Is Sugar Stopping You From Getting Pregnant?
You’ve reduced alcohol, coffee, gluten and dairy to improve your fertility. But what about sugar? Is it really necessary to reduce or avoid sugar as well?
Sugar can be the hardest thing to cut from your diet because it’s go-to comfort food and it’s everywhere.
Multiple research studies show that sugar is a big problem for fertility because it disrupts your sex hormones that govern your cycle and fertility. Research also shows that when you balance your blood sugar, you balance your hormones. And that even women with slightly elevated blood sugar levels had significantly reduced fertility and took longer to get pregnant.
Why Is Sugar Bad For Fertility?
Sugar includes anything sweet (apart from Stevia) and carbohydrates. This means cakes, sweets, candy, biscuits, pizza, white pasta and white bread. When your blood sugar is raised on a regular basis then it can:
Disrupt hormones
Create insulin resistance
Make PCOS worse
Stop ovulation
Increase testosterone
Reduce sex hormones binding globulin (SHBG)
Affect LH
Reduce egg quality
Create cysts on the ovaries
Increase the risk of miscarriage
Create weight gain
Make Type 2 diabetes more likely
What Happens To Your Body When You Eat Sugar?
Carbohydrates break down into glucose (sugar).
Every time you eat you absorb sugar into your blood then your blood sugar rises.
Your pancreas responds to the rise in blood sugar by producing insulin (a hormone that helps to keep your blood sugar stable). It enables your body to use glucose.
Insulin is like a key and it unlocks cells to allow them to absorb sugar and get energy.
Insulin also instructs the liver to take up excess glucose and store it as glycogen.
When your blood sugar is low your pancreas secrets glucagon which is a hormone that commands the liver to release glycogen to raise blood sugar.
Insulin and glucogen work together to keep stable blood sugar levels. And supply your cells with energy.
Your Blood Sugar Rollercoaster
Over the course of a day, your blood sugar and insulin levels look like a rollercoaster. There are highs that follow a meal or snack. And then the highs turn to lows when excess insulin has been produced.
You want gentle ups and downs like a children’s rollercoaster. If you have high blood sugar, then your pancreas matches it with a sudden surge of insulin. The problem is that glucose is driven down too quickly.
And the pancreas might not be able to make enough glucagon in time to get the liver to stabilise the low blood sugar. The result is that your blood sugar dips too low and this signals to your brain that you’re hungry. You eat again just as your liver starts producing glucose and then the extreme high and low happens again. High levels of insulin in your blood lead to fluctuations in your blood sugar.
This causes energy highs and lows, and hunger highs and lows.
What Is Insulin Resistance?
Insulin resistance happens when you eat a lot of sugar or carbohydrates, which turn straight to sugar. Your pancreas has to produce a lot of insulin to process the sugar. Over time your cells become less responsive to insulin and so your pancreas produces even more insulin.
It’s a bit like how your body gets used to alcohol or coffee and you need to consume more to get the same hit.
Over time your body needs more and more insulin to push the same amount of glucose into muscle and fat cells. And this is called insulin resistance.
How To Balance Your Blood Sugar
Avoid refined carbs, processed food and sugary food.
Choose slow-release low GI carbs - brown, dense, grainy food.
Include healthy fats - almonds, avocados, olives, pine nuts, sunflower seeds and olive oil.
Eat organic protein to stay full and energised for longer - fish, meat, eggs and nuts.
Only snack between meals if you’re really hungry - snack on nuts, seeds, oatcakes, humous, cottage cheese, guacamole, nut butter, berries and yoghurt.
Read the label and avoid cane juice, honey, agave, maple syrup, molasses and fructose syrup.
Eat three meals and don’t skip meals.
Have the odd treat once or twice a week and choose natural sugars over refined sugar.
Bake treats with Stevia that is 10x sweeter than sugar but doesn't raise your blood sugar level.