Intervention
Understanding the Glycemic Index of Food
To eliminate glucose spikes and lower average blood glucose levels, you need to remove foods that cause the most significant spikes. In some cases, this may require eating very few carbohydrates at all. But, you should also understand which carbohydrates are so called "fast carbohydrates" and which are "slow carbohydrates". Fast carbohydrate are those that are very quickly absorbed by your intestines. On your glucose monitor, this will appear as an almost immediate spike as soon as you eat the food. Fast carbohydrates typically have a high "glycemic index" meaning that the sugar in the carbohydrate is readily accessible. Slow carbohydrates, by contrast, are typically the healthier kinds of carbohydrates. They have a lower glycemic index and thus typically produce delayed (and sometimes more prolonged) spikes on your glucose monitor.
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Total Carbohydrate Content
The amount of carbohydrates in a food is measured in grams. It is useful to know how many grams of carbs are in the food your are about to eat because it will often dictate how long your glucose remains elevated and sometimes it can correlate with the height of your glucose spikes.
Many nutrition experts will recommend limits to the total grams of carbohydrate each day. Consider using the total grams of carbohydrates as part of your elimination diet intervention
Glycemic Index
Glycemic index is an attribute of the food itself. It has to be measured in a lab and it is not currently required as part of food packaging, so you won't see it on labels. But if you familiarize yourself with the high and low glycemic index foods on our website, you will have many good candidates for the elimination diet in your experiment.
