98: This Is SPIKING Your Blood Sugar | Levels App + Dexcom G7 Findings

MK: What if I told you that the same food or activity could send. My wife's blood sugar spiking like crazy while barely nudging. My fasting blood sugar is what? Around between 75 to maybe 90 or so, Kathy peaked to 202 milligram per deciliter. That was a significant spike. So let's zoom out a little bit and look at some of the top categories that caused spikes for us.

For me, the absolute highest spike was Welcome to the Primer Chief Podcast. What if I told you that the same food or activity could send my wife's blood sugar spiking like crazy while barely nudging mine, or vice versa? Actually, some cases where mine spiked like crazy and yours did not. That's actually was a very fun activity.

Um, but in today's episodes. I have here my wife and uh, uh, data copilot Kathy, and we conducted an experiment. We were a continuous G glucose monitor, the Dexcom G seven for a couple of weeks, uh, paired with the Levels Health app to get, you know, all the good data insights and correlations and all the tracking.

And we wanted to figure out how we react to different foods, right? What does our blood sugar do? And there are a couple of unfortunate findings I think that you realized that, I guess you kind of suspected already that was the case. Yes. Uh, this year I've been in a journey of to, you know, like to optimize my health, metabolism and all the things.

And I kind of have an idea what was going on. Yes. Uh, so, you know, we ran this experiment over a couple of weeks and tried to kind of eat the same foods. Now here's the thing, even though we ate the same foods, I ate significantly more, uh, usually of the same food. Um, and even so, some of those findings were incredibly interesting.

And today we're gonna walk you through some of those findings. We're gonna discuss what foods, I guess we just cannot really have very often because they. Havoc with our blood sugar. Um, what are some of the highest triggers, what that really means from a health perspective. I mean, why bother wearing a CT and why bother, you know, monitoring your, your blood sugar.

We talk about that and maybe some of the lessons learned and. How we lessons learned is more like a man, really? I cannot eat that. Yes. Um, yeah, we'll talk about all of that. So maybe let's start out with the first experiment, which was, I think the biggest bummer for you, and that is sourdough, right? I talked about sourdough in a previous episode because everyone says, well, sourdough is healthy.

It's unlike regular bread. And it's, you know, you, you can have that end. You know, we used different types of sourdough. We used like corn, iron, corn, we used ot, we used, uh, regular wheat of course, organic, double fermented, the whole nine yards. I mean, as good as you can make it. But nonetheless, you know, first experiment, just regular sourdough bread.

Um, which. You know, you've baked, uh, frequently in the past couple of months, really. How, when did you start making sourdough? Uh, that was two years ago. Two years ago. Well, it's been a, it's been a while and so we've, we've had occasionally sourdough and. Regular sourdough. Um, and we obviously, you know, tried it a different days, but just one thing that I picked out here is it causes, it caused a peak in blood sugar in Kathy's blood sugar of 202 milligrams per deciliter.

So if you think about it, regular blood sugar, you know, fasting blood sugar is what, around between 75 to maybe 90 or so, Kathy peaked to 202 milligram per deciliter. That was a significant. Spike, and I think that's the other nuance. It's not just about the the peak itself, but how long does it stay elevated?

And in the, in the case of leveled health, they treat everything above one 10 as above range. And so Kathy's blood sugar remained elevated above target for over two hours, 130 minutes. That's a fairly long. Spike in a fairly high spike. Now, it wasn't a two or two for the entire 130 minutes, but it was above the one 10 range.

Right. Mine on the other hand, and again, when Kathy ate two slices, I probably ate six. Um, and mine only peaked to one 50 and only stayed elevated for about 80 minutes. So just over an hour. Mm-hmm. Uh, indicating that. I respond to sourdough much better than me. Much better than you do. And there are a couple of reasons for that.

We'll, we'll talk as well. We talk about difference in gender, in menstrual cycling, lean muscle mass and, and, and all of those things. But that was, you know, 52 milligrams per deciliter, higher. So let's zoom out a little bit and look at some of the top categories that cost spikes for us, because there were some overlaps, but also some differences for you sourdough.

What on top of the list I cannot even having, and this is something that you haven't mentioned. We had protein before. Yes. Even with that, it didn't make a difference. So I eat every day, three eggs with some sort of, um, you know, either red meat or, um, what else do I do? Bacon or sometimes salmon. Smoked salmon.

So I always load my plate on protein and then. We had immediately after we had two slices of bread and it was terrible for me. So not even having my protein before was helping me to have a lower To plant that spike. Yeah. Yes. And we talk about strategies on how you can plant your blood sugar response here as well.

But yeah, sourdough was number one for Kathy. Curry like maman curry, which means rice. And there was probably, if I had to guess, some sweetener in that curry as well to get it with the rice. Mm-hmm. Um, that was number two. High intensity CrossFit sessions, uh, cost also a significant spike, but those are not the same spikes or they, they don't have the same implications from a health perspective.

We'll talk about that as well. Mm-hmm. Um, but nonetheless, high intensity exercise spike. Sourdough discard crabs, which is again, goes back to sourdough. And then the last one I, I noted, I noted it as a charcuterie plate with carbs. That was really, you know, the sourdough bread again, was the carb component of that.

Oh, it was a, yeah, I made a sourdough French bread. Yes. So sourdough and rice, no bueno for you? Mm-hmm. For me, the absolute highest spike was...

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Now back to our regular scheduled program. Before any more cells decide to retire an intimate activity, I'm gonna call it that way because our little one is sitting right here. Um, that cost a spike of 188 I think. I think it's here. Yeah. 188 milligrams per deciliter.

Apparently I wasn't at a lot of stress. My body needed to mobilize glucose. Why do I have the same you only one 50. Oh, for the same, on the same day your blood sugar only went to one 50. Okay. And it stayed only elevated for 40, 45 minutes. So not a big deal. And again, we'll talk about activity induced spikes, but that was for me, number one.

Number two was rice. Um, I. Again, there was one time it was rice combined with chicken before and avocado and stuff. So again, fat and protein preloaded and then rice after still cost a dramatic spike for me. Mm-hmm. Um, do we have the actual number here of what The rice, uh, here is it me, I. Mike. So at 1 78, I mean, it's not super terrible, but it stayed up for three hours.

In fact, maybe even a little longer. So we had it for dinner with, you know, once a month or so we have that curry for dinner and it was up and down, up and down, up and down for half of the night. Similar to what you experienced with mm-hmm. The sourdough pizza. So rice. Maybe also in combination with whatever sweetener is in there.

Could be honey, could be just regular sugar, not good for me. Um, same with curry. Um, again, you know, just rice in, in general. And then we had. The sourdough, but the sourdough again, for me was a much more moderate spike, which indicates that I am better at handling the starches or the carbs from the sourdough.

Now there are obviously other implications with wheat, with grains. Oh my God. It just occurred to me. Does it have to do with you being from Europe that you've, I mean, you guys. If we go back, yeah. Many years ago. We'll, we'll, you guys have been making that from scratch. Yeah, I know maybe it's in your, well, maybe not the rice, but the bread for sure.

No, I'm talking about the bread. The bread, and we, we will talk about you, those differences here in a little bit. But yes, that could absolutely be a, a factor. I think it's also muscle mass, but again, we'll talk about that. Ah, so how much carp buffering or glucose buffering capacity do I have? Mm-hmm. Um, but here, the key point for me really is, you know, exercise.

Be it late night or you know, keep looking at the camera, keep looking at the camera while I'm looking at both kids too. So, you know, activity, um, in the room or in the gym, um, had a dramatic impact on my blood sugar response and. And just to the same extent really as some of the carb heavy meals. But again, there's a difference between those two.

But overall, I think even with a significant, I mean, there are some meals where I had like 250 grams of carbs or so, and I still responded somewhat okay to that, which is good. Yeah, I think for me they were like sourdough. Rice. I think rice was not good for you. Potatoes were good for sweet potatoes. We did sweet potatoes and, and sweet plantains.

Yes, they were all, and those were a good response. So let's talk about maybe what makes, what's, what's the difference between, obviously just because, you know, you react to that in a certain way? I react to carbs in a certain way. Doesn't necessarily mean everyone, you know. It's, it's the same between men and and women.

But there are differences obviously. You know, you mentioned already maybe genetic variation. You know, I'm from Europe. I mean your ancestors at some point came from Europe too. But we probably eat more seasonal fruit, like higher mango, all those tropical, nice fruit. And maybe I'm well, but I try a Mandarin and it was really high.

Mandarin wasn't good for you either? No, but apples are really good for me. Berries, like apples I can, berries I can eat. Uh, they don't spike my blood sugar. But, um, but I think between you and I, there are two main differences. One is obviously our gender, right? Your menstrual cycle. You notice that leading up to your period?

No. Yes. Leading up to my period, which is the ltil phase. Um, I was not, my, my insulin sensitivity was. Lower. So you had higher spikes, no lower, higher spikes. Uhhuh. Yeah. Yeah. So take that into account. You know, if you're a menstruating woman, depending on the time of the month, you might respond to the same foods differently, and it might make sense to eat differently, but, but that's, that's a fact.

Mm-hmm. That's really because I've been talking with other women that have a glucose monitor mm-hmm. Or have been wearing one of those and there is a, you know, proof that. Leaning towards, uh, well, when we are on the luteal base, we have a lower insulin sensitivity. Right? Yeah. That, that makes a lot of sense.

The other thing, I think the difference between us is lean muscle tissue. You know, the more muscle tissue we have, the more muscles and liver or stored glycogen. Glycogen is the storage. Molecules, so to say, of glucose and or, yeah, you're very strong too. You a butch. Congratulations. You always have that.

But you know, the more muscle tissue you have, the more you can buffer those, that glucose that you, you know, get from the carbohydrates. So that's probably why my blood sugar response a little bit different because. I can store more of what I consume in my muscle tissue and it doesn't stay in my blood sugar for too long.

Okay. Um, so that's probably, and what does it mean is, well the more lean muscle tissue you build, the better your blood glu, uh, glucose response likely is. And that's probably also one of the reasons why you started lifting more. Right. So, well, I've always been lifting heavy weights because that's my passion.

That's what I like. Yeah. Um, but there has been some changes in the last. Year or two, and now I'm focusing even more on just lifting heavy lower reps. Just heavier. Yeah. And doing less heat workouts. Yes. Yeah. So the new program that I'm trying, mm-hmm. Is only once a week of a hit program. I'm working more so I think.

Maybe in a few months we can try again. The, yeah, test again. The monitor and test again. See if it made a difference. Um, obviously other lifestyle factors like sleep, um, stress and your gut microbiome also play in a role into how your body responds. And speaking of stress, because chronic stress already one thing that can.

We've noticed it. That can elevate your blood sugar. It's not gonna get a huge spike, but it's just a little bit elevated. So speaking of stressors, exercise obviously is a stressor. Sauna, bathing is a stressor. Cold plunging is a stressor. I've noticed Spikes in blood sugar when chomping into the cold plunge.

I've obviously noticed, I didn't test that. You didn't test it? Mm-hmm. I've I, I mean, it's only maybe 30 or 40 milligrams per deciliter of a increase. But nonetheless, my body responds to that stress. But here's the thing, I. Those spikes are different from food induced spikes, mainly because it's not extra glucose that you're consuming.

It's glucose that your body is mobilizing. You know, the liver, in most cases, releases glycogen in response to that stressor because your body thinks, Hey, we need energy to fight or to run away. But if you don't use it, it gets reabsorbed and you know all is good. And in fact, over time, by, by exposing yourself to those stressors, exercise, cold plunge, Sona, I think you actually get more sensitive, more insulin, improve your insulin sensitivity.

So your blood sugar management becomes better over time. So those are not issues. If you see a spike, if you were a CGM and you go exercise and you see a spike and don't freak out. That's perfectly fine. What would you say if someone says, you know, should I wear a CGM? Is it worth it? Um, an average person, what would you tell 'em?

I think it's worth it now that I've tried it. If, yeah. I think it's worth it. Yeah. You know, you wanna, if you are like us, then you want the data, I think is, you know, just experiment. You know, I, I would actually like to experiment with sourdough, but milling or own. Mm-hmm. Um, grains. You can't, you can't let the sourdough be, huh?

No. No, because I have, I have a friend that's, she says that it makes a difference. It makes a difference, Uhhuh. So it would be a good, you know, thing to try. Yeah. Um, but I think, you know, having the data, you know, experiment, you know, see what it works, what it doesn't. Now I have to say and be truly honest, without a z Jim, I don't feel that I'm.

How do you say that? Accountable. Mm-hmm. Like, I'm like, oh, whatever. I'll eat it. You hold yourself more accountable if you wear a ct. If I wear it. I know. You see the damage. I see the damage. Exactly. If I'm not, I've noticed that, oh, I'm just gonna eat it. Uhhuh. But that's, that was a lot, you know, towards my menstruation days.

Right. So my hormones are all over the place and I just wanna eat more. Mm-hmm. Or whatever it is. And. I don't, I feel like in that phase of my period, I don't want to take care of myself kind of thing. Mm-hmm. But then I go back and I'm like, okay, I have, I wanna do all the things. All the things, right? Yeah.

Yeah. So I feel like it, it helped me to make myself accountable, you know? Like, yeah. I, I think it's good to say, you know, it's not that carps are inherently bad, that a blood sugar spike is inherently bad, but I think it's worth finding out what foods do you respond better to. Versus not. I mean, if you're on a carnivore diet, I would say you maybe don't worry about a CTM because if you're not consuming carbs, your blood sugar is likely gonna be more stable.

Now there are still stress and other factors that can influence your blood sugar levels, but it's food is probably, you know, the most critical one. And if you don't need carbs, you know, then don't, don't worry. But if you consume carbs, which you know, I don't think is necessarily wrong, you know, humans are meat leading omni wars, you know, we.

Eat what we find, right? Mm-hmm. But finding out what do you respond better to? Because if you can choose between, if you like an apple and a banana, an you know, equally. Yeah. And one a Mandarin, you know, because bananas, I don't, I mean, I could not eat a banana. Mm-hmm. But a Mandarin I really like because I can travel with it.

Right. You know, like, well, the banana, banana too. But I don't know. I feel like between an apple and Mandarin, I would go for the Mandarin. Mm-hmm. But then I found out that I don't respond, handle it. Well, you don't respond. Yeah. Then. I'm gonna go for the apple. Just go with the apple. You know, it's the same, same thing more or less, but you get a better response and it's likely gonna more positively impact your health over time.

So finding out what foods you respond better to is, is definitely worth it. Just understanding that certain things cause. Like the, the sourdough or the rice for us at night, you know, that's, having those carb spikes or those glucose spikes for several hours before going to bed is going to disrupt your sleep.

So it's not only bad from a, from an insulin sensitivity perspective, it's gonna disrupt your sleep. That means, you know, your less restored, your, you know, it just has a cascading effect. And that's something you can avoid if you say, you know what, instead of having that curry, if I really want it. At night, why don't we have it, you know, have an early lunch and then we go for a walk.

You know? Speaking of, you know, what can you do to. Better manage your blood sugar response, even if you don't cut out specific foods that you know, uh, cause spikes. I mean, going, exercising right after. Obviously, if you exercise and if it's only a brisk walk, it doesn't even have to be a high intensity kind of workout or heavy lifting.

Just going for a brisk walk means you're gonna be utilizing some of that glucose instead of, you know, having it in your bloodstream or then shuttling it back and converting it to fat for long time storage, which is probably the worst thing that you wanna do. Unless your goal is to gain fat or to become fat.

Yeah. Um, so going for a walk is, is an easy thing. Right. I did that when we did pizza night. Mm-hmm. I just started walking in on our driveway. Yeah. I'm like, five minutes, at least five minutes, 10 minutes maybe. You know, I did it up and down, up and down just to. Lower a little bit, you know, before going to bed because it was high.

I mean, we don't eat just a slice of pizza, you know, we're gonna eat, you know, three or four. We eat it all oral. And um, I think number two is, you know, focus on building lean muscle tissue. If you have more muscles, your blood sugar response gonna be better. And so that's my goal. Yeah. And that's a good thing anyway, because more muscles are always good.

Don't have to look like the Hulk, but you know, muscle tissue is a good thing. And then. You know, preloading with carbs and fat. Now you've seen that, that had only, that didn't quite work for some of those carbs. What do you mean load with carbs and like, have a lot of protein and fat and then have the carbs at the end?

I think you said it the other way. Preload. I said anyway. What? Yeah, you said preload with carbs and fat. Oh no, that's not, don't preload with carbs. That's the exact opposite of what you wanna do. I'm like, what? You're gonna have pro, you should have protein and fat first, and then have your carbs at the end, which.

For most people works in many cases. For me, it didn't. What it did for me is I noticed and that kind of, uh, that kind of tricked the levels up a little bit because when I ate a ton of protein and fat before and then I had a ton of carbs, my blood sugar spike would come with a delay of about two hours.

You know, most of the apps that we've used, oh yeah. They, they, they give your mil score based on your blood sugar response. Uh, within the next two hours after consumption, most of my spikes when I ate a lot of protein first occurred past those, the two hour, you know, cutoff. And so the meal looked pretty good, get a quite a high score, but since I didn't do anything else after, you know, that spike must have been caused by, but nonetheless, it's gonna blunt it a little bit.

Might not be traumatic. Uh, it's gonna delay it potentially. Mine. It just mm-hmm. For you did not, my body was like, Nope, nope. Did not work for you. Well, it might not work for you either. So, uh, but worth experimenting, trying to find out, and then obviously, you know, pay, pay attention to your hormone cycle, especially if you're a woman and maybe, you know, just the food intake, your carp intake too, the time of the month, uh, that, I mean, what I've heard is that just do it on days of workout, you know, and not.

That type of carbs, more the types that are, you know, that didn't spike as much. You know, like sweet potatoes, uhhuh, you know, or sweet plantains, not just, you know, sourdough. Yes, correct. And with that, um, I guess we're gonna wrap it up. The key takeaway really was that, you know, we all respond differently to different foods.

It's worth finding out what you respond to, well, what you don't, and then maybe avoid, but I have a question. Yes. Do you think it's worth having those C Yes. I, I absolutely think it's worth. Not to freak out, not to stress yourself, but to, to learn to understand how your body's reacting. And the cool thing really is once you kind of correlate what you see in the data with how you feel, then you can really tell.

I mean, you know, we can tell when we at carbs and we get that, you know, slump and low in energy and kind of like, I want to take a nap. You know, you don't need to be a rocket science to kind of correlate that with your carbon intake. So, but it helps you really fine tune what you feel or what you think you feel.

And give you a better understanding. And I think regardless or not, if you have already diabetes, obviously you need to do something about it. But even if you don't, if you think like you're metabolically healthy, um, I would, I would encourage you to just wear a CTM for a little bit. Yeah. You know, only for a couple of weeks and, and find out.

How your lifestyle impacts your blood sugar, because blood sugar goes right back to insulin sensitivity and, and insulin resistance, and that's really at the root cause of most metabolic disease, including Alzheimer's. You know, diabetes, obviously Type two diabetes, cancer, stroke, cardiovascular. All of that goes back to inflammation triggered by insulin.

Resistance And that's something you absolutely want to avoid and it's very easy to avoid. And um, if you wanna learn more about the leveled health that we used, I think it's a great app. It's super easy to Yes. Track it. You can take a picture of your suit. I love that. Right? And it taking a picture and you know, with ai, I think Uhhuh they use and they.

It captures the food, breaks it down, how much you ate. And I know you don't like the macro counting, but I was like, oh, you know how much protein I have to fit in. You know, like I, I'm okay with counting protein if you wanna count something, but don't track your calories, don't count your calories. Don't, don't do that.

We talked about that. Oh yeah. Um, but yes, check it out. Uh, we're gonna have some links down below in the, in the show notes if you wanna learn more about Lever Health. A great app. Uh, I think there's a port both at Dexcom as well as the, the Abbots freestyle. I really like the Dexcom because it's, you know, you don't need to scan anything, it streams.

Mm-hmm. Um, and it's a, it's a great tool. Check it out. I highly encourage you. Give it a try and learn a little bit more about how your body responds to food, stress, intimacy, workouts, and anything in between. Ah, and don't mix up your monitors. You did? Oh yeah. If you do both, if you do it both, make sure you really know which one, um, goes to what account.

Otherwise she played chess with our mother and then we didn't know which one it was. Who? Yeah. Let's not do that again. Oh. But this was fun. Yeah. Share with someone who might benefit from watching this or listening to this and, uh, let us know. What do you think if you're watching this on our platform or?

Consuming that on a platform that supports comments, um, let, let us know what do you think about CGMs? Have you tried it? What are your findings? And until next time, next time.