Your blood sugar levels are important for your overall health and well being. When you eat foods that are quickly and easily broken down into sugar, your blood sugar level rises. To keep your blood sugar balanced, your body produces insulin. Insulin helps your cells to absorb and use glucose for energy. Insulin resistance happens if your body is unable to respond to and use the insulin produced by your body. Insulin resistance can lead to excess glucose in your blood stream and result in prediabetes, diabetes, and an array of other health issues. The good news is that it is possible to stabilize your blood sugar levels naturally through a healthy diet and lifestyle.
Quality Sleep
Being well-rested is absolutely essential in maintaining overall health, including stabilizing your blood sugar, improving insulin sensitivity, and reducing the risk of diabetes. A lack of sleep can increase your stress levels and appetite hormones and makes you more likely to reach for sugary snacks and inflammatory foods. This can disturb your circadian rhythm triggering the rise of blood glucose without the needed excretion of insulin to keep your blood sugar levels balanced.
To improve your sleep quality, reduce sugary foods and caffeine in your diet, especially in the evening. Develop a regular sleep schedule with an evening routine that works for you. Avoid blue light exposure and electronics in the evening. Choose relaxing activities such as meditation, reading, journaling, a relaxing bath, and sipping on herbal tea, to help get your body ready for rest. And finally, eating a healthy diet as described below, can help you sleep better as well.
Eat an Anti-Inflammatory Diet
Chronic inflammation is the underlying cause of most chronic health problems, including diabetes, heart disease, and cancer. Eating an anti-inflammatory diet provides your body with a healthy balance of fats, protein, and carbs, while also fueling you with necessary fiber, vitamins, minerals, and water. Nutrient-dense foods that are rich in antioxidants can effectively fight inflammation and free radicals. You can get plenty of antioxidants to protect your health from free radical damage through herbs, non-starchy vegetables, and low-glycemic fruits, such as berries, lemons, and limes.
To lower inflammation in your body and stabilize your blood sugar levels, you need to remove toxic foods, such as sugar, artificial sweeteners, alcohol, caffeine, GMOs, trans and hydrogenated fats, artificial ingredients, high fructose corn syrup, and processed foods. Instead, fuel your body with healthy fats, including avocados, coconut oil, olive oil, coconut butter, coconut milk, pasture raised eggs, and grass-fed butter. And if you eat meat make sure that it is high-quality protein, such as grass-fed beef, wild-caught fish, pasture-raised poultry, and wild game.
Exercise
Regular exercise is associated with countless health benefits, including weight loss, maintaining a healthy weight, heart health, and mental health. As for maintaining healthy blood sugar levels, even short-term exercise can help your muscle cells to take up more glucose to be used for energy and tissue repair. About 30 to 60 minutes of exercise on most days can help you lower inflammation, increase insulin sensitivity, manage stress levels, and improve your immunity. Exercise may include an exercise class, weight lifting, a walk in a park, playing outdoors with your kids, yoga, running, swimming, and stretching.
Reduce Stress
Excessive and chronic stress can increase your blood sugar levels because of the production of the stress hormone, cortisol. Chronic stress can also result in emotional eating, overeating, and cravings for sugary junk foods and other unhealthy ‘comfort foods’, which can increase inflammation in your body and further increase your blood sugar.
So it’s important to find something that you can do to reduce stress. Meditation, relaxation exercises, yoga, arts and crafts, coloring, using essential oils, creating some ‘me-time’, deep breathing, taking a relaxing bath, spending time in nature, connecting with loved ones, etc. These are natural stress relievers that can benefit your health in many ways, including balancing your blood sugar levels.
Key Nutrients
About 80 percent of your immune system is located in your digestive tract. It is basically the foundation of your overall health. Having an imbalanced gut flora can result in a compromised immune system, inflammation, infections, a foggy brain, autoimmune disease, and unhealthy blood sugar levels. So it is especially important to keep the good bacteria well feed. If you’re not eating plenty of, and a good variety of, fermented foods like kimchi and sauerkraut, you may want to consider taking a probiotic.
Magnesium is one of the most important minerals in the body because it’s involved in a large number of biochemical processes that are crucial for proper metabolic function. It is thought that approximately 80% of the population is deficient in magnesium. Magnesium helps lower blood sugar levels, reduces aches and pains, supports the cardiovascular system, lowers stress levels and more.
Omega-3 fatty acids are also critical for good health. They play an important role in reducing inflammation and contribute to the health of your nervous system and brain. If you are not getting enough omega-3s in your diet, your risk of chronic illnesses, including diabetes, can increase greatly.
Turmeric is one of the most potent anti-inflammatory herbs that has been used for thousands of years as a staple in Indian cuisine, a natural remedy in Ayurvedic and Chinese medicine, and as a popular superfood in the United States in the past 30 years. Its anti-inflammatory properties lie in its active compound called curcumin.
Opt for quality if you are going to take a supplement. Labdoor scores and rates the best selling supplements. Physician offices, including naturopaths and chiropractors, often have high quality supplements that are sold in smaller quantities. There are also high quality health and wellness companies that make safe and effective supplements.
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