Why is my blood sugar so high?
Co-living with Diabetes is not a smooth one, and as for any other relationship, there are ups and downs. Even when one believes he’s cracked its code to a better health status, as I thought I did when conquering a 90% time in range, some new, unknown factor powers its way into the equation and messes things up.
One such example for me is what I call the “The Home Coming Effect”.
The “Home Coming Effect”: inexplicable hyperglycaemia
I’ve been living and working abroad for a few years now, and I surely enjoy some family time and Italian vibes here and there throughout the year. However, there’s one thing spoiling each and every one of my stays in Italy: the moment the airplane lands and I reach my beloved hometown, my insulin resistance just spikes. It’s almost as merely breathing the air in my house and in its wonderful surroundings does something that prevents insulin from working.
This has happened every time I spent a few days or weeks with my family, without fail, over the past couple of years. At first glance, the obvious hypothesis one might formulate is: you visit Italy, you sacrifice all your green light foods on the altar of Pizza and Tiramisu. Your days become less structured, as the occasions to visit relatives, friends and be outside multiply (and with them, the exposure to foods and meals that would normally be outside of an optimal rotation of ingredients).
Indeed, all these can compound and produce the undesirable effects of insulin resistance, bad blood glucose levels and all that junk. And that would make total sense.
But that is not at all my case this time around! I am still eating clean, plant-based, exercising and all the rest. There must be something else going on, some previously unseen variable at play. A curious diabetic’s mission is to go out there and find it.
Why am I insulin resistant?
While in the past I surely indulged in larger amounts of processed foods like breads, pizzas and the likes, I have learned my lessons and I know what are the mistakes I don’t want to repeat. In fact, the foods I’ve been eating while in Italy were exactly the same green light foods I enjoy to maintain a 90% time in range. Potatoes, lentils, beans, fruits, vegetables are always on the plate, while oils, fatty or hyper processed junk are out of sight.
And here’s the interesting bit: since the day I have arrived, the exact same amount of carbohydrates eaten at the same time and in the same format required TWICE as much insulin. The fasting blood glucose started to rise without an apparent reason. The fruits I usually snacked on - which hardly need any insulin injection at all - suddenly skyrocketed my glucose levels and required considerable amounts of extra insulin to be handled. To give you an idea, from one day to the other I went from 21 units of bolus to 43, eating the exact same types of foods in the same amounts. Plus the hyperglycaemias overnight. Plus the up and downs that come with constant new injections to fix the damages. Plus the up and downs in energy, a direct consequence of the blood sugar rollercoaster.
Definitely not the ideal situation.
Witnessing this happening can be frustrating (indeed, it is), but I see an opportunity to potentially discover something new and solve a more complex equation. If I am still eating an optimal diet, still exercising and still sleeping well, there can be something else, something unrelated to these three pillars, that is playing with me.
I did some research, and came up with some hypotheses that could help figuring out this whole mess.
What causes high blood sugar besides food?
To start, I googled “why is my blood glucose high unrelated to food”. A skim-through over the most reliable and trustworthy search results according to Google (as this, this, this and this) highlighted some common areas of interest. I took some personal notes for each of them:
Lack of sleep: not my case. I average 7.30-8 hours of deep sleep each night.
Medications: I don’t take any, except insulin.
Sickness: I rarely get sick, and I was all well during my stay.
Stress: I get that from time-to-time, but that was not the case while in Italy. On top of my daily meditation practice (which by the way has done wonders for me in the past couple of years, in all areas of my life!), I was surrounded by nature, doing mind-cleaning manual work, spending time with lovely people. I can’t see much stress in there.
Dehydration: I drink at least 3 litres of water in a normal day. 4 or 5 when I run.
Lack of exercise: I exercise for at least 1 hour every day. And I tend to move and stay active while not working out with light activities such as walking or stretching.
Being overweight: Not my case.
Looking at this list, the situation looks helpless: I am doing everything right (or so it seems), and still my body is doing whatever the heck it wants! I dug deeper, and found an interesting article mentioning eating excess calories as a factor.
My overall energy requirements are still rather high, but one thing that changes when in Italy is that, not having a gym close by, I turn to high-reps calisthenics. While the metabolic conditioning effect can be high initially, the absence of weights - responsible for an increased adaptation required from the muscles, that tend to grow when sustained by a higher calories intake - can quickly lead to a plateau. Since the body is more in a maintenance, rather than growth, phase, a calorie surplus is rather superfluous.
I did 2+2, and realised that it was the case that, although my workouts changed from “growth” to “maintenance”, my diet didn’t follow. I am still eating a surplus of calories, which maybe is not needed.
I am still intermittent fasting, I am still thriving on green light foods, but the food availability at the family mansion is arguably higher than the one I have when I live on my own. That could be it.
Fixing chronic hyperglycaemias once again
Thus, the subject of my exploration for the coming days will be a lower calorie intake: I will turn from my usual 3000-3500 calories to 2500-3000, and see if that has any effect. I will also avoid too heavy carb-loadings at dinner, to tame overnight hyperglycaemic statuses.
This is a very interesting experiment because it deals with more subtle factors than the main ones (food, exercise, sleep). It’s a great opportunity to discover something new about how my body works.
Don’t beat yourself up!
Coming from a 95% time in range over more than one month, seeing it suddenly drop to 70% for no apparent reason can be frustrating. I need to remind myself that to give myself a hard-time will not make things better - if any, it will just add more stress. I know that I am moving in the right direction, that obstacles are always on the way and all that matters is how we frame them.
All we have to do is to stay positive, think clearly and get through them!
… talk to you soon!
As always, thank you for making it this far through a text-packed blog post. Sometimes I just need to sit and think deeply about what's going on, and I can only do that with a text-wall.
Not always do I find my answers, and that’s where a reader’s input is tremendously helpful. Have you ever experienced something similar to what I described? How did you deal with it, in terms of lifestyle and diet? Did you or your doctors find out something interesting that I didn’t consider?
Let me know, I am all ears!
