Dear Friends,
You may know that consuming too many carbs can make shedding extra pounds or maintaining your current weight more challenging.
This becomes magnified when you eat meals with a lot of simple carbohydrates like starch and sugar that cause a steep rise in your blood sugar or blood glucose levels.
Today, we’re going to cover two reasons why this happens - and then I’ll give you a couple of suggestions to help you blunt or minimize this blood sugar swings for better weight management support.
The process of digesting sugar and starch starts very quickly, beginning in the mouth where saliva releases digestive enzymes like amylase, which breakdown down sugar and carbs into single sugar molecules – a lot of which is glucose.
This continues in the stomach and intestines and ultimately, a lot of the glucose is absorbed into the bloodstream.
The effect is similar when we eat starch, as many starches are strings of glucose molecules. Digestive enzymes “cut” the string until you have all these single glucose molecules that can be absorbed into blood through your intestines. This too spikes your blood sugar levels.
Rapid Blood Sugar Spike Can Slow Fat Burning
Of course, the amount of starch and sugar you consume at a meal will determine the severity of the blood sugar spike.
If you eat foods with a lot of both starch and sugar—say, a donut or cookie—there’s going to be a more rapid blood sugar increase. Wash that down with a sugary soda, and you’re creating a lot of work for your body because it needs to get that glucose out of the bloodstream.
Your body responds to the blood sugar spike by secreting insulin, which is made in the pancreas. This helps escort the glucose sugar out of the bloodstream and into cells, where it can be used for energy.
This process is a good thing and necessary for you to survive.
However, when you secrete insulin, it sends a message to your cells to stop or slow down the burning of fat – which is the body’s stored energy.
Insulin is essentially saying, “I’m bringing a fresh source of energy in the form of glucose, so stop using our stored energy (fat); we may need that at some other time.”
So, the more insulin your body releases, the less fat you are likely to burn – which over time can lead to weight gain or make it harder to lose weight.
This is the first reason why we want to minimize the severity of the blood sugar spike. It’s to minimize insulin release, so our bodies don’t stop or significantly reduce burning fat for energy.
Food Cravings Can Lead to Snacking
The second way rapid blood sugar spikes can make your weight management goals more challenging is the release of extra insulin may cause your blood sugar levels to drop too low.
Before you know it, you’re snacking again because you’re hungry and craving food.
This leads to extra calorie intake, and often this leads to making bad food choices because we’re in a hurry or between meals and don't have anything good to eat available.
These are the two reasons why it’s important to minimize wild-up and down swings in blood sugar levels to make weight management less challenging.
One way to help reduce post-meal blood sugar spikes is to include a good amount of fiber in the meal, as it also helps blunt the blood sugar spike. In addition, fiber also has other weight management benefits like contributing to satiety (feelings of fullness) as well as prebiotic effects for intestinal health.
If you want help from a supplement with fiber, you can try our AloeCran product. It has 5 grams of a soluble fiber that has been shown to reduce the post-meal blood sugar spike when taken with a meal.
Another supplement that can be a big help is TrueBerberine+ (formerly TrueGluco SP).
TrueBerberine+ contains the InSea2, brown seaweed extract that helps slow down the breakdown of starch and sugar into glucose – smoothing out the post-meal blood sugar spike.
In one study, the blood sugar spike after eating starchy white bread was reduced by about 48% on average when participants took InSea2 before eating compared to when they didn’t.
In addition, TrueBerberine+ contains a highly absorbable form of berberine (GlucoVantage) and chromium, both of which help your body use insulin more efficiently. This can help minimize the amount of insulin the body needs to release after a meal.
Both AloeCran and TrueBerberine+ support metabolic health in other important ways too.
Yours for Good Health,
