I’ve watched some videos recently that showed the equivalent number of teaspoons of sugar in carbohydrates. This is a surprising reality check for most people.
What do I mean? Let’s take, for example, the dietary recommendations that a “healthy” diet contains about 40-65% of calories from carbs. So, in a 2,000 calories/day eating regimen, that means about 1,000 calories per day (50% of calories) from carbohydrates. At 4 calories per gram of carbs, that comes to 250 grams of carbohydrates per day.
How many teaspoons of sugar does that equal? A teaspoon of sugar contains 5 grams of carbs. So, 250 grams of carbs per day is equivalent to eating 50 teaspoons (250/5) of sugar!
Now, you might say that nutrient dense whole foods do not metabolize the same as straight sugar and I agree. Unfortunately, the common diet often includes lots of highly processed carbs like bread, pasta, and crackers.
These foods are immediately exposed to the enzyme, amylase, in our mouths and stomach. Amylase quickly cuts all the bonds that hold starches together and turns them into simple glucose. I’ve found that eating a slice of bread has the same total glucose effect and speed as an equivalent amount of table sugar.
In a typical man, the amount of blood circulating is 5 liters. A blood sugar of 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L) is equivalent to one teaspoon of sugar in the blood. That’s weak solution of sugar. It’s no wonder that regularly adding the equivalent of 50 teaspoons of sugar per day causes metabolic mayhem for those of us living with a compromised glucose metabolism.
I’m aware that people who eat a low-fat, high-carb regiment seem to do much better than the typical high-carb, high fat eaters. This low-fat high-carb method looks like it works well even for people with diabetes.
One can usually find 3 or 4 flavors of Skittles–perhaps you can find one that is somewhat unpleasant, Jim. I don’t like any of the flavors except for Wild Berry, but I still don’t eat them for fun, despite loving the flavor.
Melissa portrays well the whole emotional/metabolic cascade of events: a racing heart, sweat on the brow, the brain dominated by the primitive region of the brain that responds to fear, the glucose starved brain struggling to put two connected thoughts in a row, fighting to force your body to get sugar.
By the time you start feeding your face, restraint is abandoned and survival reigns, by the time you stop eating and the brain starts to work again, then you realize that you did it again, over-treated a serious hypo and now you’re in the front seat of the gluco-coaster.
With my carb-limited way of eating, my glucose variability is low. I take modest amounts of insulin. When I do go low now, my BG trajectory is shallow unlike in years past where I would come screaming down and enter hypo territory at a very steep angle. These are the lows that produce the blues Melissa sings about. We’ve all done it.
Smarties sound like something that will keep in a purse well, I might try them, they’re actually vegan! I will have to experiment swallowing them when I am lower but not having a low low. I carry crystallized ginger with me now. I do like my ginger as it makes my tummy feel great too, but being able to swallow something sometimes sounds pretty tempting.
Canada’s supply is fresh as can be. AMG Medical, the distributor, told me Dex4s are still manufactured. While they are no longer distributed in the US, they are still distributed in Canada.
They do. They’re softer than Dex4s, and have less flavour, but still contain 4 g carb each. They are also a smidge larger than Dex4s, which means you can’t reuse your old Dex4 tubes.
And they are THE BEST. I always wonder, traveling back from Canada or Europe, whether I’ll get stopped by customs for a violation on bringing too many smarties (m&ms to the MAX) back into the States. They are SO GOOD. I just found them at a local deli that imports things from Ireland. Dangerous. Jessica
Another Canadian favourite to try is a Coffee Crisp chocolate bar. My U.S. cousins would visit and bring a load back to the States. Sorry… This is a bit of a tangent from the topic.