In this video, the speaker discusses the top 10 foods to help lower blood sugar levels. They categorize the foods based on their carb, protein, and fat content. The foods mentioned include berries, leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, healthy fats like butter and olive oil, nuts and seeds, eggs and dairy, and meat, fish, and poultry. The speaker also emphasizes the importance of reducing carbohydrate intake to minimize blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance. They highlight the adaptability of the body and how it can function normally with low blood sugar levels if it is in a state of ketosis. Additionally, they touch on the benefits of acetic acid found in vinegar in managing blood sugar levels and insulin resistance.
Key Insights:
- Most people in the world have a problem with high blood sugar.
- Normal blood sugar levels range from 65 to 99.
- It’s important to focus on insulin levels as well as glucose levels.
- Carbohydrates should be kept low to prevent blood sugar spikes and insulin resistance.
- Top 10 foods to lower blood sugar: berries, leafy greens, non-starchy vegetables, healthy fats (butter, ghee, olive oil), avocados, olives, nuts, seeds, eggs and dairy, meat, fish, poultry, and organ meats.
- Low blood sugar during fasting or low-carb diets is not necessarily a problem as long as you don’t experience symptoms such as anxiety, chest pain, or confusion.
- Understanding the body’s ability to adapt and use ketones for fuel is essential.
- Adding vinegar or sour foods to your diet can help with lowering blood sugar and improving insulin resistance.
- Stay focused on the foundational principles of lowering carbohydrates, getting exercise, and managing stress for overall health improvement.
Transcript
Hello Health Champions. Did you know that most people in the world have a problem with high blood sugar so today i’m going to give you the top 10 foods to help you lower blood sugar but more importantly we need to understand what normal blood sugar is and if and when it ever gets too low. Also despite all the attention given to blood sugar it may not be the first marker you want to be concerned with. I’m going to list these foods in categories so we can talk about them and understand them a little better.
First category is low carb protein and fat so if we look at a graph it’s kind of flat there’s not much of anything there the next category is low carb high fat but still low protein so here we increase the fat and what does that do it gives us more fuel it gives us replacement calories but with very little impact on glucose or insulin and the next category is low carb high fat and high protein because high protein can increase insulin a little bit but not so much it’s a good trade-off because it’s also the most satiating it’s the most nutritious if we can only eat a few types of food this one is the most satisfying and the most likely to keep us alive long-term so what we’re trying to do as you notice is the red the carbohydrates that’s the only one that we keep low in all these categories and why is that because carbohydrates is another form of glucose and glucose turns into blood sugar that’s where we get those fast blood sugar spikes and if we eat a lot of carbohydrates frequently we’re going to keep triggering insulin and maintain high insulin levels get insulin resistance and then that insulin resistance promotes higher blood sugar and now we’re kind of stuck in that loop and make sure you stick around to the end because after the 10 foods i’ll have a little bonus for you.
Number 10 on the list is berries and these are things like blackberries raspberries strawberries and and this thing here is pretty common in sweden it is called a red currant and all of these are things you can have some it’s about five percent net carbs in them and what you have to remember it’s not a bulk food so the reason this is 10 out of 10 is it’s not something you want to eat a lot of it’s something that you can eat as a treat if you want something sweet you want something to kind of round off the day or the meal then this is a good thing to eat instead of candy instead of other fruits.
Number nine is leafy greens and this is something that you can pretty much eat as much as you like and the reason is they’re very low carbs one to three percent net carbs but also because they’re mostly water and fiber it takes you a long long time to chew through a substantial amount it’s very difficult to eat half a pound of leafy greens so the carbs will never really amount to anything the drawback of course is that because there’s so little carbohydrate and so little calories in it you can’t really live off it but it’s very nice to have as a foundation to make salads and also that’s why there’s more than one item on the list we want to vary things and change them up a bit.
Number eight is non-starchy vegetables and we’re still in the category where these things have very little of anything in them broccoli cauliflower celery brussels sprouts they’re around two to five percent net carbs but these are things you can eat a little bit more of you can easily eat a half a pound or even a pound or more of these non-starchy vegetables and if you add some butter or some olive oil then they become quite satisfying as well even though there’s so much focus on blood glucose because so many people have problems with it i think it’s just part of the picture and what we have to understand is that it’s a controlled variable the body tries very hard to keep it within a range of about 65 to 99 and those are the outer ends of that range most of people are going to find themselves in a much more narrow range than that even and i think there’s too much focus on glucose because it only really changes it only really ever gets outside of this range under extreme conditions or when the body is failing to control it so instead we want to look at insulin so if we compare glucose and insulin here we see the yellow would be glucose and year after year after year it stays pretty much the same on average after we become moderately insulin resistant it starts slipping a few points but it doesn’t really get out of hand until we’re full blown type 2 diabetics whereas if we measure insulin insulin is what the body is using to control it so the harder the body has to work to control glucose the higher our insulin goes so while glucose stays about the same we can see insulin increasing almost linear over the years so if we were to measure it we can see the progression much much earlier some other things i like to keep an eye on are triglycerides and VLDL because when the cells become insulin resistant they’re resisting glucose but also triglycerides because glucose turns into triglycerides and VLDL’s is a vehicle that delivers triglycerides so as insulin and triglycerides and VLDL goes up we can see how the problem is progressing but we can also monitor these to see how the problem is reversing but i also get a lot of questions from people who are told that type 2 diabetics can’t do low carb and they can’t fast because their blood sugar gets too low so what is too low let’s start understanding that here’s an article i found in helio endocrinology diabetes and they’re saying despite benefits intermittent fasting increases risk for hypoglycemia in type 2 diabetes so people start fasting they start doing low carb and then they see something like this and they stop for all the wrong reasons so what are the benefits they’re talking about? Well, they’re focused on blood glucose but what’s really happening the benefits from lowering carbohydrate and lowering frequency of meals doing fasting is you’re allowing the body to return to homeostasis the problem is you have overloaded the body you’ve sent it the wrong messages with the wrong kind of food triggering too much insulin too frequently so your body is congested and when you eat less carbs less frequently you’re allowing that congestion to reverse and that does so much more than just glucose it starts affecting everything in your body so everything related to metabolic syndrome and inflammation starts getting better so the benefit is your body is now returning to normal but then people read articles like this and they read intermittent fasting increased hypoglycemia among patients with type 2 diabetes and that’s kind of where their understanding stops and we really have to understand the next sentence here which says who were treated with hypoglycemic medications right hypoglycemia and hypoglycemic medications let’s figure out those words the body has the ability to regulate things it can turn things up it can turn things down medications can’t do that medications block their mechanism is to go in and interfere and if they’re designed to turn things up then they will do that if they’re designed to turn things down they will do that but they can’t do one or the other they will do one that they are designed for so the body can be very precise in its regulation a drug a medication can only go in with the precision of a sledgehammer and sort of flatten things so if we have a situation of really really high blood sugar like in a type 2 diabetic then we’re taking medication and this medication forces a balance so it forces it down into a more normal range however when you reverse the process when you allow your body to return to normal now that same medication is still going to keep doing the same thing and it’s going to force an imbalance after you have already started to create a balance it’s the same thing with blood pressure medication it can only force blood pressure down and if your blood pressure is too high that can be a good thing but after you normalize your blood pressure now that medication will push it too low so when you are starting to make changes to return your body to normal that can actually look like a short-term problem like hypoglycemia but it is the long-term solution and the solution is to fix the actual problem and talk to your doctor about changing your medication not to keep doing the wrong thing so that your medication stays the same and here’s actually a true story a patient came to me we were working in my clinic on reversing their metabolic syndrome we gave them some good nutrients we had them reduce carbohydrates we had them on a diet plan and then one day they came back and said that my medical doctor is concerned i went for my annual checkup and he told me i had to add more carbohydrate back in my diet because he didn’t want to change my medication it was too complicated and the problem here is that the medical doctors are smart people they’re intelligent they’re well trained but they can be stuck in what’s convenient and in their model it’s all about treating the symptom they don’t expect anything to ever reverse or return to balance because that doesn’t happen in their model in their model there’s a symptom and you treat it with the medication and nothing ever gets better on its own but if you understand the mechanisms you can start turning these around and bring balance back.
Next category is low carb high fat but also high protein so now we’re getting into more nutrient dense more calorically dense food nuts macadamia nuts pecans and walnuts are my favorites because they’re high fat and protein but they’re also low carbohydrates some other nuts will have moderate carbohydrates and you can still have some of those but you need to know which ones they are especially if you’re trying to be on a strict low carb diet and even though nuts is not like a whole meal in itself they’re still very satisfying so you could have a handful of nuts as a snack and they could keep you for hours and they maintain your glucose levels pretty stable as opposed to many of the sugary snacks and very similar to nuts or seeds and my favorites are flax chia hemp and pumpkin these are typically higher in protein than nuts because nuts are usually more than 50 fat and then these are also lower in fat and carbohydrates.
And my recommendation is that if you have the dairy then don’t do the low fat normally they tell you that you can’t have dairy except low fat because they’re mostly concerned with the saturated fat my only concern really is if you have a sensitivity to any of the proteins so you reduce the likelihood of that sensitivity by eating the things that are high in fat then the percentage of protein goes way way down and in a low carb high fat diet it’s the saturated fat the fuel that you’re looking for for satiety and calorie replacement my go-to’s here would be heavy cream sour cream creme fraiche which is basically sour cream made from heavy cream normal sour cream is around 15 fat creme fresh is more like 35 and also different forms of cheese typically run around 30 fat and very often eggs are referred to as the most complete food that we have and there’s a lot of good arguments for that as long as you don’t throw away the yolk the yolk is part of the package with if you throw away the yolk you’re losing 90% of the nutrition in the egg so make sure you eat the whole egg unless and this is my only reservation for any of this is if you have a known sensitivity dairy sensitivities and egg sensitivities are rather common but if you do well with these then they’re probably some of the best foods you can have.
And number one on my list would be meat fish poultry organ meats etc and why is that because it’s the most satiating these are the most complete foods a big part of lowering your blood glucose and reversing your metabolic syndrome is to eat less carbohydrates and fewer meals and the best way to do that is to eat things that satisfy you because then you will eat less and you go longer between meals so if i was to only eat one food if i could only eat one thing for six months it certainly would not be lettuce i mean i love lettuce i love nuts and seeds but if i could pick one thing to eat i would eat red meat and it would be really boring i think it’d be great to be able to vary it up but what i’m trying to say is the food value the completeness of that food is why this is on number one and in recent years the carnivore diet has been very very popular and this is where people eat not necessarily a single food but they eat this single category they only eat animal products and they probably include some eggs as well but the reason is if they are sensitive to all the other stuff then this would be the ideal the ultimate elimination diet and if they stop having allergic reactions they’re going to get healthier so for some people that is a good idea at least for a few months but most of us are not that sensitive and we’re not forced to stick with a single product we don’t have that ultimatum of living on a single food so the best thing to do is i think to eat some of this every day you could have meat most days or every day but then you mix it up with all of the other foods that we talked about for a good variety.
And if you’re trying to lower blood glucose it’s a little bonus for you that acetic acid which we have in vinegar in apple cider vinegar in pickled vegetables if we use vinegar to pickle them or anything sour pretty much like sauerkraut it has a number of different acids in it it has primarily lactic acid but there’s also some acetic acid in there and this acid has a signaling property to lower insulin resistance to lower blood sugar to lower a1c and triglycerides and all those different things and it’s not a solution in itself but if you’re doing all the other things you’re supposed to lowering carbs getting some exercise relaxing etc then this can be a very very nice addition to that program.
And also keep it simple if you like apple cider vinegar and you want to make it part of your daily regimen do that but also keep it simple it doesn’t have to be complicated if you have a salad and you put some vinegar on it that still counts if you like pickled vegetables or you just like to add it to a sauce or a food or something then all of that acetic acid is still going to contribute some of those benefits.
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