The importance of stable blood sugar to our overall health and longevity cannot be overstated.  

When we eat carbohydrates our body breaks them down into their original components – sugars. The sugar enters our bloodstream, causing our blood sugar to rise.   Excess sugar in your blood is dangerous, so the pancreas responds by releasing the hormone insulin, which helps shuttle the sugar (glucose) into our cells where it is burned for energy.  Your blood sugar will return to within a normal range, and likewise your insulin, which for the time being is no longer needed.  Maintaining balanced blood sugar and insulin levels is critical for your overall health and wellbeing. 

But when your diet is full of easily absorbed sugars and refined carbs (bread, pasta, rice), and these are ingested regularly throughout the day, the pancreas has to work harder, producing more insulin to deal with the excess glucose in the blood.  Insulin levels in the blood rise, and slowly the cells begin to resist the insulin, inhibiting the glucose from entering your cells, thus leaving it circulating in the blood.  As a result, your pancreas ends up producing more insulin in an attempt to overcome your body’s weak response to it.  Eventually your pancreas wears out.

This condition is called Insulin Resistance, which can lead to prediabetes, diabetes and an array of other health issues.  Along with chronic inflammation, these two conditions are a real and dangerous threat to our health and longevity and the root causes of virtually every chronic disease.

A very high percentage of adults in UK (not far off half) are insulin resistant and yet high insulin levels (which are the first sign of a problem) are rarely checked by a doctor.  An increasing number of people are suffering from diabetes every day.  It is estimated that the number of people with diabetes will double during the next 25 years, going from about 190 million globally to 325 million unless we do something about it.  

The good news is that it’s possible to prevent diabetes and stabilise your blood sugar naturally through dietary and lifestyle changes.  The first step is to reverse insulin resistance and improve insulin sensitivity (the opposite of insulin resistance).

On this page of my website, I am going to bring together everything you need to know about balancing your blood sugar and avoiding insulin resistance:  what causes insulin resistance, what is the role of insulin in the body, what is prediabetes; what are the symptoms of your blood sugar/insulin being out of order; how to test for it; and lastly what to do about it – so easy ways to make sure you keep your blood sugar stable.