Sugar is only one side of the coin, as far as blood sugar problems are concerned. Stimulants and stress are the other. As you can see from the figure below if your blood sugar level dips there are two ways to raise it. One is to eat more glucose, and the other is to increase your level of the stress hormones adrenalin and cortisol. There are two ways in which you can raise adrenalin and cortisol. Consume a stimulant - tea, coffee, chocolate or cigarettes - or react stressfully, causing an increase in your own production of adrenalin.
Knowing this, you can see how easy it is to get caught up in the vicious cycle of stress, sugar and stimulants. It will leave you feeling tired, depressed and stressed much of the time.
Here's how it works. Through excess sugar, stress and stimulants you lose your blood sugar control and wake up each morning with low blood sugar levels and not enough adrenalin to kick-start your day. So you adopt one of two strategies:
Either you reluctantly crawl out of bed on remote control and head for the kettle, make yourself a strong cup of tea or coffee, light up a cigarette or have some fast releasing sugar in the form of toast, with some sugar on it called jam. Up go your blood sugar and adrenalin levels and you start to feel normal.
Or you lie in bed and start to think about all the things that have gone wrong, coulod go wrong, will go wrong. You start to worry about everything you've got to do, haven't done and should have done. About ten minutes of this gets enough adrenalin pumping to get you out of bed. If this sounds like you, your caught in that vicious circle, with all its negative effects on your mind and mood.