What if you could use one little trick to get smarter and be happier?
If you learn to balance your blood sugars on a daily basis, you will be doing just that. The highs and lows of blood sugar swings affect your brain’s capacity to work well by altering your ability to make important brain chemicals, such as serotonin and dopamine. Our brain chemicals, or neurotransmitters, determine how we think and feel, and their balance is essential to being a happy, intelligent human being.
The whole process looks something like this: Let’s use the neurotransmitter serotonin as an example. When you eat a pastry or a bagel, your intestinal tract is flooded with high amounts of glucose. This glucose is absorbed very quickly into your bloodstream and triggers a dramatic release of insulin from your pancreas. The high levels of insulin then push too much of the amino acid tryptophan into your brain, leading to an over-the-top production of serotonin.
You may be thinking that all of this serotonin should be a good thing, as it is our sense-of-well-being brain chemical, but this response is too much of a good thing, and it doesn’t last.
Too much serotonin leads to drowsiness, and if you get sleepy after your meals, it is a sure sign that you have consumed too much refined sugar. As quickly as they rose, serotonin levels will fall, leaving you craving more sugar and feeling depressed and irritable because your serotonin levels are low.
Over time, the ravages of this cycle create deficiencies of all the ingredients we need to make essential brain chemicals. For example, the depletion of B vitamins and methyl donors, such as methionine and choline, is the result of an overstimulation of the serotonin building pathways in our brain. This leaves us unable to make the serotonin we need to be emotionally balanced. Similar problems occur with the dopamine and GABA pathways.
The biggest cause of chronic, unstable blood sugars is the regular consumption of refined sugars in sweets and flour products. So the good news is that there is an easy cure for this problem. Help yourself by reducing or eliminating your intake of sugar.
Here are two strategies that may help:
Eating protein at every meal, especially breakfast, is one of the most effective ways of staying away from sugar. Having several small, protein-rich snacks throughout the day helps, too. Nuts and nut butters work well for this job.
Minimizing your daily caffeine intake can help keep blood sugars in balance. While caffeine gives you a temporary burst of energy, it will make you feel more tired and worn out in the long run. The fatigue can perpetuate sugar cravings as your brain realizes how sugar can provide a bump of serotonin to provide a temporary fix for the problem.
Don’t let sugar diminish your sparkle. Develop new eating habits to cultivate happiness and keep your brain healthy by working to balance your blood sugars every day.
drnancy@durangonaturalmedicine.com. Nancy Utter is a licensed naturopathic doctor at Durango Natural Medicine.
