How Does the Sugar Content of Food Influence Blood Sugar Levels?

Concerns about Sugar

Eating food with a lot of sugar naturally causes a lot of sugar to enter your digestive system. In people with a normally functioning metabolic system, this can lead to brief spikes in the levels of sugar in the blood that ultimately become regulated by insulin. In people with diabetes and related disorders, the situation can be different.

Digestion of Sugar

The digestion process begins in the mouth. Starches and simple carbohydrates begin to be broken down into sugar. The food then travels down the esophagus, through the stomach and into the small intestine where it is absorbed into the blood stream. Foods with higher sugar content will lead to a greater amount of sugar entering the blood stream.

Response with Insulin

Digestion leads to a brief spike in the sugar content of the blood as the sugar molecules enter the blood stream in the small intestine. But the body then releases insulin, which causes the cells to absorb the sugar and restore the blood sugar level to normal. People with diabetes may not produce insulin adequately, however, or their cells may not respond to it, which means that the cells do not absorb the excess sugar in the blood and the level can get dangerously high. For this reason, people with diabetes have to avoid eating sugary foods and some may need to use injectable insulin to keep their blood sugar levels under control.