Day 31---SPIKES--Leave Them to the Athlete

Spikes can be good and bad. Perhaps when you hear the word "spike", like me, you immediately think of athletics. In baseball and track, spikes are good for traction: in basketball they are bad because you would slide on the floor.  Second, I think of a railroad spike. It holds the train track down, and that is a good thing. The only bad I can think of, is if they came out and caused a derailment. Third there are the spikes that were nailed into Jesus hands and feet on the cross. And that was a good thing. My sins were nailed to that cross. The bad thing is that Jesus had to die.  Then there are sugar spikes. The spikes are God's natural design to help regulate the sugar or glucose in our body. But if this process is overused or ignored you can become sick and diseased. Since the sugar spike is the one that everyone deals with daily, I want to think of them as BAD, because I do not want pre-diabetes or anything else that it might leads to: heart problems, cancer, strokes, other diseases and eventually a premature death. The great news is that you can control the SUGAR SPIKES  and that is what this blog is about.

When you conquer sugar spikes you are on your way to a healthy body and naturally controlled weight. So what in the world is a sugar spike and what causes sugar to spike?  It is caused by food. Yes I said FOOD---any food, not just sugar, but any high glycemic food or any food for that matter if you eat too much at one time. Because remember, carbohydrates, turn to sugar and protein and fats can become sugar if eaten in excess. So you can eat what is considered "healthy foods" and still spike your sugar, if you eat too much. You may have even "given up sugar", but your body will still produce sugar and this is God's design because sugar produces energy and we all need that to survive. But the problem is that we give our body more energy than it needs----remember the extra logs on the fire?  Sugar from whatever source (carbs, proteins or fat), causes an insulin response.  If the response is above normal, or constant our body will become insensitive to this response. As an example, have you ever heard a noise so annoying when you first heard it but after a while you did not hear it at all?  Larry and I were visiting a couple once who lived within a few feet of a train track. While we were there, trains passed by the house twice. It was so loud that we had to raise our voices to what seemed like a scream to me. Finally we asked how they could tolerate that noise that went on day and night. They looked at us kind of funny, and said, "We do not hear it, even while we are sleeping". Our body adjusts to this insulin so it begins to ignore the overproduction and it begins to store the insulin in your cells and so that is how you get fat. Your body will work overtime activating multiple mechanisms to reduce this sugar concentration in your blood and your tissues. This is because your body recognizes sugar as a poison. Yes I said poison---sugar can be toxic. I was killing myself one spoonful at a time by eating the SAD diet, and when I was on the diets that were not as sad, I struggled because I did not always restrict the amount of food  I could eat at one time.  As long as I didn't go over my calorie limit or points limit, I could eat all of them in one sitting. Then I could save some of my overall points and pig out on the week-end. I also ate a lot of wrong foods that the plan allowed--- foods that were causing my sugar to spike. So these diets did not work for me long range, because I was always hungry and could not figure out why.

Spiking is going on inside your body and you may not realize it. You will have the symptoms of a sugar spike, but you probably have never related it to that fact. Here are some symptoms, but I have never heard anyone say, "I have a headache---must be a sugar spike after eating that big meal with the added dessert". What I would say --- it is allergy season, or my sinuses are bothering me, or I am under stress at work, etc.  So what did I do? I took aspirin. It stopped the pain, you know the quick fix, but it did not allow me to address the problem and certainly not solve the problem. Taking aspirin just added toxins to my body. What about when you are tired, thirsty, have trouble concentrating, blurred vision, or frequent urination?  And if you get into the high range it can cause you to feel sick to your stomach and you might throw up. When I had any of these symptoms I never associated it with what I had eaten two hours earlier. Two hours after you eat is when the spikes occur, or at least when you can measure it. Now when these spikes or symptoms of the spikes occur, I look back and ask myself, "what did I eat?" Remember from a previous blogs---- pain is a blessing. It says STOP and figure out what is causing it. But most people say, I have a pain so I am going to the doctor to get something for the pain. Does the doctor say, "Make me a list of everything you ate before you had the pain and go back as far as you can remember'? No, he will say, "Here, let’s try these pain pills." You have no pain while taking the meds, but my guess is that it will come back if you do not address the problem. Now don't get me wrong. If I have excruciating chest pains, I am going straight to the emergency room with no hesitation. But have you visited the emergency room lately?  Enough said.



On my journey of learning to eat God's way I began to be aware of high glycemic foods. I installed an app on my phone called Glycemic Index. I do not use it often because I basically have no sugar spikes now.  I also know immediately when I do and I make an adjustment. But sometimes when I know I am going to have a heavier meal (by volume) than usual, I will check to see if I need to make an adjustment in food before I eat. So instead of having a banana which has a glycemic index of 65, I might have grapes which has a glycemic index of 46. There are lots of free tools out there to use if you need them, especially at the beginning when you are learning how food affects your body. So how do I know when my sugar has spiked? I judge it by how quickly I get hungry after I have eaten. It is as simple as that for me. When I eat high glycemic foods or too much food, there was an insulin response which causes a sugar crash that leads to a desire for more sugar. This is hunger. Your body sees this crash as an emergency so you crave more food to fix the problem. So you need a snack shortly after your meal because you are hungry. I would call it getting "snacky". Then the symptoms show up---you are tired, thirsty, irritable, stressed or sleepy. Then this impacts your mood. In the past I would start blaming myself for having no self-control or looking fat in my clothes--- you know all the doomsday thoughts. These mood swings mess with your hormones so your body kicks in dopamine and serotonin--- the same hormones that contribute to addiction of drugs. It fosters your addiction of sugar, because sugar is a drug. So to make myself feel better I would go find some "pleasure"----cookies, chips, cokes, you name it. A drug addict’s pleasure is more drugs.  This sugar would give me a burst of energy, but then that lead to another "crash"----and the cycle would continue until I went to bed.  I was living from one crash to another. Every morning I would say, "I'm going to do better today". But I would ignorantly eat wrong breakfast foods, and the battle would begin. Some days I guess I did do better, otherwise I would have been on the Biggest Loser. The good news is coming.

I began to read about food and how it impacted my bodily functions. I found that food controls everything in your body, but most importantly it controls your wellness, as well as your sickness. And I think it is sad that doctors and nurses are required to have so little training in nutrition.  I know there are illnesses that people are born with, for which they have no control, but that is a very small percentage of the population. And I just wonder if you could trace that disability or disease back to the diet of the mother or the environment in which she lived, if we could find some interesting facts. I know this would not be the case a lot of times, but I really do believe our polluted environment is a factor in illnesses. It seems that the world is not interested in the things that are killing us----GMO foods, pesticides, herbicides, toxins in our cosmetics, putting sugar (poison) in our processed foods, unnecessary medical treatments and misuse of pharmaceuticals---all the things that we could control. OK I'm off the soapbox.

 Anyway on my journey to health I realized that I had conquered hunger and I did not know how. I just knew that I could go hours without eating. Larry and I started intermittent fasting. On a normal day we start eating around 12 o'clock. And really we don't eat because we are hungry, we eat because we know if we don't eat we might not eat all day. We could literally eat only one meal a day and be fine. But we are so excited about good food that we are now putting into our system, because it is so good. We want to get raw veggies---broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, peppers, and fruits---blueberries, strawberries, grapes, etc, into our stomachs to fight free radicals that destroy you. We want to get rid of the toxins by good bowel movements 2-3 times because we are eating good, fibrous foods. There is an excitement knowing that we are cooperating with God to create a healthy body. It was society and the food producers that have created the three meals a day and two snacks in between. We do not need that many meals and that many snacks. But you know why we do it---because we are HUNGRY. And you know why you are hungry? It is because you are eating too much food and the wrong kinds of food that causes sugar spikes. The spikes produce the hunger. I had not been hungry for so long that I was taking it for granted. Some of my meals have been a handful of nuts. I thought---you know-- I need to tell everyone how I now go through life and am not controlled by food. It was an earth shaking thought because it was the first time in my life that I could say that. In Philippians Paul says it this way, "their God is their belly". That certainly described me. I wanted you to know that you belly does not have to dictate your life, that you can be free. So I decided to do an experiment this week at my son's (Brad) house while I was watching my Grandchildren and the pets. I knew I was going to eat out more than usual anyway, so this seemed to be the perfect time to go back to the SAD diet and illustrate SUGAR SPIKES.  You may say, well that is just an excuse for you to eat bad. No, it was a real sacrifice, because at the end I suffered some of the things that I had not suffered in months. It was really good for me to go back and revisit how I had lived in a sick body for so many years and did not even know it or how to fix it. So this is what I did. I ate the SAD diet and two hours later I checked my blood and here is the story and the results.

I bought a blood glucose testing kit at Walmart, and I bought the cheapest one there---nine bucks I think.  Don't laugh, you know I am cheap!! I know it is probably not as accurate as the $25 up ones but I am not as interested in the accurate blood sugar numbers as I am interested in how the numbers spike. So now off to breakfast. Larry is participating in everything but the blood test. He said he would sacrifice just for me and that he had pricked his finger so many times in college that he had enough.

When I got up that morning my blood sugar was 119. I later figured out that it was a little higher than normal because I had eaten so late the night before.  Remember I am at someone else's house living on their schedule. But anyway that is beside the point. I could not go directly to Waffle House after getting out of bed, so I had a couple of hours to kill. I had read that drinking water would help lower your blood sugar so I had two glasses of water plus my morning lemon water. I took my blood sugar again and Voila! My blood sugar dropped to 109. Now it was time to go eat.

We had the All Star Breakfast at Waffle House, which consisted of bacon (Larry had country ham and I ate a couple of bites of this), two eggs over medium, hash browns, whole wheat toast, a plain waffle and two cups of coffee.  I was so stuffed. First of all with intermittent fasting I have not been eating breakfast, second of all that was just a lot of food. I took my blood sugar two hours after eating and it was 149. It spiked 40 points. I did not know if that was a large spike or not. I told Larry that there was no way I could eat lunch. But guess what?  I knew it was a large enough "spike" because I got hungry and so did Larry. Now I had also read that exercise would bring your blood sugar down. So Larry and I went for a two mile walk. When I got back I took my blood sugar and it was 100. It dropped 40 points. So exercise works too.

Now we are off to lunch. I took my blood sugar before lunch and it was 100. For lunch we went to Burger King. Oh I have missed my Whoppers. Shouldn't that name in itself tell me something?  Well I ordered a Whopper Combo--you know--- whopper, fries and a COKE with a small sundae on the side. Larry couldn't do the Coke thing so he carried in his kombucha!!!  Well, two hours later my blood sugar was 169---up 69 points. Next was dinner.

I took my blood sugar before I left and it was back at 100. By the way, Larry and I were hungry again. I had 1/2 rack of ribs, tossed salad, pickled beets and water. Two hours later my blood sugar was 249. So it is spiking more every time. Time to go to bed and I was miserable. I was up and down all night with peeing, hot flashes, indigestion, general tossing and turning and the next morning I was wiped out. I dragged out of bed with no energy and I hurt all over. Joshua said when I walked into the kitchen "Grandmother you look tired, " and I wanted to add and I feel old. Now on to the next test.



We were back to intermittent fasting, the next morning, but Larry made regular breakfast food for lunch so I would be able to compare a good breakfast vs. a bad one. So he fixed bacon and eggs and coffee. I took my blood sugar before I ate and it was 100. Two hours after I ate it was 96. There were no carbs in that breakfast and therefore no sugar to spike and I had eaten a reasonable amount.  I'm not sure why it went down 4 points because eating in general, even good eating, should have raised the blood sugar some, I would think. This may be a time I need to go back and revisit the "cheap Walmart brand”. 

Anyway, I thought it was a good illustration for you to see how you can control your sugar spikes through what you eat, the water you drink, and exercising. I see more clearly now when I was advised to drink lots of water and if possible exercise some after every meal.  I would not take anything for that trial day night. I think I had forgotten how it felt to feel bloated, tired, sleepy, and yes, a little irritable because I had muscle pains that I have not had in a long time. To think that I lived this way every day makes me SAD. To think that I had just chalked it up to "old age" makes me SAD. To remember those sleepless nights makes me SAD.  And it was all because I had eaten the SAD diet.

I hope you have realized how sugar is poisoning us. I hope you realize how you can be Healthy and Happy if you are willing to change your lifestyle.  I yearn for the day, that I know will never come, when people can sit down with a medical doctor and after they tell him what is wrong and after he does a thorough physical examination with blood tests, he will look you in the eye and say, " Here is a diet filled with every good thing your body needs to function properly. Go home and follow this completely for 30 days, and then come back in a month and we will do more tests to see if anything has improved and we will go from there". That is true "health care". Fortunately, there is a growing movement in this country demanding real "health care providers". The problem is that we have been brainwashed to think you have to have a medical degree to be credible. We never ask about their success rate. Wonder what would happen if we interviewed doctors and asked that question?  Doc, I have diabetes. I know of doctors who have cured diabetes, what is your cure rate? I read a story of a lady doctor who graduated medical school with those aspirations of curing her patients. After she lost 48 in one year using the standard medical care, she began to give them a choice of treatment---natural or conventional. Most chose natural and began to get well. Long story short, the pressure from the other doctors and the pharmaceutical reps caused her to close up shop and move to Puerto Rico. A lot of the medical doctors who have crossed over the line into holistic medicine did so because they had major medical problems themselves---cancer of all kinds, ALS, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia, Crohn's disease and on and on--- and they cured themselves through diet. At that point they started their own clinics and sadly many of them have been blackballed by the medical professionals and are called quacks. Fortunately also, there are a lot of nurse practitioners and physician assistants who are starting their own clinics and they are giving true health care. They are all doing this at a sacrifice, because the "big" money is not always there like it could be elsewhere. For many of the holistic doctors, insurance will not pay for their services because they are not board certified and cannot write prescriptions. So if a patient does not have the money they have to go elsewhere.  I have read that when a person who has cancer goes to an oncologist, he can count on being paid $900,000 before that person dies. Do the math. This is ONE patient. And only 2% of the patients who go the conventional route of chemo/radiation survive past 5 years. But 24% live past 5 years who do NOTHING. 84% live past 5 years who follow the holistic route, and many of them are cured and live way past five years. No one does the statistics for anything above 5---I think we know why. I have told my 3 grandchildren that if they chose to become a holistic doctor I would pay for their education. As for now I have no takers. They think me and my coconut oil is crazy. Sometimes I do, too.  I just know one thing. I am healthier and happier than I have ever been in my life.