Evening hypo drowsiness - sugary snacks are a complete "no no" later in the day

[Danielj1]

Hi All,

To recap when you start on the hypo recovery journey, there are a number of milestones to overcome.

Despite all that good progress one thing that remains beyond my reach is heavy tiredness into the evening time that restricts a more active life at times.

I have been obsessive over supplements and diet for a while and whilst this is much better I now realise I remain very sensitive to higher insulin levels caused by excessive carbs especially processed carbs and sugary snacks.

From all the research I have done to understand this better, it does seem in the morning we have raised cortisol and improved pancreas insulin production ( it appears to be of a better quality in the morning) to support higher energy levels and good mood, and so the body can cope with insulin spikes better in the early part of the day.

I for one have typically enjoyed treats and snacks later in the evening rather than during the day time.

So to cut a very long story short, the only way to combat this at all is avoid bread with a meal if eating out, avoiding carbs almost entirely with dinner (so no rice/naan with the curry takeaway) and aslo avoiding the red wine and after dinner chocolate mints with the coffee. Pretty much ruins the meal does it not.

But as the final frontier of health recovery with hypo, at the moment I can see no way that I can avoid this for the foreseeable future.

I post these in- depth anecdotes really to better understand how others find themselves in the same situation and what they do about it. So hopefully I can learn a little more...

If you have resolved the evening energy drops consistently, I can only say well done.

[JumpJiving]

  Danielj1

Eating out is definitely tricky. There are restaurants that do produce good quality food that works for those of us who experience sugar spikes, but there are an awful lot of restaurants that are truly terrible at such things. Hotel breakfasts tend to be pretty much the opposite of what we need most of the time - savoury is better than sweet, but even the savoury is often high in refined carbs.

It's definitely easier when at home.

Very expensive, but if you want really good quality chocolate that is actually pretty good for you (unlike the vast majority of chocolate that you can buy in UK shops) take a look at cocoarunners.com/ . I have about 12g after dinner in place of the low quality, sugary junk that I used to have, letting each piece melt in my mouth rather than just wolfing it down.

To replace sugary snacks during the day, I now fill a container with mixed seeds and nuts each morning, which works really well for me. As somebody who (before they changed the ingredients to include lactose) used to munch a packet of Jaffa cakes on the way home from work, washed down with a can of full fat Coca Cola, and even recently would munch a whole packet of ginger nuts whilst watching TV, the transition to seeds & nuts has been remarkably easy.

[Edit: Forgot to mention, try having stuff involving vinegar prior to sweet dishes, such as pickled or fermented stuff. Apparently, it changes the way sugary things that follow are digested. It can be a bit of an acquired taste though, and your insides may take a while getting used to it, so build up quantity slowly]

[Catkin1234 in reply to JumpJiving]

A Tablespoon of vinegar taken pre prandially in a glass of water (to prevent dental enamel erosion) can lower the glucose spike of a meal by up to 30%.

Acetic acid (in vinegar) slows down the breakdown of starches into glucose. It also directs muscles to take up glucose as it arrives in the bloodstream.