Snacking: Proceed With Caution!

There are two hormones that need to be understood for the management of blood sugar. These are insulin and glucagon and they are both produced in the pancreas. The intent of this introductory article is to draw attention to how the body is supposed to work. Without a basic understanding of how our body is supposed to work (physiology) there is no way to know if you are doing the right things and making the right choices. I believe you need to know WHY you should be doing something, or long term success is often poor.

Insulin is released from your pancreas when you consume a meal that elevates your blood sugar. Sugar is good! It is the main fuel your body needs to keep itself going. It is like the fuel in your car and we all know what happens if we run out of that. Insulin is like a taxi cab. It picks up its blood sugar passenger and brings it to various destinations around the body. Specifically, wherever your body needs the sugar, such as the brain, liver and muscles.

It is important to understand the following. Your insulin peaks at about 30 minutes after your meal and returns to its neutral baseline level about 3 hours after your meal. Remember, your insulin is helping your body to put away the sugar by delivering it to the body parts that need it.

One of the organs that need this sugar is the liver. It would ordinarily take about 60% of your blood sugar which is a fair bit, and store it as a compound called glycogen. In the ideal scenario insulin is promoting storage of calories (sugar) into the liver and body tissues (like muscle).

Now we need to get back to your insulin finishing its job 3 hours after the meal. The bodies goal is to keep your blood sugars level throughout the day or we start to fatigue or develop other symptoms. The way it does this is with the hormone glucagon. This is where the magic takes place.

Glucagon tells your liver to take the stored sugar (remember the 60% that was stored from your meal?) and convert it BACK INTO GLUCOSE (blood sugar). Think about what this means. This means that your body has a natural "snack machine" built into it! If everything is working right you will keep your blood sugars normal between meals by snacking from your liver!

Your liver under the influence of this hormone glucagon also makes blood sugar from stored fat. Think weight loss here. You burn off fat for fuel between meals naturally to keep your blood sugar levels normal. There is a catch here though. The muscles are what are designed to use this fuel source. If you don't exercise, the fuel gets converted back into fat storage and no fat weight is lost. You must exercise to burn off the fat, and this is the truth and will always be the truth because it is physiology!

Now here is the rub. What do we usually do between our meals? We snack! Now before you argue with me that you might be having a healthy snack I'm going to tell you that it doesn't matter. A snack simply translates into calories and will play havoc with your normal metabolism.

When you snack 3 hours after a meal you will produce more insulin to take the blood sugar from your snack to be stored and distributed as we have discussed above. The problem is that your body three hours after the meal is trying to use the stored sugar and fat for its snack. There is no need for the extra calories and blood sugar as your body is about to use its stored amounts from the meal you had 3 hours ago.

So where is this extra fuel (sugar) going to go? For simplicities sake suffice to say that you will use the fuel (sugar) you just took in with your snack to keep your blood sugars level. The fat and sugar stored in your liver that was supposed to be used will stay where it is. In other words your liver won't empty its stored calories and no fat burning will occur. If this goes on meal after meal eventually not only will you not burn off the fat but there will be nowhere to put the extra fuel coming in! This will result in weight gain and all the associated problems with that.

This is the very basic version of how the body regulates sugar but it is CRITICAL to understand this. At the end of the day if the technical information escapes you the bottom line is that you must not snack between meals and you must not snack after dinner as this is even worse. It is absolutely insane to promote snacking. We have understood this physiology for decades and there is no excuse for our health professionals in this day and age to be promoting snacking. On a slightly different note, I personally have grave concerns with the school system and its promotion of snacking throughout the day.

In future articles I will look to explain how the body functions in more detail but should you want further information on this and how it ties into diabetes, cardiovascular health and weight loss please contact me or check out Lifestyle Integration on Facebook for regular updates on your health and wellness.