How to Achieve Emotional Stability by Flattening Your Glucose Curve
Do you often experience bad moods, low energy, or feelings of anxiety without understanding the cause?
Do you aware that how you feel may be closely connected to the spikes and dips in your glucose levels?
I recently completed reading a book titled 'Glucose Revolution - The Life-Changing Power of Balancing Your Blood Sugar' by Jessie Inchauspe. It explores how to manage our body's glucose levels and highlights the negative impact of excess glucose. One of the impacts I would like to discuss today is its effect on our emotional fluctuations.
When you consume a high-glucose meal, glucose is absorbed into your bloodstream, providing energy to your brain. This can lead to increased alertness and energy, commonly referred to as a 'sugar rush’. After being converted to energy or stored as fat, glucose will be depleted, causing the glucose level to dip back to its pre-spike level or even lower. At this point, you may experience a sugar crash, which can result in feelings of fatigue, irritability, and lack of focus. Even worse, you may experience worsening moods, increased depressive symptoms, and mood disturbances. You may begin to crave sweet foods, as you may have learned that they can temporarily boost your mood. However, this effect is only temporary.
Imagine continuing this glucose rollercoaster throughout the day, with your mood mirroring the ups and downs. Even worse, consuming sweet food before bedtime can also affect your sleep quality. Poor sleep leads to a bad mood the next day, prompting a search for sweet food to repeat the glucose rollercoaster.
While this cycle might seem manageable for a week or two, what if it persisted for your entire life?
Example of Glucose Curve in A Day
What approach should you take then?
Ideally, you should flatten your glucose curves as much as possible, which will help you feel better.
You can try the 10 hacks shared by 'Glucose Revolution' to flatten your glucose curves:
Eat foods in the right order
Add a green starter to all your meals
Stop counting calories
Flatten your breakfast curve
Have any type of sugar you like - they’re all the same
Pick dessert over a sweet snack
Reach for vinegar before you eat
After you eat, move
If you have to snack, go savory
Put some clothes on your carbs
Personally, I'm doing my best to follow whatever methods I can, not only to maintain a good emotional stability but also for weight control. If you find this helpful, you might want to look for this book and learn more from this book.
I believe support is important to sustain momentum. Feel free to drop me a message, and we can discuss how to continue this practice together so that we can feel good together!
