When I look around acne forums I see one type of thread popping again and again.
“What can I do to lower my blood sugar?”
Sometimes they talk about foods that should lower blood sugar levels, sometimes it’s about herbs, and lately even about salt.
Most time the discussion on these threads is so far off the base that it’s almost painful to read. Btw, one reason I don’t recommend these forums is the amount of misinformation being passed around there. Interaction is good, but without solid understanding of health most people get horribly confused there.
Back to the point, and let’s see if we can get to the bottom of this issue.
There’s no need to make blood sugar control more complicated than it is. Your blood sugar levels are affected by two things: input and output. Input is the amount of glucose that goes into your bloodstream and output is the amount that leaves. Quite simple.
For keeping blood sugar levels steady output is far more important than input. I know you’ve probably heard otherwise, but that’s just one more jewel of misinformation.
As long as the output is working well your blood sugar levels remain stable – even if you screw the input with lots of refined sugar.
Output is all about your lifestyle. Burn more calories than you eat (or don’t overeat), exercise, sleep well and keep the fat off your plate.
Do that and your blood sugar levels remain just fine.
For some reason people don’t get this. Confusion about diet is probably one reason. People don’t understand how diet affects insulin resistance. And maybe some people just don’t want to accept the responsibility. It’s always easier to look for herbs and other easy solutions rather than change the way you life your life.
Whatever the reason be, it shows up as confusion in acne forums and keeps acne victims from finding real solutions.
Let’s finish by looking at few examples of the kinds of threads I’ve seen recently.
Which foods lower blood sugar levels?
This question is fundamentally flawed. No food lowers blood sugar levels. Food is all about input, and all foods increase blood sugar levels. But I guess that person meant to ask what he/she could eat to keep blood sugar levels stable. Again, that’s more about output. Just make sure you don’t mess up the output with your diet.
If you are quite not sure how to do that, pick up a copy of Clear for Life and I’ll explain it in detail. It’s something most people wouldn’t figure out on their own. Thanks to the diet ‘advice’ we’ve received from out parents, school and the media.
Cinnamon lowers blood sugar levels!!!
You could just as well replace cinnamon with some other herb. Many herbs mimic the effect of insulin or stimulate the pancreas to produce more insulin. So the give the illusion that they lower blood sugar levels.
At the outset it might seem like a good idea to take these herbs to lower your blood sugar levels. But it really isn’t.
See, insulin resistance is again one of those protective mechanisms I talked about in Acne 101. If you have insulin resistance, it’s there for a reason. Cells develop insulin resistance for example when you eat more than you need. It’s a result of over-nutrition, or I should say over-calories.
So when you take these herbs you force the cells to take in more glucose they can use. And perhaps that’s not very smart.
Pancreas also has its limits. If you stimulate it with herbs or drugs at some point it will collapse, and you’ll get type 1 diabetes.
Please remember that herbs are drugs, only made by nature. They medicate but never deal with the real problem.
Salt lowers blood sugar
This was the one theory that got me shaking my head the most.
So some scientists made a study that showed that salt intake lowers blood sugar levels. As this amazing discovery is in the form or scientific study people take this nonsense seriously. And to think of this shows how badly people misunderstand the function of blood sugar.
It’s like the fuel tank in your car. When your cells need fuel they take glucose from the bloodstream. When they don’t need it, they don’t take it. It’s really that simple. And to think that salt somehow makes the cells more ‘hungry’ is just absurd.
But what about the study? It showed that salt lowers blood sugar levels. That’s a scientific fact.
Yes, it’s possible that the study showed that. But blood sugar level is measured as concentration of glucose in a particular volume of blood. You can lower blood sugar levels two ways: by reducing the amount of glucose or increasing the volume of blood.
What happens when you eat salt? You get thirsty.
Salt is extremely poisonous to life. It kills all life – and that includes you also (I’ll get to your objection soon, just hold on). For the body to cope with the salt you eat, it must dilute it. The solution to pollution is dilution. That’s why you get thirsty. And if you don’t drink water it’s going to pull it out of your cells and cause dehydration.
So, if after eating salt your blood volume increases by 1 liter because of the water your drink and gets pulled from your cells, of course your blood sugar levels will be ‘lower’. But it’s just an illusion. You still have the same amount of glucose in the blood. So no real progress was made. In fact you wrecked your health by eating poison.
I know that by this time someone is just dying to object. Saying that salt is essential to us. That it’s only harmful in large quantities. The flawed reasoning goes that everything is dangerous in excessive quantities – even water.
Of course the difference is that no matter how little salt you take it’s going to cause an adverse reaction. But the body can deal with it in small quantities. Water causes no adverse reaction in normal quantities. And the lethal dose of salt is not very much. The average American eat 1/8th of it every day. So it’s not very difficult to eat a lethal dose of salt almost by accident. But for you to kill yourself by drinking too much water?
I trust that you understand the difference.
Again, I have to stress that there are no secrets of shortcuts to clear skin and happiness. Every such shortcut you take is just going to make the matters worse in the long run.
Just eat healthy, respect the way your body works and be merry. That’s the ‘secret’.
And of course buy Clear for Life, and all your problems will be magically solved for this and all your future lives to come : )