpensive glucometer from the drugstore from Amazon, whatever. They're about $25. And you buy these testing strips, and you prick your finger and measure your blood sugar that way. There's also something that I've found called the keto mojo, and this is a little more expensive.

I think it's around $100. So this you can use to measure blood sugar and ketones if that's something you're interested in doing. And this also involves pricking your finger. If you don't want to be pricking your finger all the time to figure this out, and you don't have to do this all the time, you can just start with a few times, a few meals to see kind of where you are. And then if it is an issue, then you want to keep testing meals and testing some of the hacks that I'll talk about in a minute. This doesn't have to be a forever thing, necessarily, but if you don't want to be pricking your finger all the time, you can also go to your doctor or order a continuous glucose monitor or a CGM. Supposedly, the less expensive glucometers where you prick your finger are actually more accurate, but the continuous glucose monitor is great for seeing the trends that are happening. And so how that works is that you have this kind of patch on your arm all the time, and so you can test your blood sugar levels whenever you want without having to prick your finger every time.

And a lot of times, doctors can prescribe them for free. If you tell your doctor that you think you have blood sugar issues, or if you know you already do, then you can likely get this as a prescription for free. So, something to try out there. And this is what you want to be looking for. So ideally, you want to start with your fasting blood sugar levels. So that means when you wake up in the morning and you before you have eaten anything, and I actually recommend about an hour after waking up to test, because there is an actual spike in our blood sugar when we wake up. So you want to wait an hour or so and then measure it. And again, you want that to be between 75 and 90, and then you want to measure it again.

2 hours after you eat a meal, or breakfast would be the first meal to do. And ideally, you don't want to see glucose levels rise more than 30 points from your fasting level. So let's say you were at 90. You don't want to see it go above 120. You definitely never want to see it go above 140. That's kind of the max of the optimal range for after eating, and then 3 hours after eating, it can help to measure again because you should see your glucose levels going down 3 hours after eating because that is when insulin kicks in. And so if your blood sugar levels or glucose levels are starting to rise 3 hours after eating, that means that you aren't having an appropriate insulin response. And so you can find out more about that again on episode 46 where I talk about insulin resistance.

That's what you are looking for there. So let's talk about how to regulate your blood sugar. So ideally, you want to follow the correct diet for your metabolic type. So this is something I help all my clients with, is find their ideal balance of macronutrients for fat, protein and carbs. So not all of us in the world should be low carb or high carb or low fat or high fat or whatever it is. We're all genetically, metabolically different. And so some of us are more protein types where we need more protein, some of us are more carbohydrate types and we need more carbs. And the most common is actually in the middle, which is a combination of those two or called the mixed type.

You can find out more about this by googling metabolic typing diet. And there is a quiz, I think it's under mtquiz.com, that you can take to find out your metabolic type. So that's where you want to start, because that's going to have a big impact on your blood sugar levels. And it can also help to eat fat and protein with every meal. And I want to say snack, but actually one of my recommendations is not to snack. So it used to be the trait. The school of thought was that if you have blood sugar issues, you should be eating all the time to keep your blood sugar levels steady. It turns out that's really bad and can lead to insulin resistance over time.

So we want to minimize the amount of time that times during the day that our bodies has to release insulin to lower blood sugar. If it's constantly having to do that cause you're constantly eating, then that can lead to your body not responding to insulin or this insulin resistance, which can lead to diabetes over time. And so I actually recommend not snacking and having two to three meals a day. You also want to make sure to eat at least 20 grams of protein, definitely with breakfast and with every meal, ideally, but definitely with breakfast. That's going to be the most important meal of the day to, because that's going to set the stage for your blood sugar levels remaining steady throughout the day. So I'd say at least 20 to 25 grams of protein with breakfast. Now, I also recommend taking 12 hours of what I call digestive rest. So, again, I don't necessarily recommend intermittent fasting, especially if you aren't sleeping well.

But taking, and I should say by intermittent fasting, that's usually, you know, going 1416 or more hours without eating and having this really small eating window. So you don't need to go to that extreme. But I do recommend taking 12 hours of what I call digestive rest every day. And so that means that you are going 12 hours without eating to give your body a break from digestion and from, you know, raising your blood sugar levels and then your body releasing insulin. So that's where I would start. I also recommend limiting fruit to two servings a day, max, so the fructose and fruit turns directly into fat. It isn't actually used for energy like glucose is. And today's fruits have been bred to be much sweeter than they used to be.

So some of the best fruits to eat that are lower in sugar are going to be berries, citrus fruits, and sour apples, like granny Smith apples. Those have the least amount of sugar. Tropical fruits, like mangoes and pineapples and bananas are really high in sugar, so you definitely want to limit those. And you don't want to be eating fruit on an empty stomach or, you know, just fruit by itself. Now, if you already know about these hacks or you follow those hacks and those don't help with your blood sugar, then I recommend some of the suggestions I learned from the glucose revolution, which was written by Jesse and in shows, I think is how you say her name. It's spelled inchauspe. And I highly recommend her book to learn more about blood sugar and glucose. But she has some tips that I found really helpful for myself lately as well.

So, first of all, to eat foods in a certain order. So you want to eat vegetables first, and then protein and then carbohydrates. So you're getting the fiber from the vegetables kind of in your digestive system first. So that's going to slow everything down that comes behind it. It can also help to add a green starter to your meals. This is why so many cultures have a salad first, right? That actually helps with our blood sugar. And you can follow Jesse on Instagram. She's under glucose goddess, and she shows all these graphs of the difference between, say, eating a bowl of pasta and eating a bowl of pasta when you eat a salad first.

So she'll show the blood sugar spike without the salad and with the salad. And so she's tested all of these things herself, and everything she's recommended is based on research as well. But it's a really fascinating way to see how these changes can make a difference in your blood sugar levels. So, yeah, having this veggie starter is another hack. It can also help to drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar and 8oz of water before meals. So this is great for digestion anyway, because that bitterness is kind of the same concept of having bitters, taking bitters before meals and that it stimulates bile production by the liver, which is going to help with liver detox. Bile is also helps us digest, fasten, so it's good for digestion as well, but can also help with blood sugar levels. It can also help to move within an hour or so after eating.

So a walk, doing squats, something like that, can also help stabilize blood sugar levels. And you always want to eat sugar for dessert instead of as a snack. So I mean to eat it after the meal instead of, say, in the middle of the day, 2 hours after lunch or whatever. You always want to eat it right after a meal because that meal is going to help stabilize the blood sugar levels that you get from the dessert. And so, same with fruit, as I mentioned earlier. So those are some of the hacks that can help. And so I suggest starting with these hacks first before moving on to supplements. So ideally, we want your body to be able to regulate glucose on its own, so you can test it with your glucometer, with the CGM, and test different meals and start getting a sense of what is going to work best for you, because it is different for everyone.

And if all of these hacks don't work, then that's when I recommend that it's time to try some supplements for the short term, you know, as you're also working on your sleep, ideally, so that then your body can regulate glucose and blood sugar on its own. So some supplements that help, there are a lot of blends out there. If you look under blood sugar support, you'll see different blends. Chromium is a mineral that's commonly in those blends. Cinnamon is an herb that actually helps stabilize blood sugar. So I always add a dash of cinnamon to smoothies when I make them. And another great supplement that I use with my clients is called D chiro inositol. And this helps with blood sugar and insulin.

So I'll tend to recommend this if someone is also having signs of insulin resistance. So it can, it's a good combo supplement. But again, start with the hacks first, and then. Then if you need it, do the supplements and test how those help you. So I talked on episode 46 about my client, Peter. I mean, his main issue was blood sugar. Yes, he definitely had different other imbalances in his body as well. He had h. Pylori, he had food sensitivities. He had other things going on. But stabilizing his blood sugar was the game changer, and it's something that his doctor had totally missed. And my client, Susan, also wrote when I asked her, you know, why she thought that her sleep was getting so much better. And she said, one major thing is getting my blood sugar under control, not having me wake up at 03:00 a.m. every night because I'm hungry. So waking up at night hungry is a definite sign that your blood sugar is out of balance. But even if you aren't, it can still be out of balance.

Awesome. So that's what I have for you today. As you. As you know from listening to my podcast or if you're new to me, there are many pieces to the puzzle of what's causing someone's insomnia, and it's different for everyone. It's never just one thing. So blood sugar is just one piece of the puzzle. But I wanted to share this with you because this is something that you can work on on your own. It doesn't involve any of the lab testing I do or anything else.

You can test this yourself and see if this can make a big difference in your sleep. All right, everyone, thanks so much for listening, and I will talk to you next week.

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