What Goes Up Must Come Down: The connection between blood sugar levels and feeling tired, irritable & hungry

Have you ever eaten something and felt tired soon after? Or perhaps you’ve eaten something and felt hungry just an hour later. I experienced these feelings for most of my life and simply thought it was normal. But when gut health and nutrition became my focus, I learned that they were far from normal - and completely avoidable! 

Eating naturally increases our blood sugar levels. More specifically, eating carbs increases our blood sugar levels. For most of us (i.e. those not on the keto diet), carbs provide us with our main source of energy. Our bodies naturally convert into sugar- hence why they directly impact blood sugar levels. 

Think about a time when you’ve been really hungry. You might’ve felt sluggish, spacey, and irritable (read: hangry). Then you ate and almost instantly felt better. That’s because your blood sugar level was low, and the food you consumed (the carbs you consumed…) raised it. Then, over time, your blood sugar levels naturally went back down as your body started to break down and use the carbs from your food. So, you got hungry and ate again - and the cycle continued. 

That concept is simple enough, but what I didn’t understand for many years was that the size and duration of those rises and falls in blood sugar levels can have a life-changing impact on your energy levels and long-term health. And you have the ability to optimize how those rises and falls occur so that you can feel your best. 

I found that a helpful place to start with understanding blood sugar levels was the Glycemic Index (GI), which ranks foods on a scale of 0 to 100 based on how quickly they raise blood sugar levels after being consumed. Foods with higher scores are digested quickly and cause stronger fluctuations in blood sugar. Foods with lower scores are digested slower and cause more gradual fluctuations in blood sugar. Low-glycemic foods have a score less than 55, while high-glycemic foods have a score above 70. 

Let’s use natural sweeteners as a quick case study. The following table summarizes glycemic index ratings for popular natural sweeteners:

Sweeteners such as agave and honey have lower GI ratings, and thus cause smaller fluctuations in blood sugar relative to other sweeteners such as sugar. However, TruMonk, our 100% pure monk fruit extract powder, rates zero on the GI, meaning it causes zero fluctuations in blood sugar when consumed. 

But what do these fluctuations really mean? They mean the rate and duration at which our blood sugar levels rise and fall after eating. The rise happens as our bodies convert carbs into sugar. The fall happens as our bodies naturally release the hormone insulin, which reduces blood sugar levels back down to avoid hyperglycemia, or damagingly high blood sugar levels that can injure nerves, blood vessels, tissues, and organs. We’ve all heard of blood sugar spikes and crashes, and those are just extreme versions of those fluctuations. When we have a blood sugar spike, our body releases higher amounts of insulin in order to take blood sugar levels down fast and avoid hyperglycemia. So, a more rapid increase means a more rapid decrease - their speeds are completely related. And that is what leaves us feeling tired, irritable, and hungry. But it’s important to remember that when we eat most types of carbs (not just sweeteners), we’ll experience a rise and fall of blood sugar to some degree, whether extreme, mild, or somewhere in between. We absolutely want to avoid spikes and crashes, but we also want to minimize strong fluctuations in general.    

For the sake of our case study, let’s say you wake up and immediately drink a cup of green tea sweetened with table sugar. Nothing else at the moment, just a cup of sweetened green tea. We just saw that refined sugar has a very high glycemic index. This means the sugar is going to raise your blood sugar very fast, and then your body, with the help of insulin, is going to lower your blood sugar very fast.

Halfway through your tea, you may start to feel a little jittery - that’s the blood sugar spike giving you a “sugar rush.” And then, soon after you finish, you may feel tired - that’s thanks to the blood sugar crash. Now, here’s where it gets interesting. What would happen if you drank your sweetened green tea with a small breakfast of oatmeal, eggs, and bacon? Well, your body is going to process that sugar in the green tea slower, and your blood sugar will rise and fall less dramatically as a result of consuming that sugar, leaving you feeling more energized and full. 

Why does this happen? Because several factors affect a food or meal’s glycemic index, including processing level, physical form, fiber content, ripeness. Refined sugar is just that - it’s “refined,” or stripped of unwanted elements by processing. So, that makes it a lot easier (and therefore faster) for your body to break down. While oatmeal is mostly made of carbs, it’s much less processed and contains fiber, which actually slows down the rate at which our body breaks sugar down and absorbs it. The protein and fat from the eggs and bacon also help slow down the digestion of carbs, helping to control blood sugar levels. In other words, how we pair our carbs with foods has an incredible effect on the way we process them and the intensity and duration of our blood sugar levels. By pairing them effectively, we can avoid sharp rises and falls in blood sugar levels and the fatigue, irritability, and hunger that can follow. 

So far, we’ve only talked about the short-term effects of strong fluctuations in blood sugar levels. Are there long-term effects of these constantly strong fluctuations? Absolutely, and they are alarming. Research clearly shows consistently consuming many high-glycemic foods that result in strong blood sugar spikes can lead to increased risk for type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Preliminary studies also link high-glycemic diets to age-related macular degeneration, ovulatory infertility, and colorectal cancer. In contrast, low-glycemic foods have been shown to control type 2 diabetes, improve weight loss, and offer anti-inflammatory benefits. This is incredibly significant, yet unknown by most (including me for most of my life). 

Surprised? I certainly was when I learned about these long-term effects. So, taking control over your blood sugar levels not only has positive impacts on our short-term health, but also our long-term health in significant ways. 

So - what can you do? Here are some easy tips you can incorporate into to your daily routine: 

• Replace refined natural sweeteners (sugar, honey, maple syrup) in your morning coffee or tea with zero glycemic natural sweeteners like TruMonk™, especially if you’re having them on an empty stomach. Not only will this help with more balanced blood sugar levels, but it’ll also help with weight loss and gut health. 
• Pair traditional “carb-heavy” foods like pasta and rice with a good amount of fiber, protein, and fat. These foods are heavily refined and almost exclusively carbs, so your body will break them down into sugar faster than you may think despite their bulk. 
• Wait to eat sugary foods (fruit, desserts, sodas) at the end of a meal, never before, so that they aren’t broken down immediately and cause a blood sugar spike and crash.