How Your Gut Microbiome Shapes Blood Sugar & Insulin

What are the different factors that influence your blood sugar? What are the different factors that influence your insulin release? What are the different factors that influence your postprandial triglyceride level? Basically, postprandial is my nerdy way of saying after you eat, your triglyceride level after a meal. And what we discovered is that the gut microbiome is a crucial part of this entire story. In fact, it's powerfully informing what our triglyceride levels are after a meal, which is connected to our inflammation levels. It's actually extremely connected to insulin release. Let me explain why that's important. Because when you have a diseased microbiome, you are more likely to become insulin resistant. So, effectively, that was proving that concept. The microbiome is strongly tied to insulin sensitivity and insulin resistance. Now, that's different than blood sugar. That's not the same. Because blood sugar, the most powerful thing, is not your microbiome, it's what you eat. So if your entire goal is to keep your blood sugar as low as possible and you don't care about any other thing, you don't care about anything else. Like, you don't care about your health, your longevity, inflammation, your microbiome. If the only thing you care about is that blood sugar, which is kind of the approach that a lot of people have taken to this, then you would eliminate carbs. Because if you eliminate carbs, then your blood sugar is not going to go up as high after a meal.

And when we say carbs, that could also include non starchy vegetables. Because I've worked with people wearing CGMs who literally opt to, like, remove bell peppers and broccoli from their diet because the bell peppers are sending their blood sugar up 15 points. And, like, that's too much for them.