DR. MICHAEL MOSLEY: Why the first thing you should do is give up coffee… and eat last night’s pasta for lunch!

I love self-tests: I regularly test my blood pressure and cholesterol. And as many of you know by now, I was once diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, and although I have cured the disease, I still check my blood sugar levels.

More of us should be doing this – millions of Brits have abnormally high blood sugar levels, but many are blissfully unaware of the damage this is doing to their arteries and nerves.

An estimated seven million people in the UK have prediabetes (i.e. high blood sugar levels that can be a precursor to full-blown type 2 diabetes) – but the majority don’t know it.

And even if you don’t develop type 2 diabetes, prediabetes alone increases your risk of premature death by more than 60 percent.

You can check your blood sugar levels with a standard homemade finger test (for around £20) in the supermarket or online. These kits are reliable; If the result suggests you have a problem, talk to your GP.

I’ve found that coffee – even black coffee and no sugar – causes large spikes in blood sugar, especially when consumed first thing in the morning

Many people with diabetes now use a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) – the coin-sized device that attaches to your arm and has a tiny needle that measures your blood sugar levels: you then connect it to your smartphone and within an hour it starts with the playback of measured values ​​that are updated every 15 minutes. Theresa May, who has type 1 diabetes, wears one.

Although these devices are aimed at people with diabetes, anyone can buy one (they cost around £60 and last two weeks) and they are increasingly being used by people – including TV presenter Davina McCall – who want to see what food is available (and Activities) raise your blood sugar levels.

The idea: the fewer large glucose spikes, the better.

I decided to try it out myself, not least to put some popular social media “hacks” to the test.

So two weeks ago I bought a type of CGM called Freestyle Libre. So what have I learned?

Well, firstly, the device takes a while to settle down – for the first few days it suggested that my blood sugar level was much higher than my fingerprint meter readings (which is more reliable). If I hadn’t known this, I might have been very worried.

After that – and this was no surprise – I noticed that anything sweet or high in carbohydrates (like cakes or cereal) soon caused my blood sugar to spike very high, followed by a crash that left me hungry – and irritable. Unfortunately, this was also true of one of my favorite treats, dark chocolate, which contains a significant amount of sugar, about 4g (a teaspoon) per square.

Even more tragically, I discovered that coffee – even black and without sugar – caused large spikes in blood sugar, especially when consumed first thing in the morning.

That’s because a few hours before you wake up, your body releases a big shot of the stress hormone cortisol to prepare you for the day ahead.

If you take caffeine while your cortisol is high, you will experience a sharp spike in blood sugar.

The advice I received from James Betts, a professor of metabolic physiology at the University of Bath, is to delay coffee consumption for at least an hour after waking when your cortisol levels drop. And this trick certainly seems to help control my blood sugar response. I also found that a brisk walk shortly after eating was a good way to lower my blood sugar levels – this is because my muscles used up some of the excess sugar.

Recent research from the University of Limerick has shown that a brisk walk 60 to 90 minutes after eating is best, as this is when your blood sugar levels peak.

Ideally you should walk for at least 15 minutes, but even a little is better than nothing.

That’s because a few hours before you wake up, your body releases a big shot of the stress hormone cortisol to prepare you for the day ahead

Oddly enough, more intense exercise had the opposite effect: After a long bike ride, I was horrified when my blood sugar spiked.

This was likely because more intense cycling led to the release of adrenaline, which caused my body to release sugar into my blood to cope with the additional training.

Of course, that doesn’t mean intense exercise is bad, but it can be unsettling when you look at your monitor and see your blood sugar levels rising instead of falling.

So what about these internet hacks for preventing blood sugar spikes?

One of the most popular methods is to drink a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar in water before a sugary snack or high-carb meal.

This is based on the idea that the acetic acid in vinegar slows the breakdown of carbohydrates into sugar. It seemed to work for me, but it didn’t taste particularly good.

Another hack I tested was the claim that cooking, cooling, and reheating carbohydrate-rich foods like rice, pasta, or potatoes changes their structure, making them “resistant” to gut enzymes that break them down, resulting in a smaller blood sugar spike leads.

I ate pasta for lunch two days in a row, but on the second day I used leftover pasta that was in the fridge and then reheated it. This time my blood sugar spike was half what it was before.

This, too, has been confirmed in studies, including one from the University of Surrey in 2021, which found that cooking, cooling and reheating pasta made a significant difference in blood sugar increases.

Despite these positive aspects, there are significant limitations to consider if you use a CGM and do not have diabetes.

It was interesting to find out which foods caused my blood sugar levels to spike, but I became a little obsessed with checking my readings even in the middle of the night, which is clearly not healthy.

And it’s important to note that blood sugar levels don’t tell the whole story.

Lentils and a bar of chocolate both gave you a boost, but that doesn’t make them nutritionally equivalent – lentils have significant benefits, including the fact that they’re prebiotics, so they feed the “good” bacteria in your gut.

A recent study from the National Institutes of Health in the US also showed that eating the same meal two days in a row can produce very different results for a variety of reasons, including how stressed you are and how well you slept.

So don’t rely on a CGM to shape your future diet.

And if you really just want to know whether you have prediabetes or not, then a visit to your GP or a finger test is a cheaper and easier way to find out.

Finally a crackdown on the lip filler cowboys

If you are receiving injections into your face, it is clearly a good idea to have them performed by someone knowledgeable about the underlying anatomy [Stock photo]

These days, a lot of young – and not so young – people seem to have big, pouty lips thanks to fillers.

While many people are happy with the results, thousands are traumatized every year by botched procedures.

If you are receiving injections into your face, it is clearly a good idea to have them performed by someone knowledgeable about the underlying anatomy.

This is because there is a complex network of arteries and veins under the skin. If you inject filler into one of these vessels, it could restrict blood flow and cause permanent tissue damage.

Amazingly, this industry is almost completely unregulated, so virtually anyone can pick up the needle and start advertising – there’s no guarantee that the person on the other end of the needle knows what they’re doing. A few years ago I was filming a television series about enhancements and was horrified by some of the stories I heard, including people who had been blinded by fillers placed too close to the arteries that supply the eye.

In light of these disasters, the Department of Health and Human Services recently announced a consultation on tweaks to make them safer and curb the cowboys (and cowgirls). It is time.

Autumn is just around the corner, but annoying mosquitoes and other flying insects are still looking for me – I seem to be a magnet for them.

But the good news is that scientists at the University of California may have found a solution. They have isolated a type of bacteria that is found on some people’s skin and is good at keeping mosquitoes away. These bacteria produce a number of chemicals, including butyric acid, that mosquitoes find repulsive.

Researchers hope to test this effect by spraying animals with the bacteria before moving on to human trials.

We know that people in their 60s and 70s who develop new skills (such as painting) experience large improvements in memory and other cognitive abilities.

Now a large study of aging Brits has found that adult education courses can significantly reduce the risk of dementia. One theory is that mental activity increases your brain’s ability to cope with damage or decay later in life – or that learning creates new neural pathways. The bottom line is that the benefits of learning last well into old age.