Oliver Moody

Science Correspondent

The Times

Gerry Gajadharsingh writes:

 “Metabolic Balance has known about this for at least 14 years but it’s good that research is finally catching up! Blood sugar spikes provokes an insulin response, insulin is pro inflammatory, and inflammation is implicated in most disease processes. Snacking, which is endemic in society also causes sugar spikes as well as consuming high glycaemic load carbohydrates. 80% of people had sugar spikes after eating cornflakes, why do people still eat cereals?” If you want to know more, you can download by iBook The Health Equation A Way of Life available on iTunes for Apple devices.

Ostensibly healthy people often experience sharp increases in their blood sugar that are more commonly associated with diabetes, scientists have discovered.

A Stanford University study found that four out of five non-diabetic people experienced abrupt surges of blood glucose after eating a bowl of cereal for breakfast. While there is not yet any positive evidence that the phenomenon is a health risk, a sustained cluster of similar increases can lead to organ damage in people with diabetes.

Blood sugar levels have usually been measured with finger-prick devices that collect a very small drop of blood. While these give an accurate reading at a particular point in time, they are prone to miss fluctuations.

A group led by Michael Snyder, professor of genetics at Stanford, equipped 57 people, most of whom were healthy or “pre-diabetic”, with kits that monitor blood continuously as it circulates through the skin. “There are lots of folks running around with their glucose levels spiking, and they don’t even know it,” Professor Snyder said.

The scientists invited 30 participants into the laboratory early one morning to eat a protein bar, a peanut butter sandwich or a bowl of cornflakes with milk. More than half of the healthy and pre-diabetic people experienced blood sugar surges comparable to those in the people with diabetes, the results in the online journal Plos Biology showed.

“We saw that 80 per cent of our participants spiked after eating a bowl of cornflakes,” Professor Snyder said. “My own personal belief is that’s probably not such a great thing to be eating.”