Why Is My Blood Sugar So High After A Meal Even Though I Was Not Diagnosed With Diabetes?

It's like the idea of a congested road that we'll be looking at.

During rush hour, there will be tons of cars on major roads. Many drivers have to get to their workplaces during the morning peak hour traffic rush. The reverse happens during the evening peak, where many drivers are using the roads in the other direction to get home.

Some of these roads will have traffic lights, while freeways can generally get by unscathed except at their entrances and exits. When there are more cars than the traffic lights can handle, there will be a traffic jam. Congestion will abound at that exit. Similarly, there will be congestion if we have that same ton of cars attempting to enter a freeway at the same entrance.

And where there is congestion, will there not be an increase in the concentration of cars per unit length of freeway?

In the same way, when we have a meal, we’re going to be ingesting some form of carbohydrates that will be eventually converted into glucose, which is then absorbed into the blood.

We can visualise these glucose molecules as “cars”.

There will be a ton of glucose “cars” entering the blood, and these will make their way to the various exits - or rather, the cells in the body will start to take in this glucose from the blood via the GLUT4 transporter proteins, which traverse the lipid bilayer at the cell’s surface. Glucose is transported via the GLUT4 protein from the blood into the cell.

These transporter proteins ain’t going to take in the cell’s required glucose all at once - they’ll do it bit by bit, piece by piece, in a regulated manner.

Much like how a traffic light only remains green for a certain interval and allows only that many cars to clear it per interval.

When we’ve got that much glucose in our blood, there will be a high concentration of glucose. However, when we’ve stopped feeding ourselves, and the glucose slowly makes its way into our cells from our blood, the glucose concentration in our blood will gradually decrease back to what is “normal”, which would be what happens to a non-diabetic.

The traffic lights (GLUT4 protein transporters) aren’t working properly as a result of reduced insulin production.

There will be a logjam of glucose “cars” in our blood because there is insufficient insulin to increase the amount of GLUT4 proteins at the cell’s surface. An insufficiency in GLUT4 at the cell’s surface will result in a reduced glucose intake by the cell.

Which ends up affecting a Type 1 diabetic negatively in 2 ways.

1. There will be an accumulation of glucose in the blood, which we would term as diabetes.

2. When the cell is taking in insufficient glucose for energy manufacturing, the patient would feel really lethargic. Their energy levels would be affected pretty significantly.

What we see then is this logjam of glucose in the blood that cannot be cleared quickly. Hence Type 1 diabetics do need regular insulin shots to ensure that there is sufficient insulin for getting the GLUT4 proteins out.

And we do know that glucose can be highly reactive - there will be much biochemical damage done to the cells in our body if the glucose levels in our blood remain chronically high.

For a Type 2 diabetic

We’re looking at the resistance to the insulin signalling.

At this stage, the traffic light signals are still working fine. There’s no issue with insulin production. It’s not like Type 1 diabetes where the signal lights are dead (well, kind of).

It’s just that there’s a reduced connection between the insulin and the GLUT4 proteins.

Because when one has mild chronic inflammation, which is a precursor to Type 2 diabetes, the amount of pro-inflammatory cytokines in their blood will increase ever so slightly. Cytokines such as tumour necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α) and interleukin 1-beta (IL-1β) will come to mind.

And small increases of these cytokines are going to reduce the concentration of GLUT4 on the cell surface.

Again, when GLUT4 is affected… the glucose intake into the cell will be reduced, as we have seen in the case of Type 1 diabetes.

Which results in the logjam of glucose in the blood, and then we’ll see the effects of Type 2 diabetes appear.

Hence insulin is also prescribed for Type 2 diabetics, but it doesn’t really address the issue of the pro-inflammatory cytokines that influence the activity of the GLUT4.

When these cytokines aren’t dealt with, and the insulin resistance increases over time, how much insulin has to be jabbed into a Type 2 diabetic just to see an effect take place? (It’s going to be pretty expensive in some parts of the world to do just that, too.)

Unfortunately, one who has Type 1 diabetes is not exempt from getting Type 2 diabetes, and neither is one who has Type 2 diabetes exempt from getting Type 1 diabetes.

As inflammation is ultimately an immune system signalling mechanism, we’d want to get our lifestyles in good condition to keep our inflammatory response good.

One significant way to do that is our diet - do feel free to check out

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