From Hangry to Happy

A Powerful Way to Balance Blood Sugar

From Hangry to Happy — A Powerful Way to Balance Blood Sugar

Lunch Hour Lesson #53

A 10 minute walk 45-90 min after a full meal can support balanced energy all day.

I struggle with regulating my blood sugar. I write in My Health Journey how this is something that I have struggled with since childhood, and although it has gotten MUCH better, I still have to keep it in check.

Let's start with some basic anatomy and physiology here to understand how blood sugar regulation works in the body: When you eat a meal, the carbohydrates in that meal are broken down into glucose by your digestive system and absorbed into your bloodstream. Your pancreas then produces the hormone insulin to shuttle this glucose out of your blood stream and into your cells for energy storage. If your meal is big, or too high in sugar or other carbohydrates,you will have a high level of glucose circulating in your bloodstream within the 2 hours after eating the meal. This can cause symptoms of brain fog, extreme lethargy, sleepiness, or like you've "hit a wall". The body senses this and goes into overdrive, overcompensating with insulin production to get that sugar out of the blood stream as quickly as possible.

Since insulin is a blood-sugar lowering hormone, about 2 hours after your meal this flood of insulin has dropped your overall blood sugar levels too low.This causes symptoms such as headaches, shakiness, brain fog, hollow or empty feeling in the pit of the stomach, irritability, and food cravings. Or simply, hangry. Then we are compelled to eat food fast to bring our blood sugar levels back up and feel better.

This high and low blood sugar pattern can repeat over and over again throughout the day, and is called reactive hypoglycemia.

In order to break this pattern, we need to interrupt the spiking glucose before it can be stored away. Walking is what interrupts this spike. When you walk within 45-90 min following a meal, your muscles will uptake the glucose from the bloodstream without the need for insulin. The glucose can go right into the muscle cells and used immediately for energy.

If you walk too late after a big meal, that flood of insulin will have already shuttled too much circulating glucose out of the bloodstream and blood sugar will have dropped down into the "too low" range. You will be trying to exercise with low blood sugar, which doesn't feel good at all and you'll struggle with low energy and even worse hangry symptoms.

I was motivated to do a bit of an experiment with this in the past few weeks, because I was teaching students in the NTP Program about blood sugar regulation.

The two symptoms that I was trying to combat were: irritable hangry symptoms before lunch (low blood sugar) AND lethargy and sleepiness after lunch (high blood sugar).

These two symptoms were both uncomfortable and annoying!

So, I made a habit to do a 10-20 min gentle walk around my neighborhood about 45 min after breakfast, and/or after lunch. Sometimes I did both, but usually I would just do one because realistically that is what fit in my schedule. Plus it was hot in the afternoons, so after breakfast walking was more comfortable.

I needed a bit of extra motivation for this too, so I bought a cheap $10 pedometer to count my steps.

Wow — after all these years of adjusting my diet for blood sugar regulation, I was surprised how much of a difference I noticed in my symptoms with this walking strategy! Both the before and after lunch symptoms improved: I didn't feel the need to reach for a before-lunch snack, and I didn't feel as sleepy after lunch, even if my walk had been after breakfast. This has made me more motivated to keep up the walking habit.

Final Notes:
  • You can do any kind of exercise to interrupt the blood sugar spike — if I didn't have time to walk after lunch, I'd do a few knee pushups, or squats, or calf raises. That would help get rid of the brain fog sleepy feeling (high blood sugar). But I actually found walking to be the most effective.
  • This strategy only works if the walk is within 45-90 min following a meal. If it is too close to the meal, you will interrupt the digestive process. If it is too far away from the meal, you'll have missed the blood sugar spike and it will already be falling into low blood sugar territory.
  • Apparently it is even more effective for blood sugar regulation to spread out the walks and do three 10 min walks, one after each meal, vs. one longer 30 min walk.
  • This strategy works best if you can walk after your biggest meal of the day. That meal is ideally breakfast or lunch (not dinner), but that's a subject for another lesson.
Weekend Tip
Prep your walking stuff. Get out your shoes, your walking clothes, and any accessories and put them in a visible place. After your biggest meal of the day, go for a 10 min walk.