Let’s
just say that you’re not diabetic and, of course, you want to keep it that way.
But then let’s say that one (or both) of your parents is
diabetic.  Plus you have a brother, and your mom says
the doctor just told him that his blood sugars were a little
too high, and he’s pre-diabetic.  Now you’re
wondering if it’s inevitable that it’s going to happen to you, too.
It’s not.

If
you read last week’s post, you may recall that I recommend to people
in the situation I just described that they get themselves a glucometer.  One of
the best ways to prevent diabetes in people at high risk (and everyone
else, for that matter) is to check your own blood sugars after you eat
and figure out for yourself which foods and situations keep your blood
sugars from recovering normally.

You can get a glucometer, a
machine for measuring your blood sugar, at the drugstore without a
prescription.  Or you can ask your doctor for a prescription, and
perhaps decrease the cost a bit that way.  If you’re only planning to try it once
or twice, you can even ask your brother, or a friend, if you
can borrow theirs for an experiment.

The
next time you’re not sure whether something you ate made your blood sugars spike, check them about 60 to 90 minutes after you’re done eating.  If your
sugars aren’t back in the normal range, say 80-120, that meal (or
snack) had too much carbohydrate for your body to cope with.  Maybe it
was too much refined carbohydrate (white flour and sugar), or maybe it
was too much carbohydrate, period.  Or maybe there wasn’t that much of
any one single thing, but when you added up everything together, that
was too much.

So how can you keep your blood sugars from spiking a little too high for a little too long?  Here are a few ideas:

#1
Don’t make your insulin do all the work of getting your blood sugar
into the cells!  Make your muscles do their share — run around, play,
toss a ball, get some exercise!

#2  Eat something that you absorb slowly before you
eat something that you absorb fast.  There are three things that we
absorb slowly — protein, fat and fiber.  There are two things that we
absorb quickly — sugar and white (stripped) flour.  I can think of two
benefits to eating something absorbed slowly first.  The first is that the
protein, fat or fiber mixes in your stomach with the sugar and/or white
flour, and decreases its absorption.  The second is that your stomach
is fuller to start with, so you eat more of the “slow-absorb stuff” and
less of the “quick-absorb stuff” to begin with.

#3  Eat
something highly acidic before you eat something sweet.  I have some
ideas about why this works, but to be honest I have not seen any
research on it.  It’s one of those old wives tales that really seems to
work.  The idea would be to drink a glass of water with a teaspoon
of cider vinegar mixed in before you eat your meal.  Try eating the
identical meal on two different occasions, at the same time of day, in
as similar a circumstance as you can arrange.  Change only one
variable:  one time have a glass of water and vinegar first, and another time have the identical meal without.  Don’t forget to check your blood sugars 90 minutes after you eat, both times.
Then send me your results.

#4
Save refined carbohydrates for later in the day, when you aren’t so
insulin resistant.  We are all naturally most insulin resistant when we wake
up in the morning.  As the day goes by we become less resistant and more insulin
sensitive.  So if you really enjoy oatmeal but you discover that it spikes your
blood sugar, try it for dinner with something that increases the meal’s
protein content, like some nuts.  You could actually stir some peanut butter into the oatmeal instead, if you’d like.

#5  Choose carbohydrates that
come with the fiber attached instead of eating ones that have had the
fiber stripped away.  Whole grains instead of stripped, refined grains.  Oranges instead of orange juice.  Dates instead of sugar.  And so on.

#6  Drink water or iced tea instead of soda pop.  Enough said.

#7
Load up your plate with fruits and vegetables, and leave room for one
brownie, instead of two, or three, or four.  Notice that in nature you
don’t normally find carbohydrate without the fiber attached.  With very few exceptions, refined
carbohydrate is a recent human invention, and it
is one of the major causes of the obesity and diabetes
epidemic.

#8  Drink a glass of milk before you head on over to
your friend’s house to hang out and eat snacks.  This gets back to filling your belly with protein
before you eat refined carbohydrate.  And fat, if you drink 2% or whole
milk.

#9  Eat a handful of peanuts before you leave for a party.  Peanuts are rich in protein, fat, and fiber, a three-in-one
winner all around!  If you are allergic to peanuts, try almonds, walnuts, sunflower seeds or pumpkin seeds.

#10  See #1.  The more we move, the more we will
protect our blood sugars.  Think big.  See if you can organize a group
at work to walk together at lunchtime.  Find out what it would take to
put in sidewalks in your town.  A community garden.  Maybe you can talk your family into a weekly ball game after Sunday dinner.

Don’t take
my word for it.  Compare your blood sugar with and without these kinds
of interventions, and see what you get.  Figure out which kinds of
changes work best for you, and stick with them.  Teach them to your
friends, your siblings, and your parents.  Diabetes is not inevitable,
and pre-diabetes is reversible.  You can get yourself off the road to diabetes.