Featured VideoBlood sugar levels can be affected by stress, sleep and a lack of exercise. But what role does food play when it comes to blood glucose? This week on The Dose, registered dietitian Anar Allidina talks about the role diet plays, how eating certain foods can help regulate your blood sugar and when to know it’s time to see a doctor. For transcripts of The Dose, please visit: lnk.to/dose-transcripts. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
Dr. Kaberi Dasgupta wants to set the record straight on blood sugar levels.
The professor of medicine at McGill University says people often think high blood sugar levels are from eating too much sugar.
That could be to blame for high blood sugar levels, but most of the time, she says excess weight and lack of physical activity are the causes.
“People think they’re just going to get rid of or reduce sugar in their diet,” said Dasgupta, who is also the director of the Centre for Outcomes Research and Evaluation at the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre.
Instead of focusing on sugar alone, dietitians say people should focus on eating foods that don’t cause high spikes in blood sugars, like fibre and protein.
“If you’re someone who is struggling later on in the day, you want to really look at your meals to make sure that they’re giving you enough nutrients so that your blood sugar is balanced so you’re able to be your best,” Toronto-based registered dietitian Anar Allidina told CBC’s The Dose podcast host Dr. Brian Goldman.
Diabetes is a major health issue in Canada, with one in three Canadians living with diabetes or prediabetes, according to the charity Diabetes Canada.
Diabetes can be caused by a range of factors depending on the type of diabetes, according to the charity’s website. However, prediabetes and type 2 diabetes are largely preventable.
For those with diabetes, high blood sugar can lead to health problems like kidney disease and vision loss, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Here’s what Dasgupta and dietitians recommend to those wanting to better regulate their blood sugars.
How do I know if I have high blood sugar?
Blood glucose, or blood sugar, is the main sugar found in your blood. High blood sugar usually happens in people who have diabetes that isn’t well-controlled, and symptoms can range from mild to severe, according to MyHealthAlberta‘s website.
Mild symptoms include fatigue, anxiety, thirst and increased urination.
Diabetes is a major health issue in Canada, with one in three Canadians living with diabetes or prediabetes, according to the charity Diabetes Canada. (Shutterstock)
More severe symptoms include blurred vision, flushed skin and trouble waking up.
For people with diabetes, keeping your blood glucose in the healthy range should be the target, according to Diabetes Canada‘s website, which has a list of the target ranges for certain age groups.
Glucometers are the common tool of choice for many with diabetes to test blood sugars at home.
Some factors increase a person’s risk for diabetes, say CDC officials.
To assess their risk, Dasgupta recommends that those who haven’t been diagosed with prediabetes or diabetes start with the Public Health Agency of Canada’s diabetes risk questionnaire.
If someone’s risk is calculated as moderate to high, she says “that might be a moment to go to a drop-in clinic and get your blood sugar measured.”
She says most people should get their first blood sugar test done at or around the age of 40.
“If it all looks good, you can wait up to five years before having another blood test,” she said.
In general, foods with higher glycemic indexes are going to raise your blood sugar levels higher and faster than those with a lower rating, according to Diabetes Canada.
Allidina says that eating fibre-rich foods and protein can be great ways to stabilize blood sugars throughout the day.
If you experience cravings in the afternoon, try consuming more fibre at lunch.
“So if you are having a sandwich, opting for a whole grain or rye sourdough that’s going to give you that fibre is going to slow down how your food is digested,” she said.
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Toronto-based registered dietitian Andy De Santis also recommends people incorporate more fibre into their diets. Specifically, he’ll encourage clients to eat more legumes — a food group he says is the most underrated.�
“These foods have incredible amounts of fibre. They have almost no effect on blood sugar levels,” he said.
De Santis also advises people to eat consistently throughout the day and on a predictable schedule to keep blood sugars from hitting those peaks and valleys.
Should I cut out sugar?
Allidina and De Santis agree that people should never cut out sugar completely from their diet.
But according to De Santis, it’s important to remember that not all sugar is created equal and that fruits and vegetables are generally made up of glucose that will release more slowly into the bloodstream compared to processed sugar.
“An orange has more sugar than a cup of white rice, but a cup of white rice will cause a much bigger spike in blood sugar levels,” De Santis says.
Registered dietitian Andy De Santis recommends people turn to legumes and other sources of fibre because they help people feel full and have almost no effect on blood sugar. (Julie Van Rosendaal/CBC)
Instead of cutting out sugar, Allidina says to look at how you can add more nutrient-dense foods to your diet to replace foods filled with processed sugar.
“It’s just being strategic and figuring out what you can add to whatever you enjoy that’s going to give you the nutrients like healthy fats, fibre and protein, which is going to slow down the way those sugars are absorbed in your body,” she said.
They said 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity per week typically recommended for adults is a good benchmark.
They said breaking up down time with smaller bouts of exercise each hour — like taking 250 steps per hour — or being active a few times throughout the day may also work well for blood sugar management.
Experts say exercise can help to lower blood glucose levels. (Shutterstock)
For those who don’t know where to start, Dasgupta usually recommends people turn to walking to increase their physical activity.
Most people should aim for 7,000 steps at least per day, she says.
Resistance training can further lower our blood sugars and reduce our risk for type 2 diabetes, she added.
Other factors
A lack of sleep and stress can also both have an effect on blood sugar levels, Dasgupta says.
CDC officials say getting less than seven hours of sleep per night regularly can make diabetes harder to manage, with less sleep creating an increase in insulin resistance for example. Insulin is a hormone that helps blood sugar enter cells to be used for energy. Insulin resistance is when your body can’t use insulin right away so sugar doesn’t move into your cells and stays in your blood instead, according to HealthLinkBC’s website.
Dasgupta says the younger we are when we improve our diets, sleep and exercise habits, the more it will pay off later in life by delaying or lowering the risk for type 2 diabetes.
She compares it to saving money for retirement.
“If you’re walking a bit more from the beginning, if you’re exercising a bit more from the beginning, if your diet is just a bit better, then over time that is going to have a favourable impact.”
MILWAUKEE (AP) — Whooping cough is at its highest level in a decade for this time of year, U.S. health officials reported Thursday.
There have been 18,506 cases of whooping cough reported so far, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. That’s the most at this point in the year since 2014, when cases topped 21,800.
The increase is not unexpected — whooping cough peaks every three to five years, health experts said. And the numbers indicate a return to levels before the coronavirus pandemic, when whooping cough and other contagious illnesses plummeted.
Still, the tally has some state health officials concerned, including those in Wisconsin, where there have been about 1,000 cases so far this year, compared to a total of 51 last year.
Nationwide, CDC has reported that kindergarten vaccination rates dipped last year and vaccine exemptions are at an all-time high. Thursday, it released state figures, showing that about 86% of kindergartners in Wisconsin got the whooping cough vaccine, compared to more than 92% nationally.
Whooping cough, also called pertussis, usually starts out like a cold, with a runny nose and other common symptoms, before turning into a prolonged cough. It is treated with antibiotics. Whooping cough used to be very common until a vaccine was introduced in the 1950s, which is now part of routine childhood vaccinations. It is in a shot along with tetanus and diphtheria vaccines. The combo shot is recommended for adults every 10 years.
“They used to call it the 100-day cough because it literally lasts for 100 days,” said Joyce Knestrick, a family nurse practitioner in Wheeling, West Virginia.
Whooping cough is usually seen mostly in infants and young children, who can develop serious complications. That’s why the vaccine is recommended during pregnancy, to pass along protection to the newborn, and for those who spend a lot of time with infants.
But public health workers say outbreaks this year are hitting older kids and teens. In Pennsylvania, most outbreaks have been in middle school, high school and college settings, an official said. Nearly all the cases in Douglas County, Nebraska, are schoolkids and teens, said Justin Frederick, deputy director of the health department.
That includes his own teenage daughter.
“It’s a horrible disease. She still wakes up — after being treated with her antibiotics — in a panic because she’s coughing so much she can’t breathe,” he said.
It’s important to get tested and treated with antibiotics early, said Dr. Kris Bryant, who specializes in pediatric infectious diseases at Norton Children’s in Louisville, Kentucky. People exposed to the bacteria can also take antibiotics to stop the spread.
“Pertussis is worth preventing,” Bryant said. “The good news is that we have safe and effective vaccines.”
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AP data journalist Kasturi Pananjady contributed to this report.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
How a sperm and egg fuse together has long been a mystery.
New research by scientists in Austria provides tantalizing clues, showing fertilization works like a lock and key across the animal kingdom, from fish to people.
“We discovered this mechanism that’s really fundamental across all vertebrates as far as we can tell,” said co-author Andrea Pauli at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna.
The team found that three proteins on the sperm join to form a sort of key that unlocks the egg, allowing the sperm to attach. Their findings, drawn from studies in zebrafish, mice, and human cells, show how this process has persisted over millions of years of evolution. Results were published Thursday in the journal Cell.
Scientists had previously known about two proteins, one on the surface of the sperm and another on the egg’s membrane. Working with international collaborators, Pauli’s lab used Google DeepMind’s artificial intelligence tool AlphaFold — whose developers were awarded a Nobel Prize earlier this month — to help them identify a new protein that allows the first molecular connection between sperm and egg. They also demonstrated how it functions in living things.
It wasn’t previously known how the proteins “worked together as a team in order to allow sperm and egg to recognize each other,” Pauli said.
Scientists still don’t know how the sperm actually gets inside the egg after it attaches and hope to delve into that next.
Eventually, Pauli said, such work could help other scientists understand infertility better or develop new birth control methods.
The work provides targets for the development of male contraceptives in particular, said David Greenstein, a genetics and cell biology expert at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study.
The latest study “also underscores the importance of this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry,” he said in an email.
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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
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