What Impacts Blood Glucose?

These days, you hear blood glucose and you panic! EEK! Just the word sounds scary.

It’s associated with diabetes.

You remember your dad or your grandma or a friend having to poke themselves after dinner to check their sugar levels.

So what is it exactly? What makes it go up? What makes it go down?

Let’s check out what this sticky subject actually is and all the things that can impact it!

What is blood glucose?

Blood glucose, also called blood sugar, is the main sugar found in your blood.

It can come from the food you eat and the beverages you drink and it’s your body’s main source of energy.

It gives us energy by traveling through our bloodstream and going to all our body’s cells to help our body take care of all the functions it needs to do every day!

What makes my blood glucose go up?

There are many factors that can make your blood glucose (or blood sugar) go up, but they aren’t all things that you can control.

Let’s review the common ones.

Food and beverages, of course, impact our blood glucose. If you eat a meal or consume a beverage with carbohydrates your blood glucose will naturally rise. If you consume a meal and/or beverage with more carbohydrates than usual you may notice a bigger increase in blood glucose.

Lack of activity can also cause blood glucose to rise.

Some medications (like steroids, for example), illness, stress, pain, menstrual periods, and dehydration can all increase your blood glucose.

Our weight and/or waist circumference can also lead to increases in blood glucose. The higher our weight, body fat percentage, or waist circumference gets, the harder it is for our insulin and glucose to stay regulated.

Many of these impacts on blood glucose are due to changes in hormones in our bodies! Perimenopause and menopause, for example, play a huge role in our glucose metabolism!

Don't forget about those factors that we have little to no control over!

Our family history, medications, or our own past medical history can all impact our blood glucose and cause an increase in the risk of diabetes.

There are a few other situations or items that can cause blood sugar to rise.

These are not all true for every person, but things to keep an eye out for, especially if you are checking your blood glucose at home and notice spikes on occasion.

You can check to see if any of these are correlated with the spike you notice!

Sunburns can cause our blood sugar to rise, as well as some artificial sweeteners, coffee, losing sleep, skipping breakfast, the time of day, something called the dawn phenomenon (when people have a surge in hormones early in the morning whether they have diabetes or not, but this can raise your blood sugar), as well as dehydration, nasal spray, and gum disease.

How High Blood Glucose Affects Your Body

When your blood glucose is running higher than normal, it's hard on your body. When this happens for long periods of time, severe health problems, or even life-threatening situations, can happen.

So getting your blood glucose under control (like you'll learn how to do in this resource library!) will really help your body out!

Low Blood Glucose (Hypoglycemia)

While the goal for those with prediabetes is to lower blood glucose, it's important to notice the symptoms of low blood glucose as well.

Low blood glucose (hypoglycemia) can also be a dangerous situation, leading to possible seizures or loss of consciousness. Low blood glucose typically occurs in those who have diabetes, but this isn't always the case.

If you feel that this could be an issue for you, please discuss your symptoms immediately with your medical team. It's possible they may want you to test your blood glucose throughout the day to monitor trends and adjust their plan of care based on your blood glucose trends.

What Could Cause Low Blood Glucose?

• Consuming Alcohol
• Exercise
• Medication
• Not Eating Adequately
• Skipping/Delaying Meals

Should I Be Checking My Glucose at Home?

For those with prediabetes, you likely don't need to check your glucose at home.

There is the exception of your medical team prescribing a monitor or meter to see what's going on outside of a single lab visit though. If this is prescribed to you, please request to be referred to a Certified Diabetes Educator (CDE) in order to receive the necessary education on how and when to test as well as how to interpret the results.

Receiving a prescription or recommendation for testing at home is not common for those with prediabetes though, and likely not needed.

We will discuss this further in a later lesson, but unless you have something going on that the doctor needs to see greater detail, this is likely something that can go on the back burner for now.

So … It’s Not Just the Carbs!

Many factors impact our blood glucose. If you've been diagnosed with prediabetes, your blood glucose is running higher than normal.

This can be caused by many factors, and it's likely a combination of factors that led to your higher-than-normal blood glucose. Some factors are outside of our control.

What factors are impacting your blood glucose?

Knowing these specific factors can help you determine where to make changes to impact your blood glucose in the best ways possible.

Check out the worksheet with this lesson to walk through possible factors impacting your blood glucose so you can start to make goals that focus on these factors!