This article is a short explanation of why our bodies go through sugar highs and sugar lows when we eat sugary foods. It is the principal reason a lot of us end up craving sugar all the time and often overeating. What I mean by a sugar high (or rush) is that sense of euphoria and high energy that occurs right after you’ve eaten anything sweet. A sugar low (or crash), on the other hand, reduces your energy level to the point that you will be sleepy, irritable, and typically intensely hungry. These sugar highs and lows may possibly not be anything you distinctly notice, but when you think about it, it may well be a part of your lifestyle. An example would be picking up a candy bar at a grocery store on the way home from work because you’re tired and have to have some energy.

I don’t try to eat candy bars very frequently. I have other sources of sweets that I have trouble staying away from! When I do consume a candy bar, though, in most cases I am literally shaking with hunger in about 2 hours. If we consume too many sugary foods, we may suffer from a series of these highs and lows – first the high and then the low around 2 hours later. Unfortunately the low causes us to seek out some sugar once again and the cycle repeats. In order to stop sugar cravings, we need to understand this cycle.

Let’s first go over how our bodies consume glucose (or carbohydrates). After it is digested, sugar enters the bloodstream as glucose (often called blood sugar) and from there, it’s absorbed and removed from the bloodstream, either to be burned by the cells within the body to supply energy or stored as fat, which could be later utilised to supply energy. The pancreas regulates the rate at which blood sugar (glucose) is absorbed and consequently the level of blood sugar in the blood. To do this, the pancreas injects a hormone called insulin into the bloodstream. The insulin acts as a trigger mechanism for the cells in the body. Higher levels of it in the blood stream trigger more blood sugar to be absorbed – lower amounts cause less blood sugar absorption. In between meals, the pancreas injects a nominal quantity of insulin to give you the vitality you have to have through the day. As you consume food, it will detect additional blood sugar in the bloodstream and inject more insulin to either burn it or store it as fat to preserve the blood sugar at a consistent level. This can be a crucial mechanism in fact, because the existence of abnormally high or reduced blood sugar levels is quite dangerous.

To explain why we have sugar highs and lows, we have to go backward in our history a few thousand years and examine what human beings were chowing down on in those times. Well, as you can imagine – it was very dull, fibrous, raw stuff. Whatever we ate took a long time to digest, so the sugary stuff that we run across each day now just wasn’t readily obtainable. Our complete process of consuming blood sugar now is based on those times in the past and truly hasn’t changed much. So, the speed with which the pancreas adjusts the insulin to either boost or decrease blood sugar was matched to the quite slow speed at which food was digested in those days. For our day and age, when we eat anything very sugary, this just isn’t fast enough as explained in the following example.

1) I consume an entire Snickers candy bar. Darn it – I earned it!
2) My pancreas, taking its time, doesn’t realize till too late, that my blood sugar level is substantial. It reacts though and releases a substantial amount of insulin to get that blood sugar level back down.
3) The insulin does its thing and triggers my system to absorb the blood sugar, either as energy or fat. So I am in a Sugar High. I’m truly feeling fine – but I’m also a little fatter!
4) The insulin is nevertheless triggering the absorption of blood sugar and, regrettably removes almost all of it. This level is now too low. Normally, the pancreas adjusts the insulin level to keep a moderate level of blood sugar in the blood stream, along with a moderate level of insulin, to steadily absorb the blood sugar for energy.
5) Now I’m in a sugar low. I’m shaking, starving, and exhausted. I am craving sugar and genuinely have to have anything to eat.
6) The pancreas, nevertheless taking its time, realizes there’s no blood sugar within the blood stream and finally, but way too late, ceases pumping out insulin.
7) In most instances, I find something to eat. If it’s sugary I start off back at step 1) once again.

So, that’s it in a few words – the vicious little cycle that will keep you moving from one sweet snack to another until you uncover a solution to get out of the rut – to stop craving sugar.

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Filed under: Nutrition

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