STOP Making These Blood Sugar Mistakes (Diabetics Need to Watch This)

Find out how to improve blood sugar control and stop making common blood sugar mistakes! In this video, we’ll cover 13 blood sugar mistakes to avoid, along with the best blood sugar management tips for healthy blood sugar levels.

Dr. Bur here. Today we’re going to talk about how to avoid making mistakes with your blood sugar. So, I have 13 common mistakes that people make when they’re testing their blood sugar. So, we’re going to clear that up.

I’m going to also give you some basic very important information about blood sugar. If you are heading toward diabetes or you have it, and if you have diabetes, I’m also going to show you how to reverse it. The first thing I want to talk about related to blood sugars is what is normal. In all of your blood, you should only have one little teaspoon of sugar. So, our body very tightly controls how much sugar we have in our blood at one time.

It does not like too much sugar. When you get into pre-diabetes, it’s one and a half teaspoons of sugar. When you get into a full-blown diabetic state, it’s only two little teaspoons of sugar. That’s what diabetes is. That’s a crazy small amount.

You probably thought it was a lot more. But then the question is going to come up, don’t people consume a lot more than that? Yes, they do. An average person consumes between 50 to over aundred teaspoons of sugar every single day if you include the hidden sugars from starch. So starch is hidden sugar.

How does one consume so much sugar yet if they’re a diabetic only have like a couple teaspoons of sugar show up in their blood? Well, that’s because there’s something behind the scenes sucking it out like a vacuum cleaner and that is called insulin. So insulin works really hard to bring the sugars down and it’s taking all this sugar and putting it into different parts of the body and sometimes it converts it into fat. Sometimes it converts into stored sugar in the liver or the muscles. Doctors are focused on blood sugars.

They don’t really test for insulin too much. They should because if they did test for that, they would find it’s like off the charts with the amount of sugar that an average person consumes. But what happens if you don’t eat any sugar at all? Would your normal blood sugar still be one teaspoon? And the answer is yes, it will.

Because your body needs a small amount of sugar, just a tiny bit to survive. as you can see, one teaspoon. So, it’s going to just make the sugar. The liver is going to make this extra sugar and it can make it out of pretty much anything. We don’t actually need sugar.

The problem is we consume too much and now we can’t get all that sugar out of the blood and then it starts going a little bit higher and a little bit higher and that’s what we call type 2 diabetes. And in that process, you should just know about this other thing called insulin resistance because the body also does not like too much insulin. So what happens in different tissues, you start developing this resistance to insulin. It starts with too much carbohydrate and sugar and snacking. Another thing you should know about is we need insulin to be able to pull in the glucose, but with insulin resistance, the body is going to have a difficult time pulling in the glucose.

And this really is the problem with a lot of chronic disease and even dementia and Alzheimer’s. They call it type 3 diabetes of the brain. Why? Because you’ve consumed too much carbohydrate for too long. Another little interesting thing about that, when someone becomes a diabetic, 80% of the sugar in their blood is actually created or made by the liver.

It’s not coming from the diet. Only 20% comes from the diet, but most of it is coming from the liver. Now, why would the liver be making that much sugar? It’s because all the messages all screwed up. It thinks it’s not getting enough glucose, so it has to then make a lot of it.

And this is why metformin is prescribed which indirectly lowers the blood sugar by telling the liver to stop making sugar. That’s how that works. When you go to the doctor, they screen for your blood sugar and eventually they say you’re a diabetic and now we have to treat you. So in other words, they’re going to wait until finally things are dysfunctional and then they’ll treat you and they’ll treat you with medication. They don’t put a lot of emphasis on diet or telling you to lower your carbs because 95% of doctors disagree with going on a low carb diet and they think it’s dangerous mainly because of propaganda in media that’s pushing it out there.

But instead, you’re given a medication to manage that blood sugar. And then you’re also sometimes told if your blood sugars go too low to have this glucose tablet or pill or eat some candy to raise the blood sugar. So some doctors are more concerned with a low blood sugar situation than a high blood sugar situation. So it’s all about managing that biomarker. It’s not about reversing.

Also hypoglycemia typically is about 70 milligrams per deciliter. Okay? Like normal is 80 and then 70 is considered hypoglycemia. So if a diabetic has a blood sugar of 90, they might be experiencing the symptoms of hypoglycemia. Yet other people that are normal, like that might be even a little too high for them or that might be normal for them.

And they consider normal between 80 and 100. Personally, I think it should be 80 and then when you go on a low carb diet, that 80 will go down to a 70 and that’ll be your normal or even 60 and I’ve even seen it even lower than that. And there’s no hypoglycemic symptoms at all because if you train your body not to live on carbohydrates and you can live on fat and ketones, your body won’t depend on all this extra sugar. So, let’s go through a couple points with this. Number one, not washing your hands before you check your blood sugar.

Let’s say, for example, you’re eating some fruit and you cut some fruit and you get some juice on your fingers and that mixes with the blood sugar. that can easily alter it. It’s called pseudohypoglycemia. It’s really important to wash your hands with soap and water and let them dry and then you know test your ring finger or your index finger. Number two, let’s say you use alcohol wipes and you wipe your finger but the alcohol is still wet and you test it.

That can create a difference between 10 and 40 points going up. So that can give you a false number. So wait at least 30 seconds for the alcohol to fully dry. And the other point I want to make is sometimes alcohol wipes had added glycerin which can also alter your blood sugar. So I would use the ones that don’t have glycerin because glycerin is kind of sweet.

Number three, do not use expired strips because you don’t know if they still work and that can make your readings incorrect. Number four, if you experienced a sauna, something really hot, or a cold plunge, both of those scenarios can alter your readings by up to 30 points, either going up or going down. So, you want to keep the strips in a kind of a good temperature and keep your body in a a good normal temperature. Uh, what about Tylenol? Yeah, that can increase your blood sugars if you’re taking Tylenol right before you test yourself.

or even vitamin C can alter the blood sugar going up by 30 to 50 points. If you’re testing your blood sugar like in the morning in a fasting state, don’t take any vitamins before you test it. Just don’t even drink any coffee, which I’m going to cover in a little bit, because that can majorly affect it. Also, if you’re squeezing or milking your finger, you’re also squeezing the interstitial fluid and mixing that with the blood sugars, diluting the blood sugar, and that can alter your blood sugars by dropping by up to 30 points. You just want to very gently have that blood drop and then have it sucked into that little tester to test your blood sugar.

Number eight, using different fingers can give you an alteration in you