Blood sugar and energy: the cause of the slump
Why you collapse at 2 pm and the five adjustments that remove it.
The mechanism
When you eat rapidly absorbed carbohydrates, blood sugar rises fast. The pancreas responds with a proportional release of insulin. If the rise was steep, the response is strong, and blood sugar often comes back down below the starting level.
That reactive dip produces fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and a craving for sugar that restarts the cycle.
The 2 pm slump is the combination of that reactive dip and the circadian trough covered in chapter 1. The two add together, and you can act on the first.
The five adjustments
1. Food order
With identical composition, the order changes the glycaemic response. Work by Shukla and colleagues shows a significant reduction in the peak when you eat vegetables and fibre first, protein and fat next, carbohydrates last.
Fibre forms a viscous barrier that slows absorption. The reduction in the peak reaches thirty to forty per cent in some studies. It is free and immediate.
The rest is part of the Sleep & Energy module
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