Alyssa Chavez [00:00:00]:
Hello and welcome back to the Endo Belly Girl Podcast. Today's episode, we are going to be talking about all things blood sugar. We now, this episode came to be because recently on episode 19, which I will link to in the show notes, if you haven't had a chance to listen to that one yet, I was going through some of the signs and symptoms that happen in your body. Things that can point to all kinds of different things, ranging from vitamin and mineral deficiencies to essential fatty acid deficiencies. And we also talked about blood sugar dysregulation. And that was the thing that I heard so much feedback from, that so many people were messaging me and reaching out, saying, oh, my gosh, when you were talking about blood sugar, I felt like you were talking directly to me. And we just had all kinds of questions and wanting to know more about blood sugar and how that connects with endometriosis, which is such a great question. Now, why blood sugar? This is definitely something that we are going to dive into today because I know for me, for most of my life, until I really started to dig into this world of nutrition that I'm in now, used to think of blood sugar as something that diabetics needed to worry about, or that you only had to worry about when you got hangry because your blood sugar is too low.
Alyssa Chavez [00:01:28]:
Hangry, by the way, because I might refer to that a few times today, refers to the combination of hungry and angry. My husband knows all about hangry because that used to be. Used to be. Note that part of it, because this can be overcome by following some of the actionable steps we're going to talk about today when your blood sugar gets too low. Right. But there's really so much more to blood sugar. Blood sugar actually impacts everything in your body, everything from adrenal health to your hormones, which we all know is an important piece for endometriosis, to energy levels and so much more. We are going to get a little bit sciency today, but nothing too crazy.
Alyssa Chavez [00:02:16]:
So hang in there. It will all make sense. I promise. I will connect all the pieces for you as we go along. So, starting out, when we are talking about blood sugar, what we're really talking about is glucose. Glucose is the form of sugar that is in your blood. So if you notice, if you get a cut or something, you notice that that blood actually feels kind of sticky. That is because of the sugar, the glucose that's in your blood.
Alyssa Chavez [00:02:47]:
That glucose functions as your body's primary source of fuel. Now, glucose, which comes from sugars that we eat in the form of carbohydrates are your body's quick burning fuel source. So I like to think of carbs, glucose, like kindling for a fire. So if you are like me and my husband and you are fans of survivor, you know all about building fires, or maybe you actually have life experience doing that as well, building fires. When you are starting to build a fire, you start with kindling, which is something that burns up very quickly. So think, like little tiny twigs or dry pine needles or leaves or bits of paper, something that's going to light very easily but burn up very quickly and then it's gone. So if you start your fire with that kindling, but you don't have anything else to put on the fire, it burns and then it goes away and then it's gone, and then you'd have no fire anymore. And that is very similar to what happens in your body, which we're going to talk about a little bit today.
Alyssa Chavez [00:04:02]:
Meanwhile, fats that we consume are like logs on the fire. That's your long burning fuel source. This is all going to be important for what we're going to talk about today. We're going to come back to all of this. So I just want to make sure that everybody has a solid understanding of this going into it and just that if that's your only takeaway from today's episode, awesome. So that way you can kind of plan for your meals as you're going through your day, right? If you're sitting there and you're just eating carbs, let's say you sit there and you eat a piece of bread or you eat a donut. Not that I'm saying I would recommend that as an afternoon snack, but I know that that's something that people do that is pure carbs right there, not to mention a whole ton of sugar. And so that is going to burn up in your body very quickly.
Alyssa Chavez [00:04:48]:
It might give you that quick energy boost that you think you need, but it's always going to bring you crashing down very quickly, which you don't want. Meanwhile, if you consume fat in your diet, which can come from animal fats, meat has fat in it, it can come from nuts and seeds. There's all kinds of different sources of fat. Those are your logs on the fire. Those are your long burning fuel sources that are actually going to last for a while and leave you satiated, so you're not hungry again in an hour, right? So think of it like when you eat a piece of cake or a big cup of coffee, you get that quick burst of energy, but you come crashing back down very quickly. Now, let's stop here for a moment and talk about why blood sugar dysregulation is such a huge issue these days. Because it is. Rates of diabetes have increased like crazy in recent times.
Alyssa Chavez [00:05:52]:
But even if you're not diabetic, even if you're not on that spectrum, blood sugar has huge impacts for everybody. One thing that I see all the time, this definitely used to be my story, and I see it a lot with clients who come into my one on one practice, is what I call the blood sugar roller coaster. Picture this, you get up in the morning and you have nothing but a cup of coffee, right? I hear this all the time. I have coffee for breakfast. Okay, well, here's what happens when you have coffee for breakfast. That coffee, like we just talked about, gives you that quick spike in glucose, that quick blood sugar burst. So it might leave you feeling good right away after you drink it, you have that energy. Now, you can get through your day, but by 10:00 a.m.
Alyssa Chavez [00:06:43]:
You come crashing back down, and all of a sudden, you're starving, and you need something now immediately to bring your blood sugar back up. So then, okay, well, now I'm going to have a doughnut to get me through the rest of my morning until lunchtime. Well, guess what? The same exact thing happens. That doughnut spikes your blood sugar all over again. Maybe you have a cup of coffee alongside it, and that just doubles. And then again, you burn through that very quickly, and that blood sugar comes crashing right back down again. And then you repeat this process all throughout the day and becomes what we call a blood sugar roller coaster. You can't see me right now, but I'm drawing it with my hand, right where it's this big spike all the way up and way down and way up and way down.
Alyssa Chavez [00:07:29]:
And that, my friend, right there, is blood sugar dysregulation. If you were to look at and really monitor your blood sugar throughout the day, it should not have these huge spikes and dips. Your blood sugar should stay within a range. It's going to go up and down. Absolutely anytime that you eat a meal, your blood sugar is going to increase. If you were to measure your blood sugar right before a meal, when you haven't eaten in a few hours, your blood sugar definitely will be lower. It's going to naturally fluctuate. That's normal.
Alyssa Chavez [00:08:01]:
It's a matter of the size of those fluctuations. That is not normal. That is considered dysregulation. So how do you know if this is happening? First of all, do you feel that? Do you feel that sudden need of having sugar or carbs? Are you craving sugar and carbs? Do you feel irritable or shaky or hangry? I told you we were going to talk about that more today. When your meals are delayed, are you needing to have coffee or sugar to get through the day? Are you having fatigued that you feel better when you eat a meal? Are you having energy crashes in the afternoon? I'm talking that 02:00 p.m.. Slump. I'm looking at you. Yes, that is a sign of blood sugar dysregulation.
Alyssa Chavez [00:08:51]:
Now, why is this such a big issue nowadays in society? Why is blood sugar dysregulation and even diabetes becoming more and more prevalent? Once upon a time, food in general was way more scarce. But definitely sugar. If you go back even 100 years, which seems like a long time, but it's really not. Humans used to eat an average of one to two pounds of sugar per year. One to two pounds per year on average. Now, in this day and age, the 21st century that we are in, the average is 150 to 200 pounds of sugar per year on average, mind you. So that means that for many people, it's probably a lot more than 200 pounds of sugar per year. That's crazy.
Alyssa Chavez [00:09:55]:
150 to 200 pounds is these days, an average sized adult. You're eating that much sugar every year. Why? Sugar isn't everything. It's in the obvious things that we think about, like baked goods and cookies and cakes and candies and donuts and pastries. But sugar is also in things like salad dressings and sauces and even bacon. Yes, bacon. Check your packages. So much bacon comes with sugar in it.
Alyssa Chavez [00:10:28]:
Processed foods, check those ingredients labels. Sometimes you'll actually see sugar listed as an ingredient, but more often in processed foods, you're going to see something more like corn syrup. Right? Or if you look for any words that end in ose, like sucrose or glucose or something that ends in ose, that is code for sugar. There actually are a ton of words that stand for sugar because they try to hide that it's in your ingredients labels, and that's why it's so important that you really understand how to read your ingredients labels. But that's probably a story for another day, because I could really dive deep into that topic as well. Why does this matter so much? Speaking in more general terms, because blood sugar dysregulation interferes with virtually every metabolic function in your body. It messes with everything, right. Nothing in our body works independently.
Alyssa Chavez [00:11:30]:
Everything relies on everything else. That's why I do the functional type work that I'm doing, because it's such a big problem in this day and age that we tend to focus on just one little aspect of our health and we're not looking at the big picture. But what we're going to really talk about today is why this is such a problem for endometriosis in particular, because that's probably what most of you care about most when it comes to your health. If you're listening to this podcast, that is probably true for you. So we're going to go into a few different things, a few different ways that blood sugar impacts your body. We're going to look at how it impacts adrenals and stress response. We're going to look at how it impacts your hormones. That's a huge part of it.
Alyssa Chavez [00:12:14]:
Let's go ahead and start off with how your blood sugar impacts your adrenals and your stress response. So we talked about that blood sugar roller coaster, the huge spikes and dips that so many people have going on all throughout your day. Every single time that that happens, it puts your body into a state of emergency. Ever heard of that fight or flight mode? It's that. So every time your blood sugar crashes, especially when it has that huge downward crash, your body considers that to be an emergency. And it goes on turbo to bring your blood sugar back to neutral. And the exact same thing happens when your blood sugar spikes. When it goes really crazy high, your body works overtime to bring your blood sugar back down to neutral.
Alyssa Chavez [00:13:10]:
There's a whole bunch of processes that happen in your body to achieve that. I'm not going to go deep into the science of that today. If you're really interested, reach out to me and I can send you some resources on that. But I'm going to stick more with how it really impacts you and your day to day life. Now, when this is happening, when you're chronically in that blood sugar roller coaster and your body is chronically in that fight or flight emergency mode, that becomes automatically a chronic stressor in your body. Stress can be either internal or external. In this case, obviously, we are looking at internal stress. Blood sugar dysregulation, blood sugar spikes and dips is an internal stress and can become a chronic stressor in your body.
Alyssa Chavez [00:13:58]:
When there is chronic stress on your body, it impairs your body's ability to handle stress. So that may even mean that when a stressful situation comes up at work or at home that you are less able to cope with it because your body is busy coping with this blood sugar emergency that you constantly have going on. So that alone becomes a problem, right? And it has huge impacts also on your adrenals. So your adrenals are a huge part of that fight or flight response. When your adrenals are signaled that there is an emergency, you need to go into that fight or flight mode. They start to release hormones, and that can be adrenaline, noradrenaline, as well as cortisol. And again, your body can only do so much of that without going super in depth on the science of that today. It very much impacts your body's ability to handle further stressors, which does matter a lot, because then your adrenals impact your ability to handle overall stress.
Alyssa Chavez [00:15:04]:
Your adrenals also impact your sex hormones, which we're going to look at a little bit more hormones in general in a moment. But your adrenals themselves have huge impacts on your hormones because your adrenals actually can produce some of the sex hormones. But also when your body is under stress, the last thing that your body's going to prioritize, guess what, is? Reproduction. If your body's constantly in this fight or flight mode, your body is not going to be prioritizing ovulation or sex hormone production in general. It's just not right, because your body is so worried about just keeping you alive. That is priority number one. Okay, let's take a look at how blood sugar impacts your hormones, because this is a big one. In fact, in my practice, when someone comes to me and their hormones are out of balance, whether they've had testing done already or just coming to me with hormone imbalance symptoms in general, and maybe I'll go in and do some functional testing on the hormones.
Alyssa Chavez [00:16:07]:
One of the number one places that I look, I would say even the number one place that I look when I see hormone imbalances is blood sugar dysregulation. You cannot, cannot have balanced hormones without balanced blood sugar, period. I don't care how many hormone balancing herbs you are taking, you cannot fully bring your hormones back into balance without balanced blood sugar. So when we're talking about taking a root cause approach and really digging in and figuring out what is going on in your body, guess what? Balancing your blood sugar is a huge piece of that. Now, hyperglycemia, which is high blood sugar, can happen when you are, of course, consuming too much sugar and starchy carbs and or not enough protein, right? Because you need protein and fat as well to help keep your blood sugar balanced. Like we talked about earlier. You need those long burning fuel for your body to use for energy. When that happens, when your blood sugar is on a regular basis too high, that has huge impacts on your pancreas, which is one of the organs that is very involved in blood sugar regulation, as well as your adrenals, which we talked about a little bit already, and your liver, all three of those organs are heavily involved in blood sugar regulation.
Alyssa Chavez [00:17:41]:
And when you constantly have high blood sugar, all of those organs become overburdened. Now, for example, you're coming back to your liver, because a liver is definitely a huge piece of the puzzle when it comes to hormone balance, because your liver is responsible for helping to take excess hormones, primarily estrogen, right? Because we have estrogen circulating in our system, and we need that, and we want that. We never want to just get rid of the estrogen. Like I feel like we're taught in society these days, we want estrogen. We just want it to be in balance. But when estrogen is ready to be removed from your system, your body has these amazing feedback loops that tell the systems in place that it's time to remove some of this excess estrogen from your body. Your liver packages up that estrogen in a way that is safe for your body and helps to eliminate it from your body, helps to detoxify those excess hormones. When your liver is overburdened, because you constantly have too much sugar in your bloodstream, it cannot eliminate those excess hormones well.
Alyssa Chavez [00:18:55]:
It cannot detoxify well, because your liver can only take on so much at one time. So that right there becomes a problem. On top of that, your sex hormones are directly linked with insulin and insulin resistance. Now, insulin may be one of those things that you have heard of, again, in relation to diabetes, right? That's where we often hear about insulin, because people who really are struggling with diabetes often have to take insulin or have insulin on hand when they need it. Insulin is a hormone that your body releases to basically tell your cells to take up glucose. When we're talking insulin resistance, that is, when your cells don't respond well to insulin and can't take up glucose from your blood. As a result, your pancreas just makes more insulin to regulate your blood sugar levels. And then, guess what? The pancreas gets overburdened.
Alyssa Chavez [00:19:58]:
Your sex hormones are directly linked with that process because insulin plays a role in regulating the production and release of sex hormones, as does cortisol that is impacted by your adrenal health, like we talked about earlier. See, how everything is connected. We can't think of any part of our body as being just by itself. Everything works in conjunction with everything else. All the systems in your body help each other and communicate with each other. It's like a team effort going on in there. Now, chronic blood sugar dysregulation eventually can lead to lower DHEA. And DHEA is the precursor hormone to your sex hormones, progesterone and estrogen, and even testosterone, which we do even have testosterone as women, just in much lower amounts than men do.
Alyssa Chavez [00:20:49]:
When your dhea is low, you can end up having symptoms like low vitality, right? And weight gain. And those certainly aren't something that we want to have and can really impact your quality of life. When you're just feeling a lack of that vitality and you're feeling like you're not really able to give your best self and live up to your full potential, it doesn't feel great, right? And your chronic blood sugar dysregulation can have huge impacts on your dhea levels. And then that insulin resistance that we talked about, where your cells are just not communicating well to take up glucose, it can also contribute to an increase in body fat. When you have an increase in body fat, it promotes excess estrogen production, leading to estrogen dominance. And that estrogen dominance can contribute to the growth of endometriosis. Heavy periods, period pain, PMS symptoms, all of the fun things. So you can see how it just becomes a big old domino effect.
Alyssa Chavez [00:21:55]:
So just think, if you don't want to remember all of that information, that's okay. You can always come back to this episode. If you're curious, this may be one that you want to come back and relisten to a second time. But just remember that imbalanced blood sugar equals imbalanced overall hormone health. That's the big nugget that I want you to take away from today's episode. So where do we go from here? We have an understanding now of why blood sugar matters and how it impacts your hormones and so many other things in your body. So the next step, how do we rebalance your blood sugar so this doesn't become an issue. Now, like so many things, balancing your blood sugar can become a more complex issue depending on where you are along that pathway.
Alyssa Chavez [00:22:46]:
If you are already in a place of insulin resistance in your body, if you are maybe pre diabetic or diabetic, you may need a deeper layer of support. But what I will talk about today is the foundations that we can all be thinking about. And starting with that is going to help to support balanced blood sugar, because so much of the work that we do is related to your diet. Nutrition. Right. Food is at the very root of the work that I do. I know I talk a lot about other things like gut health and supplements and all of that as well. But really, balanced nutrition is at the root of all of that.
Alyssa Chavez [00:23:26]:
We are what we eat, or rather what I like to say. You are what you can absorb. But again, that's a topic for another day. Okay, balanced blood sugar. Step one, eat three balanced meals per day. Include protein and fat with every meal. The phrase that I like to use along in conjunction with that is no naked carbs. Remember that one? No naked carbs.
Alyssa Chavez [00:23:59]:
What does that mean? We never eat carbs by themselves. What are carbs? I guess that would be a good place to start. Carbohydrates include all of your fruits and vegetables. Those are carbohydrates? Yes, they are healthy carbs. I absolutely recommend eating fruits and vegetables, but they are carbohydrates. Right. Carbs also includes the things we typically think of, like breads and pastas, grains, things like that. But even if you're going to be eating, say, a banana or you're going to be eating some broccoli, great.
Alyssa Chavez [00:24:30]:
Those are wonderful things to eat. Awesome. Depending on your body, of course. But we never want to eat those things by themselves. If you're going to eat an apple, eat an apple with some nut butter so that you're getting some fat and a little bit of protein in there, right. Or have a piece of fruit along with some beef jerky or salmon jerky or whatever you like to eat. Right. Or an orange with a boiled egg.
Alyssa Chavez [00:24:58]:
Right. So there is some protein and some fat along with that fruit or vegetable that you're eating. And of course, when you're creating your plate, when you're creating an actual meal for yourself, the same rule applies. You never want to eat just carbs by themselves. So if you're one of those who like to sit down in the morning and just eat a big old bowl of oatmeal and that's it with some fruit on it, guess what? That is all carbs and will absolutely spike your blood sugar. So again, focus in on the protein and the fat. Maybe eat instead some scrambled eggs. Or if you are going to eat that oatmeal, at least add some collagen powder to it and some nut butter.
Alyssa Chavez [00:25:38]:
Or have a little extra protein of some sort on the side, have some bacon with it, right. Something so that you're not eating the naked carbs by themselves. And then three of those balanced meals every single day, breakfast, lunch and dinner. Right. We're focusing in on whole foods as much as possible, avoiding the processed foods as much as possible, in a large part, because those processed foods are very packed with sugar for the most part and are not going to do you any favors when it comes to your blood sugar regulation. Focusing on whole foods, meaning they are real foods that are grown in nature. An apple is a whole food. A piece of chicken is a whole food.
Alyssa Chavez [00:26:22]:
Right. That idea, does it come from nature? Can you tell where it came from? If it came in a package and it has a list of ingredients, it is a processed foods. And of course, processed foods come in a sliding scale. There are certainly some that are better than others. I personally try to avoid processed foods as much as I can, but if I do eat some, it's going to be on the healthier side, right. Looking at. Looking for at least the ingredients labels that have whole food ingredients that I recognize. That's an important piece of it.
Alyssa Chavez [00:26:53]:
Even if you're going to have coffee, right. Coffee goes in with the naked carbs thing. Have protein, right. Have your coffee after breakfast. And that can have huge impacts on your blood sugar regulation throughout the day. If you are planning to eat something sweet, like for me, I like dark chocolate. I have a thing for it. Love it.
Alyssa Chavez [00:27:14]:
Not giving it up. Don't have any plans to, but I will have. If I'm going to eat some chocolate, I'm going to have it right after a meal so that it is consumed again along with protein and fat. So the goal here is that you're just not eating the sugar, the carbs, all of that stuff by themselves because that's what's going to spike your blood sugar. Okay. And then in addition to that, we want to be thinking about meal spacing. Ideally, you want to have, give or take around four or 5 hours between meals. Now, if you're just starting out this process and you're used to snacking a whole lot, that might seem really challenging for you, I would say take that in stages.
Alyssa Chavez [00:27:53]:
It's okay for right now starting out, if you need a little snack in between. For me, sometimes I really struggle with having that break between lunch and dinner. It just becomes too long. Instead of four or 5 hours, sometimes it becomes six or 7 hours. Just because I have things going on in my life, because I am a human and so I'll have a snack to cover me so that I don't have too long of a gap where my blood sugar gets really, really low. But ideally you have a meal that is satiating enough because you packed it with protein and fat so that you can last four or 5 hours before you get hungry overnight. So that four or 5 hours, that's between breakfast and lunch, lunch and dinner overnight. My best recommendation is to go ten to 12 hours of fasting overnight, which shouldn't really be that hard in theory, because typically we sleep, or at least the goal is to sleep about 8 hours per night.
Alyssa Chavez [00:28:47]:
So that means you only have to stop eating about 2 hours before your bedtime and you're good to go. That's it. Right. Some people do better with a little shorter, some with a little longer. So you can experiment with that. It's more a matter of figuring out what's right for your unique body than it is following an exact time frame. Right. It's listening to your intuition on that because so often I think we're eating just out of habit because we're used to it or we're fasting, maybe because we are told that we should.
Alyssa Chavez [00:29:17]:
By the way, I did want to mention here and drop in that I do not recommend intermittent fasting at all if you're working to balance your hormones. Well, I shouldn't say at all, because even taking that ten to twelve hour fast per night, that is intermittent fasting. It's just a little bit shorter time frame. Because I know oftentimes when I hear about intermittent fasting, they're talking about maybe a 16 hours fast where you stop eating at 06:00 p.m. And you're not going to eat again until, what would that be like, 10:00 a.m. The next day. That is too long for a cycling female who is trying to balance their hormones. I should say, too that when it comes to intermittent fasting, and I'm not against intermittent fasting, by the way, it's more a matter of bio individuality on that because there have been many studies on intermittent fasting and all of its benefits.
Alyssa Chavez [00:30:11]:
You may have heard some of that out in the health world, but it's important to recognize that most of those studies have been done on men. And men are physiologically very different from women and particularly women who are currently cycling. It's a little bit different for postmenopausal women, and postmenopausal women can sometimes do a little bit better with intermittent fasting than younger women can. But there has been some studies going on and even clinical anecdotal stories that I've heard from fellow practitioners out there who are saying that they're seeing with people who cycling women who are intermittent fasting are coming in with hormones that are just way out of whack. And personally, I think that has a lot to do with just the blood sugar. Dipping too much on a regular basis, giving your body that sense of, I'm in an emergency, I need to bring my blood sugar back up. And that messing with your sex hormones, that's my opinion. That's not coming from any particular study or anything, just from what I've seen in my practice and from talking to other practitioners as so.
Alyssa Chavez [00:31:23]:
And then in general, when it comes to your diet, focus in on protein, fat, and non starchy vegetables like broccoli, asparagus, peppers, brussels sprouts, cauliflower, leafy green zucchini, beets, non starchy vegetables. Not to say that you can't eat the starchy ones. It's just you want to do those with a little more limitation in there so that you're focusing more on the types of veggies that won't spike your blood sugar quite so much. And then, of course, the protein and the fat, focus on that stuff, make that your priority. And then we can weave in the starchy veggies and fruits and things like that intermittently in between. Right. That's really your best starting point, kind of just from a foundational approach, and then we go from there. But remember, at the end of the day, it is always about a root cause approach.
Alyssa Chavez [00:32:19]:
Hormone imbalance is a symptom and not a root cause. Right. And blood sugar regulation is a huge part of that root cause. All right, my friend, I know we talked about a lot today. Like I said, this may be one of those episodes that you want to go back to and listen to a couple of times so that it can really sink in. I know it was a lot of information, but I hope that you were able to glean some great nuggets from today's episode. Maybe you were able to learn something or understand something in a different way. I hope that was helpful for you.
Alyssa Chavez [00:32:55]:
If you're listening to this and you're having questions pop up that you just want more clarity on, you want to have a deeper understanding of how all of this works, please feel free to reach out. I'm actually more than happy to answer questions and have conversations about this stuff. So you can come and find me on Instagram at belly Girl and slide into my dms there. Is that what we're saying these days? Slide into my DMS? I don't know. I don't know the lingo on this stuff. But anyway, you are more than welcome to send me a DM. Ask any questions that you have, any comments, any huge revelations that you got from this. If you're going to go in and do a little work on your own dietary approach and see how that impacts your blood sugar, I would love to hear if you got any positive results coming out of that.
Alyssa Chavez [00:33:43]:
And I hope you have the most wonderful day, my friend, and we will talk soon. Bye.