Let me tell you something you already know. White bread, as opposed to whole wheat and whole grain breads with all their fiber goodness, is not good for you. But do you actually know why refined carbohydrates like white bread, pizza crusts, pastas, and pretzels and the like, are not good for you? Well, it all boils down to the fact that refined carbohydrates and simple sugars don’t take long at all to absorb into your blood stream, causing rapid explosions in your blood sugar levels.

This leads to spikes in blood sugar, especially in women, according to new research, which is why high carb consumption in women is linked to increased levels of heart disease. Women apparently process carbohydrates differently (ie probably less efficiently) than men do. This may partly explain why it is generally harder for women to lose weight than it is for men. Lucky us!

Have you ever noticed that after eating a snack of nothing but chips or white pretzels, you feel like you’re ravenous again an hour or two later? This is because of the effect that food products like this have on your blood sugar, which is indelibly linked to your appetite.

When your blood sugar levels peak and drop all the time instead of staying steady at all times, your body reacts by turning on the appetite switch. Therefore, eating a diet that maintains a steady, always even blood sugar levels is pretty much the best natural appetite suppressant and key to weight loss you can get.

Dips and spikes in your blood sugar don’t just cause your appetite to become erratic though. Your mood is also profoundly effected by the food that you eat, and whether or not those foods are conducive to a healthy balance in your blood sugar levels. Seratonin levels are affected, cortisol levels are affected, pretty much everything can go down the tubes if your blood sugar is never within healthy limits.

This also affects your heart health. Those that experience a lot of spikes in their blood sugar are at particularly high risk for heart disease and heart attacks as it affects the natural rhythms of the heart beat. Simply the fact that someone has diabetes increases their risk for heart disease, so that should tell you something about the relationship between blood sugar and heart health. If you want to read a good book about weight, health and keeping blood sugar levels stable through diet, try reading The Zone.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 28th, 2010 at 9:27 pm and is filed under Foods, General Health Updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.