Low Blood Sugar: Over 100 Recipes for overcoming Hypoglycaemia
Low blood sugar is an increasingly common result of our high pressure lifestyle and over-processed western diet.This practical and helpful book explains in simple terms what low blood sugar is and offers recipes and meal programmes to correct this common problem. Features include over 100 easy protein-rich and sugar-free recipes, coded recipes suitable for vegetarians and vegan diets and the glycaemic (blood sugar) index which codes foods according to the rate they are absorbed.
Читать Low Blood Sugar: Over 100 Recipes for overcoming Hypoglycaemia онлайн беплатно
Low Blood Sugar
RECIPES FOR HEALTH
Over 100 recipes for overcoming hypoglycaemia
MARTIN BUDD & MAGGIE BUDD
Table of Contents
2 Lunch, Snacks and Sandwiches
3 Soups, Main Meals and Desserts
4 Between-meal Snacks and Drinks
IAM VERY pleased to have the opportunity of introducing this book which I know will be a source of help to a great many people. I have had the privilege of working in close collaboration with Martin Budd at the Basingstoke Clinic over the past twenty years and we have shared in the often demanding task of treating and supporting perhaps a thousand victims of what Mr Budd appropriately called the â20th century epidemicâ. His experience in the field of Functional hypoglycaemia makes this latest book, written jointly with Maggie Budd, clinically authoritative. The many recipes, which have been formulated to provide the increased protein/ carbohydrate ratio fundamental to successful treatment, will give real practical help.
We have never been fully aware just why hypoglycaemia became such a neglected clinical backwater. Be that as it may, the publication of Mr Buddâs first book in 1981 brought a steady flow of letters from patients throughout the UK complaining of a wide range of symptoms which the author had described as âlow blood sugar syndromeâ. Regrettably, the majority of these patients had been unable to obtain the help they sought. Although seminars were organised by The Basingstoke Clinic, there are still not enough practitioners experienced in the diagnosis and treatment of functional hypoglycaemia.
This book will therefore fill a need, both in providing self-help to patients in suitable cases, and in drawing attention to a neglected area of clinical practice.
Keith Lamont
Basingstoke, Hants
Note: In December 1984 The Basingstoke Clinic came under new management and the original team became dispersed.
Low Blood Sugar
MOST OF US have experienced symptoms of hypoglycaemia or low blood sugar. These may include weakness, tremors, dizziness, palpitations, anxiety and hunger. The commonest triggers for these unpleasant symptoms are stress or sudden shock, unaccustomed exercise, a missed or delayed meal, excessive coffee or alcohol intake, and in women, the 4-5 day premenstrual effect. Frequently there exists a combination of 2 or more of these factors.
Although a sudden fall in the blood sugar can be responsible for some of the above symptoms, the more unpleasant acute symptoms associated with low blood sugar are in fact caused partly by the release into the blood of the hormone adrenalin. This hormone, which is released by the paired adrenal glands situated over each kidney, serves to convert into glucose the carbohydrate reserves held in the liver, and known as glycogen. In this way undesirably low levels of glucose in the blood are quickly corrected. Although this adrenal compensation is triggered when the blood glucose is too low, the same response can occur when the blood glucose level falls too quickly.
Adrenalin is also released to help the body combat stress. In addition to the blood sugar surge, this hormone increases the heart rate and raises the blood pressure. The rate of respiration is also increased; in fact the whole metabolism is ârevved-upâ. This has been termed the âflight or fightâ response, and can be compared to pulling out the choke on a car, causing an increase in available fuel and accelerating the engine.
The hunger experienced with low blood sugar is usually expressed as a sugar craving (particularly pre-menstrually), and all the symptoms rapidly improve after taking sugar in food or drink. If the various components of the sugar-regulation system are working efficiently our body chemistry is rapidly normalised. This phenomenon is known as transient hypoglycaemia, and such infrequent and temporary slumps in the blood sugar level do not normally require special diets or treatment.
FUNCTIONAL HYPOGLYCAEMIA
Unfortunately there are those who suffer a more chronic, severe and reoccuring form of low blood sugar, known as functional hypoglycaemia. This condition was first described in the late 1920s by an American doctor named Seale Harris. His contemporaries Banting and Best had recently discovered and refined the hormone insulin for the treatment of diabetes. Insulin-dependent diabetics can occasionally overdose on insulin, causing a sudden undesirable fall in the blood sugar. This was termed a âhypo effectâ, and caused symptoms including faintness, dizziness, anxiety and if severe, a temporary collapse and unconsciousness.
Dr Harris observed that several of his non-diabetic patients were experiencing very similar symptoms to patients attending the new diabetic clinics. This led him to conclude that if non-diabetics were suffering âhyposâ (or insulin shock), then perhaps there existed a medical condition that was opposite in character to high blood sugar in diabetes. He called this new condition hyperinsulinism, (excess insulin in the blood), and assumed that just as diabetics suffer an insulin deficiency resulting in high blood sugar, there are those who suffer an excess causing low blood sugar. Although high and low blood sugar appear to be opposite conditions, they are both caused by defective or inefficient blood sugar regulation.
