What Happens in Your Body When You Have a Glucose Spike

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When you experience a glucose spike, two main things happen in your body. Firstly, your mitochondria, which are responsible for transforming glucose into energy, become overwhelmed and shut down. This leads to the production of free radicals, which are damaging to the body and can cause inflammation. Secondly, the excess glucose in your body undergoes glycation, a cooking process that causes aging, wrinkles, and organ damage. To protect against these issues, your body releases insulin to store glucose in muscles, liver, and fat cells. However, prolonged insulin production can lead to weight gain and eventually, prediabetes and diabetes.

Today we’re talking all about why the most important molecule in your body, glucose, is a double edged sword and how flattening sugar levels in your bloodstream is key to less cravings, improved mood, better weight control and less risk of cardiovascular disease, dementia and depression.

My guest is Jessie Inchauspé, (in chow spe) who is on a mission to translate cutting-edge science into easy advice to help people improve their physical and mental health by knowing more about their glucose levels.

Jessie holds a degree in mathematics from King's College London, a degree in biochemistry and her first book, Glucose Revolution, she shares her discovery about the essential role of blood sugar and the surprising hacks to optimise it while still eating the foods we love.

Today we talk about:

The importance of adequate glucose
Why blood glucose variability and the velocity of change in your blood glucose is important to know
How excess sugar impacts your mitochondria, DNA, inflammation, oxidative stress and glycation levels
Why keeping Insulin levels steady is important
Glucose flattening hacks
How the order of food consumption impacts blood sugar
Why curry is good for breakfast
Vinegar before meals
And how a post dinner walk could be good for sleep and cravings

A bit of housekeeping, we discuss normal ranges of glucose in mmol/l as 4.0-7.0 fasted and under 8.0 2 hours after eating. But, your individual target range for your blood sugar levels may be different, especially if you have a metabolic condition and your healthcare team will agree with you what that should be. Do not use this podcast episode or any other material from The Doctor’s Kitchen as a replacement for medical advice.

It’s important to remember that glucose isn’t everything. As we say at the end of the pod, just because your glucose level is flat does not necessarily mean that you’re eating the healthiest diet and it should be seen as just one of those many levers that we can use to optimise behaviour change and positively impact our physiology.

I’m doing a new thing which is our podcast recipe of the week, a recipe that reflects the topic of conversation on the pod! This week’s recipe is my easy ‘Sweet potato chickpea salad with sumac and tahini dressing’ which you can find on the app here: https://apple.co/3G0zC0Z (iphone only, android users please bear with me)

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