Twin Hacks for Dual Problems
Ask any doctor, what should I do to lower my blood sugar (glucose) level? With a high likelihood one of the things he will say to you, “include fibre in your diet and start going for morning/evening walks, every day”.
It is true that this will help you to maintain your average glucose level, but more critical than that is to thwart high spikes in glucose and insulin that follow soon after a meal – it’s like, “nipping it in the bud”.
Hack One.
Your eating pattern, that is the timing and the sequence of eating the constituents of your meal can considerably reduce the glucose spike of the meal. This means that even without altering the quality of the food, simply changing the ‘order in which you eat’ the various items in that meal can help you blunt the glucose spikes.
Order of the day
Start eating vegetables/salads (fibre) first, proteins and fat second, and starches and sugars (dessert) last. The thing is, eating fibre first will give it time to deploy itself on the inner lining of the upper intestine to form a gel-like coating (protective barrier) before the other items make their way in. Not only that, the fibre also provides a clothing for the glucose molecules as well – making it less responsive.
This slows down the conversion of food sugar into serum glucose and will also delay it’s absorption at the site of the endothelial cells of the intestine. So you have flattened the spikes and therefore created less demand on the insulin which will now do its job effortlessly. This also means less insulin resistance, over time.
Hack Twoers in preventing sugar spikes. Walking contracts the major muscles of your lower body and muscles need sugar as fuel to function. Part of the glucose from the food that is released in your bloodstream will be soaked up by your moving muscles to be used for energy. By doing this you have successfully reduced the sugar spikes from that meal.
Final walk through
- Walk in the mornings and evenings to improve your cardiovascular and respiratory health.
- Walk or move around after each meal to reduce your sugar spikes instantly.
Most harm is done whenever you eat processed food with high sugar content.
Zareer Patell
