What are the most common conditions for which we would consider a change in our diet?
• High blood pressure?
• Obesity?
• Diabetes?
•
Those are the no-brainers. But what about your brain? Do you think about the food we eat being connected to our brain?
Let me give you an example from personal experience:
When I was finishing pharmacy school, I did a clinical rotation at Greenville Memorial Hospital in the Cancer Treatment Center. I had to be up on the 5th floor of the hospital at 7:00 AM to do rounds with Dr. Gluck. Every single morning, about half way through rounds, I got very light headed, weak, shaky, and I broke out in a sweat. My heart beat so hard I felt like I was having a panic attack. I’d go into the hall and sit down with my head between my knees afraid I would throw up or pass out, neither of which anyone had time for.
After a few weeks of this everyday occurrence, Dr. Gluck examined me, but could find nothing wrong. The patients we were seeing every morning were stage 4 cancer patients at the very end of their lives—tough situations for a 20-year-old college student to handle at 7:00 AM every morning. We just figured the situations were getting to me. It was somewhat overwhelming, but I couldn’t believe it could make me physically ill.
Finally, when I was about at the end of my rotation, the pharmacist I worked with asked me what I was eating for breakfast. Every morning I ate toast with grape jelly around 6:15 AM.
He suggested I switch to cheese toast and see if it would make a difference.
What do you know? I was absolutely fine.
When I ate jelly on my toast for breakfast, I was getting a sugar high. Then, around 7:30, my insulin was in high gear to take care of processing that sugar, and caused my sugar to drop so rapidly, it almost did me in. I ended up in a hypoglycemic state. It can be confusing to think of getting hypoglycemia when we eat too much sugar, but it’s the insulin’s response to the high sugar that throws us into hypoglycemia.
Look at today’s prescription verse. …Be in good health, as it goes well with your soul.
There is a definite mind-body-soul connection. What affects one affects the other.
Our brain relies on a steady, balanced level of glucose to function properly. When we eat too much sugar, our body goes into overdrive trying to process it, causing a rise in adrenalin and cortisol (the fight or flight hormone). As I’ve stated before, this rise in cortisol will cause a decrease in serotonin and other hormones in the brain. Basically, everything gets out of whack. The more unbalanced our sugar intake is, the more unbalanced our mood is.
Our brain and body need to stay in balance, so it is essential that our diet be balanced as well.
Too much sugar does not a balanced diet make. Here’s the link to a great article I found explaining this phenomenon well: Conquering Anxiety, Depression, and Fatigue Without Drugs—the Role of Hypoglycemia
My reaction to sugar was somewhat extreme. Most reaction are much more subtle and not as easy to diagnose. Here are some symptoms to look for that could be blamed on sugar intake:
• Anxiety
• Nervousness
• Restlessness
• Irritability
• Depression
• Forgetfulness
• Crying spells
• Inability to concentrate
…And there are many more.
How incredible would it be to just balance your sugar intake and solve these problems without the use of drugs? It may or may not work, but all you’ve lost is a few pounds!
Here are some suggestions from The Hypoglycemic Diet to start you in the right direction:
1) Avoidance of sugar, coffee, strong tea, nicotine if possible, refined carbohydrates, such as white bread, white rice, cakes and sugary drinks, candy bars, colas, cookies, ice cream sweetish fruits such as bananas, grapefruit, melons, honey and dates (these fruits may be reintroduced at a later stage in moderation) etc.
2) High protein + complex carbohydrates snacks every three hours or sooner, to provide a slow release of glucose, and to prevent the hypoglycemic dip. A high protein breakfast must be considered the most important meal of the day. Good sources of proteins are eggs, white meat as in chicken and fish. Eat plenty of green vegetables and fruits and the more varied the diet the better it is.
3) Supplementation of diet with Anti-stress vitamin B-Complex tablets, including vitamin B6, B3, B12, chromium picolinate, magnesium, zinc + Vitamin C, and fish oil (omega-3 fatty acids), vitamin D.
4) Other supplements that could slow down the absorption of glucose (thereby avoiding blood sugar peaks and the release of stress hormones) are: Psyllium Seeds Husks (1 tbsp. per day), Glucomannan including pectin (follow instructions on bottle), Grapefruit and Cinnamon.
So the sweet truth is that sugar is not so sweet after all. It can be downright mean.
Let’s don’t let something so simple as sugar control our emotions. And did you know when we stop eating sugar, we stop craving it? But that’s another blog post…
From my heart,
Celeste
P.S. If you’d like more great information on sugar and diet, here’s the link to my delicious stack of articles on The Sweet Truth.
P.S. If you’d like more great information on sugar and diet, here’s the link to my delicious stack of articles on The Sweet Truth.
