What is high blood sugar? It is a condition in which the amount of glucose (the basic fuel of the body and brain) is above normal levels that a person has circulating in their bloodstream. Insulin is the main hormone in the body, secreted by the pancreas gland, as part of digestion to signal the body cells to take up glucose and use it to power the cells throughout the body.
When this normal process goes wrong, there is either not enough insulin to do the signalling or the cells are “insulin resistant”, that is, they do not seem to understand what the insulin is trying to tell them to do about the glucose. As a result, the blood sugar level goes up higher than it should.
My name is Dr Iris Bell, and I am an alternative medicine doctor, researcher, and educator educated at Harvard and trained at Stanford Medical School, as well the University of California – San Francisco. I know the daily challenges of diabetes first-hand, and I know where to look to find drug-free answers for you in working to reverse your diabetes or prevent pre-diabetes from becoming a diagnosed case of type 2 diabetes, and reduce your risk of complications.
The first step is to arm yourself with the right information. That’s where this website and our self help programs come in.
Normal Blood Glucose Levels
For normal people, their system keeps blood sugar in the range of 70-100 milligrams per deciliter while fasting (after not eating overnight, for instance). Right before the next meal, the blood sugar level might range from 90 to 130 mg/dL. After eating, blood sugar does rise somewhat, and normal ranges end up below 180 mg/dL or considerably lower 2 hours later. People whose fasting and 2-hour post-meal blood sugar levels are above those general cut-offs are considered either pre diabetic (if the value is high but not quite past the threshold level to diagnose diabetes) or diabetic.
Not sure what your blood sugar (blood glucose) level is? You can get diabetes home test kits for both blood glucose testing and for Hemoglobin A1C (the value tells you on average how high your blood sugar has been in the past 3 months – a good diagnostic test for diabetes). Check out this resource here. Or just start with the basics – a good glucose meter and test strips. Many companies have special offers for the meters to get you started. To get a gift card to pay for some diabetes testing supplies, check out this option.
High Blood Sugar Levels
Different age groups may have somewhat different cut-offs that define what is “too high.” If the blood sugar stays high for long periods of hours, someone can develop damage to their body’s tissues, especially kidneys, blood vessels in the brain and heart and nerve damage in peripheral nerves that normally detect pain, vibration, and temperature in the toes and fingers. Blood sugar can go up and down depending on diet, specific points in time (it may be highest in the mornings when the body naturally releases the most cortisol, an essential hormone that is also released under stress but that is in the system all the time in some amount), after exercise, and during infections.
Once a person has been diagnosed with diabetes, they usually need to use a combination of diet, exercise, weight loss, and medications to control blood sugar levels. The good news is that they can also add in natural supplements of vitamins and minerals and herbs, as well as use certain types of alternative medicine (e.g., simple strategies like meditation or hypnosis for stress relief), to help them improve how they feel and perhaps slow down the risk of complications.
The drugs are not always effective or are only partly effective in lowering blood sugar (and sometimes they overshoot and cause serious short term problems of very low blood sugar levels that can cause seizures, brain damage, or even death), and they can cause their own serious side effects, and so reducing the risk of diabetes is always preferable to taking drugs to treat it once it develops. Lifestyle changes, if done thoroughly and properly, can work just as well as any drug and have a much safer long term outcome in terms of side effect risks.
Ready to take action and reverse your own blood sugar problems?
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