When your blood sugar crashes, your body responds with a stress response. This is the system of checks and balances that allows us to manufacture blood sugar from our body’s storage of starch. It’s great that our body has a system for saving the day after a blood sugar crash, but the end result is a 5-alarm fire in the body, which can feel synonymous with anxiety and panic.
Why is your blood sugar crashing? Here are some reasons I see in my practice: 1) you haven’t eaten, 2) you ate refined carbohydrates or sugar that caused your blood sugar to spike and then crash after a compensatory wave of insulin, or 3) your appetite is falsely suppressed from things like stimulants.
If you want to decrease anxiety, keep your blood sugar stable throughout the day and night. The best way to do this is to rehabilitate your diet away from sugar, refined carbohydrates, low fat, and booze, and toward balanced meals of real food at regular intervals (which sounds simple enough, but is admittedly challenging in our modern world). Short of overhauling your diet, there’s also a hack: take a spoonful of almond butter (or coconut oil), or a handful of almonds, every few hours throughout the day. Come for the hack, stay for the diet overhaul. And check-in after a few days: are you having fewer panic attacks? Less anxiety at 5pm? At 7am? Sunday evening?
