Page 81 - Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon PDF Program

Throughout the typical 24-hour cycles of eating, digestion, and fasting, the amount of
glucose in your blood is generally maintained within a range of 70-140 mg/dL (3.9-7.8
mmol/L) as long as you are healthy.

To give you an idea of how truly remarkable this feat is, consider the following: the
average human being has about 5 liters of blood. Looking at the numbers above and
doing some quick conversions we realize that during any given day, the amount of
sugar in your blood ranges from between 5 grams and 7 grams. This is roughly the
amount of sugar in one to one-and-a-half teaspoons!

Research conducted upon healthy adults shows that mental efficiency declines
slightly (but measurably) as blood glucose falls below about 65 mg/dL (3.6 mmol/L),
or into the range of about one-half of a teaspoon.

It is important to note that the precise level of glucose considered low enough to be
defined as hypoglycemia is dependent on the age of the person, the health of the
person, the measurement method, and the presence or absence of negative symptoms.

According to the research I reviewed on the effects of short-term fasting on blood

sugar, a 24-hour fast should not place you into a hypoglycemic state, and I have not
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seen any research that has shown a subject going below 3.6 mmol/L blood sugar
during a short-term fast.

So if there isn’t any clinical evidence of short-term fasting causing hypoglycemia,
what’s with all these people who say they get moody and light headed if they don’t eat
every three hours?

In a paper titled “Effect of fasting on young adults who have symptoms of hypoglycemia
in the absence of frequent meals” researchers aimed to answer this exact question.

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