Productivity vs Foggy Brain

I woke up at 5 am to write this blog :) Like the lady in Guldur Guldur show. If you have watched this episode, you will understand the joke here. She says she woke up at 5 am to make bread for her husband, she made the eggs from scratch herself, even the water from scratch putting H and O together :)

No worries, we are not going to talk about "that" level of productivity. I wanted to share one insight I have gathered observing my CGM (continuous glucose monitor, you can also buy some here for yourself). And yes, you can wear a CGM as a healthy person!

I will give an example of a productive day. For me this is maybe an uninterrupted focused writing day, being able to finish a good chunk in a paper. There have been days like this where I could write a whole introduction, or 1/2 of results, while needing to edit or redo figures or reanalyze the data.

What you can notice in this graph is that the blood glucose fluctuations were not very high in magnitude and they were short lived. This (somehow) improved my focus and productivity. To get to this quietness level, my total carbs needed to stay pretty low (~50-55 gr/day). The sleep quality feels better, although I do not have sufficient data to compare.

However, if I make slightly worse choices and eat things that give me "spikes"; I start seeing some purple mountains. This could be like eating one little brownie like topkek as one of my childhood memories. Just one spike per day is still (I guess) manageable and does not redirect a lot of brain energy to other avenues.

But things get louder if I have 3 spikes in a day. Then I find myself googling for some other childhood indulgences that I urgently and truly need. How can I get the Sultan Market in NJ to ship me some of their delicious eclairs? I ordered some food from Turcamart, only to notice the package is shipped from Bursa Turkiye. Oops, I did not pay attention.

I guess you can see the rest of the story. The higher and wider the peaks are, the bigger toll on mental clarity, productivity and overall happiness. The sadness can bring in the big peaks as well as big peaks in return amplify the phantom reasons for sadness.

I am noticing there is a clear link with my glucose spikes and my productivity and happiness.

This is not my invention. Glucose goddess wrote about a research study describing associations of mood swings, moodiness, risk of depression in women. Similar increased risk of depression for diabetic people was reported before. There is clearly a connection that other people noticed documented as well.

From a practical stand point: is it too hard to maintain a pretty flat curve everyday? There is a some difficulty, but there are helpful resources. I started by reading 10 glucose hacks that Jessie is describing here. Logistically, I had to switch from normal bread to Hero breads and chocolate bars to Nick's protein bars or Trubars (these two are recommended by my new dietician Helen Harloe) or Nola Bars. Taking vinegar pills, Jessie's anti spike pills, fiber pills, adding grape vinegar to my salads, peanut butter with no sugar, eating 1 tbsp of tahini per day, adding coconut oil to my coffee, making keto pancakes, a keto brownie, and something I have recently discovered (from my friend Ebru) using the eincorn flour. instead of regular genetically modified wheat flour. It sounds like the "original untouched wheat" is good and on the contrary also the resistant wheat that has been engineered to not be broken down.

There are simpler solutions to lower your peaks, such as drinking lots of water, squeezing in 15 jumping jacks or 20 squats, taking a short walk in the evening. But considering the load of life, sometimes it is simpler to just not get started on the peak, rather than trying to bring it down costing extra time. To keep the total carbs down, I had to pretty much quit on fruits. I remember having a real difficult time keeping loyal to my diet list when I had several medjoul dates in day. Nowadays, I would sometimes eat blackberries from our back yard and that is pretty much it.

I am sure there are a ton of other beneficial things that I have not discovered yet. There is also a possibility that some of these things might have detrimental ingredients that I have not learned yet. One such ingredient is Sodium Nitrite. How come no one told me about it? It is used as a preservative in sausages. My kids grew up eating many. Now we are searching for options without Sodium Nitrite, which is a challenge. There was the Sultan Market in NJ which carried some butcher's sausage. There is always the option to make it yourself.

I am teaching my son his responsibilities in life. He says out: "I take the responsibility of feeding my body." Maybe I should say it along and if you will, you can join me as well: "I take the responsibility of feeding my body well."

Until next time, take care my friend.

PS: CGMs could show a glucose number lower than what you would measure using a finger prick to measure your "blood" glucose, since they use the "interstitial fluid" rather than blood itself. Still the patterns and purple peaks are telling a story.

PS2: These are personal insights and are not meant to be medical advice. Please consult your physician for medical guidance.