"This site changed my life...thanks for everything, Steph!" -Olivia, San Diego, CAThe Reactive Hypoglycemic Diet
Filed under: Diet | 11 Comments »Like many topics surrounding reactive hypoglycemia, there’s a lot of information out there in webland and a lot of confusion about what to eat.
Confused about food choices? You're not alone!
Reactive hypoglycemics should not follow a diabetic or hypoglycemic diet. A tailored diet, specific for the blood sugar highs and lows is necessary. Often, diabetic cookbooks will recommend a larger meal at lunchtime, a skimpy meal at dinner, and no evening snack. This is blood sugar doom for reactive hypoglycemics…
a diet like this will not alleviate your symptoms. My Reactive Hypoglycemia Cookbook can give you ideas about what kinds of meals will keep your blood sugar stable.
What should a reactive hypoglycemic eat?
Some characteristics of a hypoglycemic diet are also applicable to reactive hypoglycemics: a high-fiber, restricted-simple sugar diet full of fruits and vegetables is a must. In other words, skip the Big Mac and have a Southwestern Salad instead. Load on all the veggies at Subway, choose the wholewheat bread and skip the chips and soda (yes, even the baked chips).
Do not restrict carbs from your diet. Your body needs carbs to regulate blood sugar. You may see some sites recommend things like “55% of energy as carbohydrate” in a diet or “try a low carb, high protein diet” or “less than x grams of simple carbohydrate daily.” That’s easy for a dietician to plan, but who really has time to plan meals like that? Additionally, do you follow the high carb, or the low GI diet? As well as being confusing, in the meantime, your blood sugar is up and down like a yoyo, and who feels like cooking then? The simple answer is to follow a few easy steps, and gradually make changes in your diet.
Swap white bread and noodles for whole grains.
Complex carbohydrates like whole grain crackers, bagels, and cereal deliver glucose over a longer period of time, resulting in a slower sugar response. Choose cereals carefully–shop in a health food store if you can, as you are more likely to find “hidden” ingredients in cereal like High Fructose Corn Syrup or Sugar. Did you know that the first ingredient in Apple Jacks is sugar? I only found that out after my son, Leo, consumed a large bowl and hours later was in a bad mood thanks to a blood sugar drop. I look for low-carb, no sugar cereals like Kamut Flakes or Kashi Whole Grain Puffs. Ezekiel 4:9 bread is Low GI, and full of protein. We use that instead of regular bread, but you can try another (no sugar) whole grain product.
Drink water or non-caffeinated tea instead of soda
Buy spritzer water or lime-flavored sparkling water. Avoid anything with sweeteners…even artificial sweeteners. You may be able to tolerate caffeine. I learned to restrict coffee to one, very small cup in the morning. any more precipitates a blood sugar crash.
Eat every two hours
Only you can determine how often you need to eat (that’s why it’s a good idea to check your blood sugar using a home blood glucose monitoring device–see How to Get Diagnosed for Reactive Hypoglycemia for more info), but the two hour rule works for most people to avoid a crash. That equates for me to eight meals a day, starting at 8 a.m. and finishing at 10 p.m. Instead of a breakfast of cereal and toast, I eat the cereal at 8 and the toast at 10. I do the same for lunch, and divide what I would normally eat into two meals (i.e. a sandwich and fruit).
Read Your Labels
I shop at a local health food store, because I became so frustrated at buying products at local grocery stores. Food manufacturers sneak sugar and High Fructose Corn Syrup into everything! For example, I bought home two jars of Planter’s Dry Roasted Peanuts, and was dismayed to find out later on that they put sugar on them as a coating. Even small amounts of sugar spike my blood sugar and cause a crash so I absolutely have to avoid it if I am to maintain and even blood sugar level! I had a similar problem buying yoghurt, bread, and just about every product you can think of. Organic products, and vegan products (i.e. soy yoghurt instead of regular) tend to be sweetened with evaporated cane syrup, which does not cause blood sugar spikes like sugar and high fructose corn syrup.
Learn to Love Fruit and Veggies
Top: Low-fat cottage cheese, bing cherries, raspberries, black berries, sliced apricot, mint leaf and sweetpea flower. Bottom: Mr Crabby! Thinly sliced cucumbers, red bell pepper strips and rounds, lime slices and dolmas
It took some getting used to, but we purged our cupboards of snack foods except for whole grain crackers, vegan cream cheese, and fruits/veggies. We eat stir frys, soups, salads, vegan chili, and other dishes bursting with vegetables. A diet rich in fruits and vegetables is a must to maintain blood sugar levels.
Drink and Eat Before You Exercise
Exercise lowers your blood sugar, which is great for diabetics, but not so great for the reactive hypoglycemic. I have to drink fruit juice and eat half an energy bar before I exercise, and fruit juice plus the other half of the bar afterward, otherwise I cannot exercise without feeling sick.
What do I do if my Blood Sugar Drops?
When blood glucose drops, high carb foods can bring it back up to normal; at the first sign of low blood sugar (shakes, sweaty hands, churning stomach or another symptom which may be specific to you), you must eat a a meal or a snack. Diabetics will often consume sugar, candy, or soda to raise blood sugar quickly. This is a bad idea for reactive hypoglycemics, and is unnecessary. If you learn to eat at the first sign of symptoms, you will ward off a hypoglycemic attack. In an emergency, choose glucose tablets (available in the diabetic section of your local pharmacy) followed by nuts or a wholegrain bagel, or fruit juice over candy or cola, which will quickly spike your blood sugar and encourage it to fall rapidly.
Carry a Snack Everywhere You Go
Packs of nuts, a piece of fruit, a healthy drink (i.e. s small carton of apple juice). Carry something so that at the first sign of something amiss…you can eat.
Follow this link for the Top Ten Foods to Avoid
Related posts:
- The Case for a Reactive Hypoglycemic Diet That Includes Saturated Fats
- Why Vegan Works for a Reactive Hypoglycemic Diet
- Does The 30-Day Diabetes Miracle Diet Work For Reactive Hypoglycemia?
- And Another Day of a Reactive Hypoglycemia Diet
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Reactive Hypoglycemia
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[...] to it and experience a drop in blood sugar. Start with making the changes recommended in my article The Reactive Hypoglycemia Diet. To aid you with making changes in your diet, I have compiled a list of “musts” that [...]
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[...] diet, as in carbs, protein, and fiber. Carb-heavy meals will set off your symptoms. See my article The Hypoglycemic Diet if you’d like to read more about what to eat and what not to [...]
[...] Closely related to reactive hypoglycemia, Pierre Lefebvre first proposed the term of “Adrenergic Hormone Postprandial Syndrome” in 1991 to describe the anxiety, palpitations, sweating, irritability, and tremors that patients experienced after meals that were not accompanied by low glucose levels. APS is caused by a similar process as reactive hypoglycemia, although the body avoids the hypoglycemia by stabilizing the blood sugar through a biochemical process called gluco (or sugar) homestasis. Unfortunately, due to the lack of hypoglycemia accompanying the symptoms, APS is sometimes referred to by some medical professionals as “pseudohypoglycemia” or “non-hypoglycemia.” People with APS do not have reactive hypoglycemia, but people with RH can sometimes suffer from adrenergic hormone postprandial syndrome, which can cause–amongst other things–cardiac arrhythmia. Because the cause of APS is the same as reactive hypoglycemia, the treatment is the same: a change to a reactive-hypoglycemic friendly diet. [...]
[...] with it. And it has “minimal” morbidity. Essentially, even if you don’t follow a reactive hypoglycemia diet, the most you can probably expect is a continuation of symptoms, and feeling utterly miserable. So [...]
The article on antibiotics are very good.
This is great, thanks for this info.
I was wondering what you suggest for use in baking. I love to bake and have always naturally reduced sugar because I don’t like that overly sweet taste, but I’m pretty sure now that I have reactive hypoglycemia so I was wondering what I can use instead for when I do bake? Is Splenda a good choice? Or what could I use. I’d use honey, but that makes for extremely expensive baking.
Waldo,
I use fructose for baking and xylitol for things like stir frys.
Stephanie
[...] deteriorates) A year after our diagnosis, and after switching to a modified vegetarian diet (here are some of the basic rules for the reactive hypoglycemia diet), Leo and I are 90% “cured.” The mood swings have all but disappeared. No more [...]