Frequently Asked Questions
What is hypoglycemia and how do you know if you have it?
Hypoglycemia literally means “low blood sugar” and if you have hypoglycemia, you will find that you have symptoms around the food you eat. Most hypoglycemics have symptoms 2-5 hours after eating. Symptoms include light-headedness, weakness, shakiness, difficulty concentrating and extreme hunger. Many hypoglycemics also experience frequent sugar cravings, and that helps explain why so many hypoglycemics are overweight.
How common is hypoglycemia?
Estimates of the numbers of hypoglycemia sufferers range from 25% and up! Most don’t even know they have the problem because most doctors still don’t know how to diagnose it.
What made you decide to write the book?
Up until 4 years ago, I held a responsible management level position at Newbridge Networks (now Alcatel). After I was laid off in November of 1999, I was burned out and exhausted and I started working on self-improvement. I joined a gym and started working out. A year later, I was feeling better, but I still hadn’t lost any weight. I was still behaving like a sugar addict and I couldn’t seem to control my diet.
A couple of random conversations let me to wonder if my problem could be hypoglycemia. When I started my research, I became convinced that I was hypoglycemic—the symptoms fit me perfectly. As I researched what to do to feel better, I found that there was a lot of material out there, but I couldn’t find everything I wanted all in one resource. That’s when the idea of the book was born.
How did I “get” hypoglycemia?
I believe that hypoglycemia is a result of a generation of eating junk. And by “junk”, I don’t mean just junk food. Included in junk is all the over-refined and over-processed stuff we find in boxes in our supermarkets.
There's a lot more information about this in the book, but the bottom line is that too little fiber and too much sugar mess up your metabolism until you can no longer handle sugars and low fiber carbohydrates.