Do blood sugar spikes matter?

[Stella123]

I can tell because if it spikes I feel sleepy. I am not worrying about spikes. I don’t have any issue with blood sugar that causes me any problems. It’s better to not worry about stuff that is only perceivable in a test.

The man went to the doctor and says, “doctor, it hurts when I do THIS.” The doctor responds, “don’t do THIS.”

Stop testing ***t all the time if it has no impact on you. My HbA1C is fine. My fasting blood sugar is fine. Why woudl I worry about something like spikes?

Agreed!

 

[yerrag]

I can tell because if it spikes I feel sleepy. I am not worrying about spikes. I don’t have any issue with blood sugar that causes me any problems. It’s better to not worry about stuff that is only perceivable in a test.

The man went to the doctor and says, “doctor, it hurts when I do THIS.” The doctor responds, “don’t do THIS.”

Stop testing ***t all the time if it has no impact on you. My HbA1C is fine. My fasting blood sugar is fine. Why woudl I worry about something like spikes?

It's not ***t just because you know nothing about this.

Even Ray Peat criticizes the use of HbA1c. But hey, Peat is wrong this time, right?

For someone who claims to write a health newsletter, I find your attitude to ideas that conflict with your current understanding to be disappointing.

Let me ask you.

Does FBS and HbA1c tell you if your blood sugar is stable all throughout the day and throughout the night?

Does it make a big difference if blood sugar regulation improves from yo-yo from high to low throughout the day into one that is stable and within range?

Sure. It is the difference between having low energy and being energetic and productive, as well as the difference between being sickly and being not.

So what is ***t about this?

 

[yerrag]

What can be asserted without proof can be dismissed without proof.

Talk is cheap.

Do more than sprout words and sentences that aren't yours.

 

[GreekDemiGod]

What you are calling a spike is the normal and healthy body's response to ingested sugar,

I think the idea is that even in a body with a healthy insulin response, having or momentarily reaching high blood sugar levels is damaging.
So if you're sipping on juice all day...

 

[yerrag]

Agreed!

Glad you found the answer you were looking for. Sorry I couldn't help you.

 

[yerrag]

What you are calling a spike is the normal and healthy body's response to ingested sugar, in fact the speed of the decline of the peak is a sign of excellent insulin control. A better test than OGTT would be a Craft test which measures the insulin as well as the glucose.

I dunno what a Craft test is. It may be a good test given it adds insulin to being measured along with the glucose.

But with the wrong understanding that very well leads to a wrong interpretation, you still get, in the words of a fellow Peater, a shitty diagnosis.

And no, a spike is not normal.

And no, the speed of the decline from the peak is not a sign of excellent insulin control. A steep drop is excellent control?Where do you dredge this ***t up?

 

[yerrag]

Answer this-

If I take a drop of water from the beach where I surf, and let's say I'm blindfolded and I am not hearing anything as well, and then I'm helped back to my lab, can I use this drop of water to determine if the water in the beach is calm or very turbulent and had high waves?

If I can't, how can I determine my blood sugar health from taking a drop of blood to get my FBS?

Much less HbA1c?

Maybe if you're not looking to determine blood sugar health as one where blood sugar levels are stable, you could go ahead and follow your doctor aka glorifield technician as he goes on to tell you 'You are perfectly fine. Have a nice and dandy day. And keep on smiling. Theeere you go!'

 

[Zsazsa]

Once upon a time my HbA1c was 4.8
That was when I was having reactive hypoglycemia constantly after eating.

 

[Tzheng2012]

Alright so what to do to reduce these spikes? I know bittermelon and gynostemma are the best, maybe add some astragalus? I would say cinnamon but it seems to not be a good long term herb because of the liver toxin in it (I was told even Ceylon has this).

Post-prandial walks too

 

[yerrag]

Once upon a time my HbA1c was 4.8
That was when I was having reactive hypoglycemia constantly after eating.

I don't know what your condition is now, but didn't your doctor say you're dandy with that reading? And yet you wondered why you still have reactive hypoglycemia.

If you're given a ruler that tells you than a cm is an inch, won't you be going about the neighborhood bragging about your long 10 inch ****?

 

[ecstatichamster]

@yerrag you could be right. I could be wrong. I will look into this more thoroughly. Thank you.

 

[ecstatichamster]

Yes, that was what's happening to me before and I was very sickly.

Conventional doctors with their HbA1c testing method can't help. That is how they're trained (as glorified technicians) so one deep root cause of disease is never identified and never fixed. Drug companies profit at our expense as we carry on thinking we're genetically disposed to be sick and we need their drugs. Individually, we are profit centers and the longer we live in sickness we are cash cows.

Even when I begged my primary physician to sign off on a 5hr OGTT (oral glucose tolerance test), which he did, and when results came out, his faulty interpretation would have me considered as healthy, blood sugar-wise.

But his diagnosis was a false negative. He was wrong. I plotted bs values against time in a graph, and the curve it gave me corresponded to that of hypoglycemia. I was using an old book I borrowed from the library as my basis.

Hypoglycemia is almost never diagnosed in standard medical practice.

I then went ahead and with the help of a good naturopathic doctor set about to fix it. Once fixed, I was no longer sickly as before.


Yes, when blood sugar drops and the body tissues are interrupted from their blood sugar supply. Even momentary interruptions affect us.

I think the T3 conversion from T4 in the liver, if interrupted, has downstream effects that last much longer than the temporary excessive drop in blood sugar.

It ranges from just feeling unenergetic to getting sick from lowered immunity.

How did you fix yours? @yerrag

 

[incrp]

I dunno what a Craft test is.

View: https://youtu.be/w0nV-_ddXoc

 

[incrp]

And no, a spike is not normal.

And no, the speed of the decline from the peak is not a sign of excellent insulin control. A steep drop is excellent control?Where do you dredge this ***t up?

Continuous Glucose Profiles in Healthy Subjects under Everyday Life Conditions and after Different Meals​

Continuous Glucose Profiles in Healthy Subjects under Everyday Life Conditions and after Different Meals

This study investigated continuous glucose profiles in nondiabetic subjects.Continuous interstitial glucose measurement was performed under everyday life conditions (2 days) and after ingestion of four meals with standardized carbohydrate content (50 ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Look at the graphs what do you see - spikes

 

[yerrag]

Continuous Glucose Profiles in Healthy Subjects under Everyday Life Conditions and after Different Meals​

Continuous Glucose Profiles in Healthy Subjects under Everyday Life Conditions and after Different Meals

This study investigated continuous glucose profiles in nondiabetic subjects.Continuous interstitial glucose measurement was performed under everyday life conditions (2 days) and after ingestion of four meals with standardized carbohydrate content (50 ...

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

Look at the graphs what do you see - spikes

How do you define a spike?

The article does not even call the upward curves spikes. As you can see, the upward curves that result when meals are taken for non-diabetic ( and I would non-hypoglycemic) subjects are nowhere near what a spike would look like.

Spikes are abrupt, and the peaks are sharp. Do you see these peaks being sharp?

You've seen depictions of spikes in spike proteins of COVID, and you've probably seen the spikes in some cleats shoes. Those are spikes. These are not.

 

[yerrag]

@yerrag you could be right. I could be wrong. I will look into this more thoroughly. Thank you.

Thank you for being so gracious. I am humbled. We are all learning from each other.

How did you fix yours? @yerrag

I had to first suspect that I have a blood sugar problem.

I used to sing in a church choir. I knew that before I sang for morning mass, I would need breakfast or I wouldn't be able to sing well. One day, I told my fellow bass, Bob, that he has to eat before breakfast to sing well. And he looked askance at me and told me he never needed to. And that was when I realized the problem was my blood sugar. No breakfast meant low blood sugar. But I wasn't sure about this yet.

So some research later at the public library, I went to my primary physician and pleaded for him to allow me to take a 5hr. glucose tolerance test. The results came back and he took a look and told me I'm fine. I have no blood sugar problem and I'm just normal. I decided to graph the data from the results of the test, and from there I got a graph with an xy curve of blood sugar vs time. I compared it with the figures in an old book from the library, and realized that I am hypoglycemic.

I hope this didn't bore you but I wanted to show that it wasn't easy to get doctors, much less ourselves, to realize a blood sugar issue in us.

At that time, I was already due to do mercury detox, which involved replacing the mercury fillings in 11 of my teeth, to be followed by a series of mercury chelation, but I was doing this because of cosmetic reasons. As I have keloids and that was a major toxic burden. Anyway, that didn't do anything for my keloids even till now.

But as far as my blood sugar and health went, I was surprised at the improvement. As mercury kept my blood from carrying enough oxygen, and I had hypoxemia as a result of the mercury displacing the oxygen in the hemoglobin molecules. Each hemoglobin molecule can carry 4 oxygen molecules, but with mercury in the mix, God knows how much oxygen I was carrying with each hemoglobin molecules but certainly it wasn't four. If I had an oximeter then, I would know but then oximeters are still very specialized equipment. This was 20 years ago. So I was hypoxemic as a result, and I would also be hypoxic, and this meant I had low tissue oxygenation. Being low in oxygen would really affect my sugar metabolism, and it would show up when I struggle with my running. I would barely run a kilometer, and I would be panting. Knowing now what I didn't know then, I had a lot of lactic acid buildup that made me exhausted from running a short distance.

So, post mercury therapy, I was surprised that I could handily run 5 kms. uphill without even breaking a sweat. I also stopped getting the flu every mid-winter at the depth of winter season. I no longer had fevers as well. But then I wasn't out of the woods yet. I still get hungry 3 hours after a meal, or sleepy, and I couldn't eat a piece of candy on an empty stomach, as that would cause my blood sugar to yoyo up and down, and once down, I would hiccup, get a sore throat, and end up with a fever the next day. Still, it was better than pre-treatment when on a long drive I would begin to tremble 3 hours into a trip.

I read a book called Sugar Busters, and I learned to eat more fiber in my carbs, and I replaced my white rice with brown rice, and suddenly everything was perfect for me. No longer was I needing to eat 3 hours after lunch, and I could hang on till dinner for the next meal. So for probably the next 16 years, I kept to that food lifestyle.

Until I listened to an interview of Brian Peskin. I wasn't sure what he said, but it made me decide to do a cold turkey of PUFAs, Years went by and I came upon Ray Peat thru his website and into this forum. Then I realized at least 4 years must have gone by, and it's perfect as Ray Peat said after 4 years without PUFA, the PUFA stores in the body would be depleted.

So I went about testing myself to see if my blood sugar regulation improved. I shifted to white rice and found it went well with me. I also went on a day-long fast and I aced it, with my blood sugar staying stable at 84. Then I took a teaspoon of white sugar on an empty stomach and didn't experience a sugar low that previously would have caused me to have a runny nose that would end up with a fever the next day.

I also noticed since then that I no longer suffer from allergic rhinitis, and so have no allergies that I know of anymore.

As you already know, I have very high blood pressure and that is an ongoing project of mine. But despite this condition, I'm holding up well and I don't have headaches at all. I think that the good metabolism that comes hand in hand with good blood sugar regulation is crucial to me being able to maintain a reasonably high level of health.

 

[incrp]

More on interpreting CGM

View: https://youtu.be/Ye419qJ6jIw

 

[Blaze]

They are a big deal. Spikes happen because blood sugar rises quickly and then goes down quickly after it peaks.

Blood sugar goes up quickly because the body tissues can't quickly absorb and metabolize sugar.

And blood sugar goes down quickly because a strong insulin response by the pancreas causes blood sugar to plummet.

This yo-yo action of blood sugar from high to low contrasts greatly with the stable blood sugar of a more healthy individual.

People who use HbA1c as the basis to determine blood sugar health cannot visualize nor understand how important good blood sugar regulation is. They just see one number. But this ishow the medical establishment wants people to be, clueless.

With the 5hr OGTT, where blood sugar values taken can be displayed as a graph over time, one does not need to have a rich imagination to see those spikes as well as steep drops in blood sugar to appreciate how much it means to have stable blood sugar.

Understand this well and I believe you can have a very good basis to drastically improve your health and well-being.

Very detailed well thought out reply. Not sure why it was received by some as controversial. Blood sugar spikes that persist are among the most damaging things that can happen and cause loss of limbs , blindness, kidney failure etc...........
Short term blood sugar spikes that are then easily and quickly resolved by proper metabolism are completely normal.
If it persists, then as you stated----

"Blood sugar goes up quickly because the body tissues can't quickly absorb and metabolize sugar."

Bottom line: high blood sugar or high blood triglycerides are never ok. Sugar is fuel and belongs in cells, not in the blood above a normal range.

 

[incrp]

I despair, people with thousands of postings acting as authoritative voices on basic glucose metabolism without a even basic understanding of the process.

 

[Blaze]

I despair, people with thousands of postings acting as authoritative voices on basic glucose metabolism without a even basic understanding of the process.

Don't despair my friend, instead of taking these posts as some strange authoritarian thing, maybe it's just a bunch of mostly humble people with an occasional very rare tyrant spouting dogma who is not the norm here, we are just opening a discussion and learning what we can and in turn discarding what we deem nonsensical. Enjoy the info and discard what you don't like and share any of own your ideas that may assist the rest of us. I know I would try and appreciate any perspective you take the time to offer.