BIOHACKING BLOOD GLUCOSE: 20 SCIENCE-BACKED HACKS TO CONTROL YOUR SUGAR LEVELS
DR. MARC COHEN
MARCH 2025
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Glucose is essential for life. Your mind and body have been configured by evolution to maintain glucose homeostasis and provide a steady supply of glucose to your muscles, brain, and vital organs whenever it is needed. Blood sugar volatility, however, can indicate glucose dysregulation, which can lead to short-term and long-term health issues and shorten your lifespan.
Glucose dysregulation increases your risk of Type 2 Diabetes, obesity, and heart disease, along with nephropathy, neuropathy, retinopathy, cataracts, glaucoma, inflammation, immune dysfunction, infections, Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of cognitive decline, poor wound healing, mood swings, along with symptoms such as fatigue, shakiness, irritability, and dizziness.
Continuous glucose monitors can now inform you of moment-to-moment blood glucose changes and provide personal guidance on how your blood sugar levels vary with different diets or activities, yet there are some simple, practical recommendations that everyone can follow to help reduce glucose spikes.
The following poem outlines "20 Essential Sugar Hacks" aimed at improving blood sugar regulation and enhancing the way we approach food. Each ‘hack’ is backed by scientific evidence and aligns with principles of mindful eating, optimizing metabolism and gut health, and maintaining a diverse, balanced, and nutritious diet.
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20 ESSENTIAL SUGAR HACKS
Eat food in the right order
Fibre, fat, and protein first
Add a dash of vinegar
Let filtered water quench your thirst
There is no need for counting calories
Just leave the sweets till last
Move your body after meals
Avoid those naked carbs
Only eat when hungry
Extend your fast at night
Eat with grace and color
Enjoy the feast in the first bite
Try eating with the seasons,
Enjoy different cuisines
Eat all the different parts of plants
Fungi, roots, flowers, fruits, and greens
Enjoy foods of many flavors
Bitter, salty, spicy, sour and sweet
Eat living ferments with each meal
Give your gut biome a treat
Don’t be rigid with your choices
And when push becomes a shove
Do what feels right in each moment
And eat the foods you love
#professorialpoetry
Sugar
Glucose is essential for life but glucose dysregulation can lead to health issues.
Let’s break these sugar hacks down.
1. Eat food in the right order: fiber, fat, and protein first
Eating food in a specific order starting with foods that take longer to digest such as fibre, fat, and protein has a profound effect on blood sugar. Complex foods take longer to digest, which delays gastric emptying and releases glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), which acts on the hypothalamus to suppress appetite.
2. Add a dash of vinegar
Acetic acid inhibits amylase and thereby slows the digestion of starches into sugars. Vinegar also slows gastric emptying and improves insulin sensitivity, which further slows glucose absorption and reduces post-prandial glucose spikes. These effects are enhanced by a high polyphenol content in kombucha, apple cider, red wine, or pomegranate vinegar.
3. Let filtered water quench your thirst
Adequate hydration can reduce cravings and caloric intake, yet water often contains toxicants like chlorine and heavy metals along with endocrine disruptors and obesogens such as pesticides, fire retardants, and microplastics. Drinking filtered water is essential to reduce toxic exposures because if you don’t use a filter, you are one.
4. There is no need for counting calories
Rather than focusing on calorie counting, it’s better to focus on the relaxed enjoyment of nutrient-dense foods. Counting calories shifts the focus of eating from pleasure and nourishment to a chore that requires calibrating calories to metabolic needs, which can then lead to anxiety, cortisol release, and subsequent glucose dysregulation.
5. Just leave the sweets till last
Consuming sugar at the start of a meal can cause rapid rises in blood glucose and insulin followed by a crash that triggers hunger and cravings. Saving sweets for last helps stabilize blood sugar and makes it less likely to overeat sugary foods thereby fostering a healthier relationship with food.
6. Move your body after meals
Physical activity that activates large muscle groups can help regulate blood sugar levels as active muscles absorb glucose from the bloodstream. Engaging in short bursts of physical activity after meals, such as walking or light stretching can significantly lower blood glucose spikes, prevent insulin resistance, and promote overall metabolic health.
7. Avoid those naked carbs
"Naked carbs" refer to refined, simple carbohydrates like white bread, pasta, pastries, and candy, which are quickly broken down into sugar and cause rapid spikes in blood glucose. Eating carbs with fiber, fat or protein offers a more balanced source of energy by slowing glucose absorption and promoting lasting satiety.
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8. Only eat when hungry
The body's hunger signals are an essential part of energy regulation and tuning into these signals helps avoid unnecessary snacking or overeating by promoting mindful eating rather than eating out of habit or boredom. Mindful eating improves your relationship with food and leads to better glucose regulation and overall health.
9. Extend your fast at night
Extending the fasting period overnight (intermittent fasting) ensures your body has sufficient time to fully digest, eliminate, and prepare to fully receive and process the next meal. This can improve insulin sensitivity and glucose control, promote cellular repair, fat burning, and weight loss, and reduce the risk of chronic disease.
10. Eat with grace
Eating with grace includes giving thanks before meals as well as eating mindfully in a relaxed and unhurried setting, rather than gulping down fast food while doing other tasks. Such graceful eating can lead to greater enjoyment along with better digestion and satisfaction, potentially reducing overeating and improving nutrient intake.
11. And color
Colorful fruits and vegetables tend to be low in calories and high in fiber, vitamins, minerals, and beneficial phytochemicals. Eating foods of many colors often referred to as "eating the rainbow" ensures you are consuming a diverse range of phytonutrients with health-promoting effects such as flavonoids, anthocyanins, and carotenoids.
12. Enjoy the feast in the first bite
The first bite of any meal, snack, or treat is always the best with diminishing returns for every subsequent bite. Savoring the different flavors of each bite of food helps improve digestion, prevents overeating, and enhances the body's ability to recognize satiety signals leading to the consumption of fewer calories.
13. Try eating with the seasons
Seasonal eating promotes eating foods at their peak ripeness when they are often cheaper, fresher, tastier, and richer in diverse nutrients. Nutrients are often diminished through processing, storage, and transportation and seasonal eating is likely to be more locally based and have a smaller carbon footprint due to less transportation.
14. Enjoy different cuisines
Traditional cuisines are usually based on plant-rich, nutrient-dense foods that support a diverse and balanced diet. While dietary recommendations often come and go with the latest fad or trend, cuisines are time-tested ways of eating that expose you to a wide array of flavors, textures, plant groups, and cooking methods.
15. Eat all the different parts of plants: Fungi, roots, flowers, fruits, and greens
Each part of a plant offers different phytonutrients, fiber types, and antioxidants, along with different flavor and texture profiles. Regularly eating fungi along with a diverse range of plant parts ensures you are consuming a diverse range of macro and micro-nutrients, and promotes gut microbiota diversity and better metabolic health.
Glucose
Monitor glucose to manage diabetes, prevent complications, and maintain overall health.
16. Enjoy foods of many flavors: Bitter, salty, spicy, sour, and sweet
A balanced approach to flavors ensures a satisfying and enjoyable eating experience as each flavor offers unique benefits. Balancing flavors increases enjoyment and satiety and reduces cravings. For example, bitter flavors can reduce sweet cravings, help stimulate appetite, and improve digestion, hence the traditional use of ‘aperitifs’ or ‘digestifs’.
17. Eat living ferments with each meal, give your gut biome a treat
Fermented foods, such as kimchi, yogurt, sauerkraut, and kombucha are rich in probiotics, which enhance the diversity and activity of gut bacteria. The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in digestion, immune function, and mood regulation, and a healthy gut microbiome is linked to better glucose metabolism and reduced inflammation.
18. Don’t be rigid with your choices
Rigid dietary regimens can lead to stress, anxiety, and feelings of deprivation, which may cause overeating, binge eating, cortisol release, and subsequent glucose dysregulation. Maintaining flexibility in dietary choices and allowing for occasional indulgences is a more sustainable approach that leads to better weight management and healthier eating habits.
19. And when a push becomes a shove, do what feels right in each moment
Being able to tune in, trust your instincts, and select foods that feel right in each moment builds self-confidence and enables you to overcome unhealthy impulses, marketing hype or peer pressure that seeks to control or limit your choices. Staying true to yourself is empowering and will help improve your eating habits.
20. And eat the foods you love
Preventing yourself from eating foods that bring you joy can create resentment and make it more likely you’ll be unsatisfied, make poor choices, and binge. Eating is an inherently enjoyable activity and listening to your body and enjoying foods you love is the key to a healthy relationship with food.
Dr. Marc Cohen is a medical doctor, university professor, author, poet, entrepreneur, wellness trailblazer, and perpetual student of life who embodies the role of a bridge-builder, connecting ancient wisdom with modern science, academia with industry, and individual well-being with global health. Dr Marc believes wellness can be just as contagious as illness and aims to co-create a culture of wellness that infects the world with good health. You can find him at www.drmarc.co.
