Driving Under the Influence of Sugar – a DUI from Sugar
A surprising benefit I’ve discovered with the low carb diet is how it helps me when I’m driving my car. Before I started on my low carb diet I really struggled on long road trips. I tired easily, yawned almost constantly, and struggled to keep awake while driving long distances. Even coffee didn’t help. What I was doing, without realizing it, was eating sweets and sugary snacks, which after an hour or so after eating them, put me into sugar low situations*. After I adopted the low carb lifestyle I discovered that I just didn’t do that anymore – no more yawning and struggling to stay awake. So sugar detoxification helps improve driving as well as health.
*A sugar low occurs within an hour or so of eating a high sugar treat or meal. When this sugar is digested and flows into the blood stream as blood sugar (glucose), the pancreas reacts by secreting high levels of insulin into the blood stream. The high insulin level causes most of the glucose to be absorbed into the body as fat tissue, causing a dramatic reduction in blood sugar – and therefore fatigue and hunger. There is also an equal and opposite sugar high after eating sugary foods. As described in the above video, sugar causes both sugar highs and lows.
This concept really hit me recently on a trip to West Texas. I hadn’t had any trouble with drowsiness on trips like this for a long time due to my low carb diet. On this trip, however, I went into a coffee shop in the morning and decided that I “had to have” a particularly scrumptious sweet roll (an almost twist). I ate it as I traveled further and all of sudden after an hour or so I got very sleepy. Despite tons of coffee and low carb snacks to snap me out of this low sugar funk, I suffered with sleepiness all day. That almond twist really upset my day. The next day I stayed off the sweets and stayed awake – lesson learned!
Staying awake while driving across Texas is important since Texas is a large state with long driving distances. As proof of that, consider the following famous song, Miles and Miles of Texas, by “Asleep at the Wheel”.
This post is featured on the Modern Paleo Blog.
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I'm here to help, so let me know if I can help with getting off of sugar or weight loss in any way. Contact me at Joe AT CravingSugar DOT net. If you like what you see here - Share It at the top of the post!!Joe Lindley
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The general perception amongst the masses is that excessive sugar intake makes you hyperactive but the facts revealed in this post can definitely change the thinking of many people like me.
Frank recently posted..Diabetes and Alcohol – Do They Mix?
My brother-in-law who had done a lot of driving for over 30 years as part of his job and never been in any accident, died in a car accident last summer. It was a single vehicle accident that they don’t know the cause of. According to tire tracks it appeared that he swerved off onto the shoulder but then over corrected and hit a telephone pole, plus I think ended up in a ditch. There are probably more details about the accident than I heard but the main question is…… WHY? The doctors found no physical reason why he would have lost control. But my sister told me he had been diagnosed with diabetes the year before…….which kind I’m not sure? But I have been wondering if maybe his blood sugar dropped causing him to either get sleepy or just loose control in some way……… which wouldn’t have shown up later to the doctors. So this article suggests my suspicions could be true.
Marie,
So sorry to hear about your brother-in-law. I’m not a medical professional but do think that your idea could well be true. Diabetics can suffer from hypoglycemia (lack of blood sugar – also known as a sugar low), which would cause much the same (but worse) symptoms most of us get with a sugar low such as sleepiness. Many years ago when I was a young engineer at IBM in Rochester, MN, I stayed in a boarding house where we had a common living room area. A woman I knew there came into the living room, talked with me amiably (kind of in a silly way), sat down next to me and then just put her head on my shoulder and fell asleep. I thought it was kind of sweet till one of her friends came in, got all alarmed and called an ambulance. My friend, it turned out, was a diabetic and was regularly seeing a Doctor (at the Mayo Clinic actually) nearby because she had trouble stabilizing her insulin levels. She was OK after the trip to the hospital, but they told her that her blood sugar was so low that she could have died from it. She had passed out with her head on my shoulder. The problem with these hypoglycemic incidents is that the diabetic slips into this often without really being aware of it. So this could very well be what happened to your brother in law. He got so sleepy so quickly he didn’t have the presence of mind to pull over and eat something sweet to get his blood sugar back up. I have a diabetic friend who ALWAYS has a little can of pineapple juice with him for that very purpose.
Again, sorry for you loss. You can have some peace of mind that the accident was likely the diabetes, not carelessness.
…Joe…
I have a friend who has been diabetic for many years, and, as many do, always has something sweet at hand. I have seen him in a hypoglycemic state, and the behaviour resembles slight drunkenness, possibly appearing as silliness if one is not familiar with the person. If he does not correct the condition, he could pass out in very short order. My friend was recently diagnosed as celiac, because he was not doing well on diabetic meds. Since he has eliminated all grains from his diet, his health has improved remarkably, with even his blood sugar levels stabilising. I wonder if there is more correlation between diabetes and celiac disease than nutritionists and doctors know. For this example, it suggests the deviation from a Paleo diet has hit his genetic makeup a near-fatal blow.
Barrie,
Thanks for your input. There indeed has been a relationship between diabetes and celiac disease based on, at least from what I’ve heard, the fact that both can be caused from wheat in the diet. A lot has been published recently about how bad wheat can be for us (even whole wheat), first because it is highly glycemic, which is bad for diabetics (and everybody really) and secondly because the gluten in the wheat can lead to Celiac Disease. So you’ve hit the nail right on the head. A good resource on this topic is either of the books I have reviews for on the right side bar of the website: Wheat Belly and Primal Body Primal Mind.
…Joe…