Welcome back!

You might be a bit confused by some of the latest buzz words in the diet industry “glycemic index” and “glycemic load”.

I hate the word diet by the way - it always connotes a temporary negative “starvation” situation followed by a resumption of “normal” eating a bit later on.

Anyway one of the things we strive for here at FitnessByPhone is good education based on latest research and science so here is the explanation …

It is well known that hormone balance is the key to optimal health and that imbalances can be caused by what you eat. For instance a plate of white rice will very quickly raise your insulin levels to a higher than normal level, in an attempt to normalise your blood sugar levels.

Other hormones are released in excess because of this imbalance in insulin, and one result is result extra fat is added to your middle, plus an increasing chance of diabetes too over the long haul because your cells get resistant to all the excess insulin floating around.

So how does this relate to the terms glycemic index and glycemic load?

Well the glycemic index is an indicator of the liklihood of an abnormal increase in blood sugar. So high GI foods are likely to lift insulin production higher than normal to stabilise the sugar they dump into your blood stream.

However, the speed at which this happens is even more important. Thus the glycemic load.

The higher the glycemic load of foods, the faster insulin is produced. So you can have foods with a high GI overall, but they have a low Glycemic load, and so insulin is produced at a slower rate to cope. It is still higher than optimal, but there is not the undue load on your pancreas to release the hormone as fast as possible.

Whereas the food with a similar GI but the glycemic load is maybe 4 times as high is going to ask the pancrease to produce insulin four times faster (more or less).

If you eat these types of high glycemic load foods, the yoyo effect on your hormone levels is going to create stress, burn out your pancreas long term, make you fat, create diabetes and cause lots of other nasty little problems.

However if you learn to control your glycemic load with the right foods, even if they are sometimes high GI foods, then you will stabilise your hormones and reduce the liklihood of problems as you age, or indeed reverse problems you may have right now.

The best plan of course is to eat foods that are low in both GI and glycemic load.

Simple.

Live long. Live well.

Rick Rakauskas