Glycemic Index vs Glycemic Load vs Insulin Index

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:

• Glycemic index already mystifies a lot of people, and then there’s glycemic load, and even an insulin index too. What’s the difference, and is it useful?

  • Today’s main feature demystifies each of these, explaining what they are, how they’re calculated, and their uses and limitations, before finishing up with advice on implementation without hassle.

• Have you tried everything for sleep and still find yourself getting to sleep later than you’d like, and/or sleeping less soundly than you’d like?

  • Today’s sponsor Cornbread Hemp is offering 30% of their gummies that combine organic CBD with lavender, valerian, and chamomile, for a synergistic soporific effect that’ll have you peacefully snoozing in no time, guaranteed (literally, they offer a guarantee).

• Today’s featured recipe is for heart- and gut-healthy cucumber canapés-crudités! Easy to make, and you’ll be glad you did.

Read on to learn more about these things, or click here to visit our archive

A Word To The Wise

Watch and Learn

Anti-Inflammatory Diet 101 (What to Eat to Fight Inflammation)

Prefer text? The above video will take you to a 10almonds page with a text-overview, as well as the video!

Saturday Life Hacks

How To Actually Use Those Indices

Carbohydrates are essential for our life, and/but often bring about our early demise. It would be a very conveniently simple world if it were simply a matter of “enjoy in moderation”, but the truth is, it’s not that simple.

To take an extreme example, for the sake of clearest illustration: The person who eats an 80% whole fruit diet (and makes up the necessary protein and fats etc in the other 20%) will probably be healthier than the person who eats a “standard American diet”, despite not practising moderation in their fruit-eating activities. The “standard American diet” has many faults, and one of those faults is how it promotes sporadic insulin spikes leading to metabolic disease.

If your breakfast is a glass of orange juice, this is a supremely “moderate” consumption, but an insulin spike is an insulin spike.

Quick sidenote: if you’re wondering why eating immoderate amounts of fruit is unlikely to cause such spikes, but a single glass of orange juice is, check out:

Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?

Glycemic Index

The first tool in our toolbox here is glycemic index, or GI.

GI measures how much a carb-containing food raises blood glucose levels, also called blood sugar levels, but it’s just glucose that’s actually measured, bearing in mind that more complex carbs will generally get broken down to glucose.

Pure glucose has a GI of 100, and other foods are ranked from 0 to 100 based on how they compare.

Sometimes, what we do to foods changes its GI.

• Some is because it changed form, like the above example of whole fruit (low GI) vs fruit juice (high GI).

• Some is because of more “industrial” refinement processes, such as whole grain wheat (medium GI) vs white flour and white flour products (high GI)

• Some is because of other changes, like starches that were allowed to cool before being reheated (or eaten cold).

Broadly speaking, a daily average GI of 45 is considered great.

But that’s not the whole story…

Glycemic Load

Glycemic Load, or GL, takes the GI and says “ok, but how much of it was there?”, because this is often relevant information.

Refined sugar may have a high GI, but half a teaspoon of sugar in your coffee isn’t going to move your blood sugar levels as much as a glass of Coke, say—the latter simply has more sugar in, and just the same zero fiber.

GL is calculated by (grams of carbs / 100) x GI, by the way.

But it still misses some important things, so now let’s look at…

Insulin Index

Insulin Index, which does not get an abbreviation (probably because of the potentially confusing appearance of “II”), measures the rise in insulin levels, regardless of glucose levels.

This is important, because a lot of insulin response is independent of blood glucose:

• Some is because of other sugars, some some is in response to fats, and yes, even proteins.

• Some is a function of metabolic base rate.

• Some is a stress response.

• Some remains a mystery!

Another reason it’s important is that insulin drives weight gain and metabolic disorders far more than glucose.

Note: the indices of foods are calculated based on average non-diabetic response. If for example you have Type 1 Diabetes, then when you take a certain food, your rise in insulin is going to be whatever insulin you then take, because your body’s insulin response is disrupted by being too busy fighting a civil war in your pancreas.

If your diabetes is type 2, or you are prediabetic, then a lot of different things could happen depending on the stage and state of your diabetes, but the insulin index is still a very good thing to be aware of, because you want to resensitize your body to insulin, which means (barring any urgent actions for immediate management of hyper- or hypoglycemia, obviously) you want to eat foods with a low insulin index where possible.

Great! What foods have a low insulin index?

Many factors affect insulin index, but to speak in general terms:

• Whole plant foods are usually top-tier options

• Lean and/or white meats generally have lower insulin index than red and/or fatty ones

• Unprocessed is generally lower than processed

• The more solid a food is, generally the lower its insulin index compared to a less solid version of the same food (e.g. baked potatoes vs mashed potatoes; cheese vs milk, etc)

But do remember the non-food factors too! This means where possible:

• reducing/managing stress

• getting frequent exercise

• getting good sleep

• practising intermittent fasting

See for example (we promise you it’s relevant):

Fix Chronic Fatigue & Regain Your Energy, By Science

…as are (especially recommendable!) the two links we drop at the bottom of that page; do check them out if you can 😎

Take care!

Our Sponsors Make This Publication Possible

Upgrade your sleep routine with these best-selling CBD Sleep Gummies

Tired of sleep products that promise but don't deliver?  Cornbread Hemp CBD Sleep Gummies deliver where others fall short. No more restless nights or waking up groggy—their gummies are designed to keep you asleep at night, without the morning fog that often follows synthetic sleep aids, giving you the quality rest you deserve.

With the power of all-natural ingredients, these gummies make sure you can drift into dreamland within just 30 minutes. Each gummy is carefully crafted with a blend of full spectrum, high-quality, organic CBD and lavender, chamomile, and valerian to help you restore your sleep cycle to its natural rhythm.

But don’t just take our word for it. 10almonds readers can save 30% off site wide (with a minimum purchase of $55) when you order today with code CBDSLEEP30. Sweet dreams, guaranteed.

Please do visit our sponsors—they help keep 10almonds free

This Or That?

Vote on Which is Healthier

Yesterday we asked you to choose between dates and raisins—we picked the dates (click here to read about why), as did 89% of you!

Now for today’s choice:

Click on whichever you think is better for you!

Bonus (Sponsored) Recommendation

Maximize the value of your Amazon Prime membership by uncovering 10 lesser-known benefits that can transform your shopping, streaming, and saving experience. Learn more.

Recipes Worth Sharing

Cucumber Canapés-Crudités

It’s time to party with these delicious snacks, which are great as an hors d’œuvre, amuse-bouche, or part of a buffet. And like all our offerings, they’re very healthy too—in this case, especially for the gut and heart:

Click below for our full recipe, and learn its secrets:

One-Minute Book Review

Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum's Heart Book: Every Woman's Guide to a Heart-Healthy Life – by Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum

The book is divided into three parts:

1. What you should know

2. What you should do

3. All about you

This is a very useful format, since it lays out all the foundational knowledge, before offering practical advice and “how to” explanations, before finally wrapping up with personalizing things.

The latter is important, because while our basic risk factors can be assembled in a few lines of data (age, sex, race, genes, diet, exercise habits, etc) there’s a lot more to us than that, and oftentimes the data that doesn’t make the cut, makes the difference. Hormones on high on this list; we can say that a person is a 65-year-old woman and make a guess, but that’s all it is: a guess. Very few of us are the “average person” that statistical models represent accurately. And nor are social and psychological factors irrelevant; in fact often they are deciding factors!

So, it’s important to be able to look at ourselves as the whole persons we are, or else we’ll get a heart-healthy protocol that works on paper but actually falls flat in application, because the mathematical model didn’t take into account that lately we have been very stressed about such-and-such a thing, and deeply anxious about so-and-so, and a hopefully short-term respiratory infection has reduced blood oxygen levels, and all these kinds of things need to be taken into account too, for an overall plan to work.

The greatest strength of this book is that it attends to that.

The style of the book is a little like a long sales pitch (when all that’s being sold, by the way, is the ideas the book is offering; she wants you to take her advice with enthusiasm), but there’s plenty of very good information all the way through, making it quite worth the read.

Bottom line: if you’re a woman and/or love at least one woman, then you can benefit from this important book for understanding heart health that’s not the default.

Click here to check out Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum’s Heart Book, and enjoy a heart-healthy life!

Penny For Your Thoughts?

Wishing you a beautifully restorative weekend,

The 10almonds Team