Holistic Nutrition Bytes » hypoglycemia

The Great Sugar Detox, Day 8

admin — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 03:06:23 +0000

Still plugging along sugar-free over here, save for green apples that I enjoy with hazelnut-almond butter for snacks. I would kill for chocolate, though. I miss my dark chocolate desperately. It’s easy to whip up sugar-free chocolate treats (see recipe, below, courtesy of Diane Sanfilippo over at Balanced Bites), but 70 percent dark chocolate with a touch of sugar and a little sea salt is bliss. But I am thinking clearly and feel good and happy and productive, so that’s a benefit. It’s good for the body to get the sugar out!

Are you an alcohol drinker? If so, a sugar detox is a great way to clear your mind and increase your energy level. Even one glass of wine can disrupt your sleep cycle, as the sugars can wake you, and the extra burden on your liver to detox creates stress on the body when it should be repairing and regenerating. I drank more wine (and enjoyed more desserts) than I am used to over the holidays, so I am very much enjoying the clarity and restful sleep that being booze-free brings.

How are your cravings? They should usually disappear by day 3 or 4, but if you still suffer with cravings after that point, it is a sign that something in your body is off balance. Cravings are NOT normal. We are used to hearing so much about weight loss via will power, but dealing with constant cravings may signal a deficiency of the feel-good neurotransmitters such as serotonin or dopamine in the brain, or it may mean you are hypoglycemic or have other blood sugar imbalance issues.

Here is a quote from food & alcohol addiction specialist Lynn Eliot Harding, whom I interviewed the other day for a project I’m working on:
“People (in AA or Overeaters Anonymous, who must give up sugar and white flour in order to be abstinent with food and alcohol) have heard this idea that cravings just go with the territory and you’re just gonna have to grit your teeth, but my perspective is any time somebody’s having cravings, you must first look at their physiology and get them stabilized, because that’s really a warning sign from the body that something’s out of balance. The idea is that you don’t just treat symptoms, you find out what the underlying problem is and you heal that.” And I agree wholeheartedly. More on this topic later.

I’d love to hear from you about how your sugar detox is going: challenges, victories, what you’re eating, and how you’re feeling. In the meantime, if you miss chocolate as much as I do, here is a sugar free chocolate treat recipe made with nutrient-rich ingredients.

SWEETENER FREE chocolates (thanks to Diane Sanfilippo)
1/4 cup virgin coconut oil
1/4 cup + 1Tbsp coconut creme (which is just coconut meat ground into a paste. Find at www.tropicaltraditions.com)
1/4 cup almond meal (I make my own by grinding almonds in the food processor)
3 Tbsp cocoa powder
1 tsp vanilla (optional)

Stir oil and coconut creme together over a low flame to melt, and whisk in other ingredients until smooth. Pour into a mini muffin tin or ice cube tray into 12 portions and put in the fridge to solidify. Try putting raw cocoa nibs, coarse red salt, coconut shreds, or a touch of cayenne into tin or tray first for variety. Enjoy.

Those Pesky Sugar Cravings

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 00:59:53 +0000

I hear a very common complaint from clients: “I get so tired at 3pm.” or “I have terrible sugar cravings, especially after I eat or in the afternoon and evening time.” Is this you? Read on.

Sugar cravings occur for a number of reasons. Could be hormonal. Most commonly, it means you haven’t properly managed your blood sugar levels, meaning that you either waited too long to eat and experienced a sharp dip in blood sugar (hypoglycemia), or you ate a lot of sugar or drank a lot of coffee, which spiked your blood sugar (hyperglycemia), and now it’s plummeted again, leaving you craving more sugar as your body tries to establish homeostatis (balance).

Let me explain. Your brain and body need glucose to survive. When your body perceives that blood sugar is getting too low, it sends you a signal that it needs fuel. You get hungry. When you eat sugar, in the form of white sugar, white flour (breaks down as sugar), alcohol, sodas, candy, cookies, pastries, etc, your body uses a hormone called insulin to transport the glucose to your cells for usage. When you eat too much sugar, too much insulin ushers too much glucose into cells, leaving not enough in your blood. This means your blood sugar has dropped too low, so you crave sugar again to bring the level back up.

Stay on this roller coaster too long, and not only are you feeling crabby and tired and craving sugar throughout the day, you are also setting yourself up for insulin resistance, meaning your cells don’t want anymore of the glucose your insulin is trying to give. This sets you up for diabetes, or chronic hyperglycemia.

Enough with the physiology. Let’s say you start your morning with coffee and a pastry, or coffee and nothing at all. You probably feel pretty good until you crash, then you’re starving, jittery, anxious, moody, irritable. You eat, probably too much because you’re starving and miscalculated your hunger needs, and probably feel tired as all your energy is diverted into digestion. Or, you eat more sugar and put yourself back on the roller coaster. Or you get a wicked sugar craving later in the afternoon or evening.

Do you wake up in the middle of the night? This may be nocturnal hypoglycemia. If you’ve had alcohol that evening or haven’t properly managed your blood sugar during the day, your blood sugar drops too low at night, and you’ll be rudely wakened as your brain tells your body it needs fuel.

Mismanaging your blood sugar drives your stress hormone, cortisol, up. High cortisol=weight gain, inflammation, anxiety, and can lead to female hormone problems as well. Cortisol levels that fluctuate during the day = periods of fatigue (especially at the dreaded 3pm slump) and trouble falling or staying asleep.

Step One: eat every 3 hours, beginning within an hour of waking, to set yourself up properly for the day. Reconsider so much coffee, which jacks your blood sugar, and if you must, drink it with protein. Muffins aren’t protein, but a couple hard-boiled eggs will suffice. Ideally, your breakfast will have some good fats, good protein, good carbs (smoothie is so perfect here, with flaxseeds, whey protein, supergreens). Make sure you are getting protein with every meal and that you don’t booze on an empty stomach (leads to blood sugar spike and crash, meaning bigger appetite and you’ll eat more ’cause you’re buzzed. Then you’ll wake up around 3am, unhappy). Eating regularly means stable blood sugar. Know that sugar cravings can also indicate you’re not getting enough protein. Snack on almonds or fruit and walnuts if you tend toward hypoglycemia during the day.

Are you eating a lot of refined sugar and want to break the habit? Go on a sugar detox. Quit cold turkey. It will be unpleasant for about 3 days, but it will get easier. Plan a month with no sugar. Take a multi-mineral and extra magnesium to help, and take extra chromium to help with the cravings. A supplement with 5HTP or 500mg glutamine on an empty stomach helps break the cravings, too. Not to beat a dead horse here, but coffee exacerbates sugar cravings, so try some green tea for a while. Make sugar free treats (see below recipe) with stevia or agave nectar. Use this as an opportunity to get more leafy greens and root vegetables to replenish the minerals that sugar depletes. Know also that eating sugar triggers the craving for more sugar (this is why you can’t stop with a couple M&Ms), so just don’t go there for this month. When you try some sugar on day 31, I bet you find it too sweet. We are inundated with corn syrupy overly sweet junk foods in our society and are desensitized to sweet. A couple bites will do. I bet at the end of the month, you have more energy and when you try sugar again, it makes you feel crappy.

Chew thoroughly and eat slowly. Cravings for sweets after you eat indicate you are eating too quickly and that food is not being assimilated properly. Chew so that food can be mixed with digestive enzymes and fully broken down.

According to a Chinese proverb, “Sour, sweet, bitter, pungent, all must be tasted.” Know that sweet is one of the five tastes and shouldn’t be eliminated altogether. Substitute fruit and non-refined sugar sweets to satisfy your palate.

Sugar Free Cookies
1/3 c almond butter
2 Tbs butter or coconut oil
1.5 or 2 large pink lady apples
2 eggs
1 tsp baking soda
¾ c carob powder or 1/2 cup cocoa powder
¼ tsp sea salt
1 ¼ c brown rice flour or other gluten free flour
about 30 whole almonds (optional)
½ – 1 c carob chips (optional)
¼ c agave nectar or pinch green stevia (optional)

Grease cookie sheets and preheat oven to 350. Chop apples into small chunks and put in blender. Add almond butter, butter (or oil) and eggs. Puree. Can add a bit of water to make more of a puree. In a separate bowl, combine flour, baking soda, carob/cocoa powder and salt. Mix well and add carob chips. Add puree to dry mix and stir just until well blended. Add optional sweetener if desired (stevia or agave). Drop by rounded spoonfuls onto cookie sheet. If desired, press almond onto top of each cookie. Bake for 10 min or so – don’t overbake. Yum!

Calories: 70
Protein: 2g
Carb: 8.5
Total Fat: 3.5g
Fiber: 1.6g

Good Sleep Hygiene

admin — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 20:03:01 +0000

I’ve written about sleep before, but sleep is critical to good health. Just ask anyone who isn’t getting any! Let’s have a refresher.

Poor sleep means waking frequently throughout the night, difficulty falling asleep, or waking up and not being able to get back to sleep. This affects every area of your life: you feel foggy, irritable, unable to concentrate, and you may experience cravings or increased hunger due to imbalanced blood sugar.

While we sleep, our immune systems are most active, scavenging through the body for abnormal cells, kind of like the night cleaning crew. Organs detoxify and repair and regeneration occurs. Lack of sleep means you’re robbing your body of this crucial process, and you may notice accelerated aging and higher susceptibility to illness.

Insomnia or poor sleep can be caused by a number of factors. A very common culprit is high cortisol. Cortisol is your main stress hormone, and it is high during times of stress to sharpen senses and increase chances of survival (if you were, say, outrunning a tiger). After the stress passes, cortisol should lower, but if you remain stressed out for long periods of time and cortisol stays high, it affects your overall hormonal balance.

Other than acute periods of stress, cortisol should be highest first thing in the morning to wake you, and lowest at night so you can fall asleep. If your cortisol levels do not fall naturally during the day because you are constantly under stress, you will have trouble falling asleep, or wake throughout the night. Ever have that wired feeling at night when you should be tired? Likely due to high stress hormones.

Get your cortisol levels tested. We offer a very easy take-home saliva test, and it is easy to correct imbalanced stress hormone levels. Lifestyle changes along with a treatment plan are critical to rebalance stress hormones.

For everyone that has trouble sleeping, practicing good sleep hygiene can make all the difference. Here are some tips:

*First, check your bedroom. Make it as dark as possible (think cave). Remove electric appliances, save for an alarm clock that is not directly next to your head. That means no tv, no stereo, and absolutely NO computers or cell phones.

*Create a sleep ritual and get your body on a schedule. Plan to go to bed at 10:30 or 11pm every night. What’s important is to get to bed at the same time every night. Start an hour before you hit the sack: stop watching tv, put down the computer, and start winding down with a cup of herbal tea (chamomile, skullcap, valerian, passion flower, lemon balm). Take an epsom salt bath–the magnesium will help you sleep. Then get in bed and read for 30 minutes til you fall asleep. Do this every night.

*Take the minerals magnesium and calcium in the evening to relax your nervous system.

*Taking 50mg of 5HTP in the evenings can also help. 5HTP is the precursor to serotonin, which regulates sleep, mood, and appetite.

*Stop drinking so much coffee! Even if you drink in the mornings, it can affect sleep at night (caffeine has a long half life). Stop drinking caffeinated herbal teas after 3pm and absolutely no coffee after noon!

*If you toss and turn and can’t fall asleep after 30 minutes, pick up a book and read, or do another relaxing activity, then try again.

*If you wake up around 3 or 4am feeling wired and can’t get back to sleep, the culprit might be blood sugar. Nocturnal hypoglycemia means your blood sugar drops too low at night, signaling to your brain that you need food, so your brain signals to your body to wake you. Eat a snack about 30 minutes before bed. Try a potato or some yogurt – sounds funny, but it works. Potatoes increase serotonin, and yogurt is high in tryptophan. But any small protein-based snack will work. NOT sugar or refined carbs, which will exacerbate the problem. Other ideas are toast with nut butter, eggs, nuts, or a gluten-free bran muffin.

*Avoid alcohol, which affects blood sugar and interferes with nighttime liver detox. If you wake between 1am and 3am, especially take this under consideration.

*Avoid heavy meals three hours before bed.

*Consider kicking your snoring partner out into the guest bedroom. Better yet, figure out why he/she is snoring. This is an entire other post. Hmmmm.