Jessie Inchauspé is a French biochemist (better known as the Glucose Goddess).

She’s out to help us understand the role of blood glucose in our lives.

See, glucose is a type of sugar found in some foods.

And it’s our main source of energy.

We eat it. Digest it. Absorb it. Then transport it through the bloodstream to our cells, converting it to energy.

Our blood glucose (or blood sugar) level is the amount of sugar in our bloodstream at a given time.

Having stable glucose levels is critical to our health and performance.

The opposite is high glucose variability (lots of “spikes”).

High glucose variability is linked to fun stuff like diabetes, insulin resistance, heart disease, Alzheimer's, fatty liver disease, cancer, inflammation and aging.

But it’s also linked to our performance. Science shows that balancing your glucose levels can help:

• Sleep, fatigue and energy dips
• Brain fog and migraines
• Cravings and hunger
• Immunity
• Mental health
• Gut health
• Skin and wrinkles
• Hormones and fertility
• PCOS symptoms
• Weight loss
• Inflammation
  

So... we probably wanna pay attention to it.

What spikes our glucose?

Mostly high-carb foods with lots of sugars and starches.

But that doesn't mean we have to avoid them. Absolutely not.

We can eat them intelligently.

Our French biochemist has 12 science-based hacks to help stop glucose spikes.

Many of which make sense once we understand this:

We digest different foods at different speeds.

Carbs, fats, protein and fibre all digest at different rates. Carbs are the fastest. Fats are the slowest.

So eating carbs with (or better, after) fat, protein and fibre slows down how quickly they're absorbed. Which helps limit our glucose spikes.

The only time we don't wanna do this is when we're fueling before or after training.

Most of Jessie’s hacks are based on this underlying knowledge.

Examples:

• 🥦 Eat veg first / veg entré
• 🥑 Have savoury breakfasts e.g. throw avo and eggs on your morning toast
• 🍨 Satisfy your sweet tooth with dessert rather than an isolated snack
  

There's also a handful of other tools which can help curb spikes:

Short walks after meals (or any activity), vinegar or cinnamon with meals, and cold water immersion a few times a week are all tools to buffer glucose spikes.

But all the hacks are worth a read.

Because if chronic disease is death by a thousand cuts, each blood sugar spike is a small cut that adds up overtime.