Blood sugar and fatigue
Ok, now you’ve got your baseline fatigue readings! You should know the times of day that your energy levels are the lowest! Now you get to see just how connected your food is with your energy levels.
It’s time to get familiar with your blood sugar!
Most people don’t know what blood sugar is, let alone what their optimum level should be.
What is blood sugar, really?
Your blood sugar level, blood sugar concentration, or blood glucose level is the amount of glucose, or sugar, present in your blood.
Your body and brain like to use glucose as their primary source of energy. Therefore having normal blood sugar levels is critical for healthy energy levels.
Even though your brain only weighs about 3lbs, it consumes nearly 40% of the glucose that you eat each day. If the fuel supply to your brain is not optimized, you’re going to experience fatigue. Fatigue is your body’s way of conserving energy/fuel for the brain.
High and low blood sugars on a normal day
Your blood glucose levels are usually lowest in the morning, before your first meal of the day, and they rise after meals for an hour or two. Blood sugar levels outside the normal range are your first indication that food is causing your fatigue!
A persistently high blood sugar level is referred to as hyperglycemia. Low blood sugar levels are referred to as hypoglycemia. High, low, or fluctuating blood sugar levels are going to result in fatigue. To optimize your energy, your blood sugar needs to be balanced!
Today, you’re going to find out just what your blood sugar does on an average day. Trust me, even if your doctor has told you your blood sugar looks fine, it could still be causing your fatigue!
What causes changes in blood sugar?
The type of food you eat, the time at which you eat, and the quantity of food you consume, all have a drastic effect on your blood sugar and therefore your fatigue – in a positive or negative way.
To further complicate matters, foods that cause no change in my blood sugar may very well cause your blood sugar to become erratic. That’s why something like the keto diet may work for your friend but not you. Diets are not personal. They’re general recommendations.
In this course, you’re going to create your own ideal diet based on how your blood sugar responds to food. To start creating your personal plan, you’re going to need to track your blood sugar.
Why do you need to track blood sugar?
Blood sugar irregularities occur silently. They operate below the surface without your awareness. This is why you may suddenly wake up with fatigue. It may seem sudden but it’s likely that your blood sugar has been imbalanced for years.
When you eat foods carbohydrates (fruits, veggies, starches, grains, sugars etc.), your body breaks these down into their original components – sugars. This sugar enters your bloodstream causing a rise in what is called blood sugar. Having excess sugar in your blood is dangerous, so your body comes equipped with a wonderful hormone called insulin. Insulin transports sugar from your blood (where it’s dangerous) to the inside of your cells.
High blood sugar (or insulin resistance) is also known as diabetes.
Low blood sugar is medically known as hypoglycemia.
The stress caused by either high, low, or fluctuating blood sugar levels can be so significant that it can cause fatigue. Most alarmingly, it can occur with relatively few symptoms until you’ve already developed severe fatigue.
By tracking your blood sugar, you’ll get an objective reading of how your body is processing sugars. It’s unlikely that you’ll be able to feel when your blood sugar goes out of range. This is why tracking is essential.
How does blood sugar cause fatigue?
You probably know cortisol as the stress hormone – it’s what your body releases when you get stressed. But one of its other functions is regulating blood sugar levels. It can be used for day-to-day needs or in times of high-stress situations that require excess fuel for your muscles (think running away from a bear).
Your brain’s fuel of choice is glucose/sugar, and it does not like to run low. To regulate sugar levels, your body comes equipped with a multitude of gauges that constantly measure sugar levels. In particular, the hypothalamus (a part of your brain at the base of your skull, often called the reptilian brain) is conditioned to be extremely sensitive to fluctuations in glucose levels.
If sugar levels are too low, you’ll likely feel hungry. If the levels are too high, the hypothalamus will instruct you to stop eating. This proper function happens when your body is free from blood sugar imbalance.
High blood sugar and/or diabetes, for example, can impair your hypothalamus from sensing glucose levels. With your fuel gauge malfunctioning, this can become a key driver in developing fatigue.
How does blood sugar become imbalanced?
Quite simply: your diet
In today’s world, you have infinite access to comfort foods. In periods of high stress, comfort foods are, well, comforting. Eating comfort foods lowers stress hormone levels.
So, when you’re stressed, you should just eat comfort foods, right?
Alas. It is not so simple. The unfortunate fact with comfort foods is that they’re high in calories. Really high. The high-calorie content is what makes them comforting. High-calorie foods release more dopamine in your brain – thus you enjoy the food more, albeit temporarily.
What happens when you consume more calories than you burn? What does your body do with the excess?
Your body stores them for later. Usually in the form of body fat. Over the long-term, this is what causes you to gain weight. Imagine the following scenario:
You work a high-stress job. So, every day after work your body has elevated stress hormones. The easiest way to re-balance these hormones is through comfort foods. Therefore, each evening meal (and bedtime snack) consists of highly processed comfort foods.
In a sense, you create a perpetuating loop of stress. Initially, you trade a lowering of stress hormones for the extra calories found in comfort foods. In the short term, this works. But the long-term consumption of excess calories results in you gaining weight.
Excess weight paired with the consumption of high-sugar comfort foods leads to blood sugar imbalances. And as you now know, blood sugar imbalances are quite the stress to your system.
When your blood sugar is imbalanced you’ll feel fatigued. When you’re overweight, you’ll feel fatigued. When you’re overweight and have a blood sugar imbalance, you’ll feel very fatigued.
Can fatigue cause blood sugar irregularities?
So far, I’ve illustrated how blood sugar imbalances can cause fatigue. But fatigue can also cause blood sugar imbalances!
Chronic levels of fatigue are often caused by very low levels of cortisol. Remember, cortisol helps to balance blood sugar levels! Cortisol does the opposite of insulin. Insulin lowers blood sugar. Cortisol raises blood sugar.
Low levels of cortisol are often insufficient to properly regulate your blood sugar levels. This results in spikes and troughs in your blood sugar. Low cortisol levels could be why you get really hangry.
If your blood sugar fluctuates between high and low levels, it perpetuates the fatigue cycle. This is why it can feel like you never make any forward progress in overcoming fatigue.
When blood sugar is imbalanced, fatigue tends to be the symptom. Fatigue occurs whether your body tends towards high blood sugar or low blood sugar. The fatigue solution is to have perfectly balanced blood sugar.
How do you know if you have high or low blood sugar?
It can be challenging to diagnose yourself with high or low blood sugar without having proper testing. That’s why you’re going to used objective testing methods to determine exactly what your blood sugar is.
Some of the more general symptoms associated with low blood sugar are:
- Fatigue
- Sweating
- Nervousness
- Weakness
- Shaking
- Extreme hunger
- Nausea
- Dizziness
- Headache
- Anxiety
Some of the general symptoms associated with high blood sugar are:
- Fatigue
- Increased thirst
- Headaches
- Trouble concentrating
- Frequent urination
- Blurred vision
What is a healthy blood sugar reading?
Before you interject that your doctor already checked your blood sugar and told you it was fine, let me add that there is a chasm of difference between the ranges your doctor uses and the ranges used for optimal blood sugar readings.
The lab ranges your doctor uses are what are called conventional ranges. Conventional ranges are developed based on surveying people with diabetes or other blood sugar irregularities. Once an adequate sample size is tested, the conventional range is made.
As more people are diagnosed with diabetes and other blood sugar abnormalities than ever before, the range has had to shift higher and higher. As the range shifts higher, the new “normal” moves further away from what actually is a healthy blood sugar reading. What was considered a high reading 20 years ago is now considered normal.
Normal does not mean healthy!
Functional ranges are completely different. To create a functional range, samples are taken from healthy members of the population – those without diabetes or other blood sugar irregularities. Functional ranges represent the range in which you want your blood sugar to fall within. It is the optimal range.
If you’re looking to beat fatigue, you’re going to want to get your blood sugar as close as possible to the functional or ideal ranges.
At this stage of the course, you’re going to track your blood sugar at two different intervals:
- Fasting blood sugar – This is your blood sugar reading first thing in the morning. Ideally, it would be done after a 12 hour fast.
- Postprandial blood sugar – This is your blood sugar reading 2 hours after eating. You’ll be using this reading to determine your ideal diet.
Fasting glucose:
Functional ranges: 4.2 – 4.7 mmol/L or 75–85 mg/dL
Conventional ranges: 3.6 – 5.5 or 65–99 mg/dL
Postprandial Glucose:
Functional ranges: 5 – 6.4 mmol/L or 90 – 115 mg/dl
Conventional ranges: less than 7.8mmol/L or 140 mg/dl
Did you notice how small the range is in the functional categories?
That is how tightly your blood sugar should be controlled. If your readings are venturing outside of those ranges, you’re going to experience fatigue.
Next week you’re going to track your own blood sugar and see what happens on a typical day!