10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars

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“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said…

This is Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author. She’s most known for her best-selling “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power Of Balancing Your Blood Sugar”.

It’s a great book (which we reviewed recently) and you absolutely should read it, but meanwhile, we’re going to distill at least the most critical core ideas, 10almonds style. In this case, her “ten hacks”:

Eat foods in the right order

The order is:

  1. Fiber first
  2. Protein and fat second
  3. Starches and sugars last

What happens here is… the fiber perks up the gut bacteria, the protein and fat will then be better-digested next, and the starches and sugars will try to jump the line, but they can’t because the fiber is a physical speedbump and the proteins and fats are taking the prime place for being digested. So instead, the starches and sugars—usually responsible for blood sugar spikes—get processed much more gradually, resulting in a nice even curve.

Add a green starter to all your meals

We know what you’re thinking: “that’s just the first one again”, but no. This is an extra starter, before you get to that. If you’re the cook of the household, this can absolutely simply mean snacking on green ingredients while cooking.

Stop counting calories

Especially, she advises: stop worrying about extra calories from fats, such as if doing an oil-and-vinegar dressing for salad—which she also recommends, because all three components (the oil, the vinegar, and the salad) help even out blood sugar levels.

Flatten your breakfast curve

For many, breakfast is the starchiest meal of the day, if not the sugariest. Inchauspé recommends flipping this (ideally) or softening it (if you really must have a carb-based breakfast):

  • Top choices include: a warm vegetable salad, fish, or eggs (or tofu if you don’t do animal products).
  • Next-best include: if you must have toast, make sure to have butter (and/or the aforementioned egg/tofu, for example) to give your digestion an extra thing to do.
  • Also: she recommends skipping the juice in favour of home-made breakfast smoothies. That way, instead of basically just sugar with some vitamins, you’re getting a range of nutrients that, if you stack it right, can constitute a balanced meal itself, with fiber + protein + fat + carbs.

Have any type of sugar—they’re all the same

They’re technically not, but the point is that your body will immediately take them apart and then they will be just the same. Whether it’s the cheapest white sugar or the most expensive organic lovingly hand-reared free-range agave nectar, your body is going to immediately give it the chop-shop treatment (a process so quick as to be practically instantaneous) and say “this is now glucose”.

Pick a dessert over a sweet snack

Remember that about the right order for foods? A dessert, when your body is already digesting dinner, is going to make much less of a glucose spike than, say, a blueberry muffin when all you’ve had this morning is coffee and juice.

Reach for the vinegar before you eat

We recently did a whole main feature about this, so we’ll not double up today!

After you eat, move

The glucose you eat will be used to replace lost muscle glycogen, before any left over is stored as fat… and, while it’s waiting to be stored as fat, just sitting in your bloodstream being high blood sugars. So, this whole thing will go a lot better if you are actively using muscle glycogen (by moving your body).

Inchauspé gives a metaphor: imagine a steam train worker, shoveling coal into the furnace. Meanwhile, other workers are bringing more coal. If the train is moving quickly, the coal can be shoveled into the furnace and burned and won’t build up so quickly. But if the train is moving slowly or not at all, that coal is just going to build up and build up, until the worker can shovel no more because of being neck-deep in coal.

Same with your blood sugars!

If you want to snack, go low-sugar

In the category of advice that will shock nobody: sugary snacks aren’t good for avoiding blood sugar spikes! This one probably didn’t need a chapter devoted to it, but anyway: low sugar is indeed the way to go for snacks.

Put some clothes on your carbs

This is about olive oil on pasta, butter on potatoes, and so forth. Basically, anything starchy is going to be broken down quickly to sugar and sent straight into the bloodstream, if there’s nothing to slow it down. If you’re wondering what to do with rice: adding a tablespoon of chia seeds to the rice while cooking (so they’re cooked together) will add very healthy fats to your rice, and (because they’ve been cooked) will not seem like eating seeds, by the way. In terms of texture and appearance, it’ll be as though you threw some black pepper in*

*which you should also do for many reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this “about blood sugars” feature!

Wanting to know more about the science of this?

We’ve done all we have room for here today, but Inchauspé is, as ever, happy to explain it herself:



Prefer text? Check out:

The Science Behind Glucose Goddess

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  • Should Men Over 50 Get PSA?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    It’s Q&A Day at 10almonds!

    Have a question or a request? You can always hit “reply” to any of our emails, or use the feedback widget at the bottom!

    In cases where we’ve already covered something, we might link to what we wrote before, but will always be happy to revisit any of our topics again in the future too—there’s always more to say!

    As ever: if the question/request can be answered briefly, we’ll do it here in our Q&A Thursday edition. If not, we’ll make a main feature of it shortly afterwards!

    So, no question/request too big or small

    ❝Loved the information on prostate cancer. Do recommend your readers get a PSA or equivalent test annually for over 50 yr old men.❞

    (This is about: Prostate Health: What You Should Know)

    Yep, or best yet, the much more accurate PSE test! But if PSA test is what’s available, it’s a lot better than nothing. And, much as it’s rarely the highlight of anyone’s day, a prostate exam by a suitably qualified professional is also a good idea.

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  • The Better Brain – by Dr. Bonnie Kaplan and Dr. Julia Rucklidge

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    We’ve reviewed books about eating for brain health before, but this is the first time we’ve reviewed one written by clinical psychologists.

    What does that change? Well, it means it less focus on, say, reducing beta amyloid plaques, and more on mental health—which often has a more immediate impact in our life.

    In the category of criticisms, the authors do seem to have a bit of a double-standard. For example, they criticise psychiatrists prescribing drugs that have only undergone 12-week clinical trials, but they cite a single case-study of a 10-year-old boy as evidence for a multivitamin treating his psychosis when antipsychotics didn’t work.

    However, the authors’ actual dietary advice is nonetheless very respectable. Whole foods, nutrients taken in synergistic stacks, cut the sugar, etc.

    Bottom line: if you’d like to learn about the impact good nutrition can have on the brain’s health, ranging from diet itself to dietary supplements, this book presents many avenues to explore.

    Click here to check out “The Better Brain”, and eat for the good health of yours!

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  • What Are The “Bright Lines” Of Bright Line Eating?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    This is Dr. Susan Thompson. She’s a cognitive neuroscientist who has turned her hand to helping people to lose weight and maintain it at a lower level, using psychology to combat overeating. She is the founder of “Bright Line Eating”.

    We’ll say up front: it’s not without some controversy, and we’ll address that as we go, but we do believe the ideas are worth examining, and then we can apply them or not as befits our personal lives.

    What does she want us to know?

    Bright Line Eating’s general goal

    Dr. Thompson’s mission statement is to help people be “happy, thin, and free”.

    You will note that this presupposes thinness as desirable, and presumes it to be healthy, which frankly, it’s not for everyone. Indeed, for people over a certain age, having a BMI that’s slightly into the “overweight” category is a protective factor against mortality (which is partly a flaw of the BMI system, but is an interesting observation nonetheless):

    When BMI Doesn’t Quite Measure Up

    Nevertheless, Dr. Thompson makes the case for the three items (happy, thin, free) coming together, which means that any miserable or unhealthy thinness is not what the approach is valuing, since it is important for “thin” to be bookended by “happy” and “free”.

    What are these “bright lines”?

    Bright Line Eating comes with 4 rules:

    1. No flour (no, not even wholegrain flour; enjoy whole grains themselves yes, but flour, no)
    2. No sugar (and as a tag-along to this, no alcohol) (sugars naturally found in whole foods, e.g. the sugar in an apple if eating an apple, is ok, but other kinds are not, e.g. foods with apple juice concentrate as a sweetener; no “natural raw cane sugar” etc is not allowed either; despite the name, it certainly doesn’t grow on the plant like that)
    3. No snacking, just three meals per day(not even eating the ingredients while cooking—which also means no taste-testing while cooking)
    4. Weigh all your food (have fun in restaurants—but more seriously, the idea here is to plan each day’s 3 meals to deliver a healthy macronutrient balance and a capped calorie total).

    You may be thinking: “that sounds dismal, and not at all bright and cheerful, and certainly not happy and free”

    The name comes from the idea that these rules are lines that one does not cross. They are “bright” lines because they should be observed with a bright and cheery demeanour, for they are the rules that, Dr. Thompson says, will make you “happy, thin, and free”.

    You will note that this is completely in opposition to the expert opinion we hosted last week:

    What Flexible Dieting Really Means

    Dr. Thompson’s position on “freedom” is that Bright Line Eating is “very structured and takes a liberating stand against moderation”

    Which may sound a bit of an oxymoron—is she really saying that we are going to be made free from freedom?

    But there is some logic to it, and it’s about the freedom from having to make many food-related decisions at times when we’re likely to make bad ones:

    Where does the psychology come in?

    Dr. Thompson’s position is that willpower is a finite, expendable resource, and therefore we should use it judiciously.

    So, much like Steve Jobs famously wore the same clothes every day because he had enough decisions to make later in the day that he didn’t want unnecessary extra decisions to make… Bright Line Eating proposes that we make certain clear decisions up front about our eating, so then we don’t have to make so many decisions (and potentially the wrong decisions) later when hungry.

    You may be wondering: ”doesn’t sticking to what we decided still require willpower?”

    And… Potentially. But the key here is shutting down self-negotiation.

    Without clear lines drawn in advance, one must decide, “shall I have this cake or not?”, perhaps reflecting on the pros and cons, the context of the situation, the kind of day we’re having, how hungry we are, what else there is available to eat, what else we have eaten already, etc etc.

    In short, there are lots of opportunities to rationalize the decision to eat the cake.

    With clear lines drawn in advance, one must decide, “shall I have this cake or not?” and the answer is “no”.

    So while sticking to that pre-decided “no” still may require some willpower, it no longer comes with a slew of tempting opportunities to rationalize a “yes”.

    Which means a much greater success rate, both in adherence and outcomes. Here’s an 8-week interventional study and 2-year follow-up:

    Bright Line Eating | Research Publications

    Counterpoint: pick your own “bright lines”

    Dr. Thompson is very keen on her 4 rules that have worked for her and many people, but she recognizes that they may not be a perfect fit for everyone.

    So, it is possible to pick and choose our own “bright lines”; it is after all a dietary approach, not a religion. Here’s her response to someone who adopted the first 3 rules, but not the 4th:

    Bright Lines as Guidelines for Weight Loss

    The most important thing for Bright Line Eating, therefore, is perhaps the action of making clear decisions in advance and sticking to them, rather than seat-of-the-pantsing our diet, and with it, our health.

    Want to know more from Dr. Thompson?

    You might like her book, which we reviewed a while ago:

    Bright Line Eating – by Dr. Susan Peirce Thompson

    Enjoy!

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  • Hungry? How To Beat Cravings
  • The Mental Health First-Aid That You’ll Hopefully Never Need

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    Take Your Mental Health As Seriously As General Health!

    Sometimes, health and productivity means excelling—sometimes, it means avoiding illness and unproductivity. Both are essential, and today we’re going to tackle some ground-up stuff. If you don’t need it right now, great; we suggest to read it for when and if you do. But how likely is it that you will?

    • One in four of us are affected by serious mental health issues in any given year.
    • One in five of us have suicidal thoughts at some point in our lifetime.
    • One in six of us are affected to at least some extent by the most commonly-reported mental health issues, anxiety and depression, in any given week.

    …and that’s just what’s reported, of course. These stats are from a UK-based source but can be considered indicative generally. Jokes aside, the UK is not a special case and is not measurably worse for people’s mental health than, say, the US or Canada.

    While this is not an inherently cheery topic, we think it’s an important one.

    Depression, which we’re going to focus on today, is very very much a killer to both health and productivity, after all.

    One of the most commonly-used measures of depression is known by the snappy name of “PHQ9”. It stands for “Patient Health Questionnaire Nine”, and you can take it anonymously online for free (without signing up for anything; it’s right there on the page already):

    Take The PHQ9 Test Here! (under 2 minutes, immediate results)

    There’s a chance you took that test and your score was, well, depressing. There’s also a chance you’re doing just peachy, or maybe somewhere in between. PHQ9 scores can fluctuate over time (because they focus on the past two weeks, and also rely on self-reports in the moment), so you might want to bookmark it to test again periodically. It can be interesting to track over time.

    In the event that you’re struggling (or: in case one day you find yourself struggling, or want to be able to support a loved one who is struggling), some top tips that are useful:

    Accept that it’s a medical condition like any other

    Which means some important things:

    • You/they are not lazy or otherwise being a bad person by being depressed
    • You/they will probably get better at some point, especially if help is available
    • You/they cannot, however, “just snap out of it”; illness doesn’t work that way
    • Medication might help (it also might not)

    Do what you can, how you can, when you can

    Everyone knows the advice to exercise as a remedy for depression, and indeed, exercise helps many. Unfortunately, it’s not always that easy.

    Did you ever see the 80s kids’ movie “The Neverending Story”? There’s a scene in which the young hero Atreyu must traverse the “Swamp of Sadness”, and while he has a magical talisman that protects him, his beloved horse Artax is not so lucky; he slows down, and eventually stops still, sinking slowly into the swamp. Atreyu pulls at him and begs him to keep going, but—despite being many times bigger and stronger than Atreyu, the horse just sinks into the swamp, literally drowning in despair.

    See the scene: The Neverending Story movie clip – Artax and the Swamp of Sadness (1984)

    Wow, they really don’t make kids’ movies like they used to, do they?

    But, depression is very much like that, and advice “exercise to feel less depressed!” falls short of actually being helpful, when one is too depressed to do it.

    If you’re in the position of supporting someone who’s depressed, the best tool in your toolbox will be not “here’s why you should do this” (they don’t care; not because they’re an uncaring person by nature, but because they are physiologically impeded from caring about themself at this time), but rather:

    “please do this with me”

    The reason this has a better chance of working is because the depressed person will in all likelihood be unable to care enough to raise and/or maintain an objection, and while they can’t remember why they should care about themself, they’re more likely to remember that they should care about you, and so will go with your want/need more easily than with their own. It’s not a magic bullet, but it’s worth a shot.

    What if I’m the depressed person, though?

    Honestly, the same, if there’s someone around you that you do care about; do what you can to look after you, for them, if that means you can find some extra motivation.

    But I’m all alone… what now?

    Firstly, you don’t have to be alone. There are free services that you can access, for example:

    …which varyingly offer advice, free phone services, webchats, and the like.

    But also, there are ways you can look after yourself a little bit; do the things you’d advise someone else to do, even if you’re sure they won’t work:

    • Take a little walk around the block
    • Put the lights on when you’re not sleeping
    • For that matter, get out of bed when you’re not sleeping. Literally lie on the floor if necessary, but change your location.
    • Change your bedding, or at least your clothes
    • If changing the bedding is too much, change just the pillowcase
    • If changing your clothes is too much, change just one item of clothing
    • Drink some water; it won’t magically cure you, but you’ll be in slightly better order
    • On the topic of water, splash some on your face, if showering/bathing is too much right now
    • Do something creative (that’s not self-harm). You may scoff at the notion of “art therapy” helping, but this is a way to get at least some of the lights on in areas of your brain that are a little dark right now. Worst case scenario is it’ll be a distraction from your problems, so give it a try.
    • Find a connection to community—whatever that means to you—even if you don’t feel you can join it right now. Discover that there are people out there who would welcome you if you were able to go join them. Maybe one day you will!
    • Hiding from the world? That’s probably not healthy, but while you’re hiding, take the time to read those books (write those books, if you’re so inclined), learn that new language, take up chess, take up baking, whatever. If you can find something that means anything to you, go with that for now, ride that wave. Motivation’s hard to come by during depression and you might let many things slide; you might as well get something out of this period if you can.

    If you’re not depressed right now but you know you’re predisposed to such / can slip that way?

    Write yourself instructions now. Copy the above list if you like.

    Most of all: have a “things to do when I don’t feel like doing anything” list.

    If you only take one piece of advice from today’s newsletter, let that one be it!

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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  • The Best Kind Of Fiber For Overall Health?

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The Fiber Of Good Health

    We’ve written before about how most people in industrialized nations in general, and N. America in particular, do not get nearly enough fiber:

    Why You’re Probably Not Getting Enough Fiber (And How To Fix It)

    Fiber’s important for many aspects of health, not least of all the heart:

    What Matters Most For Your Heart? Eat More (Of This) For Lower Blood Pressure

    As well, of course, as being critical for gut health:

    Gut Health 101: Making Friends With Your Gut (You Can Thank Us Later)

    But is all fiber “prebiotic fiber”, and/or are some better than others?

    Beta-glucan

    A recent study (it’s a mouse study, but promising in its applicability for humans) examined the health impacts of 5 different fiber types:

    • pectin
    • β-glucan
    • wheat dextrin
    • resistant starch
    • cellulose (control)

    As for health metrics, they measured:

    • body weight
    • adiposity
    • indirect calorimetry
    • glucose tolerance
    • gut microbiota
    • metabolites thereof

    What they found was…

    ❝Only β-glucan supplementation during HFD-feeding decreased adiposity and body weight gain and improved glucose tolerance compared with HFD-cellulose, whereas all other fibers had no effect. This was associated with increased energy expenditure and locomotor activity in mice compared with HFD-cellulose.

    All fibers supplemented into an HFD uniquely shifted the intestinal microbiota and cecal short-chain fatty acids; however, only β-glucan supplementation increased cecal butyrate concentrations. Lastly, all fibers altered the small-intestinal microbiota and portal bile acid composition. ❞

    ~ Dr. Elizabeth Howard et al.

    If you’d like to read more, the study itself is here:

    Impact of Plant-Based Dietary Fibers on Metabolic Homeostasis in High-Fat Diet Mice via Alterations in the Gut Microbiota and Metabolites

    If you’d like to read less, the short version is that they are all good but β-glucan scored best in several metrics.

    It also acts indirectly as a GLP-1 agonist, by the way:

    The right fiber may help you lose weight

    You may be wondering: what is β-glucan found in?

    It’s found in many (non-animal product) foods, but oats, barley, mushrooms, and yeasts are all good sources.

    Is it available as a supplement?

    More or less; there are supplements that contain it generously, here’s an example product on Amazon, a cordyceps extract, of which >30% is β-glucan.

    As an aside, cordyceps itself has many other healthful properties too:

    Cordyceps: Friend Or Foe? ← the answer is, it depends! If you’re human, it’s a friend.

    Enjoy!

    Don’t Forget…

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  • The Metabolism Reset Diet – by Alan Christianson

    10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.

    The liver is an incredible organ that does a very important job, but what’s not generally talked about is how we can help it… Beyond the obvious “try to not poison it too much with alcohol, tobacco, etc”. But what can we do that’s actually positive for it?

    That’s what Alan Christianson offers in this book.

    Now, usually when someone speaks of a “four week cleanse” as this book advertises on its front cover, it’s a lot of bunk. The liver cleanses itself, and the liver and kidneys between them (along with some other organs and processes) detoxify your body for you. No amount of celery juice will do that. However, this book does better than that:

    What it’s about, is not really about trying to do a “detox” at all, so much as supporting your liver function by:

    • Giving your liver what it needs to regenerate (mostly: protein)
    • Not over-taxing your liver while it does so

    The liver is a self-regenerating organ (the mythological story of Prometheus aside, here in real life it can regenerate up to 80% of itself, given the opportunity), so whatever the current state of your liver, it’s probably not too late to fix it.

    Maybe you’ve been drinking a little too much, or maybe you’ve been taking some meds that have hobbled it a bit (some medications strain the liver rather), or maybe your diet hasn’t been great. Christianson invites you to draw a line under that, and move forwards:

    The book gives an overview of the science involved, and explains about the liver’s role in metabolism (hence the promised weight loss benefits) and our dietary habits’ impact on liver function. This is about what we eat, and also about when we eat it, and how and when our body metabolizes that.

    Christianson also provides meal ideas and recipes. If we’re honest (and we always are), the science/principles part of the book are worth a lot more than the meal-plan part of the book, though.

    In short: a great book for understanding how the liver works and how we can help it do its job effectively.

    Click here to check out “The Metabolism Reset Diet” on Amazon today!

    Don’t Forget…

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    Learn to Age Gracefully

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