The average person isn’t walking around thinking about their blood sugar, but did you know it’s one of the most important markers of health even if you’re not diabetic? In a well-orchestrated body, if you consume carbohydrates or sugar, your pancreas will release a hormone called insulin that takes sugar out of the blood stream and stores it in your tissues to use later when you need energy to burn. Your body preferably stores excess glucose in your muscles and liver, but with a surplus, it will store it in fat tissue. Insulin resistance occurs when the muscles, fat, and liver stop responding to insulin. Insulin may be knocking at the door, looking to drop off a glucose package, but there’s no one answering the door, and no vacant place for the package.
How does this translate to fertility?
In a nutshell, it confuses your ovaries. Ovaries can get insulin and another hormone called Luteinizing hormone (LH) mixed up. You eat excess glucose (carbohydrates or sugar) → your pancreas releases a lot of insulin → your ovaries mistake it for a lot of LH (even though it isn’t) → your ovaries decide to stop making their own LH. UH
-OH. You need LH to grow, mature, and release eggs from the ovaries.
One fertility study in Japan found that high blood sugar levels were tied to lower pregnancy rates (and lower egg quality) in those using IVF. High blood sugar can also damage sperm DNA, lead to high blood pressure, and increase weight gain – all associated with decreased fertility.
One of the top diagnoses affecting fertility in the U.S. is PCOS (polycystic ovarian syndrome) in which the ovaries grow cysts, rather than releasing an egg each month. Without regular ovulation the ovaries can grow large and painful, and a regular menstrual cycle is difficult to achieve. PCOS is largely a metabolic disorder, with roughly 70% of PCOS patients being diagnosed as insulin resistant. Left untreated, PCOS often progresses into Type 2 diabetes, so it’s important to address the root cause of PCOS as early as possible.
What’s the goal?
Ideally, you wouldn’t have super high peaks, or really deep lows when it comes to blood sugar. Both the highs and lows are stressful to your body. Because we also want to avoid low blood sugar, you need to eat! Here are some changes you can make now to keep your blood sugar as stable as possible:
- Eat plenty of protein – 20 grams per meal, 3 meals a day if possible. This is tough, but when you mentally transition over to making this the goal, it really is effective. Look for high quality meats, full fat dairy, and collagen supplements to raise your protein without adding junk.
- Have a healthy fat with every meal: avocado, nut butter, coconut, olive oil – adding a fat to a carb heavy meal actually keeps your blood sugar more stable. At our house, if we have oatmeal, we add unflavored collagen powder, and a tablespoon of MCT oil in everyone’s bowl. Oatmeal alone is extremely prone to spiking blood sugar, but with some easy additions, your body can stay stable and full throughout the morning (with very little change to the taste of it!).
- When you eat carbs, don’t eat them alone, and eat them in the morning. Your body can naturally handle glucose so much better in the morning than it can at night, but it’s still a good idea to add protein and fat in the mix so your body doesn’t have to compensate for wild sugar swings.
Keep tabs with labs
Getting regular lab testing can be very helpful when keeping tabs on insulin resistance. If you’re getting labs drawn, be weary of a “normal” blood sugar result without context. It’s important to get a measurement of fasting blood sugar, HgA1c (blood sugar over time), and insulin to see how hard the pancreas is working to keep up with the glucose load in your system. Please ask your doctor to include all 3, rather than just a fasting blood glucose test. We’re not happy with a normal blood sugar test result if the pancreas is working 5 or 10 times harder to keep it normal. Organs can fatigue, and we want to make the pancreas’ job easy by keeping blood sugar steady.
If you’ve struggled with getting pregnant, or find yourself suspicious of PCOS, now may be time to give a high protein/high fat/low carb diet a try, or start by gathering information with labs listed above. Both are low risk ways to get more feedback about your body!
