Jeffrey Bland summarizes a two-week CGM study comparing glucose responses to different foods. Himalayan Tartary buckwheat flour and shake produced minimal glucose spikes (around 20 mg/dL), while white bread spiked sharply. Adding 16 grams of buckwheat flour to the shake didn't increase the glucose response, likely due to its soluble fiber and phytochemicals.
Questions this video answers
14 days
120 minutes (2 hours)
16 grams
January 18, 2021
Chapters
Well, here we are once again. 14 days are over. It seems hard to believe that we've been doing this for two weeks. Maybe some of you think like, well, no, it's been two weeks. But we just finished up today with our continuous glucose monitoring study. Took the monitor off. This is what it looks like after two weeks. It's not very damaged, fortunately, slept through, went through showers and all that kind of stuff. We did put a, as you recall, a protective kind of coating, bandage over it just to prevent it from getting water damage. But it worked out very, very well. So what did we learn? We learned a lot of interesting things. In fact, we had really a great group meeting today of all the participants in this study, all sharing their ideas and their thoughts and their responses to what they learned about themselves from the management of the way their bodies responded to various controlled challenges, foods. And we all did the same thing. I recall every morning we came in fasting of all 14 days and we were challenged with a specific food. And then we measured for the next two hours, the next 120 minutes, our postprandial glucose response. And so we all had the same challenge on every day. And we had varied responses, as you might expect, once again showing biochemical individuality and diversity. We did, however, derive some pretty specific general considerations out of the trial. And I think we were pretty excited to see that Himalayan tartery buckwheat flour really ranked as a low glycemic food and that we found that the HTB shape mix was really well tolerated and had a low glycemic response as well. We all learned that white bread wasn't so good and that was a good, normal kind of standard to spike our blood sugar. You saw the Andes Mountains curve I showed earlier, but I wanted to share with you one last thing that I think was a very interesting result from today, actually the last two days that I can best show you, but I'll describe what it is. So I compared then on the last two days taking the HTB shake mix, when the HTB shake mix alone is right here. And so the HTB shake mix shows a small but demonstrable increase in blood sugar. I would say it's a fairly low response. If you look at the gradations, it only increased blood Sugar by about 20 points within the first hour and then it or first half an hour, and then it went down quite rapidly back to baseline. This is on the subsequent day. Now, this more complex shape curve, so that is taking the shake mix, but it's taking it where it has been also added to it is flour, the htb, Himalayan Tartary buckwheat flour. So you see a more complex curve and what you see there is very interesting. I think you see the initial response of glucose and then this more delayed postprandial response, probably due to the flour itself, which takes longer to digest. But the most important thing of all is that the combination of 16 grams of flour did not, which is principally carbohydrate, did not change the glycemic response adversely at all. So what we've really seen is we have a low glycemic flour with the Himalayan Tartary buckwheat flour. And the reason for that I think is, I tried to summarize, is that we really feel that the high soluble prebiotic fiber that's in the flour really slows the release of glucose upon digestion and flattens the glucose response curve. So we really have, with Himalayan Tartary buckwheat flour that contains all those phytochemicals, a really remarkable low glycemic food that would be wonderful for people with insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes or individuals with metabolic syndrome. So that's, I think, what we took away from our two week study. @ this point we're going to write all this up and do the statistics and look at the glucose excursions over the various foods. But I think for each of us that individually did this study, it was a self learning because not only did we get the data from our morning standards, but we also had the rest of the day where each of us were eating our own meals, able to look and see how we were responding to the way we choose to eat. And I think there'll be some modifications probably in the way that people eat after they've done this study. It was a really great learning curve. Thanks so much for being with us through this.
