Beware the Honey Tree

Before I get back to my review of Mindless Eating, I want to share a personal experience.

In one of the Protein Power books (I forget which), Michael and Mary Dan Eades describe how primitive humans would’ve had only one source of concentrated carbohydrate - the occasional lucky find of a honey tree.  They hypothesize that a hunter-gatherer stumbling on a honey tree would have sent signals to all the other members of the band, and pretty soon there’d be a honey party until every last bit of sticky, sweet, gooey honey was gone.

In honor of our human heritage, they suggest that we modern humans might allow ourselves to indulge in sugary goodness, occasionally.  Occasionally here is key.  Think about how often our hunter-gatherer ancestors might have run across honey.  Hint:  it’s not “daily.”

Well, all I can tell you is, if you’re going to raid the honey tree, be careful, because it can sting you.

I don’t know what got into me last night, but on my way out of the office I passed a candy dish full of Hershey’s Nuggets.  I have walked by that candy dish with complete disinterest every day for months, but yesterday was different.  I ate one, went back to my office to turn off my computer, went back for another, put on my coat and gloves, went back for another … you get the picture.  I think the total was five.

On the subway, I thought, “I really should not have done that.”  On the other hand, since my doctor refuses to order a glucose tolerance test, I thought that I could turn this moment to my advantage by actually testing my blood sugar (I bought a glucometer a while ago) to see just how high a little carb binge could drive my blood sugar.  It takes me about 45 minutes to 1 hour to get home, depending on the condition of the winter sidewalks, so I figured I’d be getting home at my blood sugar peak.

One hour later I stuck my finger and waited.  Blood sugar reading:  57.  (For comparison, a healthy fasting blood sugar is around 85.)  This was not what I was expecting - I figured the reading would be sky high, not low.  Clearly, though, it was time to eat something.

I immediately went to the kitchen and started heating up leftovers (my husband was eating dinner at the office, poor guy).  Ten minutes later, I broke out into a cold sweat and started shaking.  Back in the bathroom, the glucometer read 41.

If you are not familiar with diabetes - a blood glucose of 41 constitutes a medical emergency.  I was in danger of passing out, alone in my house.  The only treatment for this is to consume some fast-acting carbohydrates, fast.

I made a beeline back to the kitchen and started consuming whatever sugar I could find.   And folks, I’m low-carb woman, so it’s not much.  I had a few swigs of my husband’s Coke (yuck! it’s been at least a decade since I drank regular Coke), a few sips of his milk, and two low-sugar cookies I made last week from a recipe on Anna’s blog.  I was about to start eating sugar straight from the jar when I noticed that the cold sweat was dissipating and the shakes were going away.  I then ate a normal, low-carb dinner - leftover slow-cooked turkey in chipotle pepper sauce, with plenty of Monterey jack and Greek yogurt (in place of sour cream).

The good news is, apparently I am not diabetic yet - clearly my pancreas knows how to produce insulin, and lots of it!  But I have to wonder, just how high did those 5 chocolate candies initially drive my blood sugar?  It must have been pretty high to cause my pancreas to pump out enough insulin to drive my blood sugar down to 41 in a matter of 1 hour and 10 minutes.

The other thing is, I felt terrible for the rest of the evening, nauseated and sort of foggy.  I am surprised that, Inderal notwithstanding, I didn’t come down with a migraine, too - skipping meals, with the resulting low blood sugar, was one of only two reliable migraine triggers I uncovered before Inderal set me straight.  (The other was lack of sleep.)

The whole experience confirmed, quantitatively, what I’ve known qualitatively for years.  My glucose tolerance is terribly impaired.  I may not be diabetic yet, but if I had continued to eat the carb-laden diet recommended by most authorities, I guarantee you my poor pancreas would’ve worn itself out, and by now I’d be jabbing myself with insulin several times a day.  This is why I do not think it is an exaggeration to say that Gary Taubes’s landmark article in the New York Times magazine saved my life.