Feel Better With High Fasting Blood Sugar

[stargazer1111]

Does anyone else feel better when their fasting blood sugar is slightly elevated?

If my fasting blood sugar is within range (70-85 mg/dl), I feel tired, fatigued, like I just want to sit around or lay around and do nothing.

If my fasting blood sugar is somewhere in the upper 90's or right around 100 mg/dl, I feel like a kid again. Lots of energy, alert, and ready to tackle the day.

I wonder if all the craze with trying to keep the fasting blood sugar low is wrong, at least for some people.

Counter-intuitively, my thought is that, if fasting blood sugar is lower, glycogen may be depleted at this point which causes an elevation of glucagon and the stress hormones. This elevation would then shift the metabolism toward fatty acid oxidation which might explain why I feel "old" with lower fasting blood sugar.

When I drink sugared milk throughout the day, I tend to increase my fasting blood sugar to near 100 mg/dl and I feel really great. But, in the past I always got spooked by the glucose number and quit. I might try this for an extended period of time while checking my blood sugar every day to see what happens.

One alternative explanation I have seen put forth is that people feel better with high fasting blood sugar because their body is just used to it being that high. This doesn't explain my case because my body is actually used to low blood sugar but when I happen to take the fasting blood sugar up a little, I feel great.

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

I don't think elevated blood sugar is bad( unless it's really high, in diabetes range). Ray has talked about how women who get gestational diabetes while they're pregnant give birth to smarter babies. Progesterone is also known to increase blood sugar.

I feel the same. A long time ago, when I was still doing lots of testing with different diets, I noticed how I had energy after drinking sugary drinks( soda, for example), but if I ate a meal of oats with bananas and unsweetened tea, I would feel exactly like you described: I just had the energy to sit or lie down. Breathlessness also was a common effect of such a meal. Oats are known to powerfully lower blood sugar, and the caffeine in tea also does the same. Now it makes perfect sense. The cells don't want the blood sugar to be low, they want it to be plentiful. If the cells perceive that the blood sugar is always low, they get worried about the possibility of hypoglycemia, and they stimulate the release of fat into the blood as back up fuel. If the cells are relaxed and happy with enough carbs, they will increase their harmony and produce more healing CO2 and ATP.

 

[Lokzo]

Oats are known to powerfully lower blood sugar

What do you reckon the mechanism is behind this?

 

[Rafael Lao Wai]

What do you reckon the mechanism is behind this?

I always thought it was the beta-glucans, but now I think the lectins and other toxins in oats also tend to cause hypoglycemia. Ray has said something along the lines of "many plant compounds lower blood sugar, but many of these are toxic". I think that anything toxic will cause a drop in sugar concentration, either inside the cell or in the bloodstream.

 

[lampofred]

I wonder if all the craze with trying to keep the fasting blood sugar low is wrong, at least for some people.

It is fundamentally antibiological and backwards. High blood sugar is life. Low blood sugar is death.

If blood sugar is high we should work to increase insulin sensitivity, not directly lower blood sugar. If your car (insulin) is malfunctioning you figure out how to fix it, not completely stop using it and start innefficiently walking to work (via fat oxidation) instead.