145: The Hidden Culprit Behind Your Afternoon Energy Crash

Blood sugar imbalances impact not just nutrition but high performance, affecting focus, mood, cravings, hormones, and resilience under pressure. We explore how glucose instability might be the hidden culprit behind your energy crashes, brain fog, and disrupted sleep patterns.

• Blood sugar rises and crashes affect both body and brain, causing mental drain and mood swings
• Waking between 1-3 AM often signals blood sugar dipping too low, triggering cortisol spikes
• The Stress Mood Metabolism Lab offers insights through simple home testing of hemoglobin A1c, cortisol, thyroid function, and vitamin D
• Continuous glucose monitors from Theia Health or Stelo help track personal responses to food, stress, and sleep
• Every meal should include protein, fiber and healthy fat to slow digestion and stabilize blood sugar
• Just 10 minutes of walking after meals can reduce glucose spikes by up to 30%
• Morning sunlight combined with protein resets cortisol rhythm and stabilizes blood glucose
• High-quality coffee can be beneficial when used wisely - timing and method matter

Book your free consultation with me to determine which lab test might be best for you. Visit jeffreymort.com/resources for product recommendations and jeffreymort.com/learn for free high-performance health education.

Chapters

• 0:00 The Hidden Culprit Behind Energy Crashes
• 1:31 Understanding Blood Sugar's Impact on Performance
• 3:19 The Stress Mood Metabolism Lab Explained
• 5:45 Four Tools for Blood Sugar Optimization
• 9:59 Balancing Coffee and Next Steps

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

You eat clean. Mostly you skip the dessert. Maybe you fast, but by 2 pm your brain is foggy, your patience is gone and your motivation's MIA, and you may be chalking it up to stress or maybe poor sleep. But what if the real culprit is something deeper, something hidden? Blood sugar imbalances are not just a nutrition issue. They're a performance issue. They impact your focus, your mood, cravings, hormones and even your resilience under pressure.

Speaker 1: 0:34

In today's episode, we are flipping the script on blood sugar. This isn't about diabetes or carbohydrates. This is about high performance health, and I'm going to share with you three subtle signs your glucose might be off. The surprising role of cortisol and stress, how to test and track even if you're not sick. And a very simple plan to stabilize your system for lasting energy, drive and mental clarity. Stay tuned.

Speaker 1: 1:05

Hello, I'm. I'm Jeffrey Mort. If you're like most entrepreneurs, you're busy taking care of business, yet who's taking care of you? If you're ready to take your energy and performance to the next level in your life and your business, then this podcast is for you, because today you're going to start breaking boundaries of your mind, body and business with integrative health, and when you do that, your possibilities are limitless. I'm grateful you're here yes, grateful as always for you joining me here on today's episode, and be sure to subscribe to the show and share it with somebody that you feel as though it could serve.

Speaker 1: 1:46

So the question is why does blood sugar matter? More than you may think. Well, for years, I believe that blood sugar issues were something other people dealt with people with diabetes or poor diets but after experiencing burnout firsthand, I learned that even healthy, driven people can be on a glucose rollercoaster that they don't even realize. So here's the truth when your blood sugar rises too fast hello smoothie bowls, caffeine or even stress your body responds with insulin, and that rise and crash cycle doesn't just affect your body, it affects your brain. You can feel mentally drained, you can feel short-tempered or anxious. You can even feel ravenous an hour after eating, or wired and tired at night, or foggy-headed in the morning, and if you're waking up between 1 and 3 am, that's often a sign that your blood sugar is dipping too low, triggering cortisol to spike you awake. Does that sound familiar? Well, I want to talk a little bit about some ways that we can discover this, and so one of those ways is a lab test that we have. You do this right at home really easy. It's called the Stress Mood Metabolism Lab and we'll talk a little bit about why this is enough. You don't need 15 vials of blood from a phlebotomist at a laboratory to understand what's going on. Our Stress Mood Metabolism Lab offers powerful insights using simple saliva samples and a dried blood spot sample. So just a simple finger prick, a couple of drops of blood on a card. There's four tubes for the saliva samples throughout the day. And here's what we test for Most importantly for the purpose of today's podcast hemoglobin A1c. This is a blood marker For today's purpose of today's podcast. Hemoglobin A1c this is a blood marker. It's a 90-day average of your blood sugar trends.

Speaker 1: 3:49

We also look at cortisol. As I said, four times during the day. This is upon waking, before lunch, before breakfast and before bed. We want to take these samples before eating and this shows your diurnal rhythm and your stress response. So this is your natural rhythm of cortisol throughout the day. We want it optimized both morning, noon, dinnertime and before bed, and it's generally elevated in the morning to give you energy, and then we want to see that curve come down before bedtime so that it's offset by melatonin. If your cortisol is elevated. You can't have both. You can't have elevated well, you can in some cases, but generally you can't have elevated cortisol and elevated melatonin.

Speaker 1: 4:35

And we also look at thyroid. So not just TSH like your primary care might run, but we also look at TPO antibodies and we look at free T4 and free T3. Those are very important markers and we're not going to go too deep in those today. We're going to leave it at that. That's a podcast episode for another day. We look at vitamin D, which is very important for the immune system. It's very important for hormone production and more. We look at more and we do this to be able to spot hormonal imbalances and underlying root causes tied to energy and metabolism.

Speaker 1: 5:12

Now you might be wondering, jeff, what about insulin? We're talking about blood sugar here and you haven't mentioned that yet. Well, insulin used to be on the stress mood metabolism test. They removed it temporarily. It's temporarily unavailable while our lab upgrades their precision equipment. But hemoglobin A1c gives us a clear enough picture for now, and the goal isn't just to target numbers. It's to optimize your energy and your performance, to give you the clarity and the energy that you deserve on a daily basis. So I want to give you four tools that you can use right now. Now, and here's how to start reclaiming your mental energy and your emotional stability without obsessing over your food or giving up your favorite treats.

Speaker 1: 6:00

Number one track your patterns. Try a continuous glucose monitor If you have a medical condition. The one that I highly recommend is Theia Health, t-h-e-i-a Health. You can find that on our resource page. We can actually link up biometric products on the episode, but unfortunately we can't link up any supplements. Unfortunately, the FDA regulates us on that. But the Continuous Glucose Monitor by Thea Health by far the best one for you know somebody that's tracking a medical condition or if you're taking this with the utmost seriousness, that's the one I recommend. And for general wellness tracking, there's a little more economical product out there by a company called Stelo S-T-E-L-O. It's about half the price and, um, that one there, uh, they have, you know, several general options, but that one's not recommended.

Speaker 1: 7:01

If someone's dealing with a medical condition, a great one just for tracking general glucose spikes and dips during a 30-day period or 60-day period and then seeing your personal response that's where it's at is. Seeing that response to foods, to stress and sleep is incredibly empowering. You can get a really good idea of what's triggering your blood sugar to either rise or fall. And you know, of course, if you eat food it's going to go up. It's just a matter of how not necessarily quickly it comes down, but there's a general slope downward of blood sugar falling after you eat that. We want to see If it stays elevated for a long time, you know, two, three, four hours. That's not good. Then there's something not allowing that blood glucose to be processed or eliminated out of the body, or the body is still producing blood sugar.

Speaker 1: 7:57

So, number two balance your plate Now. I said these are things you could do now. Yes, the CGM, the continuous glucose monitor. You would have to order that and go through a 30-day period to be able to track that and see. But you'll get instant data on that and as a practitioner, I love seeing that data For clients. I can go in before a call and I can check on a client's data to see how's their blood sugar since our last meeting, how has their sleep been, how active have they been? Are they getting close to their 10,000 steps per day? And it's great to be able to see that and hold them accountable. That's what clients come to me for is that accountability.

Speaker 1: 8:35

So, number two this is something you can start with today Balance your plate. Every meal should have a protein. Now, that's okay if you're plant based, but you still need your protein, you still need your fiber and you still need a healthy fat anchor on your plate. Why is that important? This slows digestion and keeps your blood sugar stable. No more crashes after those healthy meals. Number three by far the best thing you can do to balance your blood sugar is just 10 minutes of walking after you eat, or gentle movement after meals can reduce glucose spikes by up to 30%. That's absolutely amazing 10 minutes after you eat, and it also improves digestion and mental clarity as well. And then, number four prioritize morning sunlight and protein. Now you might be thinking, jeff, those things not something I expected you to say in the same sentence sunlight and protein. But what this does is it resets your cortisol rhythm and stabilizes your blood glucose. And then the bonus it helps you sleep better at night, which is crucial for sugar control.

Speaker 1: 9:48

Are you starting to see how this all ties together and just how powerful the science and the data can be for your overall health, your energy, your performance and your longevity? So you don't have to give up. You might be wondering what about coffee? You don't have to give up coffee, but you do need to do this. Let me be very, very clear you don't have to give up your coffee. In fact, high quality coffee can be incredibly beneficial when used wisely, and the key to this is how and when you drink it.

Speaker 1: 10:22

We talk about all that and uh, give you some great education and information. Um, in our learning and resource pages over at uh, jeffreymortcom, slash resources. Uh, for the products that I recommend uh, purity coffee or the? Uh equal life coffee Life Coffee it's the same, actually the same coffee, but Equal Life teamed up with Purity. And you can find that on the resource page. Excellent, excellent products. So many reasons why to switch to that coffee that I can. I have done other episodes on that as well and I'm really going to be going deep into that as well. And then at jeffreymortcom, slash learn for free, high-performance health education. That's our blog page over there and our learning center. Definitely check that out. And over there inside there we break down which coffee supports your adrenals, how to avoid the crash, why timing is everything when it comes to caffeine and blood sugar and so much more. So check those out over there.

Speaker 1: 11:27

And to wrap things up in today's episode energy isn't a mystery. It's a measurable metric, and if you're crashing, if you're foggy or feeling like your motivation's gone missing, it's not that you're broken. You're likely just out of rhythm, and blood sugar is often where it starts. So take the next step. Book your free consultation with me. We can determine which lab might be the best for you. Maybe it's a stress mood metabolism test, maybe it's a minerals and metals test. These all come with a consult and you get a free 20-minute consult right off the bat anyway. So take advantage of that. The link is in the show notes and with any of our lab tests or wellness programs, you get a custom bio-individualized wellness plan created specifically for you. So check out the link in the show notes and, if this episode resonated, share it with a fellow high performer who could use some steady, sustainable, safe energy. And until next time, stay aligned, stay energized and keep breaking those boundaries. Bye-bye everybody.