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Imagine you take conventional dietary wisdom to heart and base your diet on ‘starchy carbs’ such as bread, pasta and breakfast cereals. When you eat these foods the starch in them is broken down into glucose through the process of digestion, which is then absorbed into the bloodstream.

This means that whether we eat sugar, starch, or a combination of both, blood sugar levels rise. In healthy individuals, the body responds to this by secreting the hormone ‘insulin’ from the pancreas. One of the chief functions of insulin is to facilitate the uptake of glucose from the bloodstream into our cells where it can be ‘burned’ in the mitochondria to generate energy. It could be said, then, that blood sugar stability is key to ensuring sustained levels of energy. The figure below represents relatively stable blood sugar levels after eating over a few hours.

However, imagine for a moment we eat a food that releases substantial amounts of sugar quite quickly into the bloodstream. In response, the body will tend to secrete copious quantities of insulin. Gluts of insulin are not good news for the body in the long term (see below). Even in the short term, though, surges of insulin risk pushing blood sugar levels down to ‘subnormal’ levels (termed ‘hypoglycaemia’) some time later.

When sugar levels dip too low, our cells can end up seriously under-fuelled, compromising their ability to function optimally. Here are some of the problems that can ensue: