GUY’S GOTTA TALK ABOUT…DIABETES #12: "I Didn't Think It WOULD Make My Blood Glucose Go UP…"

For the first times since I started this column eleven years ago, it’s going to be about me. I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes two weeks ago. While people are happy to talk about their experiences with diabetes, I WASN’T comfortable with talking about diabetes. My wife is Type 2, as are several friends of ours. The “other Type” of diabetes was what caused the death of my Best Man a year after my wife and I got married. He was diagnosed with diabetes when he was a kid. It was called Juvenile Diabetes then. Today it’s Type 1. Since then, I haven’t WANTED to talk about diabetes at all. But…for my own education and maybe helping someone else, and not one to shut up for any known reason, I’m reopening my blog rather than starting a new one. I MAY take a pause and write about Breast Cancer or Alzheimer’s as medical headlines dictate; but this time I’m going to drag anyone along who wants to join my HIGHLY RELUCTANT journey toward better understanding of my life with Type 2 Diabetes. You’re Welcome to join me!

When I started this whole Type 2 Diabetes adventure, I simply assumed that I could never touch sucrose (table sugar and the stuff that makes donuts and frosted cupcakes TASTE so amazing) for the rest of my life.

In fact, I thought that until a couple of days ago, my wife (who is also diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes), said to me, “I had potato chips last night – why are my blood sugars sky high?” (Or something to that effect…I’m 66 now! I can hardly remember the names of my three grandkids!)

I started wondering and after a recent Peanut Buster Parfait from Dairy Queen gave me a blood glucose the next morning of 158 (usually my morning glucose levels are around 170) and my most recent morning glucose was 179 with no obvious sugar bump in sight, I thought I’d better do some research.

Jody Stanislaw, ND, in her article, “The Many Reasons for High and Low Blood Sugars (and why we need a LOT of compassion for ourselves!)” at TCOYD (Taking Control of Your Diabetes) notes, “First of all, all carbs are not created equal. If you eat 30 grams of carbs from pineapple, it will raise blood sugar much, much faster than 30 grams of carbs from a low glycemic food, like black beans.”

OK. Cool. But what the heck does that MEAN?

Let’s dig: a cup of pineapple chunks has 16 grams of sugar; a cup of black beans has .28 grams of sugar…yet BOTH can have a detrimental effect on your blood glucose levels!

WTH???? Blood glucose and the foods you eat is an intensely complicated equation and MULIPLE things can have an impact on your glucose numbers!

BUT IN THE LONG RUN IT ALL COMES DOWN TO GLUCOSE! Glucose itself is an incredibly simple molecule (with the fancy pants chemical “formula” for glucose is C6H12O6 (C stands for carbon, H stands for Hydrogen, and O stands for Oxygen – hooked up in a particular way, it makes glucose. The number tell me how many of that atom there are in the sugar or fat or protien.)

While glucose isn’t a molecule you see the formula for, most people have seen H2O and know it’s the symbol for WATER! There are some more complicated sugars as well like sucrose (table sugar): C12H22O11 and fructose (fruit sugar) C6H12O6 – the SAME NUMBERS OF Carbon, Hydrogen, and Oxygen as GLUCOSE!!!! But it’s HOW the atoms are hooked up that make fructose twice as sweet as blood sugar.

Carbs are ALL made up of the same basic piece repeated twice to literally 10,000 times!

What’s black bean protein look like? It’s extremely complicated, which explains why it takes SO LONG to break it down in your blood. Usually you get saponins. Saponins, anthocyanins, flavonols, phenolic acids, and proanthocyanidins. I’ll show you just one: saponin?

Here’s its simplified H2O-kind of formula: C58H94O27. It takes a MUCH longer time for your stomach to break all those atoms up into glucose! The sugar in the fruit (in the form of fructose as well as sucrose) is EASILY available when it hits the blood because it arrives there as ALMOST glucose. The “sugar” in black beans comes from your stomach acid hitting the big carbohydrates and breaking them up into glucose – which takes awhile (it’s called digestion!) until they’ve been cut up until they show up on your blood sugar testing MUCH later.

With beans, you have to deal with FIBER, ‘cause they’re high in fiber.

Again, the formula for FIBER is even longer than the one for saponin but it’s not because its complicated, it’s because it’s a simple molecule that HOOKED TOGETHER INTO LONG STRINGS (you’d call them fibers!)

Cellulose is an organic compound with the formula (C6H10O5 yep, it’s basically a glucose molecule…that can be repeated INFINITELY) that is hooked up to form chains somewhere between of a few hundred to chains that hold over ten thousand glucose molecules. That’s why FIBER makes you feel full and then takes forever to break down into glucose when it can FINALLY be used by your body.

Then there are FATS which usually have slight variations on this molecule: C54H108O6

So, if I look at the bits and pieces of what I eat – if I’m eating sugars, they break down fast and slam into my blood sometimes in MINUTES. Fats take FOREVER to break down ‘cause they’re so big – they won’t slam my blood sugar for hours or maybe even days! If I eat fiber, I feel fuller and the sugars only leak off, having a minimal effect on my blood sugars.

So – my DQ Peanut Buster Parfait is mostly made up of the simpler sugars and takes little time to break down; where potato chips are mostly starch and oils – which take a MUCH LONGER TIME to break down into the glucose that shows up on my glucometer.

My DQ treat shows up early; the bag of chips show up late.

Source: https://tcoyd.org/2022/04/the-many-reasons-for-high-and-low-blood-sugars-and-why-we-need-a-lot-of-compassion-for-ourselves/?utm_source=google_cpc&utm_medium=ad_grant&utm_campaign=awareness&gad=1&gclid=CjwKCAjw8ZKmBhArEiwAspcJ7q9caZmUUmWbdd7o9TODGXdOL8BzGR-M090tEZmjYq5P1-pbxf3s6BoCcG0QAvD_BwE ,
Image: https://www.hcd.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/living-well-with-diabetes.jpg