Insulin, Sugar & Blood Sugar - An Explanation
Episode 89: Gutsy Health Podcast
Click Here to Get the Transcript for Free!
Show Summary: “When blood sugar stays in the bloodstream, it causes inflammation and damage to other organs.”
Last week's episode with Dr. Benjamin Bikman was a very beneficial & comprehensive education about insulin and blood glucose. He spoke about the biochemistry of what happens in the body when we overeat sugar and how we get sick from hormone dysfunction and inflammation.
But for those who find it quite overwhelming and technical, Juanique and Gina created a short bonus episode for you, which explains the mechanism of glucose & insulin. They use different and simple analogies to help you understand better how to monitor the food you eat, the daily activities you do, and familiarize yourself with the terminologies you can use to educate your loved ones.
Don't forget to share this with your family and friends who have listened to the Megamind episode with Dr. Benjamin Bikman. Also, be sure to subscribe and follow us on our social media accounts, where we create more content that you need to live a better, healthy, and happy life.
Exceptional Highlight:
- Even though coconut sugar, maple syrup & honey are nature-made, they still have tons of sugar and no fiber to stabilize blood glucose.
- If you have a 20-year-old liver versus the liver of an 80-year-old, the 20-year-old liver is going to handle the fruit beautifully. But if you have the liver of an 80-year-old, you are not going to regulate all the sugar from the fruits you eat.
- Check your protein bars because many of them are around 20-25 grams of sugar, while your standard Snickers bar is 25 grams of sugar.
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Show Highlights:
What is blood glucose mainly about?
Juanique 2:00
- When talking about blood glucose, we're mainly talking about carbohydrates. And the most simple form of carbs is the monosaccharides.
A great analogy of how carbohydrates work
Gina 12:09
- If you eat carbohydrates, they get digested and broken down. They're all linked together like a pearl necklace. Then each little pearl is like a little molecule of glucose. So when you eat a lot of carbohydrates, they get flooded in the bloodstream really fast.
What foods are high in sugar?
Juanique 17:33
- Table sugar, any pastries, icings, cakes, cookies, fruit juices have tons of sugar. Soda has tons of sugar, even the healthy sources, I hate to say this, but coconut sugar, maple syrup, honey, even though they are nature-made, they still have tons of sugar & no fiber to stabilize the blood glucose.
What to check first in the food label?
Juanique 23:41
- When you're looking at labels, you need to look at sugar first, carbohydrates second. So if it has zero sugars, but it has 60 carbs, that's still going to break down into sugar, and you'll still need a lot of insulin to break that down.
Important Links
Podcast Episode with Dr. Benjamin Bikman
Transcript (DOWNLOAD)
Juanique Roney
This is a Gutsy Health Podcast with Juanique and Tristin Roney.
Juanique Roney
Hey, guys, welcome back to the Gutsy Health Podcast. I have my co-host, Gina Worful, let's welcome Gina.
Gina Worful
Hey, everybody.
Juanique Roney
OK, so we did a podcast with Dr. Ben Beckman, and he is this like Megamind on insulin and blood glucose, and he spoke about the biochemistry on what happens in the body when we eat too much sugar. He explains how he gets sick from hormone dysfunction to gaining weight to inflammation to all kinds of things. It was brilliant, but a lot of our listeners had a little bit of a deer in the headlights feel about the podcast because it was very technical. And so what Gina and I want to do, we're doing this kind of like bonus episode because we want to talk about the mechanism of what glucose does and what insulin does and and how how it works in the body, because we understand there's all of these buzzwords. And so we're going to explain to you what these buzzwords are and what they do in your body, and so maybe what you can do once you listen to this, like click bonus episode is you can go back and listen to Dr. Rickman and then really retain the information that he's talking about because you'll understand what mechanisms he is describing, don't you think, Gina?
Gina Worful
Yeah, I think that we should start with step one all the way of what is glucose, what is a source of glucose? And you're saying and and how does it go through the body? So I think it'll be really helpful to break down if you're feeling a little bit lost on like what is glucose. I hear all of I get you know, Kerry is going to do all these things to my health, but what is it? Because I still get questions a lot. What is a carbohydrate? What is glucose? What is a protein? So sometimes we need to go back.
Juanique Roney
Yep. So this is like nutrition one on one. So let's go to fats and carbs and protein. So when talking about blood glucose, we're mainly talking about carbohydrates. And carbohydrates, they are broken into, I mean, they can be multiple molecules of carbs, but their technical term of the monosaccharide, they're these like one molecule that builds onto other molecules. And so the most simple form of carbs are these monosaccharide and you have fructose glucose and it's the third one galactose or is it maltose? It's maltose.
Gina Worful
I also think that's not.
Juanique Roney
Don't worry about it. I want you guys to know that carbs are these like they're the sugar molecules and the most important sugar molecule of those three is the glucose. And so when we're eating carby foods because remember, fats are, you know, fats like avocados and olive oil and coconut, that doesn't have any glucose in it, has no sugar in it. It's just fat. Same thing with protein. They are just amino acids. So your body interacts with fats and carbs and proteins very differently. So with this podcast that we were doing, we were mainly talking about carbohydrates and carbohydrates are like breads, grains, pastries, sugars like walk into a bakery. And it's just a carbohydrate factory, right? Like, it's just sugar, sugar, sugar everywhere. So go ahead.
Gina Worful
I also want to touch onto that we do see those as like the carbohydrate factory. But it's also important to know that things like even the healthier ones are quinoa or your brown rice or fruits are a ton of carbohydrates. So where I do see some people go wrong is that they're like, what? It's natural sugar. I can find plenty of dates or I can eat plenty of a huge bowl of grapes that are, you know, things like that and then not really realizing that they are still getting those samecarbohydrates.
Juanique Roney
Yes, they're still really sugary. So there's also something that's really important to understand, because if you're eating, let's say, a very sugary meal, let's say you went to a pastry store and you got like a muffin with icing on it. Lots of sugar, not much fiber. So you and one going ate all the sugar, and so with this influx of sugar hitting your bloodstream because you digest it and it goes into the bloodstream and it can't stay in the sugar can not hang out in the bloodstream in high doses for long because it creates a lot of inflammation and a lot of organ damage. So what the body does is you have this organ called the pancreas and the pancreas will produce insulin. And I always like to think of insulin as in like it takes the sugar from the bloodstream and puts it in the cell. So the pancreas will make all of this insulin and because you had this influx of sugar hitting your bloodstream really fast, it wasn't slow timed at all. Like, this was super fast because there was no fiber slowing down how it was like dripping into your bloodstream. Right. I think drip is a weird word, but that's the only one that came to my mind. So we have this inflects. We don't have any fiber to slow down the influx of sugar hitting your bloodstream. So now the body is like, oh, we need to make an influx of insulin so insulin and sugar in the bloodstream will almost like correlate perfectly together. So if you have a spike in sugar hitting your bloodstream, you're going to have a spike in insulin. All right. Now, remember when Dr. Bigman said insulin, it doesn't just have one job. It influences every single cell in the body. So now you had this unnatural spike of sugar hitting your bloodstream and now you have this unnatural spike of insulin hitting your body, trying to get all of that sugar into your cell, but it's not just going to direct like the fat cells in the muscle cells. It's also going to hit like sex organs, sex cells, hormones, neural tissue, like it's hitting everywhere. Insulin is one of those molecules that affects every single cell in your body, not just one or two or 10. And so now we have this influx of blood glucose. We have this influx of insulin affecting your body in mass. And now we've created an imbalance. Go ahead.
Gina Worful
I just want to say, before we get too far, just to kind of recap, I hope this all makes sense is that you eat the carbohydrates. They get digested and broken down from a carbohydrate. They're all linked together like a pearl necklace. Right. And then they get broken down in each pearl is like glucose. So if you're getting lost on how do we go from carbohydrates to glucose to insulin? Just as a little recap that you could think of, like a full carbohydrate, like you eat a piece of bread. Think of that as like the pearl necklace.
Juanique Roney
Yes.
Gina Worful
All together. And then you digest it. And then each little pearl is like a little molecule of glucose.
Juanique Roney
Yes.
Gina Worful
When you eat a lot of carbohydrates, you know, they get flooded in the bloodstream really fast. When you eat a little bit of carbohydrates or the ones that they just lower with fiber, they go in like one at a time, a lot slower. And then from there it hops on with insulin where insulin brings it inside of your cells.
Juanique Roney
Perfect.
Gina Worful
A little recap before we keep moving on.
Juanique Roney
I love that. Thank you for making that super simple. And so what is the difference between carbohydrates that are loaded with fiber and carbohydrates that are just sugar? Well, when you think about rice and you think about oats and some fruits, they have some fiber in there. So when you're eating, let's say, X amount of those carbohydrates, that the fiber is slowly releasing it into the bloodstream, and it's not just like Bam! It's like in there. So when we have this slow release, like the slow time capsule, then your body slowly releases insulin as well. But when you don't have that fiber to slow it down, then you have this influx boom and it hits hard and the bodies hit hard with all of these molecules and these chemicals. And then as high as it goes with the influx of insulin and the influx of sugar, you have just as heavy of a drop. All right. You have this spike in insulin and you have this drop in insulin. You have the spike in blood glucose and you have this drop in blood glucose. And when we use the term blood glucose, we're just talking about all the sugar that you've now absorbed that is in your bloodstream. That's what blood glucose is. And we're trying to get that glucose in the blood, the blood glucose to exit the blood and enter the cells. So now we've had this spike in insulin and blood glucose, and you're going to have this drop really soon. And that's going to make you very tired. That's going to make you feel sluggish. That's going to make you feel lethargic, and you're going to want to have another hit. That's where we get cravings from.
Gina Worful
I'm so glad that you brought that up. And if you ever think about if you've had a big bowl of popcorn and you just literally you can't stop eating it.
Juanique Roney
Yes.
Gina Worful
Or you have some something that is very carby and some people are like, oh, well, I eat skinny pop popcorn. It's like, can you eat those two cups? And a lot of the time it's those carbs that put you on that insulin roller coaster where that sugar jumps into your bloodstream and then insulin is scrambling to get it out of your bloodstream, and then you feel the drop and then you want more of it. I love you brought up the craving aspect because so many people are eating foods that they think are very light, like, oh, well, it's only popcorn, but it puts you on the insulin roller coaster and giving you those cravings. I love you brought that up. .
Juanique Roney
Exactly, I don't know if we're going to release this video or not, but I hope people can see my hand if you want to. We might upload this video to YouTube, but if you have an instant spike, it's like a mountain boom up and then it's like it falls just as hard down as it did going up. When we have fiber with that or when we add like fat to that, you have these light rolling hills. It's way more stable. It's less moody. All right. Think of someone who goes from hot to cold really fast versus someone who is like, OK, to just talk things out nice and calmly. We want the nice and calm all the time.
Gina Worful
And this is such a common, huge misconception. Huge misconception, because just yesterday I was getting on a plane and I was with somebody who had said the recommendation I got from a personal trainer was that if you only eat carbs alone, if you don't eat them with fats and proteins, that is the way to really lose weight and be the healthiest. You'll just get shredded. I'm thinking like, wow, eat carbs I'm going to eat all of these dried mangos and I have my my proteins separate, and as long as I keep them separate, that's how I'll keep my body healthy. It's actually the opposite concept. So when you eat those dried mangoes alone, you're just going to be dumping sugar because they just so fast. So because that sugar alone, they just so fast, it's just dumping sugar into your bloodstream and putting your body on that roller coaster versus having some fats and some proteins with it, it's going to slow down that influx of carbs because it just digests a lot slower so you get those more rolling hills versus the big up and down.
Juanique Roney
Yes. Well, and unfortunately, the standard American diet is the mountains. It's the up and the down and the up and the down, and that's why we're so sick, because we have this up, down, up, down of sugar and blood glucose and the up down, up down of insulin. And that is how we get hangry actually. When people say we're hungry, it's because you're in the down and you need that spikes super fast. You didn't have fiber to stabilize your or satiate you for a long period of time. And so when you eat fiber, like I've had so many people that come and visit me for a few days and I feed them and they're like, I can't believe I was so satiated and I ate such little food and like and I've had people like express to me, they're like, I'm actually scared to come and stay with you because I was scared I was going to be hungry all the time, then you wouldn't have food that I wanted but actually when I ate your meals, I was satiated and I ate less and I was happier. I've had a type one diabetic, one of my friends come to visit me and was the most stable her blood sugar ever was. She had one of those consistent blood glucose monitors and I could actually track it. We could track it and that's beautiful.
Gina Worful
Using a continuous blood glucose monitor right now, it's just starting to be available to the public for anyone, normally insulin for diabetics. So I was able to do a test run with kind of a new Biohackack company there called Levels. They're starting CDMs for just everybody on diabetics. It was the most eye opening Biohackack thing I've ever done in my life.
Juanique Roney
Amazing.
Gina Worful
I was so shocked, so shocked at how easy eating a small amount of carbohydrates really elevated my blood sugar and how what a huge impact things like protein, fiber, fat, really does to help keep it stable, and what a huge impact it has both ways. How stress releases sugar into your bloodstream. I mean, we're going to kind of further now, maybe off track, but how stress raises blood sugar and then also how blood sugar raises stress hormones.
Juanique Roney
Yeah.
Gina Worful
So in the Gutsy health membership, when we talk about correcting your adrenals, people think like, oh, adaptive genes. If I just do actual gonda, that's going to bring down my cortisol. But if you're not keeping that blood sugar stable every time that sugar goes into your bloodstream, that spike actually releases and dumps more cortisol out. And you can't fix adrenal problems until you get your blood sugar stable.
Juanique Roney
One hundred percent. Another thing, I saw this because Tristin were at continuous blood glucose monitor. Another thing that spiked his blood sugar was lack of sleep.
Gina Worful
Absolutely.
Juanique Roney
Yeah.
Gina Worful
There's a study that the mice will get diabetes if they don't get enough sleep. I can't remember how long it is, but if you deprive mice of sleep, look at this every time.
Juanique Roney
Yeah. Because of that stress.
Gina Worful
I think Doctor Lichtman mentioned that to me.
Juanique Roney
Maybe he did. I can't remember that, but you guys like there were a lot of questions people were asking because there are some I'm going to put you on air quotes biohackack is out there that are recommending tons of maple sirup and tons of fruit and you know, they're not super fans of vegetables for some reason. I have no clue why. And so women were asking questions, confused, but so-and-so said, Maple is fine and honey is fine and, you know, and like, we can go. And this is why we're actually tired. So what we're talking about, these continuous blood glucose monitors, if you are curious, test yourself. Don't guess test, get a blood glucose monitor, a continuous blood glucose monitor and check and see what you get.
Gina Worful
I think if you have access to it, one hundred percent jump on that and do it. I do know that right now because people are going to be saying, how do I get one? And basically what it does is it measures your glucose around the clock. You actually it's this tiny little implant, it's on to your skin and it's constantly measuring your blood sugar and you can connect it to your phone to read it.
Juanique Roney
Right.
Gina Worful
I know so a lot of people are going to be saying, how do I go on? How do I get one? And I think that right now it's not as easy to access yet.
Juanique Roney
I will tell you how I got mine. Tell everyone the company that you went through and I'll tell people how I kind of weaseled my way in with my doctor.
Gina Worful
Yeah. If you can. That's great. So far, this is what maybe there's more maybe there is easier access that I just don't know about as far as I know. I think I thought through a Dr. He still had to have a prescription.
Juanique Roney
Yeah, you do.
Gina Worful
If you have high blood sugar and then the company that I used there called levels, but they're doing like beta testing. And so they have, like I want to see they have hundreds of thousands of people on their list, and they had a huge waiting list and it was very difficult to access. We were kind of launching a program alongside it. So anyways, I don't know if there's maybe other companies that you can actually sit through. That would be interesting. How did you get it?
Juanique Roney
So I have a really great and maybe this will work for some of you that have a great relationship with your doctor, Dr. Sanders. He's been on my podcast a lot, but he's kind of like a self pay membership doctor. But if you have, like, a holistic doctor that you go to and you're like cash-pay, unfortunately, it's a lot of doctors that are cash-pay that are not, you know, being held responsible by insurances. They can kind of just make recommendations based off of, you know, what they see and protocol, not just protocol created by insurances. But I spoke with Dr. Sanders and I said, can I get a blood glucose, continuous glucose monitor? And he was like, why up for you don't have diabetes? I know, but I'm doing some biohacking and I want to do some experimenting on my health and my sleep and I want to see what my body is doing and I want to see it live. And he's like, oh, cool. Well, you keep me posted. And so he wrote me a prescription but again, I have to pay cash for the blood glucose monitor. So that's the only nuance. Your insurance is not going to cover it. If you have a really great relationship with a doctor, it doesn't hurt to ask, and maybe some people that have PCOS or insulin sensitivity or, you know, anything, you can kind of take it to your doctor as I suspect I have metabolic syndrome. I would really like to see what my body is doing because and you can say something like, I've been working with you for months and I'm still not losing weight. I want to see what my body is doing. And then they might say, OK, let me write this prescription for you, but you will have to pay cash and it's like a few hundred bucks.
Gina Worful
So maybe what we could do just to clarify, coming back around to like what is glucose? How does this work? I'm thinking what we could do is break down here. What are your worst sources of glucose that we really want you to just very sparingly, minimally save it for the special occasion down to like, OK, sources, some good sources and how do we really get to that optimal blood glucose?
Juanique Roney
Right. So sugar like table sugar or any kind of pastries, icings, cakes, cookies, fruit juices that has tons of sugar, soda, has tons of sugar, even the healthy sources, you guys and I and I hate to say this, but like coconut sugar, maple sirup, honey, even though they are nature made, they still have tons of sugar, no fiber to stabilize that blood glucose and that sugar from jumping into a stream. They have minerals and that's what makes them healthier because they're giving your body minerals and your body needs minerals. However, they are still spiking your your blood glucose, which will in turn cause an insulin spike. So please be mindful of that.
Gina Worful
And one thing I want to add to that list, maybe this is one step better from the this would be like one step better, I think from like the pastries and all that there is. Check your protein bars.
Juanique Roney
Yeah.
Gina Worful
So many people are doing protein bars. And I just want to put this into perspective. A lot of protein bars are around twenty, twenty five grams of sugar.
Juanique Roney
That's a lot
Gina Worful
Your standard Snickers bar is twenty five of sugar
Juanique Roney
Yes.
Gina Worful
You might be getting some added protein, but you're like it's a protein bar is as healthy as it fuel my muscles all these things or some people are like, well what about like a cliff bar. Can I have that as a snack? And it's like, well, the guy on the front is climbing a mountain
Juanique Roney
Right.
Gina Worful
Do you need that sugar or are you hanging out at your desk or you're just midday working? You want to grab something that's like the fuel to be able to climb a mountain.
Juanique Roney
Rather get some like beef jerky that doesn't have sugar in it, you know, like a big stick or a turkey stick, because that's straight up meat and a little bit of fat with no sugar, hopefully added. But yes, like those protein bars, also, you guys, we need to be mindful of kombucha. I love kombucha, but I call it the health person soda because you can pick up a computer bottle and it has about 16 to 20 grams of sugar per bottle. Now, let's put this into perspective, because I put this in my stories. So this might be repeat for a lot of people, but the average adult should get about 20 to 24 to 26 grams of sugar. Some people say 30, and that's added sugar per day. So if you're drinking a kombucha and it's got sixteen grams of sugar, you have ten grams left. You got more than half of your daily added sugar intake in one drink. All right. So please be mindful of that. Healthy snacks, just be careful. They all have sugar like these oatmeal bars will have like ten to twenty grams of sugar. So we spoke about the pastries being like worst case scenario. This is like, OK, medium, like we're getting a little bit better, but still be mindful. Let's talk about fruit really fast because not all fruit is created equal. Well, I always say Bury's you know, they have a less like a lower glycemic index, you know, they're going to stabilize your blood sugar a little bit more. Pineapple, mango, grapes, you mentioned those are a little bit more sugary, and they add up super fast. A lot of people talk about watermelon and how it's like technically zero calories, no watermelon still has a ton of sugar in, you know, so we need to be mindful of our portions when it comes to fruit. Now, the beautiful thing about fruit is it does have its own built-In defense mechanisms. It has vitamins and minerals and it has antioxidants that do the damage control that the sugar and the fructose do in the body. But if your body is inflamed, if you have a hard time putting on weight, if your liver's overtaxed and I actually explained this in the Gutsy health Zoom call this week, it's like if you have the liver of an 80 year old versus the liver of a 20 year old, the 20 year old liver is going to handle the fruit beautifully and you're not going to put on weight. If you have the liver of an 80 year old, you've got fatty liver disease, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease. You have liver enzymes through the wazoo because you've been eating the standard American diet or you drink a lot of alcohol or whatever. You are not going to handle all that sugar as well because you have that 80 year old liver. And we need to circle this back to insulin. So if you have insulin resistance, let's talk about do you think we're ready to move on to insulin resistance and stuff ?
Gina Worful
I think we've got it.
Juanique Roney
OK, you know what we still need to talk about? Let's talk about grains and stuff, because grains, they have a little bit more fiber, you know, so we went from worst medium and better is grains. Now, remember, they're still carby. There's still going to break down into sugars. So you want to be mindful, but they will stabilize you a little bit longer. We're not talking about, like, white process flowers. We're talking about like oats and quinoa and rice, you know, like these whole grains, and so that would be better, but best is vegetables because they have tons of fiber in. They're low carb and so they're going to be super duper staple. All right. So let's go through that again. Pastry's and icings and cakes, your worst. Let's talk about snack bars and fruit juices and sodas is the next worst. Then we've got fruits and grains which are better and then our best is vegetables.
Gina Worful
And before we move on there, just a strategy to make those better, like we had talked about, is not only just eating and being mindful of your portion with those carbs, but think about pairing them with a fat and a protein and sort of slow your digestion of them. So let's say you want to have some fruit in the morning. Could you have some fruit with, like a Greek yogurt, instead of a huge bowl of fruit could you have a little bit of fruit?
Juanique Roney
Or some nuts or seeds.
Gina Worful
With some nuts and seed.
Juanique Roney
Or eggs, avocado .
Gina Worful
Perfect. Yeah, exactly.
Juanique Roney
Yeah, because even the yogurt now this is for people that have like severe insulin resistance, even yogurt, because it's from milk. It still has some lactose in there. It still has carbohydrates there.
Gina Worful
Greek yogurt has less I think so. But of course checking your labels because they're also different.
Juanique Roney
Right.
Gina Worful
But just thinking in that mindset of like, how can I, you know, maybe cut back a little bit on just the carbs alone and work in a fat and a protein.
Juanique Roney
Exactly. So when you're looking at labels, you need to look at sugar first, carbohydrates second. So if it has like zero sugars, but it's got like 60 carbs, that's still going to break down into sugar and it's still going to do something like you're still going to need a lot of insulin to break that down. All right. Versus a protein or fat that needs zero insulin.
Gina Worful
Also taking a look at like the sugar versus the fiber. When I'm looking like that, does it really matter if I'm having these fried mangoes? And so when I looked at, like, the dried mangoes, one serving was twenty five grams of sugar and two grams of fiber and that is not a very good ratio.
Juanique Roney
But if it was like twenty five grams of sugar and 20 grams of fiber, great ratio.
Gina Worful
Well twenty five grams of total carbohydrates. You still don't want twenty five grams of sugar by itself. It's kind of a lot. Right?
Juanique Roney
Right, right.
Gina Worful
Total carbohydrates. I know that might be confusing, but total carbohydrates that includes sugar fiber. Should we want more of those total carbohydrates to be fiber in the sugar.
Juanique Roney
Exactly.
Gina Worful
Does that make sense?
Juanique Roney
Can you explain that to everyone one more time? Because total carbs includes carbs and it includes sugar and it includes fiber, right?
Gina Worful
Yep.
Juanique Roney
What do people need to do? Because let's say we have a food that is thirty grams and let's say it's ten grams fiber, ten grams sugar, ten grams carbs. What does that mean for someone. Do we take that total and we subtract the 10 grams of fiber and we have 20?
Gina Worful
Yeah, if you really were monitoring basically fiber, very minimal fiber actually gets digested and added to the total calories. The purpose of fiber is to feed your gut bacteria. We don't really get nutrients and vitamins out of it. We don't really get much calories. You harvest very minimal calories and carbohydrates from it. So the more fiber you get, the more it's going to slow down the absorption of the other sugar and the more it's going to feed your good gut bacteria. So when we look at those we have the total carbohydrates includes everything, the sugar, the fiber, and there are other carbohydrates that would be like your starch. I think your starches are, I think are included in there. Like sugar alcohols are included under total carbohydrates I think. Just different types of carbohydrates. So you have like the total and then if you have like 30 grams of total carbs and then you have 10 grams of fiber, if you subtracted it, you would get 20 grams of carbs. You don't have to really get caught up in all this man. You're likely not to do math problems. Basically, just know that the more fiber you have, the less carbs your body is actually absorbing because it's a part of the total carbs, but it doesn't actually get digested and absorbed.
Juanique Roney
Yes, that makes perfect sense.
Gina Worful
You don't have to do math to understand. You don't have to add and subtract. Just start doing long division here and there.
Juanique Roney
There's some people that like these details, there's some people out there that like those details. I just want to throw that out for the people that want to go deep into the nitty gritty.
Gina Worful
Yeah, so for the people who want to go deep, you take the total carbs, you subtract the fiber, and that's how many carbs are going to get absorbed into your body.
Juanique Roney
And that's the amount of insulin we're going to need, not like 20 grams of insulin. But if you take that 30 grams and you minus the 10 fiber, you don't need insulin for fiber. You only need it for the other carbs that are going to be metabolized. Let me give another example. Let's say you're eating food and it has like 50 grams of total carbs, but twenty five of that is fiber. So then it's only really twenty five grams of carbs. So it's not that bad because you're not utilizing a lot of insulin to navigate all of that carbohydrates, all those carbs that are going to be absorbed and well broken down into glucose.
Gina Worful
So if you had that same 50 grams of total carbs, but it was only two grams. Yes. You're going to get all of those carbs you're seeing in your bloodstream. So fiber makes a huge difference. Pay attention to it. So you're looking at things like your bars, you know, does it have twenty five grams of sugar and one gram of fiber or It makes seven grams of sugar and nine grams of fiber, a more ideal ratio.
Juanique Roney
Exactly. So you guys, hopefully that makes a little bit of sense. So let's start talking about insulin resistance. Let's say you have been eating because I mentioned in my stories as well that the average American eats between ninety to one hundred and thirty grams of sugar a day. So that's four plus times more, right? Four times more than what we should be eating. So and these are not the good carbs, too. This is not the fiber. This is like sodas and fruit juices and sugary drinks and pastries. America, we're not healthy. And breads that have no fiber in it. So we are hyper bloating and we're constantly even from like childhood, we're doing these sugar spikes, these blood glucose spikes in these insulin spikes and and then these drops and these insulin spikes in these drops daily and multiple times a day. All right. So what happens is over time, we create something called insulin resistance because the body wasn't meant to have insulin in mass and in spikes like that over and over and over. It wears and tears on the body over time. And so what happens with insulin resistance, and this is mainly for muscle cells, remember, because Dr. Bickman, he spoke about the opposite side of the coin where there are some cells that never become insulin resistance. In fact, they are more sensitive than ever. But let's talk about insulin resistance and how that causes you to put on weight and stuff. So insulin resistance, which leads to type two diabetes. Let's use the example of we have that blood sugar going into the bloodstream and we need it out of the bloodstream because remember, when it stays in the bloodstream, it causes a lot of inflammation and damage to other organs. So we need to unlock every cell like the muscle cells. We need to unlock those cells with a key and shove the sugar from the bloodstream into the cell and close the door. So now we got it out of the bloodstream and into the cell, and now it's not wreaking havoc systemically. So insulin is that key to the door of the cells. So blood sugar goes well, sugar goes into the bloodstream and the body releases insulin and it starts unlocking all these doors, and you need one key for one door. One insulin key for one cell door. And so all these doors open, sugar goes in and now we lock it and we close, but insulin resistance is when we have these sugar spikes over time and now we use one key to unlock the door and the cell says, nope, I'm tired of you, and so the body says, what? There's still sugar in the bloodstream. It's causing damage. Let me make more keys. Let me make more insulin keys. So now the body makes more insulin and now we're shoving two keys into that door and the cell is saying, nope, I've had enough of you like my area. My cell cannot handle more sugar. You're stuffing too much sugar. I don't want more sugar. And then the body says, wait, but there's still sugar in the bloodstream. We need it out the bloodstream, cellsyou ha ve to take it. So now what do we do? We make more insulin. Now we're shoving three keys in that insulin door on the cell and we're shoving and we're pushing and we're pushing. And finally the cell says, fine, all right. And then it opens and then we're shoving blood sugar in, but we use tons of insulin to do that. Now, remember the other cells that aren't insulin resistance like sex hormones and sex cells and, you know, neural tissue and other like organ systems in the body that don't have insulin resistance. Now, they are being hyper derived with all of this insulin on their receptor sites, and it's causing them to grow faster, to produce more, to be in hyperdrive over and over. It's like that example Gina gave with Hello Lucy or I Love Lucy, is that the show?
Gina Worful
I Love Lucy. Right, right.
Juanique Roney
Yep. It's that same example where now all the other areas that all the other cells that are not insulin resistant, they're now in hyperdrive over and over and over, and that's where we get the imbalances in the other parts of our bodies. Is there anything you want to add to that?
Gina Worful
I think that that was great.
Juanique Roney
OK, so you guys hopefully do you think we need to add anything else? Like, I feel like that was pretty good.
Gina Worful
The only thing I think we need to add is maybe we need some kind of infographics, a picture of like what is the sugar coming in? Yeah, but I think overall, if we could maybe one day create infographics, it'd be so much easier to understand. I know it's hard to hear about blood sugar and insulin and all these things, but I think that we broke it down the best we could.
Juanique Roney
So I will do some infographics on my stories. I'll like pair this podcast, this extra episode with some infographics on my Gutsy_mom Instagram post them.
Gina Worful
I think we talked about in the membership doing deep training on how exactly to get that blood sugar stable. So if this wasn't enough, if you're like you got some strategies, but we just did a training Jaunique and I just recently did the training all about how short chain fatty acids can influence.
Juanique Roney
Yes, and sugar cravings and hormone dysregulation.
Gina Worful
And I also like how specific nutrients, nutrients alone, like people underestimate how chromium, zinc, all alpha, lipoic acid, how nutrients can actually help yourselves bring sugar into the cell and metabolize it faster and more efficiently.
Juanique Roney
Exactly.
Gina Worful
We got to heal the mitochondria. We have to do all of it together. Like it's all one big thing, but I think this is a really good starting point to at least get a good hold on what is blood sugar? How is insulin involved? And then go back and listen to the recording with Dr. Ben Beckman where he can go further and deeper.
Juanique Roney
Exactly. You guys, thanks for listening. Hopefully you enjoyed our mini class and we'll catch you next week. Bye.
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