Blood Sugar and Why It Is Important to Your Health
Having a balanced level of blood sugar in the body gives you a healthy brain, balanced moods, and stable energy levels.
06/02/2021
When carbohydrates break down, they produce sugar that gives energy to the body. Blood sugar is the quantity of sugar circulating in the bloodstream at any particular time. Your energy, cravings, and hunger get controlled by blood sugar. Therefore, blood sugar is important as it has significance in your body, and balancing it is critical to maintaining a healthy level.
Importance of Maintaining Blood Sugar
A balanced level of blood sugar in the body gives you a healthy brain, balanced moods, and stable energy levels. A disruption in blood sugar can lead to poor sleep, low energy, irritability, high sugar cravings, weight gain, and anxiety. Balancing blood sugar is essential to people with health conditions, and everyone mindful of their health.
Balanced levels of blood sugar help keep at bay the risk of heart disease and diabetes. Maintaining balance in blood sugar levels is possible as capsules made from natural products can help. You can read more about the tablets in a detailed online review and find out why you need them as part of your regimen to balance blood sugar.
Causes of Disruption in Blood Sugar
Eating a meal with too many carbohydrates or sugar will increase the level of glucose in the body. A healthy body will be able to regulate glucose and lower blood sugar levels. However, overconsumption of carbohydrates will stress the process.
If you do not check the consumption of such foods, your body will demand more insulin to better manage blood sugar. With time the body will develop resistance to insulin response, eventually disabling the insulin from locking cell doors in your body. When that happens, excess glucose accumulates your bloodstream leading to high blood sugar.
Insulin resistance also occurs as the body cells starve for energy as there is no insulin to unblock them and let glucose get in.
Risks of Insulin Resistance
As earlier mentioned, consuming carbohydrate-rich foods increases sugar in the bloodstream; however, with insulin resistance, no matter how much you eat, there is no energy. Cells become blocked as there is no insulin to unblock them and allow glucose to get into them, causing low energy.
You end up having more cravings for sugar and carbohydrates, being irritable, having low energy, trouble sleeping, and not concentrating. The body will not keep up burning fat to give energy, and the fatty acids get stored, leading to weight gain.
The Range for Normal Blood Sugar
Blood sugar levels differ before taking a meal and after having one. It is important to test both of them to understand how your body absorbs and stores glucose.
Before taking a meal, the ideal sugar level is 80 – 99 ml/dl, and after a meal is 80 – 40 mg/dl. If one has diabetes, the right range before eating should be 80 – 130 mg/dl and below 180 mg/dl after a meal tested after one or two hours.
Cases of Low Blood Sugar Levels
Having high blood sugar levels, also known as hyperglycemia, is not the only bad thing, as lower levels are also harmful to your health. When blood sugar lowers, a condition termed hypoglycemia occurs. Some of the symptoms associated with hypoglycemia include paleness on the face, tingly lips, sweating, shaking hands or other body parts, increased heart rate, dizziness, and anxiety.
Thus, it is crucial to maintain the right blood sugar levels to ensure the body has an adequate glucose supply. Some of the causes of hypoglycemia include too much insulin, diabetes, taking alcohol on an empty stomach, taking certain medications, anorexia, and kidney disorders.
How to Keep Blood Sugar in Control
Maintaining the right levels of blood sugar is important, and there are several ways you can use control to it, including the following.
- · Choosing the right diet
Highly processed foods, saturated fats, deep-fried foods, and fizzy drinks need to be eliminated from your diet or rarely consume. You will need more vegetables, fruits, nuts, unsaturated fats, and wholemeal foods in your diet. Simple carbohydrates are also not beneficial to your body as they get digested quickly, leading to increased insulin levels, which stresses the pancreas. - · Maintain a healthy weight
What an ideal weight is for you may not be what you perceive. Before embarking on a weight loss journey, your doctor's consultation will help determine the right way to go. - · Check insulin levels
To test for type 2 diabetes, most doctors will conduct a blood sugar test. However, checking for insulin is as important. - · Exercise
Even without hitting the gym, simple exercises like walking at least 30 minutes a day can lower blood sugar levels. - · Check the level of minerals
To avoid tolerance of insulin, having enough levels of magnesium could help. Magnesium assists insulin in the body to function properly.