The Collagen Diet by Pamela Schoenfeld

Author:Pamela Schoenfeld
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Ulysses Press
Published: 2018-11-01T16:00:00+00:00

Low Blood Sugar and Collagen Protein

Perhaps you have experienced the symptoms of reactive hypoglycemia, or a rapid drop in blood sugar levels that occurs within four hours after eating. If so, you know how life-altering this condition can be, causing extreme hunger, unusual fatigue, brain fog, mood changes, and in the worst cases, nausea, sweating, shakiness, and lightheadedness. When it occurs in the middle of the night, you may wake with a start and then have difficulty getting back to sleep.

Did you know that the symptoms of low blood sugar can signal that your body may be on the path to insulin resistance? Insulin resistance happens when the body’s cells stop fully responding to the insulin signal your pancreas is sending out. As a result, the brain instructs your pancreas to “shout louder” and release more insulin. Those high insulin levels could very well be behind the sudden drops in blood sugar. And if insulin resistance goes on unabated, it poses a high risk for progressing to prediabetes and eventually even diabetes. Many people who have hypoglycemia are not overweight, so they never suspect they could be at risk for insulin resistance, much less diabetes.

The human body has elaborate regulatory mechanisms that work to keep blood sugar, or blood glucose, in a relatively narrow range. Insulin and glucagon are the two main hormones that regulate this process and their actions “oppose” each other: Insulin lowers blood glucose, whereas glucagon raises it. Your body continually manages the release of both of these from your pancreas, and when it’s working right, you aren’t even aware of the ongoing adjustments. It is when they are out of sync, so to speak, with insulin predominating over glucagon, that the problem of low blood sugar can arise.

Many patients with symptoms of low blood sugar simply believe that this is their “normal.” They tell me their routine is to eat every two to three hours, which keeps their “hunger” problem under control. While a protein and carbohydrate snack does alleviate the symptoms in the short term, my goal is to prevent them from experiencing a sudden drop in blood sugar in the first place. Several things contribute to reactive hypoglycemia, and we work systematically to address the issues surrounding diet, sleep, and stress. I often determine that they are actually undernourished and then work to rectify inadequate protein, fat, magnesium, zinc, and vitamin B6 intakes, along with other micronutrient shortfalls.

I recently added a few new tools to my box for patients with hypoglycemia: collagen protein, gelatin, and bone broth. Regular consumption of these can help for several reasons: One, glycine and proline are among the amino acids that can be converted to glucose as the body requires; two, glycine has been shown in cell studies to stimulate the release of glucagon from the pancreas; and three, lycine and proline lower peak glucose levels in human subjects who consume them simultaneously with glucose. When glucose levels descend rapidly, the brain senses that there is a potentially life-threatening situation occurring.

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