Anxiety and your Blood Sugar:
The connection to calming your internal stress…
When most people think about anxiety, they think about the underlying mental/emotional reason for it, which is usually connected to something in their life. Often psychologist will council people on ways to deal with a new job, a problem in their relationship, financial stress etc. There is usually always a psychological component or thought pattern that brings on anxiety, but there is a strong physiological component that can bring it on or exacerbate it as well.
This physiological component is hormonal and is something that can be easily controlled with diet. Let me first lay the groundwork for the overall hormonal condition that can cause continual underlying anxiety. For women in our society chronic stress has become the norm. Even girls in high school or studying and doing extracurricular activities, then there’s the pressure of college, then getting a job and then of course becoming a multitasking mother while also working a full time job! This constant stress raises the stress hormone called cortisol. When this hormone is in high demand the body needs to take a secondary sex hormone, called progesterone, and convert it to make cortisol to keep up with the demand. This leaves the woman in the state of “estrogen dominance”. Most younger women and even older women have plenty of estrogen but are deficient in progesterone. Progesterone is a very calming hormone. It increases the brain neurochemical called GABA. GABA is very calming and relaxing and it is the neurochemical that many of the benzodiazepine drugs aim to increase. These drugs are of course very addicting. So raising progesterone levels and lowering cortisol is the best way to calm the body and the mind to lay a perfect terrain to fight anxiety. This is what BeBalanced “natural hormone balancing” does. However, to take it to the next level there is a hormone called insulin that is often ignored. Insulin plays a big part in our blood sugar. When our estrogen or progesterone are balanced, we will have less or no PMS and very little menopausal symptoms. However, balancing our insulin and blood sugar daily is still something that needs to be watched in order to keep a calm state, avoid anxiety or avoid exacerbating our reaction to situations that would normally cause us anxiety or worry. When a woman has not eaten for a long time, such as several hours, her blood sugar can begin to crash. This can definitely bring on anxiety and irritability and if a woman is prone to a panic attack this can bring one on. Another scenario is abuse of caffeine, alcohol or refined sugar. These will make a blood sugar rise quickly and then sharply fall, bringing on a blood sugar low that will exacerbate anxiety.
Via “natural hormone balancing” BeBalanced can aid in balancing sex hormones such as estrogen and progesterone fairly quickly. Our weight loss program, using a homeopathic formula, or our natural hormone balancing creams can achieve this in a very short period of time. This leaves the perfect foundation to avoid excess worry and anxiety on a daily basis. Proper daily eating patterns are very important to maintain blood sugar balance providing more stabilization and being the icing on the cake in a woman feeling her best.
Simple tips to Achieve Blood Sugar Balance:
- Do not have caffeine by itself in the morning without some type of protein or fat with it to help stabilize blood sugar. You can even put coconut oil and some stevia in your coffee if you only have coffee in the AM.
- Do not go more than 3 hours without eating until you get insulin and blood sugar stabilized and then you can go longer.
- Try to have protein and some fat, even if it’s just a tablespoon, at each meal and then some carbohydrate such as a grain. If you desire flour carbohydrates, such as bread or crackers, this is even more important to watch the protein and fat content in order to have balance blood sugar.
- Take a digestive enzyme daily as this will aid in breaking down your ingested fat and protein fully, allowing those macronutrients to get into the bloodstream faster to balance the carbohydrates consumed that are much easily and quicker broken down.
- Try to eat three meals a day and an afternoon snack between lunch and dinner. It is almost essential to have something an hour before bedtime. This prevents waking up in the middle of night and hot flashes/night sweats as well, which are often triggered by crashes in blood sugar. A good vegetable protein blend with some MCT medium-chain triglyceride oil or coconut oil in some coconut or almond milk blended/shaken will taste great and calm you so that you fall asleep easier and sleep throughout the night. This should even be done if you did have wine earlier or cake at a birthday party. It is a much more essential in this circumstance to “book end” your day with this easily digestible protein and fat.
There many ways to deal with anxiety such as meditation, sound wave therapy, yoga, Reiki or counseling that deal with working through the problem. Just remember that the body cannot be ignored in this process though, because everything is connected. By stabilizing the sex hormones, estrogen and progesterone, with “natural hormone balancing, the foundation will be laid for a much calmer state of mind. By adding in simple dietary changes to monitor blood sugar you will be able to handle normal day-to-day stress as well as unexpected events with a much more calm and rational state of mind. So get balanced for a balanced lifestyle that can truly be anxiety free.
See if you have a hormone imbalance that could be effecting your mood! Go to bebalancedcenters.com and take the free hormone assessment!