DR MICHAEL MOSLEY: Why you should AVOID coffee first thing… and eat last night’s pasta for lunch!

I love self-monitoring: I regularly test my blood pressure and cholesterol. And, as many of you may already know, I was once diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and although I reversed it, I also continue to monitor my blood sugar levels.

It’s something more of us should be doing: millions of Brits have abnormally high blood sugar, but many are unaware of the damage this is doing to their arteries and nerves.

An estimated seven million people in the UK have prediabetes (i.e. high blood sugar levels that can be a precursor to full-blown type 2 diabetes), but a good proportion don’t know it.

And even if you don’t develop type 2 diabetes, simply having prediabetes increases your risk of premature death by more than 60 percent.

You can check your blood sugar levels using a standard DIY fingerstick test (for around £20) on the High Street or online. These kits are reliable; If the result suggests you have a problem, talk to your GP.

Many people with diabetes now use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), a coin-sized device that sticks to your arm and has a small needle that measures blood sugar levels: then you connect it to your smartphone and in one hour It will begin giving readings, updated every 15 minutes. Theresa May, who has type 1 diabetes, wears one.

But while these devices are aimed at people with diabetes, anyone can buy them (they cost around £60 and last two weeks), and they are increasingly used by people (including TV presenter Davina McCall) who want to see what foods ( and activities) increase your blood sugar levels.

The idea is that the fewer glucose spikes there are, the better.

I decided to try this myself, mainly to put some popular social media ‘tricks’ to the test.

Two weeks ago I bought a type of CGM called Freestyle Libre. So what did I learn?

Well, first, the device takes a while to stabilize: for the first few days it suggested that my blood sugar levels were much higher than the readings on my (more reliable) finger prick monitor. If I hadn’t known this, I would have been very worried.

After that, and unsurprisingly, I found that anything sweet or high in carbohydrates (like a cake or breakfast cereal) soon sent my blood sugar very high, followed by a crash that left me hungry and hungry. irritable. Unfortunately, this also applies to one of my favorite treats, dark chocolate, which contains a good amount of sugar, about 4g (a teaspoon) per square.

Most tragically, I discovered that coffee, even black and unsweetened, caused huge spikes in blood sugar, especially if consumed first thing in the morning.

This is because a couple of hours before you wake up, your body releases a large amount of the stress hormone cortisol to prepare you for the next day.

If you introduce caffeine while your cortisol is high, you will get a big spike in blood sugar.

The advice I received from James Betts, professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath, is to delay drinking coffee until at least an hour after waking up, when cortisol levels are falling. And that trick certainly seems to help control my blood sugar response. I also found that a brisk walk shortly after eating was a good way to lower my blood sugar levels; This is because my muscles were using up some of the excess sugar.

Recent research by the University of Limerick showed that a brisk walk between 60 and 90 minutes after eating is best, as this is when blood sugar levels will peak.

Walking for at least 15 minutes is ideal, but even some is better than nothing.

Interestingly, more vigorous exercise had the opposite effect: After a long bike ride, I was horrified to see my blood sugar levels rise.

This was probably because more vigorous cycling caused the release of adrenaline, causing my body to release blood sugar to cope with the additional training.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that vigorous exercise is bad, but it can be disconcerting if you look at your monitor and see your blood sugar rising, rather than falling.

So what’s up with those internet tricks to avoid blood sugar spikes?

One of the most popular is to drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in water before eating a sugary snack or carbohydrate-rich meal.

This is based on the idea that the acetic acid in vinegar slows the breakdown of carbohydrates into sugar. It seemed to work for me, but it didn’t taste very good.

Another trick I tried was the claim that cooking, cooling and reheating carbohydrate-rich foods like rice, pasta or potatoes changes their structure, so they become “resistant” to the intestinal enzymes that break them down, causing less increased blood sugar.

On two consecutive days I had pasta for lunch, but on the second day I used leftover pasta that had been in the refrigerator and then reheated. This time my blood sugar spike was half of what it had been.

This has also been confirmed in studies, including a 2021 one by the University of Surrey that found that cooking, cooling, and reheating pasta made a significant difference in raising blood sugar.

Despite these positive aspects, there are serious limitations that must be taken into account if you use a CGM and do not have diabetes.

It was interesting to look at what foods cause my blood sugar to spike, but I got a little obsessed, even checking my readings in the middle of the night, which is clearly unhealthy.

And it’s important to keep in mind that blood sugar levels don’t tell the whole story.

Lentils and a chocolate bar made mine soar, but that doesn’t make them nutritionally equivalent: lentils have significant benefits, including the fact that they’re prebiotics, so they nourish the “good” bacteria in your gut.

A recent study by the US National Institutes of Health also showed that you can get very different results if you eat the same food on two consecutive days, for all sorts of reasons, including how stressed you are and how well you feel. he falls asleep

So don’t rely on a CGM as a way to shape your future diet.

And if all you really want to know is whether or not you have prediabetes, then a visit to your GP or a finger prick test is a cheaper and easier way to find out.

Finally, drastic measures against lip filler jeans

A lot of young (and not so young) people today seem to have big, full lips thanks to fillers.

While many people are delighted with the results, thousands of people are traumatized by botched procedures every year.

If you are going to be given injections in your face, it is clearly a good idea to have it done by someone who knows something about the underlying anatomy.

This is because beneath the skin is a complex network of arteries and veins, and if filler is injected into one of them, it could block blood flow and cause permanent tissue damage.

Surprisingly, this industry is almost entirely unregulated, so virtually anyone can pick up a needle and start advertising; There is no guarantee that the person on the other side of the needle knows what he is doing. A couple of years ago I did a TV series on retouching and was horrified by some of the stories I heard, including people who had been left blind due to fillers inserted too close to the arteries that feed the eye.

In light of these disasters, the Department of Health and Social Care has recently announced a consultation on adjustments to make them safer and stop cowboys (and cowgirls). It was time.

Fall is on the horizon, but pesky mosquitoes and other flying insects are still looking for me; I seem to be a magnet for them.

But the good news is that scientists at the University of California may have found a solution. They have isolated a species of bacteria, found on some people’s skin, that is good at keeping mosquitoes at bay. These bacteria produce a variety of chemicals, including butyric acid, which mosquitoes find repulsive.

Researchers hope to test this effect by spraying animals with the bacteria, before moving on to human trials.

We know that people in their 60s and 70s who develop new skills (like painting) experience great improvements in memory and other cognitive skills.

Now, a major study of older Britons has found that adult education classes can significantly reduce the risk of dementia. One theory is that being mentally active increases the brain’s ability to cope with damage or deterioration in adulthood, or it may be that learning something forges new neural pathways. The bottom line is that the benefits of learning continue into old age.