What Are The Top 10 Signs of Blood Sugar Imbalances?
Your body is one big interconnected system. It’s like any other ecosystem in nature. Every part is interdependent on all of the other parts.
If one piece is struggling, that can impact how well all of the other pieces work, too.
This explains why when one symptom pops up it can quickly feel like your health is spiraling out of control and suddenly you have five other issues. Because everything is connected.
One of the things that link all the different areas of your health together is your hormones. Particularly, your blood sugar hormones.
Your blood sugar hormones (insulin and glucagon) have an incredibly important job to do. They are responsible for providing the rest of your body with the fuel and the resources that it needs to function correctly.
If your blood sugar hormones are out of balance and unable to supply fuel to the rest of your body, this can lead to a wide variety of other imbalances and symptoms (hormonal and otherwise).
So, how can you know if imbalances in your blood sugar hormones are contributing to the symptoms you’re experiencing?
Well, you have to start by connecting some of the dots between your blood sugar hormones (what they do) and what’s going on with you. To help you connect those dots and understand if you might need to address some blood sugar issues to improve your health, we’re going to cover the most common signs of blood sugar imbalances in this blog post.
Here Are The Top 10 Signs That You Have Blood Sugar Imbalances
#1: You Have Chronic Inflammation
Inflammation is actually a normal and healthy process. Inflammation is one of the ways your body heals itself from injury. It’s the result of your immune system cells rushing to an area of damaged tissue so they can do their job and help that tissue heal.
However, inflammation is only healthy and normal when it comes and goes quickly.
It becomes a big problem when it sticks around for a long time and turns into chronic inflammation. It does more harm than good in this chronic, long-lasting, state.
So, what can cause this normal healing process to go haywire and become a health problem?
One possibility is blood sugar imbalances.
When your blood sugar levels are too high, this can cause damage to your cells and your tissues.
That damage prompts your immune system cells to have an inflammatory response. They’re trying to help repair your tissues.
And, if your blood sugar is consistently high for long periods of time - it causes your body to release inflammation over and over again. High blood sugar levels promote a chronic inflammatory response from your immune system. [1] [2]
In other words, blood sugar imbalances can be the root cause of chronic inflammation and pain in your body.
Sidebar: Something I often think about here is joint pain. If your joints hurt - I’d get really curious about whether or not your blood sugar levels are optimal.
#2: You’ve Been Diagnosed with An Autoimmune Disease
Since we’re already talking about how your immune system and blood sugar are connected - it’s a good time to address the connection between unhealthy blood sugar levels and autoimmune issues.
At their core, all autoimmune diseases are a result of an overactive inflammatory response from your immune system. [3] [4]
And, if high blood sugar levels promote a chronic inflammatory response, it’s possible that they contribute to the development of autoimmune issues, too.
The data we have shows a very strong connection between unhealthy blood sugar levels and the following autoimmune diseases:
#3: Your Skin is Inflamed or You Have Chronic Acne/Rashes
The health of your blood sugar hormones can also impact your skin.
This goes back to the connection between blood sugar balance and inflammation. Inflamed skin can be a result of long-term blood sugar imbalances and these imbalances are associated with an increase in chronic acne and other inflammatory skin issues. [14] [15] [16] [17] [18]
#4: You’ve Experienced Stubborn Weight Gain or Obesity
Real food fats don't make you fat. Blood sugar imbalances do.The idea that dietary fat is the cause of weight gain is an oversimplification of how your body actually works. Nothing about our biology is quite that simple. Having excess body fat is a result of some complex hormonal processes.
Here are the basics that are helpful to understand:
Insulin is your main blood sugar hormone and one of insulin's jobs is to store energy for your body to use later (this is your body’s natural way of protecting you against famine).
When your blood sugar is high, your body releases the hormone insulin. And, insulin works to move that extra sugar from your blood into storage in your body fat tissue. This causes your body fat tissue to increase. [19]
When your blood sugar levels are higher than optimal, this leads to excessive insulin release which can result in excessive body fat storage (i.e. weight gain).
Real food fats (like real butter, tallow, and lard) do not cause significant blood sugar or insulin increases. [20] [21]
Processed foods do.
So, real food fats don’t cause weight gain. Blood sugar imbalances (caused by processed foods) do.
In other words, it’s likely that imbalances in your blood sugar hormones (caused by processed foods) are the true underlying cause of stubborn or recurrent weight gain and obesity.
#5: You Have Inconsistent, Heavy, and/or Painful Periods
In order to experience relatively pain-free easy periods your body needs to have a healthy balance between estrogen and progesterone.
And, as you may have guessed, the balance between these two sex hormones is influenced by how healthy your blood sugar hormones are. This connects back to the fact that your blood sugar hormones provide fuel to the rest of your body. Your cells and ovaries need the right fuel to make healthy levels of estrogen and progesterone.
Blood sugar imbalances lead to a lack of healthy fuel, which can cause sex hormone imbalances, and ultimately lead to inconsistent, heavy, and painful periods. [22] [23]
#6: You Struggle with Infertility
Having healthy estrogen and progesterone levels is not only important for pain-free periods, but we need those healthy levels in order to be fertile.
More and more, we’re learning that improving blood sugar levels improves the fertility of women who have historically struggled with infertility. [24] [25] [26]
#7: You Struggle With Digestive Health Issues
It’s long been known that people with severe blood sugar imbalances (like, Prediabetes or Diabetes) often have bothersome digestive issues as well. [27]
But, we’re gaining a better understanding of how even seemingly mild blood sugar imbalances can have a negative impact on digestive health - even for people who do not have Prediabetes or Diabetes.
There’s a strong connection between unhealthy blood sugar levels and Irritable Bowel Syndrome as well as Intestinal Permeability (aka ‘Leaky Gut’). [28] [29] [30] [31]
Digestive health issues as a result of imbalances in blood sugar hormones are likely brought on by increased inflammation and also may be a result of the fact that the hormones that control your digestion are influenced by the health of the hormones that control your blood sugar balance. They talk to each other - they’re all interconnected.
#8: You Are Dealing with Depression and/or Anxiety
Your blood sugar levels have a significant impact on your brain and nervous system.
Your brain needs a lot of energy. So, it makes some sense that if the hormones that provide that energy to your brain are out of balance, this can lead to mental health and cognitive issues.
Blood sugar imbalances and metabolic syndrome (which is ultimately a result of blood sugar imbalances) significantly increase your risk of developing both anxiety and depression. [32] [33] [34] [35]
#9: You Feel Sluggish/Low Energy/Foggy
Along those same lines, when your blood sugar is higher than what is ideal for your body this can leave you feeling foggy, sluggish, and fatigued.
Chronic blood sugar imbalances are linked to chronic fatigue and impaired cognitive function. [36] [37] [38] [39].
Basically, blood sugar imbalances make it harder to think. Which can make everything feel hard.
#10: You Have Prediabetes or Diabetes
These issues are probably the most obvious of all the health problems on the list. But, the symptoms associated with both Prediabetes and Diabetes (this is true for all types of Diabetes) are a result of very severe blood sugar imbalances.
It’s important to realize that these severe imbalances don’t just show up overnight. For most people, Diabetes is the end result of decades of mild imbalances in their blood sugar hormones that were never corrected.
The health issues caused by unhealthy blood sugar levels begin way before Diabetes sets in.
And, learning to optimize your blood sugar hormones now can not only help you prevent and repair Diabetes, it can also help you remedy all of these other health problems associated with blood sugar imbalances.
Now you may be wondering -
How Can You Rebalance Your Blood Sugar Hormones?
The answer is to ditch processed foods and get back to eating the real foods that nature has always provided. Inside The Hormone Rebellion Program, we cover exactly how you can do that in an easy-to-follow step-by-step process. Learn more about the program here.
Hope to see you there!
