Why Your Fasting Blood Sugar Won't Come Down

I want to tell you about a patient that I see almost every single week. She wakes up at 6 a.m., right, checks her blood sugar before she's even had a sip of water and it's 128 milligrams per deciliter. She hasn't eaten since like seven o'clock the night before. 11 hours of fasting and her blood sugars are still high and it keeps going up if she doesn't do anything about it in So she looks at that number and she feels defeated, right? She thinks she's failing. She thinks something is permanently broken inside her body. But here's what I tell her and here's what I want to tell you today. Nothing is broken. Your body is actually doing exactly what it has been trained to do. The problem is it's been trained the wrong way and today we are going to change that. I'm Dr. Ahmet Ergin from SugarMD as you know from sugarmds.com and I operate as a physician at Diabetes Thyroid and Hormone Center of the Treasure Coast and I'm going to walk you through exactly why your fasting sugar is not coming down and what is actually happening inside your body while you sleep. Let's start with the root of almost everything, right? Insulin resistance. Imagine your cells have a front door. Insulin is the key to that door. Every time you eat, especially carbohydrates, your pancreas sends out insulin keys to unlock your cells and let glucose in for energy. Simple system, beautiful, really nice. But here's what happens after years of high carb diet, processed foods, excess sugar, which some people call it American diet, your cells get so bombarded with insulin keys day after day, meal after meal, that they start to ignore the knocking, they stop responding, they become rusty and the door won't open. So your pancreas basically panics, it makes more keys, more insulin, right? Or louder knocking, more insulin, whatever it takes until eventually the whole system starts breaking apart. And your liver, you know, this is where the critical part is actually, your liver is supposed to release a small, small controlled amount of glucose overnight to keep your brain alive while you sleep, that's it. But when your liver becomes insulin resistant, it doesn't get the signal to slow down. It just keeps pouring glucose into your bloodstream all night long, full speed. That's why you wake up at 128 even after fasting for 11 hours. It is not what you ate, sometimes it is, but it may not be, but it is what your liver is actually doing while you're sleeping. Layer on top of that, let's talk about visceral fat. This is not the fat you can see or pinch. This is the fat wrapped around your organs. You can be skinny and you can still be fat inside. We call them skinny fats actually. Now your liver, your pancreas, deep inside your abdomen. And this fat is not passive, it is very aggressive. It is actively releasing inflammatory chemicals into your bloodstream, chemicals that go straight to your liver and muscle cells and block insulin from working for you. And here's what makes it a vicious cycle as well. The high glucose, high blood sugar, causes more fat storage. More visceral fat causes more insulin resistance. More insulin resistance causes higher blood sugar. Round and round it goes and your fasting numbers just keep sitting there, stubborn, unmoved. So what breaks the cycle? Dropping insulin levels low enough and long enough for your body to start burning that fat. That means cutting that refined carbohydrates, not just reducing them, but totally eliminating them. It also means intermittent fasting. It means giving your body the metabolic breathing room it desperately needs. Here's the third piece of the puzzle. And honestly, most people never connect this dot. You're not moving enough. I'm sorry. Inside your cells, there are these incredible little glucose transporters called GLUT4. And here's the remarkable thing about them. When your muscles contract, when you walk, when you squat, when you lift something heavy, those transporters activate and pull glucose directly out of your bloodstream without needing insulin at all. No insulin is needed. Your muscles are the single greatest glucose disposal system your body has, and it does not need insulin. Most people are leaving that system completely at idle, or they take a 10-minute walk and call it a day. But even a 20-minute walk after dinner can drop your blood sugar by 30 to 50 points. Well, that's not a small thing. That is more than some medications do. And when you exercise consistently, increase the intensity, especially resistance training combined with cardio, you deplete your muscle glycogen stores, and your muscles stay hungry for glucose throughout the night and into that morning. So the exercise you do this morning can affect your blood sugar the following morning, right? That is what's going to change your fasting. The patients I see with the highest, most stubborn fasting blood sugars are almost always sedentary. Sometimes they won't accept that, but their significant other will come and they'll just break the news. Well, that's not a coincidence. And then there's the one that surprises everyone, right? And most people don't even know that they are doing this one, right? They think everything is fine with their sleep, but it's not. Sleep, right? So picture this. It is 3 a.m., you're tossing and turning. Maybe your partner is snoring. Maybe you are staring at the ceiling with a wasting mind. Meanwhile, inside your body, your cortisol is spiking. Now, your cortisol is your stress hormone, remember? And one of its primary jobs is to raise the blood sugar. It tells your liver to dump glucose because biologically, stress means dandruff. Dandruff means you need energy. You need energy is glucose. Give them glucose, right? Just one single night of poor sleep, four to five hours, most people sleep like that, reduces your insulin sensitivity by up to 25%, just one night. Imagine what months and years of poor sleep is doing to your fasting numbers every single morning. And if you snore heavily, if you wake up exhausted, if you get up multiple times to use the bathroom at night, please, please get tested for sleep apnea. Every time you stop breathing, your cortisol surges. That can happen sometimes over a hundred times in a person's body. It is one of the most underdiagnosed drivers of insulin resistance I see in my clinic. People resist to get this test done, but once they're done, they love it. They feel so much better. Seven to nine hours of quality sleep is not a luxury for a doctor. It is your medicine. Now, like I said, lifestyle is the foundation, but I need to be clear about that. Always, you cannot supplement your weight out of a broken lifestyle. Yes, a lot of you are taking sugar MD-Gluxion, sugar MD-Berberine. Your numbers are getting better, but that doesn't mean that you need to ignore the lifestyle factors we are discussing in every video. Now, sometimes the body needs additional support, right? It does. Sometimes you need medication, sometimes you need supplements, but I'm going to tell you something new though. I know a lot of you are on Gluxion, but what we did is we went back to the formulation and we sourced it from a top-notch facility, strengthened it, tested it, and it works a lot more, a lot more potent and more precisely targeted at the exact mechanisms we just talked about. It works on liver glucose output, cellular signaling, insulin signaling, the inflammatory pathways that drive the insulin resistance. Obviously, I have had patients stuck at a fasting blood sugar of 134 months doing everything right, and then sometimes they're like, you know what, let's try the Gluxion and see what the numbers do, and finally it starts moving. Sometimes you need that push. Sometimes you need that powerful one. So, please visit SugarMDs.com to check your options, and if you're on diabetes medication, definitely work with your doctor because, you know, if you're on insulin, etc., you add these powerful supplements like SugarMD Gluxion, you may need to adjust your insulin down a little bit. Now, that is a good problem, right? Now, so, to the patient waking up at 128 every morning feeling defeated, and to you watching this right now, I'll tell you this. Nothing is permanently broken. Your liver is overreleasing glucose because it is insulin resistant. Your visceral fat is feeding the inflammation. Your muscles aren't being used to their potential, and your sleep may be silently sabotaging everything else you're doing. So, please fix those four things, and your fasting blood sugar should follow. I'm Dr. Ergin, your Sugar MD. I will see you in the next video.