Your Unique Carb Response: Why Blood Sugar Spikes Differ for Everyone
As a Certified Functional Medicine Physician, I practice personalized and proactive medicine, guiding patients to prevent disease instead of waiting to treat it. One of the most powerful places to start is with blood sugar.
Elevated blood sugar is a root cause of weight gain, inflammation, hormone imbalance, cardiovascular disease, dementia, and even many cancers. When blood sugar stays high, it silently damages blood vessels, stresses the pancreas, and promotes fat storage around the organs—laying the groundwork for future illness. Managing blood sugar isn’t just about diabetes prevention; it’s about protecting your brain, your heart, your hormones, and your long-term health.
Your Personal Response to Carbs is Unique
One of the most fascinating things we now know about blood sugar is that not everyone reacts to the same foods in the same way. In a recent study published in Nature Medicine, participants ate the exact same carbohydrate-rich meals - rice, bread, potatoes, pasta, beans, berries, and grapes. The results?
The meal that caused the highest blood sugar spike varied dramatically from person to person.
Some spiked most with rice, others with bread, others with grapes. Interestingly, no one spiked the highest with beans or berries - likely due to their high fiber content.
The Real Driver: Your Metabolic Health
What predicted the differences? Not just the type of carb, but how metabolically healthy the person was.
People with insulin resistance tended to spike very high after potatoes and pasta,
Insulin-sensitive people, on the other hand, often spiked most with rice or grapes.
This is where personalized nutrition becomes so important. While tools like the glycemic index can be helpful, they don’t capture your unique blood sugar response. Two people can eat the exact same potato and have completely different results depending on how sensitive their cells are to insulin.
Testing, Not Guessing: Understanding Your Blood Sugar
When it comes to blood sugar and metabolic health, I’m a big believer in testing, not guessing. The first step is to get a clear picture of your metabolic health.
A fasting insulin level often reveals early insulin resistance well before blood sugar rises into abnormal ranges.
Even better is a 2-hour glucose and insulin tolerance test, which shows how efficiently your body handles carbohydrates over time.
(you can order these tests yourself at cheaper cash prices - visit JasonHealth.com)
Once you have this baseline, a Continuous Glucose Monitor (CGM) can take your understanding to the next level. A CGM is a small, wearable sensor placed on the back of the arm that continuously tracks glucose levels in the fluid between your cells and sends the data to your phone - giving you real-time feedback on how your blood sugar responds to meals, exercise, stress, and sleep. Many physicians reserve CGMs for patients with diabetes, but I use them frequently with non-diabetic patients to help prevent and even reverse the earliest signs of metabolic dysfunction before diabetes develops.
Personalized Nutrition
Your body’s response to food is as unique as your fingerprint, and nowhere is that more clear than in how we process carbohydrates. By moving beyond one-size-fits-all guidelines and tuning into your personal blood sugar patterns, you can make informed choices that protect your energy, metabolism, and long-term health. The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your entire diet overnight. Small, personalized shifts—guided by the right testing—can make a powerful differ
Are you ready to take the next step? I can help! As a board-certified Integrative & Functional Medicine physician and Certified Menopause Specialist, I can help you “think outside of the box and dig deeper with a variety of laboratory testing to help uncover the root causes of your symptoms, and create a plan personalized for you that goes beyond the prescription pad to incorporate diet/lifestyle change, nutritional supplements, holistic therapies, health coaching and more! Contact us to get started!