10 Ways To Balance Blood Sugars

Today’s almonds have been activated by:

⏰ IN A RUSH?

Today’s 30-Second Summary

If you don’t have time to read the whole email today, here are some key takeaways:

• For balanced blood sugars, the order in which we eat foods can be as important as what we eat. The best order at mealtimes is:

  • Fiber first

  • Protein and fat second

  • Starches and sugars last

• We have lots more tips about keeping blood sugars balanced (see today’s main feature!)

• Verb Energy are offering high protein, low sugar snack bars at a very good price (and are today’s sponsor!)

• Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs may help reduce your risk of heart attack

• Cognitive behavioral therapy is beneficial for individuals with post-viral fatigue after COVID-19

• The ability to chew properly may improve blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes

• Talking on your cell phone may increase hypertension risk

Read on to learn about these things and more…

👀 WATCH AND LEARN

12 Signs That You'll Live to 100 Years Old

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically!

The Twelve Things:

1. You watch what you eat

2. You love tea

3. You eat purple food

4. You don’t like red meat

5. You like to go out for a run

6. You look on the bright side

7. You get enough sleep

8. You have lots of friends

9. You’re a woman

10. You had kids later in life

11. Your grandparents lived until a ripe old age

12. You’re spiritual

(we recommend you watch the video for more details, though, such as what kinds of purple foods count or not, how much of what kind of running, and what the “you had kids later in life” bit’s whole deal is!)

🍰 MAIN FEATURE

“Let Them Eat Cake”, She Said…

This is Jessie Inchauspé, a French biochemist and author. She’s most known for her best-selling “Glucose Revolution: The Life-Changing Power Of Balancing Your Blood Sugar”.

It’s a great book (which we reviewed recently) and you absolutely should read it, but meanwhile, we’re going to distill at least the most critical core ideas, 10almonds style. In this case, her “ten hacks”:

Eat foods in the right order

The order is:

1. Fiber first

2. Protein and fat second

3. Starches and sugars last

What happens here is… the fiber perks up the gut bacteria, the protein and fat will then be better-digested next, and the starches and sugars will try to jump the line, but they can’t because the fiber is a physical speedbump and the proteins and fats are taking the prime place for being digested. So instead, the starches and sugars—usually responsible for blood sugar spikes—get processed much more gradually, resulting in a nice even curve.

Add a green starter to all your meals

We know what you’re thinking: “that’s just the first one again”, but no. This is an extra starter, before you get to that. If you’re the cook of the household, this can absolutely simply mean snacking on green ingredients while cooking.

Stop counting calories

Especially, she advises: stop worrying about extra calories from fats, such as if doing an oil-and-vinegar dressing for salad—which she also recommends, because all three components (the oil, the vinegar, and the salad) help even out blood sugar levels.

Flatten your breakfast curve

For many, breakfast is the starchiest meal of the day, if not the sugariest. Inchauspé recommends flipping this (ideally) or softening it (if you really must have a carb-based breakfast):

• Top choices include: a warm vegetable salad, fish, or eggs (or tofu if you don’t do animal products).

• Next-best include: if you must have toast, make sure to have butter (and/or the aforementioned egg/tofu, for example) to give your digestion an extra thing to do.

• Also: she recommends skipping the juice in favour of home-made breakfast smoothies. That way, instead of basically just sugar with some vitamins, you’re getting a range of nutrients that, if you stack it right, can constitute a balanced meal itself, with fiber + protein + fat + carbs.

As an extra note from the 10almonds team: come to think of it, today’s sponsor’s product would be a great choice for this “mixed nutrient breakfast” idea! But more on that later 😎

Have any type of sugar—they’re all the same

They’re technically not, but the point is that your body will immediately take them apart and then they will be just the same. Whether it’s the cheapest white sugar or the most expensive organic lovingly hand-reared free-range agave nectar, your body is going to immediately give it the chop-shop treatment (a process so quick as to be practically instantaneous) and say “this is now glucose”.

Pick a dessert over a sweet snack

Remember that about the right order for foods? A dessert, when your body is already digesting dinner, is going to make much less of a glucose spike than, say, a blueberry muffin when all you’ve had this morning is coffee and juice.

Reach for the vinegar before you eat

We recently did a whole main feature about this, so we’ll not double up today!

After you eat, move

The glucose you eat will be used to replace lost muscle glycogen, before any left over is stored as fat… and, while it’s waiting to be stored as fat, just sitting in your bloodstream being high blood sugars. So, this whole thing will go a lot better if you are actively using muscle glycogen (by moving your body).

Inchauspé gives a metaphor: imagine a steam train worker, shoveling coal into the furnace. Meanwhile, other workers are bringing more coal. If the train is moving quickly, the coal can be shoveled into the furnace and burned and won’t build up so quickly. But if the train is moving slowly or not at all, that coal is just going to build up and build up, until the worker can shovel no more because of being neck-deep in coal.

Same with your blood sugars!

If you want to snack, go low-sugar

In the category of advice that will shock nobody: sugary snacks aren’t good for avoiding blood sugar spikes! This one probably didn’t need a chapter devoted to it, but anyway: low sugar is indeed the way to go for snacks.

Put some clothes on your carbs

This is about olive oil on pasta, butter on potatoes, and so forth. Basically, anything starchy is going to be broken down quickly to sugar and sent straight into the bloodstream, if there’s nothing to slow it down. If you’re wondering what to do with rice: adding a tablespoon of chia seeds to the rice while cooking (so they’re cooked together) will add very healthy fats to your rice, and (because they’ve been cooked) will not seem like eating seeds, by the way. In terms of texture and appearance, it’ll be as though you threw some black pepper in*

*which you should also do for many reasons, but that’s beyond the scope of this “about blood sugars” feature!

Wanting to know more about the science of this?

We’ve done all we have room for here today, but Inchauspé is, as ever, happy to explain it herself:

Click Here If The Embedded Video Doesn’t Load Automatically

Prefer text? Check out:

The Science Behind Glucose Goddess

❤️ OUR SPONSORS MAKE THIS PUBLICATION POSSIBLE

Verb Energy: High protein, low sugar bars with organic green tea caffeine!

Forget the overpriced latte, and supercharge your morning with these:

Verb Energy are tasty energy bars that…

• Are high protein, low sugar

  • (they even have a <2g sugar option!)

• Contain 80mg caffeine from organic green tea

  • (so about as much caffeine as an espresso)

There’s a wide variety of flavors, from cookie dough to caramel macchiato, s’mores to chocolate sea salt—see their shop for full list of flavors!

As for price, they do various deals, but to give you an idea, they’re typically just a little over a dollar per bar—so, cheaper than the much more sugary energy bars in your local supermarket!

Click Here To Check Out Verb Energy Bars!

(Psst, use code “STACK” to enjoy 30% off)

🌎 AROUND THE WEB

What’s happening in the health world…

• Is there such a thing as an addictive personality?

• Ozempic and other GLP-1 drugs may help reduce your risk of heart attack

• Cognitive behavioral therapy is beneficial for individuals with post-viral fatigue after COVID-19

• The ability to chew properly may improve blood sugar levels in patients with type 2 diabetes

• Talking on your cell phone may increase hypertension risk

• Eye-opening drug discovery may help treat age-related macular degeneration

• This knitted glove massages the hand to treat edema

More to come tomorrow!

📖 ONE-MINUTE BOOK REVIEW

Ikigai: The Japanese Secret to a Long and Happy Life - by Héctor García and Francesc Miralles

Ikigai is the Japanese term for what in English we often call “raison d'être”... in French, because English is like that.

But in other words: ikigai is one's purpose in life, one’s reason for living.

The authors of this work spend some chapters extolling the virtues of finding one's ikigai, and the health benefits that doing so can convey. It is, quite clearly, an important and relevant factor.

The rest of the book goes beyond that, though, and takes a holistic look at why (and how) healthy longevity is enjoyed by:

• Japanese people in general,

• Okinawans in particular,

• Residents of Okinawa's "blue zone" village with the highest percentage of supercentenarians, most of all.

Covering considerations from ikigai to diet to small daily habits to attitudes to life, we're essentially looking at a blueprint for healthy longevity.

For a book whose title and cover suggests a philosophy-heavy content, there's a lot of science in here too, by the way! From microbiology to psychiatry to nutrition science to cancer research, this book covers all bases.

In short: this book gives a lot of good science-based suggestions for adjustments we can make to our lives, without moving to an Okinawan village!

Click Here To Check Out Ikigai on Amazon Today!

May your life be counted both by the number of breaths you take, and the number of moments that take your breath away,

The 10almonds Team