Marriage Counseling or Better Glucose Regulation?

In 2014, a team of researchers gathered up 107 married couples to test this. They gave them each a voodoo doll, a bunch of pins, a glucometer, and specific instructions.

The couples were instructed to measure their glucose every night and insert between 0 and 51 pins into the doll, depending on how angry they were with their spouse for 21 days.

At the end of the 21 days, the couples returned to the lab and were asked to play a game with their spouse. This “game”, if you could call it that, was to see which person could press a button faster.

The winner was awarded the opportunity to send a blast of noise - as long, annoying, and loud as they wanted - straight into the headphones of their better half.

As expected, the lower the glucose level, the more pins spouses added to their voodoo dolls and the louder, longer, and more annoying the noise blasts they delivered to their spouse. Real-life translation?

We have had multiple patients report to us, “I actually like my husband again” after we got to the bottom of their reactive hypoglycemia.

True to the proverbial, “But wait there’s more!”, there’s more.

Have you heard of low glucose causing hip pain? We recently read of a case of a patient who did not have hypoglycemic symptoms, but who’s arthritic hip pain increased after “sugary meals”.

Doctors performed a glucose tolerance test on the patient and when his glucose hit its lowest point, 44 mg/dL (2.44 mmol/L), was also when he happened to report the worst hip pain. With some minor dietary changes to help manage his glucose a bit better, his arthritis pain greatly improved.

The narrative surrounding glucose regulation is far more intricate than what the industry typically presents. This complexity is why we cover numerous facets of glucose regulation in Clinician's Code.

For instance, we delve into crucial yet frequently overlooked topics such as glucose variability, the necessity of including c-peptide in every lab panel (and its superiority over insulin), and innovative therapeutic approaches tailored to various patterns of glucose dysregulation.

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