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Sigma Nutrition Radio

#474: Glucose Peaks & Variability – Is Lower Better?

Sigma Nutrition Radio

Danny Lennon

Nutrition, Health & Fitness

4.8 • 633 Ratings

🗓️ 13 March 2023

⏱️ 83 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Links:

About This Episode:

Often claims are made recommending that people should aim to keep peaks in blood glucose low in terms of both magnitude and frequency.

And while many claims about blood glucose "spikes" are incorrect or purposefully exaggerated to grab attention, there are some reasonable and interesting hypotheses put forward in relation to blood glucose variability and excursions.

For example, interesting questions have been raised in relation to the impact of blood glucose excursions in seemingly normoglycemic and/or healthy people.

In this episode, we look at three specific elements of this: average blood glucose, glucose variability, and glucose peaks. All in the context of people without prediabetes or type diabetes, who have typical blood glucose measures in the 'normal' range.

Specifically, we look at three hypothesized recommendations made elsewhere:

  1. "The lower you average blood glucose (HbA1C) is better, even if already in normal range"
  2. "The more you can minimize glucose variability, the better."
  3. "Minimizing the number of glucose "peaks" is important, even if they don't meet the threshold for hyperglycemia"

Can normoglycemic people benefit from further reducing these measures? Let's take a look…

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to Sigma Nutrition Radio.

0:17.3

This is episode 474 of the podcast. My name is Danny Lennon and here with me is Dr. Alan

0:25.3

Flanagan. Alan, how are you today, sir? I'm good. Thank you. So today we want to discuss some

0:31.2

ideas relating to minimizing blood glucose peaks or some people may frith him as spikes,

0:37.2

keeping variations in blood glucose low and the impact of average blood glucose peaks or some people may further them as spikes, keeping variations in blood glucose

0:39.1

low and the impact of average blood glucose on health outcomes in those without diabetes

0:44.8

specifically. And we'll come to more of that in a moment. But really this surfaces from often

0:50.8

you will see claims on the internet that people give the idea that the lower you keep

0:54.8

your blood glucose, or at least the flatter you keep your blood glucose curve, as it's sometimes

1:00.0

phrased, the better it is for your health.

1:02.6

And so I think in this sense, people referring to this glucose curve being that graphical

1:07.6

representation of their blood glucose over a certain period.

1:11.9

So typically when you see people talking about the benefits of a flat curve, they're probably

1:16.8

referring to across, let's say, 24 hours.

1:20.0

If you mapped out that blood glucose response, that there's very little variability,

1:24.7

therefore kind of flat enough curve.

1:26.8

And so this relates to these ideas

1:28.6

of variability and peaks in blood glucose, which are going to come to a bit later on. But I think

1:34.1

what we really want to do here today is note that many of these claims are either nonsensical

1:39.6

or just coming from people that don't really deserve much attention on this topic that either have

1:45.1

no real understanding or are pursuing some sort of agenda or to advance their own notoriety,

1:51.4

often both of those things. And so we're not trying to address those weakest, most obviously

...

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