Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Foreign.
[00:00:10] And welcome to this week's episode of the Whole Health podcast. Thank you for joining me. Now, I want to talk about something that many people aren't aware of, but it's had a huge impact on those that I've coached over the years and how they eat, how they train and how they manage stress, and that is knowing what's going on with your blood sugar fluctuations throughout the day. And because what your blood sugar or glucose, I use those two words interchangeably is doing, every minute of the day affects your energy, cravings, mood and how easy or hard it feels to lose weight.
[00:00:43] Plus, as women, we are more prone to glucose problems from perimenopause onwards. And the tricky part is we can't see what's going on inside our body because we can't always feel these fluctuations. And it's a topic I feel so strongly about because it's not a small issue. It's happening on such a massive scale.
[00:01:02] So, for instance, in the uk, around one in five adults are now dealing with diabetes, or pre diabetes. In the US, it's over 150 million people affected by blood sugar dysregulation. And here in New Zealand, we're talking hundreds of thousands and it's rising. Every year, it's getting worse.
[00:01:19] And the key thing to understand is that the vast majority of this is type 2 diabetes. Now, type 2 diabetes is generally lifestyle, diet and lifestyle led. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition. You can't, you have no control over that. But type 2 diabetes is the real issue here.
[00:01:38] Plus there are many more people walking around with these blood glucose levels out of control, undiagnosed, and just have no idea that this is happening. And type 2 diabetes isn't down to genetics. It's something that we can remedy with diet and lifestyle choices. And that's why I get so excited about this subject and that's why it's really my passion. But first up, why do we need this? Why do we need this information? Why are blood sugar fluctuations important in our general health and wellbeing? It's not just about type 2 diabetes, because blood sugar dysregulation doesn't suddenly appear in diabetes one day. It develops slowly and quietly. It usually starts with something called insulin resistance, which is silently happening in the background for up to 10 years before we get that diagnosis of type 2 diabetes.
[00:02:25] So, in simple terms, think of insulin like a train and glucose or sugar as the passengers trying to get to their destination. They need to board that train to get into the cells where it's needed. So normally, glucose ju on the train, it gets delivered to the cells and we use it for energy. But with insulin resistance, that system doesn't work properly. The train isn't picking up passengers efficiently, so the glucose gets left behind in the bloodstream, so it stays around for longer in the blood. And your body has to then produce more and more insulin to keep your blood sugar stable. We shouldn't have blood sugar hanging around in the blood. It shouldn't be there long term, because what happens is when it is sticking around, you might go to the doctors one day and get a called an HbA1c or glycated haemoglobin. And this tells you what's happening with your blood glucose levels over the past three months, because that's generally the life cycle of a red blood cell.
[00:03:23] And these levels may appear normal, maybe they're starting to climb. But insulin resistance can still be happening in the background and keeping these levels normal because it's working harder and harder and harder to keep these blood sugar levels in check. And I've seen this in practice with my clients over the years, and on paper, everything might look fine. But when there are other signs and symptoms that indicate that their body's struggling in the background, this is where further testing is really helpful.
[00:03:50] So when I talk about signs and symptoms of insulin resistance, there are a few subtle signs. As I say, many people are walking around, they don't know about it, but we're looking at signs like constant sugar and carb cravings. Maybe you're getting energy crashes, like really bad energy crashes during the day. You feel tired directly after eating, meal difficulty, losing weight. That's a huge one. And maybe your weight is now accumulating around tummy, around the middle, where you never used to have it. Brain fog. I mean, gosh, that can be anything, can't it? Irritability and mood swings. You wake in the night, cortisol's high, you feel hungry soon after eating. So your hunger and satiety signals are completely dysregulated. You might feel hangry if you don't eat. You've got skin tags. Skin tags are little folds of skin. Generally they're in various places, such as the back, the neck, the chest. There's also something else called acanthosis nigricans, and that's dark, velvety skin in the folds of, say, the neck and armpits. That's usually when insulin resistance is quite progressed. Now, I've got to note here that every time we eat, our blood glucose levels Increase and that's normal. But it should return back to baseline or back to normal within two hours of eating. It shouldn't stay up there. And we need that glucose out of the blood as soon as possible. It needs to get delivered to the cells where it's needed, such as in the liver, the muscles, brain and our fat cells. Because if it sticks around too long, it increases inflammation. Now inflammation is the underlying cause of many, if not most or all, chronic health conditions. And some of these conditions that can be linked to inflammation, which is linked to high blood sugar are the following.
[00:05:35] Heart disease, hypertension, high cholesterol, triglycerides, stroke, fatty liver disease. It's not a f, is often a sugar issue. Kidney dysfunction, nerve damage, eye conditions, vision loss, foot problems, poor wound healing, gut issues, Microbiomes all out of balance. Hormonal imbalances, weight gain, these are just a few. Depression, low mood, cognitive decline. Now Alzheimer's is now being called type 3 diabetes because of its blood sugar link. So when we're talking about blood sugar, blood sugar, we're not just talking about sugar and type 2 diabetes, we're talking about long term health and many other health conditions.
[00:06:17] So what if you could see those numbers in real time and learn which foods or events cause your blood sugar to spike.
[00:06:25] Now, as I say, our blood sugar levels are fluctuating daily anyway, but it should sort of be a nice small fluctuations, you know, coming up, coming down. It shouldn't be like huge spikes and in massive troughs, like a big roller coaster ride. And you can now gain, engage these with a continuous blood glucose monitor or a cgm, which is what they're commonly called, easier to say. It's a small sensor that sits on the skin and it tracks your glucose levels every five minutes. So I'll show you here and I'm going to, for those members in the program, I'm going to pop this video in the email when I send it out to you.
[00:07:02] So this is what I use. This is a, don't know if you can see that properly. It's a Dexcom one.
[00:07:09] It's a Dexcom glucose monitor. Now these are available worldwide. And this is the applicator. Okay, so this is my pretend one. So this applicator, you take the lid off and inside there is a little monitor. And this is what's going to stick on your arm. So it's got your button here. Now this one doesn't because it's my model for demonstration purposes. But generally what they have is a little needle. Actually it's quite A big needle, it's about that long and it sticks out of this monitor here. And what you do is you pop it on the back of your arm and the fatty part of your arm and you press the button, push it down, press the button. That won't work here because this is a pretend one which is now dropped on the floor.
[00:07:51] You press the button and with a real one, it sticks to your arm. Now this has got a cover over it. This is sticky, okay? So this is like a little plaster. And this will stick on your arm and that will stay there then for 10 to 11 days. Okay? You can shower with it, you can swim, you can go to the gym.
[00:08:10] Try not to, not to knock it off your arm. Commonly people walk through doorways and they, you know, they sort of bash their arm on the door and it comes off. They can come off, but generally they're pretty. They're there for 11 days. You've just got to be careful. You can sleep in it, it's fine. And actually, you know, you don't feel a thing when you apply it to your arm either. It's no pain. I've done it several times myself. You don't feel a thing. It doesn't matter. If you've got however much fat you've got on your arm, it's not going into the blood as such, it's going into the, the tissue in the arm and it's reading your glucose levels every five minutes. Okay, so that stays on.
[00:08:46] And it's a great way on how you can start to then connect the dots on what you're doing, how your body is responding to certain foods, and also things like stress, poor sleep, exercise, et cetera. And I believe everybody should try this at least once to see how their body reacts to certain foods, because everybody reacts differently. Now if I eat oats, I don't actually eat them a lot and I know they're in the program and they're so good for you. They're full of fibre, great. But for me, they increase my blood sugar quite high and I'm starving not long afterwards. So I know for me oats don't last. I'm hungry and I want to eat again very soon after. Even steel cut oats, even with the nuts and the seeds and everything else and the protein powder in them. I've tried them every which way. They do not work for me.
[00:09:35] But for many other people they can go all morning on a, on a bowl of oats with all the goodies on top. So this is where we're all very different.
[00:09:43] So what this tool does is it turns something invisible into something that you can actually see and understand. And for most people, it's really eye opening. You might think a certain breakfast is healthy, such as oats, but then you see that spike. Or you might have a poor night's sleep, which affects your levels the next day. Think about when you're tired and what do you want to reach for? High sugar, high calorie foods, because you're looking for that energy. But it's also probably because your blood sugar's so low, it's telling your body that you need something to bring that back up again. Or you might realize just how much better your glucose is when you go for a 10 minute walk after dinner. Now, a 2022 study found that postprandial, which is after eating, walking for 10 minutes, reduced blood glucose levels significantly in type 2 people with type 2 diabetes. So exercise can act as a non pharmaceutical way to lower that blood glucose, which is really powerful given that we can all move, it's free and it only takes 10 minutes. And that was moderate pace. Now, it doesn't have to be a walk, as I say to clients and members, it can be housework, it can be dancing around the lounge if you want to, but it's movement for 10 minutes after that meal. So what you're doing is you're taking that glucose out of the blood and into the muscles because you're now working them. And so wearing the blood glucose monitor, it becomes real. And I remember I had a client with type 2 diabetes and it wasn't managed very well. He was on two medications at the time and that was one of the suggestions I gave him. Move for 10 minutes after a meal and see what happens. Now, this man was used to wearing a cgm. He had them often and so he knew what his blood glucose was doing with certain meals, et cetera, and he couldn't believe the difference it made when he moved for 10 minutes after eating. He actually had a big deck around his house and he'd literally walk around the deck for 10 minutes. And he was able to see that in real time and just how powerful the impact was in bringing that blood sugar down, which he hadn't seen seen before.
[00:11:46] And the way I like to use it with my clients is very simple, but it's very intentional, as most CGMs only last a limited time of around about 11 days. So what I say is, for the first five days, don't change anything. Eat as you normally would, live your usual routine, don't change a thing. And this gives us a baseline as to what's actually happening right now. Have a look at your blood glucose levels and see what's going on. Then for the next five to six days, we start experimenting. So we start adjusting carbohydrate intake. We start looking at the sugars. Maybe if they're eating white breads, they switch them for whole grain breads.
[00:12:22] We start pairing those proteins and fats with carbs. So, as I say in the program, don't eat a piece of fruit on its own. Dress it up with fat or protein, and this reduces the potential sugar spike. And then we start doing things like moving for 10 minutes directly after you've eaten, not half an hour after you've eaten. Don't let your food go down. We're moving straight after.
[00:12:43] And then we can start to see the difference. Now, with these monitors, they link to your phone. Now, before you go out and buy one of these, you must check that your phone is up to date, and it can actually you can get this app. So it's called the dexcom one. So you want to make sure you can get the app on your phone. But as a practitioner, because I'm a practitioner of Dexcom 1, I can also see your results. So if you choose to, you can put in my information and I can see what's going on for you every day, so I can have a look at daily reports. Now, it's really important in this app that you actually input your meals and your exercise. So there's an event tab in there where you can put in what you've eaten. Just be general. It doesn't. It doesn't have to be amounts and all that, but, I mean, it's helpful. But it will tell, you know, looking at what you've eaten, what time you ate, that's really important so that I can then look at your meal. I saw one today, actually. One of my clients had a snack of bread and butter. I don't know how much, but he had some bread and butter. He will know how much.
[00:13:39] And I could see about 20 minutes afterwards, his blood sugar started spiked. Something chronic. White bread, maybe add a few slices. I doubt whether it's just one. We don't generally have one, do we? So that would be a question for me to say, okay, how many did you have? What else can we have instead of that? Because that's really affecting his blood glucose, and he knows he already has an issue with blood glucose. His HbA1C is traveling up.
[00:14:07] So, yeah, important to add in your food and your exercise. Because maybe this form of exercise isn't serving you. Now it's common. It's usual for your blood sugar to go up when you exercise, but it should come down as well, so it shouldn't stay elevated. So I can look at all of these things for my clients and I can then pick out and say, okay, let's make some changes around this. Now when I wore one, I was able to make a few really simple changes because at the time I was enjoying a matcha from the local cafe. A matcha latte with oat milk. So yummy. I love it. It's creamy. It's a bit sweet. Now matcha is not sweet. Matcha is very bitter. So obviously there's sugars in the mix there. But oat milk, so that just, that was one of the worst spikes I had. And so I thought, okay, well I still like the matcha, you know, now and again as a treat. So I changed it to soy milk and lo and behold, it just did. I didn't have that same spike.
[00:15:02] There was also another day which was quite an unusual day for me. I had a couple of events. My son was, was doing a parade with the air cadets, so they had a big buffet, et cetera. Then we had something at home later on. So it was a really unusual day on the weekend. And over that day I had had half a scone with jam and cream. And at the time I was wearing a monitor. So I thought, well, let's, you know, see what happens.
[00:15:25] Later on I had a piece of chocolate cake. This was a really bad day for me. And then after that I had six pieces of sushi, you know, just the rolled up sushi with, I think it had chicken in the middle with some veggies. And it was really interesting for me to see. Yes, I've got a spike with all of those things. But the worst spike was the sushi. Now you wouldn't think that, you would think it would either be the scone or the chocol chocolate cake, but no, the sushi. And I know sushi is high in carbs. It's got that sugary vinegar in there. There's very little protein in there, very little fat.
[00:15:58] So it's very. A heavy carb based meal. It's not always a healthy choice.
[00:16:03] And it's just spiked my blood sugar through the roof. So that was a really interesting one for me to see.
[00:16:08] So when you have that information, you can then start to compare the difference by switching out other foods.
[00:16:15] And this is where the Learning begins. So I use the CGM as an educational tool.
[00:16:20] It's not about becoming obsessive or restrictive because that's not what we're about. It really helps you understand what your body is doing because everybody is different. We all react differently to different foods and different lifestyle habits, and the same food can create completely different responses in two people.
[00:16:39] Now, as women, when we reach perimenopause and beyond, it's especially important for us because now we're more pro prone to things like insulin resistance, particularly due to declining estrogen. So you might feel, and I've heard this so many times over the years, that women say, well, I've not changed anything, but my weight's going up, I don't feel the same what's happening to my body. And this is often. There's a real blood sugar link in this picture. As a naturopath, I practice preventative medicine. I don't wait until people are sick and say, okay, let's medicate then, because generally, and I'm not begging doctors because we need them, but generally with blood sugar, this is where the system is broken, in my opinion, because I've seen it so many times time and time again with people that come to me and say, well, my HBA1C, yeah, it's creeping upwards, but the doctor's just gonna retest it again in six months. So basically the doctor can see and they can see that their blood sugar levels are creeping up, but nothing's done about it until they reach that type 2 diabetes diagnosis. And that for me is a broken system, because if someone's tracking upwards and tracking upwards, something can and needs to be done right now. So they don't get that diagnosis, they don't get type 2 diabetes, and they can manage it and they can really make a difference in their overall health and wellbeing. And using that CGM can fast track that awareness as well. And I've seen the results with clients who use them. It really is. It opens their eyes, it's fantastic. And these aren't hard to access devices anymore. They're available here in New Zealand, across the UK, US and Canada. They're not just also for type 2 diabetes, although they are usually funded, I think many countries they're funded now. If you have type 2 diabetes, you might have to put in. When you order them online, you might have to put in that, yes, you are type 2 diabetic. It's just a little sort of tick box and it's fine. I know I had one client in the UK that Went and got hers from the chemist and she said, yes, I'm type 2 diabetic. They don't check, they don't look into your records or anything, but then they'll sell you one so you can buy them privately. And these are things that are being widely used now by health professionals like myself, personal trainers, et cetera, as an educational tool. Now, they might not feel cheap in New Zealand, here they're about 73, $78 or so. But, you know, I think that's actually a really good price to pay to give you so much insight into what your body's doing. And you only really have to do it once. Just make sure you experiment while you're wearing it for that 11 days, make the most of it, because it really can give you a huge amount of insight into how your body responds. And that's how I tend to use them with my clients.
[00:19:21] So, for me, trialling a CGM isn't about diagnosing disease, it's about preventing it. It's about understanding your body better, to make more informed choices and feeling more in control of your health, because when you can see what's happening, you can actually do something about it. And now, while this message maybe doesn't sit with everybody, I think it's really an important one to have because it does affect all of us. I'm sure you probably all know somebody with type 2 diabetes or even pre diabetes, and. And once you've got that diagnosis, I want to point out it's not too late to do something. You can absolutely do something right now to actually stop the progression of that disease. So what happens is when you get put on, say, metformin or some sort of pharmaceutical to manage it, if diet and lifestyle advice is not given, that person will carry on eating the same old foods they've always eaten, maybe not exercising. They won't change anything with their diet and lifestyle. But what happens in the background is while the medication is keeping keeping the blood sugar in check, the disease in the background is progressing.
[00:20:26] And that's really a bad place to be. So in conjunction with medications, we really need to be given that advice as well. And there are many people that have reversed this disease and completely manage normal blood glucose levels now without medication. Now, this is something that if you do have it, if you're on medication, I cannot tell you to come off. So you need to really work with your doctor, with your gp.
[00:20:52] But I do work with clients on medications and we do work with their diet, et cetera, and we keep a close check with their gp, because we don't want blood sugars going too low if we're really controlling them. Well, if you're on medication as well, it can send you too low, which is very dangerous. So it's something that you work alongside your GP with, but it shouldn't be ignored. You know, in my opinion, we really need to be getting a handle on these diet and lifestyle changes at the same time.
[00:21:20] So while this might not resonate with everybody, maybe it's something that you can pass on to a friend or relative who might be struggling with their blood sugar issues. Because, as I've said, you know, it's linked to so many chronic health conditions and many people don't actually realize that these other conditions that we're getting, heart disease, there's an underlying blood sugar dysregulation, really do encourage you to try one. It's a really interesting tool to have. It's really quite. I find it quite exciting to see what my blood sugar's doing every five minutes of the day, really. So if you've got any questions, please do reach out to me through WhatsApp personal message, however you want to, and I'm more than happy to answer them and I look forward to seeing you all again next week.
