Maximize Metabolism - Balance Blood Sugar
Let’s talk about the bioenergetic approach to wellness. This approach focuses on the energy production capacity and capability of the mitochondria in the cell. “Energy production” is another way of saying metabolism.
So, the bioenergetic goal is to maximize metabolism. This is why it is often also called “pro-metabolic.” How does it approach accomplish this?
By regulating and balancing blood sugar!
Most people would assume that you do this by eating as little sugar as possible. But no, that is not the case. The bioenergetic approach encourages you to eat as many carbs as required to maintain the highest energy possible.
Let me try to explain. Your entire body, but especially your brain and nervous system, requires glucose to maintain optimal health. If glucose is not released steadily, this tells your body that your environment must not be favorable to a high metabolism and so it will lower your metabolism so glucose can be reserved for the systems that need it the most.
Your body uses blood sugar levels as a measure of fuel availability. One health coach (Jay Feldman) put it this way: “Blood sugar acts as a proxy for the energetic capacity of our environment.” In other words, your blood sugar tells your body how much energy-generating foods (i.e. carbs) it can expect to have access to in the near future.
Therefore, low blood sugar signals to your body that you must not have very many carbohydrates to consume, and so it should lower your energy demands and focus on survival. This begins a cascade that puts your body into conservation mode.
Stress hormones are raised (to maintain energy and focus to find food)
Fat storage is ramped up (just in case it is needed later)
Metabolism is slowed (to conserve energy & force you to move minimally)
Sex hormones are lowered (because you don’t need to be making babies)
Conservation mode is another way of saying survival mode, famine mode, or starvation mode.
Yikes.
That is not what I signed up for when I started eating a low carb diet.
This does not mean that we want to go the complete opposite direction and have constantly high blood sugar, either.
But we should not be afraid of reasonable peaks after we eat that go down consistently. Maintaining stable blood sugar, with naturally flowing highs and lows is what we are looking for, and this is what our bodies use as a measure of food availability.
Why do our bodies do this?
Your body only stores a limited amount of carbs (glucose) as glycogen, because it is expecting to receive a consistent amount every day from the food that is coming in. Your mitochondria prefer to burn glucose, which is a cleaner, more efficient way of making ATP than from fat (more on this later). When you think about your millions of mitochondria making billions of ATP every single second, you can imagine how crucial it is to keep this process working as seamlessly and as smoothly as possible. Therefore, your body must take constant cues from its environment in order to stay ahead and be prepared.
Although your body can send you signals about what it needs (these are called “cravings”), your body cannot control what you eat. So how does your body is keep a tight hold on these pathways?
That’s where the stress hormones come in.
If at any point your body senses that your glucose levels are not sufficient to maintain high energy and high metabolism, your body sends cortisol, adrenaline, glucagon and others to the rescue. It will even lower T4 to T3 conversion (thyroid hormones), lower testosterone, lower progesterone and lower anabolic hormones. All to shift the body into preservation mode.
I think we can all agree that this is not what we want long term. You’ll never guess what causes these stress hormones to go down:
Insulin.
Which is raised when the blood sugar is raised, to get the glucose into the cells. Insulin is not the enemy after all, just another firemen getting the blame for the fire. But we have so much to discuss before we get too far down that rabbit hole… More soon!