Source: amazon.com via Jason on Pinterest
One of the most frequently asked questions we get at inCYST, is whether or not a specific food raises blood glucose. It is understandable, given the fact that women with PCOS are insulin resistant and highly likely to develop diabetes, that this would be a concern.
And in response to that concern, it is understandable that nutrition and wellness experts often quote a list of foods to avoid in order to maintain a low-glycemic diet.
Did you know, this"low glycemic" list is highly variable? That even though there are trends, certain foods may affect one person more than another? and that a food that has a tendency to be"high glycemic" on its own…may be perfectly fine when eaten with a mixed meal?
Those high glycemic lists floating around the Internet tend to report the response of your body to a food when it is eaten by itself. So all of those people telling you not to eat carrots or bananas are not telling you the entire story. We rarely eat that way. If you dip carrots in hummus, or eat a banana in a smoothie with Greek yogurt, for example, your body will respond completely differently to that nutrient mix than it would eating either of those foods by themselves.
So when you ask us if a food raises blood sugar and whether or not you should eat it, unless someone has measured YOUR blood sugar two hours after you have eaten it, any advice they give you is pure surmising and not based on relevant factual information.
You can do these tests yourself, you know. All you have to do, is buy a glucose meter at your nearest drug store and test your blood sugar a couple of hours after eating a meal. And before you conclude whether or not a food doesn't work for you, you need to try it alone, in a mixed meal, and at different times of day in order to determine how your body interacts with it.
My point here is, a nutrition, fitness, or wellness expert who is merely parroting information he or she has read on another website and is not customizing that advice to YOU is doing you a disservice. You may be cutting out perfectly healthy foods that you could eat in the right situation. You may be dealing with a food sensitivity that is not going to respond to a low glycemic diet.
Why waste time on information anyone can Google when you can tailor information to your own personal situation?
We love to do this kind of detective work at inCYST, and our network members have taken a lot of time to learn how to interpret that kind of data and make specific recommendations based on how YOUR body works.
Listen to someone who doesn't know you and who may be misguiding you, for free…or get evidence-based, customized information with personal relevance. It may cost you in the short term but save you a lot of trouble in the end.