Sugar and Heart Health: Understand the Connection and Your Next Steps

Transcript:

Leah: Welcome to Dishing Up Nutrition, brought to you by Nutritional Weight & Wellness. I'm Leah Kleinschrodt, a Registered and Licensed Dietitian, and today we are digging into the surprising ways sugar affects your heart health. We'll talk about how sugar affects your blood vessels, your cholesterol numbers, and your everyday energy when it sneaks into your diet all day, every day, maybe even without you realizing it. And to help us walk through this, I'm here with my co-host and fellow dietitian, Teresa Wagner.

Teresa: Well, that's good to be here with you again, Leah. I love this topic because it connects so many things that we see in practice: blood sugar, cravings, cholesterol, blood pressure. And that big umbrella of heart health.

Leah: Yeah. It's on everybody's mind. There's not a week that goes by that we're not looking at someone's lipid panel, cholesterol numbers, talking about blood sugars, all of that good stuff. So yeah, you hit the nail on the head. Yeah. And what we want to do today is help our listeners connect the dots between the sugar in your day-to-day life.

And so we're talking about the stuff that comes in, in the coffee drinks, your juices, the afternoon treats that you might be looking for to get that boost to get you through the day, the late night snacking that comes in that helps us decompress or sometimes just to kind of numb out after a long day and we want to take that sugar connected to then how is it affecting our heart and our lab numbers?

Sources of sugar to consider

So we're going to start super basic. I mean, as we're recording this, it's the beginning of 2026. I'm hoping we have some new listeners on board with the new year and kind of like with some of those resolutions on board with people. When we talk about sugar, what are we actually talking about? Because we're not talking about just the white table sugar from the sugar bowl that's maybe in your cabinet right now.

We're actually talking about high carbohydrate foods in general. So yes, we do. We, we are talking about the white table sugar, but we're talking about foods that break down into sugar. So our bodies break down all carbohydrates into sugar.

Just some break down into more sugar and some break down into more sugar more quickly than others. And when we consume a lot of those foods in appreciable amounts or in excess, our body is going to respond kind of the same way each time. We're going to see a big rise in our blood sugar on a biochemical level.

Teresa: Right. And I think a lot of people still feel like if it's natural sugar, it's fine. And to some degree I think that that's correct. We do want to be eating natural sugars; sugars that are found in fruits and vegetables and those types of foods, so in some ways, yes. Sure is fine, but when we're eating high carbohydrate foods, or if we're eating other types of foods, your body isn't necessarily sitting there sorting it out saying, oh, this came from cane sugar and this came from apples, so we'll treat it differently.

Leah: Right.

Teresa: Sugar is sugar as far as your blood sugar response is concerned. And I've got to say that I have a sort of a, a personal story with that too, because I was wearing a continuous glucose monitor for a while just kind of experimenting to see what does my body do when I eat different types of foods, and how will it respond to things.

And it happened to be a day where I was planning on going for a run. So I really wanted to see, okay, what happens if I eat a banana on an empty stomach? Because we often tell people, make sure you pair banana with like some peanut butter and a protein. We want to make sure that bananas are good, but we just want to make sure that we, help to slow the release of that sugar into the bloodstream. So that, you know, we can utilize the nutrients that are in the banana. Usually our recommendation is half a banana.

Leah: Yep, yep.

Teresa: But blunt it with that fat and protein. Well, I was like, okay, because we're, it's always like, well, okay, what, what will happen?

Leah: We love to experiment on ourselves too.

Teresa: That's right. Whole banana, empty stomach. Knowing that I'm going to go do something that's going to help to bring some, bring that blood sugar down if it does in fact spike. And yes, it sure did. So what we want for our blood sugar is for it to stay, you know, we'll eat a meal and our blood sugar can rise up above 100 and it, you know, I think, we think a right around 140 is a good level for it to rise to.

Ideally it'll stay under 140 and then it'll come back down under 100 between meals. When I ate that banana, it went well above 140. It went up to 170 as it’s rising; I can't remember where it finally hit, but at 170, I was like, okay.

Leah: It's time to go for the run.

Teresa: Yeah. So even though it's that natural sugar, it wasn't table sugar, but it was a food that breaks down into sugar.

Leah: And that's where those CGMs are just, they're kind of a nice, interesting window into what of our blood sugar's doing on a day-to-day basis, moment to moment. It's a great tool if you're able to access that. So yes, exactly. We are paying attention to carbohydrates in general and so yes, when we eat the banana, we eat the sweet potato, or we eat the cupcake, something along those lines, what happens is the first you eat or you drink that thing that's something that's high in carbs, high in sugar, then your blood sugar goes up.

Science of blood sugar fluctuations

Maybe it stops at that 140, maybe it goes up to 170. Maybe it goes a little bit higher. So that blood sugar goes up, your pancreas comes in and releases a hormone called insulin. Insulin's job is to pull that sugar from the bloodstream into our cells so that our cells can use it for energy. So it can use it for whatever it is we need to do in our day. Like your example was going for the run. Sometimes our insulin overshoots. Our blood sugar ends up rebounding a little bit too low or it comes down really quickly and that's where people, you feel that blood sugar drop.

You really feel that low blood sugar. Now you were high, now you're low. Now you actually crave more carbs. You crave more sugar. You might actually crave some of those fats in there too, just for some stability. And then that's where all of a sudden we're saying hello to the afternoon mocha and the pastry in the break room at your office, where maybe that it wasn't something that you were craving an hour or two ago.

Teresa: Yeah, I think that's a really good point to even talk about a little bit, is that craving for fat too. You know, for the people that really crave peanut butter or sour cream, I'll often ask them or talk about blood sugar because I think that it's just that natural craving to try to balance out the blood sugars that are happening.

And I, Leah, I think that you gave a really good visual of what that blood sugar rollercoaster looks like. People will say, I hit a wall an hour after eating. One of my favorites is I'm better off not eating breakfast because it makes me hungrier, which is such an indication of a high carbohydrate breakfast. Right?

Leah: Absolutely.

Teresa: Sometimes people will say, I just need something sweet in the afternoon, and for all of these people, this is not a willpower problem. This could be your physiology to many carbohydrates and that sugar sends the blood sugar soaring and then it crashes, and then your brain craves more of that quick energy.

The blood sugar connection to heart health

Leah: Let's start to bridge some of that blood sugar stuff into the heart health because that's where I think that's where we want to draw that into. When our blood sugar spikes and our body makes a lot of insulin, where we're kind of riding in that soup, if you want to say, that soup of high blood sugar and high insulin for months, for years, if this is a recurring theme, that pattern of high sugar and high insulin affects your triglycerides.

It affects your cholesterol numbers, it affects your inflammation levels, and it also long-term starts to affect how flexible and pliable your blood vessels are. It also contributes to insulin resistance and weight gain. So, and this increases the risk of type two diabetes, high blood pressure, both of those things;

Type two diabetes, high blood pressure. These are two major risk factors that are recognized as drivers of heart disease. So over time these effects, they strain the heart and the blood vessels. So over time that risk for something happening with those tiny little blood vessels in the heart, we start to see that risk go up.

Labs to consider

Teresa: And with that said, let's talk about some labs, because that is a way that we can kind of see what's going on internally. If you've gotten your cholesterol tested, you've likely seen total cholesterol, LDL and HDL and triglycerides on that lab panel.

We like to pay attention to the triglycerides when we're talking about heart health because high triglycerides are considered to be one of the biggest risk factors for heart disease. And I would say that this is true, especially in women.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: When blood sugar is frequently elevated, your body has to do something with that sugar, like you were saying, Leah. One of its favorite storage options is to convert that extra sugar into triglycerides or fat in the bloodstream. Over time, this can lead to high triglycerides, which is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease.

I like to think about it like this. If your bloodstream is the highway, triglycerides are like extra traffic that's on that highway. A little traffic, that's normal. But then when there are way too many cars, things start to slow down. Accidents start to happen, and the road gets damaged. High triglycerides are the kind of traffic jam that signals your heart and blood vessels are under stress. So what we want to see on that lab panel is the triglycerides under 100 milligrams per deciliter or under 75 is better.

Leah: Yep. Exactly. I love that analogy with the cars and roadways, highways, stuff like that. Yeah, and I'm telling my clients if we can get it, get that triglyceride number into double digits, like we're doing pretty good.

There's a, there's a ratio that we often look at when we're looking, those, that lipid panel, those labs, it's you take your triglycerides and divide that by your HDL. We know, typically know the HDL is more of that good cholesterol, the protective cholesterol, that we want a lower ratio, a two to one ratio or lower even like I've seen clients who get down to that one-to-one ratio, which is actually really great.

That's a nice goal to shoot for. So for example, if your triglycerides were 100, so kind of right on that cusp of what we would want to see, and that HDL is 50, that's a two to one ratio. So ideally if we want to shrink that gap, we're trying to bring the triglycerides down and we're trying to bring that HDL number up, that will shrink that gap a little bit more.

And this, I do want to point out, we, a couple of us, we went to a conference over, this fall, a couple of us dietitians from Nutritional Weight & Wellness. And one of the presenters he talked to, he presented this whole thing around heart health.

He brought up this ratio, the triglyceride to HDL ratio and his slides said that out of all the numbers that you get on a lipid panel, that this triglyceride to HDL ratio is the best predictor of cardiovascular disease that you can get like just by looking at these particular numbers, it's a marker of insulin resistance. It's a marker of metabolic syndrome, and it's a marker that you've got, and we won't get into this today, but a marker of more LDL particles and a smaller particle size, something that's a little more atherogenic or more heart disease promoting.

So it was just nice to hear that validation, I think to say like, great, there's other people out there, there's other practitioners out there that recognize that ratio and know the usefulness of it and what it represents.

Teresa: You know, and then speaking of that ratio, Leah, I think that, that's not the ratio that people are tending to look at. I think that ratio that more people are looking at is the total cholesterol by the HDL. Which is also a good ratio to look at.

Leah: Yeah.

Teresa: But I think that we should more emphasize this triglyceride, especially based on what that doctor was saying, because it really does have some strong evidence behind it.

Leah: Yeah, you can tell a lot by that.

Teresa: Mm-hmm. Well, when someone's been eating a lot of sugar, whether it's added sugar or refined carbohydrates, sometimes we see triglycerides in the three hundreds, four hundreds, or even higher. And just for just kind of frame of reference, we were saying we would really like to see it in the double digits.

So if we get closer to 75, this is where we want. Those cases are where we are really focusing on bringing sugar levels down and building balanced meals because that's one of the biggest markers for heart disease risk that we can influence using food and alcohol, because high triglycerides are also a sign of high alcohol use as well.

Leah: Yep. Great point. And this isn't all of this to say too, it's great to look under the hood. It's great to look at some of these numbers on paper. Great to kind of see where we're at. And let's also pivot and say those high blood sugars and those high triglycerides, they also increase inflammation in the blood vessels, that inflammation, it's that bugaboo that kind of flies under the radar a little bit more for a long, long time.

And this is where that presenter that was at that conference said like, you know, the heart attack was like the end game to what has been happening now for 10, 15, 20 years at this point.

It's that inflammation that flies under the radar for a long time, but it's doing bits of damage along the way. So that inflammation is damaging over and over time, it contributes to plaque buildup within the arteries and stiff less flexible arteries. I think when I was an early listener to Dishing Up Nutrition, the analogy of like the garden hose really sticks out to me. So you think about that garden hose that's just been left out in the sun too long, you pick it up, it cracks, it crinkles.

It's really hard to maneuver around. We don't want our blood vessels to look like that. We want to store that hose properly, especially during the winters here in Minnesota. And we want to be able to have it flex and move the way that it needs to, to bend without giving way or without getting those cracks and that damage in there.

So the same thing we want for our blood vessels. So that's a big part of why consistently high blood sugars, high triglycerides, they increase that risk of heart disease and we see more inflammation, and that inflammation, it's not just heart disease, it's, it's any other kind of chronic disease that we're looking at as well.

What does inflammation of the blood vessels mean?

Teresa: Right. And I feel like the word inflammation, it's tossed around a lot.

Leah: It does.

Teresa: I mean, it is definitely a buzzword, especially if you follow anything in social media. It's inflammation, inflammation, inflammation. I just want to say, we've been talking about inflammation for a long time.

Leah: Yeah. Yep.

Teresa: So in context, inflammation basically means your blood vessels are irritated and getting damaged from the inside. That's not where we want it to be. We want calm, flexible arteries. We want that hose to be able to turn up the volume on that, or the pressure on the water, and be able to turn it down and to be able to flex mm-hmm with the increased pressure needed.

So when we think about that with our blood vessel, it's like exercise. Right? When we start to exercise, we increase the pressure against those blood vessel walls. So we want to be able to do that easily. We don't want our arteries to be inflamed. We don't want them to be damaged. So there is a lab that's actually kind of helpful for this, that measures this inflammation in your body and it is called hs-CRP or high sensitivity C-reactive protein. We want to see hs-CRP levels under one milligram per liter to indicate low levels of inflammation and low risk of heart disease.

Leah: Yeah, I throw that one out there a lot for clients that that hs-CRP and that one's a fairly, I mean, it's a fairly common lab, so most of the time I don't see practitioners giving a whole lot of pushback against that. Like every once in a while we'll see that, but it's a pretty easy lab to get. So if, again, if you're getting some labs drawn in these next couple of months, like put that one on the docket just to see where that inflammation level is at.

Blood sugar doesn't just affect the big blood vessels that feed the heart or are coming from the heart. Those high blood sugars cause oxidative stress and damage to the delicate little blood vessels that feed kind of like the inner workings of the heart. But also we think about those delicate little blood vessels and nerve endings in our feet, in our fingers.

So those extremities, that's where we run into diabetic neuropathy; those tiny little blood vessels in your eyes. So retinopathy is a concern for people who have chronically high blood sugars. Those tiny small little blood vessels of the brain. I mean, there is a link between like poor blood flow and to the brain and Alzheimer's, dementia, concussion stuff like anything to do with kind of inflammation of the brain.

So kind of like the CRP and the inflammation, we can test blood sugars very common. Very few practitioners should give you any pushback about that. We want to test that fasting blood sugar, which is typically a part of your metabolic panel along with your other electrolytes, like the sodium, potassium, magnesium.

So you'll get a fasting glucose number and then ask for a hemoglobin A1C. That gives us a little bit bigger of a picture. What's been your average blood sugar control over the last three months or so? Ideally, we want to see that fasting glucose number somewhere between 70 to 90.

If we're starting to creep up into the mid to high nineties, that's just a little bit of a red flag, like, hey, maybe we, want to look at that A1C and that A1C actually comes as a percentage. So 5.7% and higher is prediabetes. So if we're at 5.6 or lower, we're in the normal range. I tell my clients if we can actually keep you off the ledge of prediabetes a little bit more, like get you more like 5.3, 5.4, 5.2, like now we're doing even a little bit better.

So we want to kind of stay away from that edge of prediabetes. We want to stay on top of those blood sugars. So those two labs, the fasting glucose and the A1C are very easy to get and again, add those to the docket next time you're getting some lab work done.

Teresa: Right. I think that is just a great way to monitor how we're doing is to have those done pretty consistently over time.

Leah: Yep.

Teresa: To see if there's any changes and what kind of trends we're having.

Leah: Yeah.

Sugar does affect the heart

Teresa: So if anybody at this point is still asking, does sugar affect my heart? The answer is yes, but it might not be a direct effect. It pushes blood sugar up so that sugar that we're eating, or those processed carbohydrates or the carbohydrates that we're eating pushes our blood sugar up. It can increase our triglycerides. This ramps up inflammation and all of that creates a not so friendly environment for your heart and blood vessels.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: So let's get practical. Where is the sugar sneaking in? Because most people will probably say, well, I don't really eat that much sugar.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: And then we walk through their day. Breakfast might be coffee with a flavored creamer, a banana and a bagel with a low-fat cream cheese, mid-morning, maybe a green juice or a fruit smoothie. Lunch, maybe a sandwich, and instead of potato chips, you choose dried fruit because it sounds healthier. Afternoon snack is a flavored yogurt with granola on top, dinner, it might include some type of a bread, or maybe it's a pasta or rice dish with a glass of wine.

And then as you're winding down for the end of the night, popcorn might sound good with TV as a great bedtime snack. It doesn't look like a lot of sugary sweets and desserts. But all of those carbohydrates, they all start to add up.

Leah: And sometimes the biggest surprise is the drinks.

Teresa: Right.

Leah: Yep. So you mentioned the, that pre-made green juice, we, we see the color green. You think like, oh, look at all the vegetables blended up in there. And that may be true, but that 15-ounce bottle of one of those pre-made green juices holds, you know, 52 grams of carbohydrates in there, which you divide that number by four.

We get down into the teaspoons of sugar, so that equals 13 teaspoons or just over a quarter of a cup of sugar that that's what your body then has to deal with and ounce for ounce that juice then once you measure that up, it has about the same amount of sugar as a 16 ounce soda. When I've taught classes before, we use a lot of those sugar visuals, right, Teresa?

I mean, those get people, it's like you measure out that quarter of a cup of sugar or that half a cup of sugar and everyone thinks like, I would never sit down and just spoon that into my mouth. But when you break it down and say, well, this is actually what your digestive tract and then your blood sugar is dealing with it makes it a little bit more real or just it's a little more eye opening there.

So yeah, nobody's sitting down and spooning that sugar out of that quarter of a cup, but it adds up when you tally up the juice, when you tally up the coffee drinks, when you tally up the electrolyte drinks, the sports drinks, et cetera. And if excess carbohydrates and sugar are showing up all day every day, which again is pretty easy to do in the beverage form especially, it's a lot of work for the body to keep things in balance.

Teresa: Once we spot where the sugar is coming from, the next step is to ask what can we add to crowd out some of those higher carbohydrate, higher processed carbohydrate and sugar containing foods? The answer is protein, more healthy fats, more fiber. The blood sugar is steadier and the heart has a calmer environment to work in.

We talk about balanced blood sugar a lot for preventing diabetes or managing cravings, but it's also one of the most powerful ways to protect your heart and blood vessels. I like to reframe balanced blood sugar as stress management for your body.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: A high sugar or meal skipping pattern keeps you on a blood sugar rollercoaster, which is very stressful physically, even if you feel like you're handling your life stress pretty well.

Leah: Mm-hmm. That's another eye-opener for people too, and you kind of talk about the stress of what that blood sugar does and why when we get into more of those rolling hills blood sugar, we're able to adjust it. Actually, people do notice the difference between how they feel on the blood sugar roller coaster versus when they're riding more of those hills of blood sugar.

So we do need to take a quick break. On the other side. we will come back and talk a little bit more of like, what does that balanced blood sugar plate actually look like when you're sitting down, putting together dinner? So stick with us. We'll be right back.

-----

How to balance your plate for balanced blood sugar

Welcome back. Teresa and I were just talking a little bit about blood sugar, blood sugar roller coaster, and talking about, you know, what does that actually look like when we translate it onto, how do I put together a meal? How do I put together my plate to make sure that my blood sugar stays stable throughout the day?

If you're a regular Dishing Up Nutrition listener, you'll know our favorite formula is that good amount of protein. Pair it with some healthy fats, and we're looking for our carbohydrates mostly coming from our vegetables. So this might look like four to six ounces or so of animal protein, which gets us right in that ballpark of 28 to 42 grams or so of protein at a meal, two to three cups of colorful vegetables.

So that gives you a lot of antioxidants, a great amount of fiber. We add in, we still add in maybe that half a cup of fruit, maybe some rice or other whole grains or some kind of starchy vegetable, like some butternut squash or a sweet potato. And then somewhere in that mix we're probably either cooking with a healthy fat like olive oil or avocado oil, or maybe we're topping some of our food with some of those great healthy fats.

Putting a few slices of avocado on the plate, putting a little bit of butter on that sweet potato. So those balanced meals like this is how we slow down how quickly that sugar enters the bloodstream. And you mentioned this earlier, Teresa, we normally, when we have the banana, we pair it.

We don't have the banana just by itself. You were doing us all a justice and running an experiment on yourself. But we normally pair that banana with some peanut butter or maybe you're eating a protein to go alongside of it because that the protein and the fat, you can kind of think of them like speed bumps with the carbohydrates; they act as more of that buffer, that speed bump, so you don't have just a huge crash of carbs and sugar into your system. You get a little bit of buffering. So that means like you get less insulin getting pumped out. The triglycerides stay a little bit lower; you have less inflammation.

And overall it's just a better environment for our heart. But I also guarantee you're going to feel better as well. This isn't just like, hey, we're doing this for heart health 25 years down the road, even though yes, we are doing that, you're going to feel the difference between riding that blood sugar rollercoaster and keeping your blood sugars a little bit more rolling hills.

Teresa: 100%. That is definitely something that people feel. That's something I feel, and Leah, I bet you feel it too.

Leah: Absolutely.

Timing of eating matters

Teresa: Yep. Another thing to mention too is that timing really matters too. Timing of eating. Try to eat regularly every three to four hours and don't skip meals. When people skip, they often end up overly hungry and then they just reach for the quickest sugar, or maybe they just can't stop eating.

So they overeat some of those processed snacky foods that are very easy. It's just open the box, open the bag, and it's just really hard to stop when you get that hungry when you've skipped a meal. So instead of that pattern of starve, then sugar surge, which is really tough on blood sugar and on the heart.

Let's try to switch it. So if we want a simple starting point for heart health around sugar, I'd say make sure you're eating balanced meals like Leah was describing, and those snacks too; having those be balanced as well, but then eat them every three to four hours and that balanced schedule;

So we want to eat balanced meals with a balanced schedule, that balanced schedule could look something like breakfast at eight o'clock. Lunch at noon, a snack at three, dinner at 6:30.

Leah: Yeah.

Teresa: Because I feel like sometimes when we say that sort of like eat every three to four hours, people think they're going to be eating all day long.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: But on that schedule, it really is eight, noon, 3, 6:30. And if you stay up late, maybe you want to have a bedtime snack, maybe not.

Leah: Mm-hmm.

Teresa: That, that could be something that you could decide is if it's a good idea for you or not. And so in that balance of food, we want to include a protein, a fat, and some of that fiber rich food that Leah was mentioning as well. So even if nothing else changes, that alone can help move blood sugar, triglycerides, and inflammation in the right direction.

Balanced meal examples

Leah: Mm-hmm. Yeah. So let's walk through some specific swaps, because again, theory is great, but we all have to eat actual meals. We all have to stare at the fridge. We all have to be in the grocery store and pick out what's going into our cart.

So let's start with breakfast and I mean, this is my favorite place to start because it's the beginning of the day. It's logical. Let's start from the very beginning. Start with like anchoring. I talk to my clients constantly about anchoring, like good anchoring meals. So like let's anchor those blood sugars right away in the beginning of the day; we stand a better fighting chance for the rest of the day going well when we start with a great breakfast.

Teresa: Right. And I think, don't you think, Leah, we've just all been kind of conditioned to want dessert for breakfast.

Leah: Absolutely.

Teresa: Think about it. Muffins, I always tell my kids, muffins are just unfrosted cupcakes. Or pancakes with syrup or waffles or whatever. It is just very, very sweet and we're very conditioned to it.

Leah: The things that typically fall into that breakfast box, at least here in America, definitely tend to trend higher carb, lower protein, you know, variable on the fats piece of it. So yeah, just like less balance, less blood sugar friendly. So no wonder we're riding that blood sugar rollercoaster starting at 8:00 AM like you said. That typical American breakfast, it might look like cereal with skim milk, maybe a glass of orange juice alongside of it.

Or going back to the yogurt parfait type of idea, you get the sweetened low fat yogurt. It has the strawberries on the front and maybe the fruits on the bottom. You top that with the store bought granola. Those are common breakfasts that, and we, again, we teach this in some of our classes and we have some graphics that show like just breakfast like that can have just as much sugar in it as like having a candy bar, having that cupcake.

Something along those lines, even though you don't necessarily equate it in your brain like that. So a heart friendlier version could be something like a cup of whole milk, Greek yogurt, so no added sugar in there. Top it with a few berries and put some raw nuts and seeds on there for that, you get that bit of crunch, you get some of those good healthy fats.

You get a little fiber in there. If the plain whole milk yogurt is a little bit of a hard sell, you know, if we're just trying to transition those taste buds over a little bit, I'll have my clients add a little protein powder in there. If you get a good vanilla protein powder that is maybe sweetened with a little stevia or some monk fruit, so you can still get that vanilla undertone, a little bit of sweetness, sometimes that's enough of a, it gives you enough of an edge to say like, all right, I can make this switch.

Teresa: Yeah, that's a great idea. Plus it adds extra protein.

Leah: Yeah.

Teresa: Sometimes a breakfast, that's a hard, hard target to hit. So yeah, great idea. Mm-hmm.

Leah: So that's like, that's more of an example of a sweet type of breakfast. I think a breakfast like that works well, especially if people don't have a huge appetite in the morning. Sometimes stomaching yogurt or something, yogurt and berries goes over better than, than doing like some eggs or some sausage. But some people love the eggs and sausage idea.

So if you want something a little more savory, you could heat up a couple of ounces of pre-cooked nitrate free chicken sausage. We have a great turkey sausage recipe on our website that I just, I got constantly making that one in our household.

You pair that with some frozen cubed sweet potatoes and maybe you serve that again, a couple slices of avocado and that can all, it can be heated up easy. Ready to go in a minute or two. Ready to eat. I wanted to throw out like, like I like the chicken sausage idea. Meatballs are like, I feel like that's the ultimate utility player on the team.

Like meatballs can be a meal, they can be a snack. You can have four or five of them for a meal. You can have one or two for a quick breakfast or a snack. It's just, and you can vary it up. You can do beef meatballs, turkey meatballs, chicken meatballs, pork meatballs, like those are just a great utility player.

Insert them when you need something fast, something that you could just heat up. So even like meatballs, some green beans leftover from last night's dinner and put a clementine in there. Boom. You got a great balanced breakfast there.

Teresa: So I think we could even turn that turkey sausage recipe into a meatball

Leah: Absolutely. Yeah. Instead of, instead of flattening it, just put it into a ball form. That's a great example. Yeah. So yeah, these combos, again, like if, remember we're looking for where can we get some of that protein, the protein speed bump, the fat speed bump, the fiber speed bump.

It gets you started on a much more balanced foot with stabilized blood sugar, and I guarantee you that at least those next couple of hours you're going to feel good. You're going to feel like you can motor along and do whatever it is you need to do with your day.

Food is fuel for the body

Teresa: And speaking of motoring along, our body needs the proper fuel to run its best. I really do like to, equate food to fuel for people because that's really what it is doing. It's fueling our body and if we just give it sugar, we're asking a lot out of our body in order to try to be healthy. It's just, it's really hard to sustain that long term. But in the moment, we're asking a lot of our pancreas, that organ that makes insulin.

We're asking a lot of our blood vessels, our nervous system and our heart. But if we give it a mix of real food protein, fat, and fiber, it's a much smoother ride. We fuel that body for performance, whether we have to think well or we have to physically work well. That fuel is so important for the entire body.

Watch out for sugar in certain beverages

Leah: Yep. Absolutely. And let's circle back to beverages for a minute. We did call that out because some, it's not everybody, but sometimes it's the beverages that get people. They're a big player in where those sugars show up and then they're a big player in, in our heart health and in our blood sugar balance.

We talked about the, the pre-made green juices that they can have 13 teaspoons of sugar in a bottle is similar to soda. Your body is going to respond with a baked blood sugar spike regardless of whether the label looks healthy or not. So we want to swap that green juice.

So, I mean, I, I would say probably our best option, especially if it's like if we've got maybe about that four hour window, like you mentioned, Teresa, between 8:00 AM and 12:00 PM let's just drink some water. Let's drink some water, let's drink some herbal tea. Let's just stay hydrated.

If you do feel like, eh, I kind of need a little something, otherwise I feel like my brain starts to get fuzzy, or I start to just kind of lose motivation mid-morning or I start to kind of bonk a little bit, maybe another diff a different option that's still “liquidy” could be a balanced smoothie.

You can still use that fruit, you can still use your frozen berries, you can still use some banana, you can still use whatever you want in that smoothie in terms of, in terms of those fruit carbohydrates, especially, you know, about three, half to three quarters of a cup of that.

But then we are pairing that and we are blending it all up with some sort of protein, whether that's protein, powder, yogurt, those are kind of the two most popular things. We add in a tablespoon or two of some peanut butter, or we're throwing in some avocado slices, or we're throwing in some canned coconut milk.

Again, we're adding speed bumps into that smoothie idea and having four to six ounces or so of that smoothie might be just enough to get you through till you get to that lunchtime. Instead we are trying to reap some of those benefits and keeping some of those fibers and keeping like a lot of those antioxidants intact with blending up the fruits in a smoothie like that.

Teresa: Yeah, that's a great, you know, eat this, not that.

Leah: Yeah.

Teresa: Another example would be, instead of coffee with that sugary creamer, try a cup of black coffee and add a splash of whole milk or heavy cream. And if you like it sweet, try some stevia or monk fruit. You can get it in flavors, hazelnut or vanilla or whatever flavor you like.

Maybe you add a scoop of collagen for some extra protein, and that can be a great example of turning a drink into an actual fuel instead of just like a sugar and caffeine bomb. Right?

Leah: Yeah. Instead of soda, because there's, again, some people will just love the carbonation piece of things. There's a lot of options for soda alternatives out there these days. We've got sparkling waters, you know, some have a little bit more flavor to them than others. There's the stevia sweetened beverages, like the soda alternatives. I think sometimes you'll see them labeled as like prebiotic sodas.

There's even beverages out there with adaptogens in them, like ashwagandha and stuff like that. So like they're out there. You might have to look past some of the flashy marketing or some of the stuff that's really in your face and might have to look up or down a couple of shelf levels. But some of these swaps are out there and each of these swaps, they dramatically lower that sugar intake, which then reduces that strain on blood sugar and on triglycerides and on your heart health.

Healthier dessert ideas to have occasionally

Teresa: Okay, Leah, so what about desserts?

Leah: What about desserts?

Teresa: Of course, people are thinking, so do I never get to eat dessert again? If I want to be, have a healthy heart, I never have dessert.

Leah: Yeah. I remember teaching a class with another instructor, this was many years ago, kind of towards my beginning as a career as a dietitian here at Nutritional Weight & Wellness. And that actually came up in a class once. This poor little old woman, we had gotten through probably class eight in the Nutrition for Weight Loss Foundation series. And she just kind of looks at us and like, can I never have an ice cream cone ever again? And I was just like, no, that's not what we're saying. So we're going to get into that.

Teresa: Right. And that is so true. I mean, there is room for everything. There is room for your favorites. So whatever you like, there is room. But what we're thinking about here, so how can we do dessert without it maybe affecting our blood sugar? Like a typical dessert that we would use for celebration or for those once in a while treats.

Leah: Yep.

Teresa: So the answer is can you never have dessert again? And the answer would be no. Even if we're thinking about just having something sweet, no, we can have those types of things as long as it's not a trigger for you to spiral down with excess sugar consumption for days afterwards.

Ideally, we want desserts that feel like a treat, but don't flood our system with sugar. In our recent holiday episode, Leah and Marianne talked about things like the pumpkin custard made with real pumpkin eggs, coconut milk, and maple syrup instead of refined sugar, and it's made without a crust.

It is so good. I make it every year around Thanksgiving and I am one of those people who does have a hard time stopping, so I only make it at that time because it is so good. I just want to keep eating it all day. It is still sweet. It is still dessert, but with more protein, some fat and fewer refined carbs. I mean next to no refined carbs per serving. Just a little bit of maple syrup.

Leah: Yeah. Yep. Love that example. Those fruit, like a fruit based dessert, like an apple cranberry crisp that uses nuts and maybe almond flour in the topping, again, sweetened with a little maple syrup, that can be satisfying. Also gentler on the blood sugar than something, yeah, like the baked frosted cake or the big frosted cupcake. There's one that I really, like to make in my household. I wish my kids loved it more because then I would make it more is a chocolate avocado pudding, where you take a couple avocados, you blend that up with a milk of your choice.

If you need to be dairy free, you can use something like almond milk. Or if you can use regular cow's milk, that's fine. Mix it up with a little bit of milk. You throw in a tablespoon or so of some cocoa powder. Again, a little bit of maple syrup, a dash of vanilla. Either throw it in your blender, or if you have a food processor or something like that, blend it all up.

You do not taste the avocado in there. Once you add the chocolate, the vanilla, that little bit of maple syrup, so good, like that cold, creamy, chocolatey, little bit of sweet kind of experience that's still like that avocado lends a lot of great fats, some great fiber in there, so it's not going to spike your blood sugar.

The only downside is like you're probably, you can't make it and then 10 days later pull it out again. Say like, I'm ready for some more. Because as we all know, avocados are just a little temperamental like that. So yeah, it's probably something that you're going to have to eat either in that serving, or within the next day or two afterwards. It's just not going to stay long term.

Teresa: No, I can’t imagine it would. And there are some simpler ideas too. I mean, that's a great idea, and it's not over complicated, but even like a little bit of dark chocolate with a handful of nuts can be a good one. That is one though that I caution people measure, measure, measure because man, the serving size is small.

Or we could even do some dark chocolate dipped strawberries. These are a couple of examples where they could be relatively simple to put together. You can even just have a small square of dark chocolate with those strawberries if you don't want to go through the process of melting it and dipping and things. But these give you some sweetness. They give you some healthy fats, there's some fiber there, and it just softens that blood sugar impact, but it is so pleasant and tasty like a dessert.

Leah: Yep. Love those ideas. And the, this goes back to, you mentioned it, Teresa, like the big idea is not perfection. That's not realistic for anybody. We're just shifting away. We're trying to figure out where can we make the biggest impact in our day, shifting away from sugar all day long to like starting it at breakfast. We drink it through our day and end it with something sweet for dessert or like that bedtime snack.

I'm trying to shift away from that sugar all day long to more balanced meals and being thoughtful and intentional with the treats that we do have, and that shift sends a much kinder message to your heart.

Recap

Okay, so I think that kind of takes care of the bulk of what we wanted to talk about today. Let's just take a few moments and recap, because we did throw a lot of information out there. So to recap, the main ways that sugar affects heart health. Number one: eating sugar spikes blood sugar, which leads to more insulin production.

Over time, that high sugar, high insulin pattern makes us less insulin sensitive. It nudges our blood sugars up towards that prediabetes or diabetes level. And over time it just, it ages those blood vessels just like that crusty hose left out in the summer sun. So all of these things come together and raise heart disease risk.

Teresa: Number two: Excess sugar often gets converted into triglycerides. High triglycerides are a strong correlation with cardiovascular risk, so we want to pay close attention to that number. We like to see the triglycerides under 100, and we watch that triglyceride to HDL ratio aiming for around two to one or lower if possible.

Leah: Number three, high blood sugar and triglycerides create inflammation and oxidative stress on the blood vessels, so that damages the lining of those arteries. It sets the stage for more plaque buildup. It stiffens those arteries, makes them less flexible. Again, that just increases the risk for that blood not flowing well and contributing to more heart disease.

Teresa: Number four: sugar, often, it displaces real nutrient dense foods. When sweetened beverages and refined carbohydrates take up space, there's usually less room for protein, healthy fats and colorful vegetables, the things that support healthy blood vessels, good cholesterol patterns, and lower inflammation.

Leah: And the good news is, is we don't need extreme restrictive plans to support heart health. We need stability. We need regular balanced real food meals, and snacks with protein, fat, fiber speed bumps in there for, and these are comes from our carbohydrates like vegetables. This simple practice helps improve triglycerides. It includes improves our blood sugar and overall inflammation, all of which these are key players in heart health.

Teresa: Exactly. Your heart doesn't need fancy detoxes or restrictive diet. It needs safety signals, steady meals, healthy fats, antioxidants. It doesn't need perfection. It needs consistency and calm in the form of real food.

Leah: Consistency and calm. We can think about each balanced meal every time we eat as we're sending a little love note to our heart. We're saying, here's some steady energy. Here's less inflammation. Here's a break from that rollercoaster. Over time, those little notes add up.

Teresa: So if you're wondering where to start, choose one of these today. Swap your daily sweetened drink for a sparkling water or coffee with real cream. Maybe plan one meal to prioritize protein, vegetables, and healthy fat. Or look at your day and see if you're going longer than four hours without eating. Then plug in a balanced snack. Each one takes a little load off your heart.

Leah: And if you are out there listening and thinking, I have high triglycerides, or my doctor told me I'm prediabetic, or maybe you're thinking there's heart disease in my family, know that you don't have to figure this one out alone. This podcast is a really great place to start.

We have talked about heart disease, heart health, the food connection to heart health for 30 plus years now. So there's lots of great episodes to go back to and listen. But we also see clients one-on-one. So sitting down with a dietitian like Teresa or myself, we can help you translate everything from this podcast into an actual meal plan that works for your schedule, your preferences, your life, your lab work. We take all of that into consideration.

Schedule Nutrition Counseling

Teresa: Yes, and we love doing it.

Leah: We do.

Teresa: Our goal at Nutritional Weight & Wellness is to spread the message of eating real food for real health. It's a simple but powerful message for your heart, for your brain, your nervous system, really your whole body.

Leah: And if you found today's conversation helpful, please share this episode with a friend or a family member who might be rethinking their sugar habits or they're worried about their heart health. Sometimes that little nudge or a new way of looking at food is exactly what someone needs. Thank you for joining us today.