Blood sugar imbalances are one of the leading causes of chronic health problems.
One of the cornerstones of our approach to wellness here at Integrative Chiropractic and Natural Medicine (ICNM) is to come away from “reactionary” treatments and instead focus on “functional medicine,” which identifies the root, underlying causes of a patient’s specific, individual conditions.
In other words, when it comes to our health, we don’t look at a person and simply say “OK, you’re overweight, so let’s put you on a diet.” Rather, we perform individualized tests to identify some of the underlying conditions that may lead you to gain weight.
Obviously we know that when you consume more calories than you burn in a day, it leads to gaining weight. But it’s actually a lot more complicated than that for each individual person. You could have a sugar imbalance, there could be problems with your thyroid, you could have metabolic issues, and much more.
As the saying goes, your body is a complicated machine – it’s running, but is it running at optimal performance? With some fine-tuning, we can move you toward peak performance, and optimal health.
What is a blood sugar imbalance?
One of the most common afflictions affecting Americans today is a blood sugar imbalance. Even if you’re not eating candy or cake every day, you may not realize just how much refined sugar is in so many of our everyday foods, and consuming high amounts of those foods over many years can lead someone to develop a blood sugar imbalance that not only causes weight gain, but can also be a root cause of many other chronic health conditions you may be suffering from, or on the brink of developing, such as diabetes, stroke and heart attack.
A “blood sugar imbalance” forms when the body is exposed to excessive refined carbohydrates. In addition to known sugary foods like cake and candy, refined carbohydrates are found in everything from bread, to pasta, muffins, granola and other breakfast cereals, and even yogurt.
A diet high in these carbohydrates can lead to carbohydrate intolerance, which happens when the body’s ability to metabolize carbs decreases. It can also lead to “cravings” for sweets and carbs, even though your body doesn’t actually need them. Over time, your body’s blood sugar levels become more and more unstable, leading to feelings of highs and lows in your energy levels and even your moods.
This can also cause deficiencies in some of the body’s key nutrients like magnesium, zinc, manganese, B complex and chromium.
Carbohydrate intolerance leads to insulin resistance, which means your body’s response to natural insulin decreases. Your body’s insulin starts injecting less and less glucose into your cells. Because insulin is the ‘fat storage hormone’, the higher levels result in your body becoming super efficient at storing fat vs burning fat. Your body will usually start gaining weight more easily at this time, particularly around your waist, abdomen and torso.
Without life and diet changes, these conditions will continue to progress and lead to advanced insulin resistance, or hyperinsulinism. In addition to a worsening of the above symptoms, your body’s triglyceride levels will continue to rise, and symptoms of cardiovascular diseases may start to present themselves. This can lead to Diabetes Mellitus, or Type 2 Diabetes, which is most often characterized by chronically high insulin levels that no longer function sufficiently, meaning they are not able to inject glucose into your body’s cells on a regular basis as they should. This leads to high blood sugar levels which, if not controlled by diet and/or medication, can lead to serious conditions such as kidney and eye diseases, nerve damage and cardiovascular diseases.
Blood sugar imbalances can be hard to identify
Did you know – normal blood tests run by your doctor during regular check-ups or when early symptoms start to show up will often not catch a blood sugar imbalance until it has significantly progressed?
In the progression described above, most blood tests will not detect that a problem is developing with your body’s equilibrium until stage three, which is the hyperinsulinism stage, and some blood tests may not even detect abnormal levels until stages four or five, which is when many patients will test positive for Type 2 Diabetes.
That’s why we at ICNM feel functional medicine is so important, versus mere reactionary treatments that only start trying to correct a problem after it has already reached a crucial stage. With functional medicine tests like those we can run at ICNM, even slight imbalances in your body’s blood sugar and carbohydrate metabolizing abilities can be detected, as early as stage one.
How can you ‘detox’ from sugar?
It’s a known fact – the more you consume sugar, the more you will crave it, as we explained above. You may have heard some people talk about going on a “sugar detox,” and how once they cut sugar out of their everyday diets, they no longer craved it.
Well, it’s true!
WebMD explains, “Sugar fuels every cell in your brain.” What does this mean? Researchers have done studies where they scan the brain while the patient eats or drinks something high in sugar—and nearly every area of the brain lit up.
“Your brain starts to think of sugar as a reward, which makes you keep wanting more of it. If you eat sugar often, you’re reinforcing that reward, which can make it tough to break the habit,” explains WebMD’s website.
However, doctors warn against cutting out sugar “cold turkey.” It’s better to start gradually, to avoid many of the more uncomfortable withdrawal symptoms such as headaches, light-headedness and crashing energy levels.
By gradually removing certain items high in refined sugar each week, you can slowly wean your body off of sugar. You can start by replacing refined sugars with natural sugars such as fruit that also have protein and other nutrients that allow your body to metabolize the natural sugars more slowly, rather than drastically spiking your blood sugar levels immediately upon eating.
In time, most patients report fewer sugar cravings, and that they don’t “miss the sugar” in their diet that much. Most also report an increased feeling of wellness along with more balanced energy, as well as weight loss. The results will also show up in very real ways in your blood tests and wellness workups.
We can help!
ICNM’s Wellness Workup can provide a lengthy, detailed, functional medicine report on your highly individualized levels across many health factors. This will allow us to help customize a plan specifically for you that will get your body back to its optimal balance, which we can do for you through our Transformations program.
Visit our website for more information on our Wellness Workup and Transformations program, and call us if you’d like to learn more about how it can help get YOUR HEALTH back on track, starting right away!