Blood Sugar that is not balanced can be a major contributor to insomnia. When your blood sugar rises in response to glucose consumed, your pancreas responds by releasing insulin.Insulin is the hormone that is responsible for getting glucose into the cells. This is all a very natural process.
However, if you eat excess sugar all at once, for example a breakfast that consists of toast, jam, orange juice and cereal, or donuts and coffee... the sugar rises higher than natural. When the pancreas responds with insulin, sugar drops rapidly and you become reactively hypoglycemic.
When you are in a hypoglycemic state, cortisol comes to the rescue to raise your blood sugar. This is why you might feel anxious when you become hangry and then miss your window to eat. If you happen to be on this rollercoaster all day long, think about what happens at 3 o'clock in the morning.... Your sugar has crashed and now cortisol ( a stress hormone designed to help you run from lions, tigers and bears or to lift a car off of a child) comes to your sugar crash rescue . Now, you are awake and thinking about all of the things that stress you out. Good luck getting back to sleep !
In order to opt out of this unpleasant rollercoaster ride, make it a goal to never let yourself get to that hangry place. Some of us are so busy that we forget to eat until it is too late. If your blood sugar is not rock solid you should be eating healthy protein rich snacks every couple of hours. This takes some planning, especially if you are trying to eat healthy. Finding yourself away from your home among nothing but fast food restaurants leaves you in between a rock and a hard place. Do you: a. let your blood sugar crash or b. eat toxic food?
Ideally your glucose stores would allow you to feel fine between meals , and it is actually healthier in the long run not to always be snacking. I'll save the explanation of this for another blog post. If blood sugar crashes are a problem for you, you need to manually keep your blood sugar from crashing by snacking.
If you find that you wake up in the middle of the night and have trouble getting back to sleep, blood sugar dis-regulation could be a problem for you. Avoiding foods high in simple carbohydrates and added sweeteners is a great first step to solving this problem. Balancing blood sugar takes some effort and dedication, but it is definitely worth it!