Say you have a fasting blood sugar of 85 mg/dL. No human on this planet can think intuitively about this number letter vomit.
85 mg/dL equals 0.85 grams per liter and the average human contains about 5 liters of blood.
Therefore, if your fasting blood sugar is sitting at 85 mg/dL you have about 4.25 grams of glucose floating around in your bloodstream. If my math is right, that is half an ounce of white rice or a big bite of apple (I know not really – it’s mostly fructose). Here is the kicker only 15% of that tiny number comes from food, the vast majority of it is regulated endogenously by the liver. Insulin’s main function is not to put sugar away, but to halt hepatic glucose production by blocking glucagon.
The difference between diabetes and a fasting blood sugar of 85 is 2.05 grams of glucose. That’s how amazing and tightly controlled this self-healing, self-regulating meat suit you bumble around in is. Don’t forget that.
As much as we try to put baby in the corner, we never will. You are the most resilient and prolific being (mammal) this world has ever seen. Your body is already regulating and responding before you even conscientiously have an idea of what is going on. I know many men who can house an entire pizza and not go above 120 mg/dL. That means with well over 100 grams of carbohydrate in a sitting, there blood glucose raises less than 2 grams. But some people look at a banana and they fly above 150 and then sink back down into the land of epinephrine and cortisol.
Maybe the idea is not shrink the carb box, but expand capacity. Cough…sleep, mitochondria, exercise, muscle, and everything that plays with metabolic flexibility.
Maybe insulin resistance is a protective mechanism to keep more sugar in the bloodstream so that your brain and immune cells have access to it in times of acute or sustained emergency.
Maybe we aren’t as fragile as everyone wants us to believe, yet if we continually disrespect the only body we will ever have, whether we have compensations that result in symptoms and sustained “disease” states is not a matter of if, but when.
This is a morning free-write after being able to review Dr. Bryan Walsh’s advanced lecture series on blood glucose.
You must have a solid grasp of physiology to be able to play along, but this course is going to blow minds and I am so pumped to be able to co-teach with Dr. Walsh during the 2018 Func Med retreat in Costa Rica. Game on!
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