How to Stabilize Blood Sugar, Prevent it from Becoming Too High or Low
by Sabrina Dawkins
I had a seemingly strange dream on February 22, 2020, after Friday night. In it, I was told that I had a lot of towels lying around that needed to be washed. There was nut butter smeared on my aerobic stepper platform—this, in the dream, was proof that I needed to wash my towels. I woke up confused: All my towels were clean. There was one towel that I was using to dry my clean body after washing, but there were no dirty towels lying around.
I’m trying to wait until I’m out of meat and nuts to go to the grocery store, so I decided to make my apples stretch by eating one every other day instead of one every day as I usually do. I’ve also been eating my food with little or no vegetables the past few days as I delay going to the grocery store: I have enough meat and nuts and am relying on the vegetables from my garden that survived the winter and are growing slowly in the cold weather. I don’t want to pick too many leaves off the collard greens, Swiss chard, or broccoli and risk killing them.
The night after the February 22, 2020, dream, on Saturday night to early Sunday morning, I felt a little weak before bed. I hadn’t eaten an apple that day, and I had eaten my second and final meal of the day after an hour spent walking on my manual treadmill, and that meal consisted of a piece of fish, a piece of beef, and garlic, so nothing to raise my blood sugar. When I awoke the next day on Sunday, February 23, 2020, I ate a bowl of mixed raw nuts without salt and mowed my lawn with a manual mower. Then I sprinkled almost an entire large bin of compost under both of my pecan trees. I think I got about five hours of exercise. As I was spreading my second to last five-gallon bucket of compost under my larger pecan tree, I started to feel dizzy and weak. I sat down for a little while. I thought to myself that I only had one bucket left to fill with compost from the bin. I would just fill it, quickly spread the compost under the tree, and go inside and lie down.
I started feeling dizzy and weak again as I spread the last five-gallon bucket of compost, so I sat down again for about 30 seconds. All I needed to do now was lock up my garden fork and go inside. Well, the dizziness and weakness got worse and I was forced to hurry inside before fainting. I left my dirty gloves and garden fork outside on the grass. Inside, I hurried to the refrigerator. I got out a pitcher over half full of cold water. I had started sweating and was about to faint. I poured the water in a cup. I had made it just in time: I was in my house. I could just lie down, drink a cold glass of water, and recover from the dizziness.
But things changed in a matter of seconds. I felt extremely dizzy and weak. The next thing I knew, my empty pitcher was on the living room floor and water was all over the floor: I had temporarily lost consciousness, and as my body was shutting down, I had brought my pitcher with me to sit down and drink instead of the cup of water I had intended to bring. I didn’t make it to the chair before I lost consciousness. Thank God I didn’t fall, but I did drop the large pitcher that was over half full of water. I had to quickly grab three large towels to quickly soak up as much water as possible while still dizzy.
I grabbed three clean towels and got on my hands and knees and soaked up as much water as I could before dizziness forced me to lie on the couch for a little while. The floor was dirtier than usual because, being dizzy, I hadn’t thought of wiping my boots off on the mat before coming into the house after walking through compost and dirt. So I ended up wiping up water and tracked-in compost and dirt. So then, on the night of February 23, 2020, I had three dirty towels lying on the floor that needed to be washed.
Nuts turn into “butter” or mush in the body, and I had exercised for maybe five hours straight. So I think the nut butter smeared on the stepper platform in the dream might have meant I’d done a lot of exercising and only had nuts as fuel, which resulted in extremely low blood sugar and the temporary loss of consciousness. I know that low blood sugar was the cause and not prolonged standing because sitting or lying down for a little while didn’t help; it only temporarily and artificially quelled the dizziness until I stood again. Eating an apple stopped the dizziness immediately.
My blood sugar had dropped too low because I had done five hours of yard work on a bowl of raw nuts. I didn’t feel hungry after I’d finished my yard work, so it wasn’t hunger. When I ate the apple, I wasn’t hungry. My temporary change in diet and routine caused this: unusually long work-out session and no apple the day before.
I’m not on any medication. I have a 100% natural diet and use sea salt for seasoning, but eating only natural and healthy foods and exercising regularly is not enough. In order to stabilize my blood sugar and prevent fainting due to extremely low blood sugar, or to prevent diabetes and weight gain due to prolonged high blood sugar, hyperglycemia, I have compiled a list of things to remember to do:
Prevent Hypoglycemia and Hyperglycemia
- Go to bed no later than around 4:00 AM. That is around the time that blood sugar starts to rise in order to prevent it from dropping too low during the eight-hour sleep fast.
- Sleep until you naturally awaken, or get at least eight hours of sleep so that your body functions properly.
- Never miss a night of sleep.
- I eat a low Glycemic Index diet to prevent weight gain, so it’s important for me to eat one apple a day to prevent my blood sugar from dropping too low.
- You can have too much of a good thing: Natural sugar can be bad sugar, so limit even how much fruit and starchy vegetables you eat to prevent blood glucose from rising too high.
- Exercise daily to lower blood sugar and control hunger.
- Beef and almonds are great at lowering blood sugar quickly.
- Eliminate artificial foods, or foods with artificial ingredients, such as cake, candy, imitation meats.
- Eliminate fried foods.
- Consume salt in one meal a day. Salt lowers blood sugar, but too much will leave you bloated. By consuming it once a day, you give the body enough time to flush it out and prepare for the next dose.
- Eat food in its natural form. For example, do not consume peanut butter or smoothies—chew the nuts, bite the apples. This slows the rate at which glucose enters the bloodstream. When natural food is altered to eliminate the chewing stage, your blood sugar could spike from consuming a smoothie or drastically drop from consuming peanut butter.