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How do you manage your blood sugar for optimum health and to reduce weight?

By Tim Lundeen  Beginning Noozer
Published: 19 January 2008 01:02 pm

- Suppose you agree with me that your blood sugar is the most important metric for health and weight, and you want to start tracking it, how do you go about it?

First step, obviously, is to get a blood-glucose meter. Today, you can get meters that are painless and only need a miniscule drop of blood from the back of your arm. I'm using a Freestyle Flash, and they are available online for about $20. Test strips cost about $0.65 per test for this particular meter. I like this meter because it is painless, small, accurate, and takes less than 30 seconds from start to finish to take a reading.


In addition to the meter and a supply of test strips, you will need to occasionally replace the lancet, the sharp point used to break the skin for a blood sample. The lancet should be changed at least once a month, and you could change it weekly or every other week if you want to. No need to change it more often. The meter kits comes with month's worth of lancets if you change them once a month.

What measurements do you need, and what do you look for?

• Normal blood sugar. This is the range you are in when your body is not processing a meal. You can measure this as:
  

• Fasting blood sugar, just after you wake up. This should be in the range from 70 to 85.
  
• Just before you eat, and two hours after a meal. These should both be in the range from 70 to 85.
  

• Peak blood sugar. Your peak blood sugar is usually 75 minutes after you eat. To find out when you hit peak, start measuring your blood sugar 45 minutes after a meal, and check it every 15 minutes until it starts to go down. After you've done this once, you'll know about how long it takes for you to hit peak blood sugar and can just measure it then in the future.
  
  Your peak blood sugar should be 120 or less to minimize ongoing damage. Levels over 140 are dangerous and have been shown clinically to cause damage. I recommend 120 because this is the high-normal peak, so staying below this level  seems prudent.
  
  
• Recovery time. This is a measure of how much your metabolism has been damaged by diet and aging. Eat enough carbohydrate to get your blood sugar to 120, and then see how long it takes to get back to 83. (If you eat too much and get above 120, keep checking till you get to 120 and time it from then.)
  
  If you have no damage to your metabolism, your recovery time will be less than 2 hours. My recovery time is about 7 hours, so even though I am considered to be "normal" by my doctor, I clearly have significant damage to my pancreas and islet complexes. If you have diabetes and are still making insulin, your recovery time can be more than 24 hours.

What do you do to lower your blood sugar, if any of these are too high?

• Eat less carbohydrate. There is no substitute; this change is required. Any and all carbohydrate calories will increase your peak or average blood sugar.
  
  
• Take supplements that help your metabolism. I've measured both peak and average blood sugar with the following supplements, and they clearly make a big difference for me:
  
  • Omega-3 (fish oil and/or flax oil, to get 1.5 grams/day of DHA)
    
  • Resveratrol and quercetin (one per day)
  • 250 mg of Magnesium and 30 mg of Zinc per day
    
    
• Exercise. This helps your muscle cells take up glucose, so lowers your blood sugar. If you work out to the point that you add more muscle, that helps on an ongoing basis because the additional muscle will absorb blood sugar.
  
  
• Fasting. If you don't eat at all, your blood sugar falls and your liver is primed to take up more sugar when you start eating. One way to use this is to go long enough between meals that your blood sugar drops down below 83 before you eat again, or you can fast every other day.
  
  
• Eat a low-carb diet periodically. I'm not convinced this is healthy on a permanant basis, but every other day is fine (just as fasting every other day is fine).