Most of us have been told that sugar is bad — but very few of us actually understand why, or what’s really happening inside our bodies every time we eat a bowl of oatmeal, drink a glass of orange juice, or reach for an afternoon snack. According to glucose expert Jessie Inchauspé (also known as the Glucose Goddess), the answer lies in something called glucose spikes — and understanding them could change everything about how you eat, feel, age, and think.
In this deep-dive conversation with Jay Shetty, Jessie breaks down the science of blood sugar in a way that’s genuinely accessible, actionable, and free of the guilt-ridden diet culture we’ve all been conditioned by. Here’s everything you need to know.
What Is Glucose and Why Does It Matter?
Glucose — also called blood sugar — is your body’s primary source of energy. Every cell in your body, from the muscles in your hand to the neurons firing in your brain right now, burns glucose to function. We get glucose by eating two main categories of food:
- Starches — bread, pasta, rice, potatoes, oats
- Sugars — anything that tastes sweet, from an apple to a triple-layered chocolate cake
You might assume that more glucose equals more energy. But that logic is dangerously flawed. Jessie uses the analogy of a houseplant: give it some water, it thrives. Give it too much, it dies. The human body works the same way.
Too much glucose — delivered too quickly — leads to:
- Chronic fatigue
- Brain fog
- Intense food cravings
- Inflammation
- Accelerated aging
- Hormonal imbalances
- Long-term risk of type 2 diabetes
The goal isn’t to eliminate glucose. It’s to manage how and when it enters your bloodstream.
What Happens During a Glucose Spike?
A glucose spike is a rapid surge in blood sugar that occurs after eating something starchy or sweet. If you’ve ever worn a continuous glucose monitor (CGM), you’d see it as a sharp mountain on the graph — rising fast, then crashing hard.
But what’s actually happening inside your body during that spike? Jessie outlines three key physiological mechanisms:
1. Mitochondrial Damage and Chronic Fatigue
Your mitochondria are the powerhouses of your cells — tiny factories responsible for converting glucose into usable energy. When you flood them with too much glucose too quickly, they become overwhelmed and essentially go on strike. The result? Chronic fatigue. You’re eating plenty of food, even plenty of energy-dense food, but you’re exhausted. You’re tired waking up. You’re drained playing with your kids. Your mitochondria can no longer do their job properly.
2. Glycation and Accelerated Aging
Here’s a concept that might surprise you: from the moment we’re born, we are slowly cooking. The biological process is called glycation — the same browning process that turns the pink skin of a raw chicken golden-brown in the oven. It happens in humans too. Baby cartilage is white; the cartilage of a 100-year-old is brown.
Glucose is directly responsible for this process — in fact, the words glucose and glycation share the same root for a reason. The more glucose spikes you experience, the faster you glycate — the faster you age. This shows up on your skin as wrinkles, and internally as the gradual aging of your organs.
“The more glucose spikes you have, the faster you age.”
3. Inflammation and the Insulin Response
Both mitochondrial stress and glycation trigger inflammation — one of the most destructive forces in the human body. Today, three out of five people will die of an inflammation-based disease. Glucose spikes are a significant contributor.
On top of that, when your body senses a glucose spike, it calls on the pancreas to release insulin, a hormone that grabs excess glucose molecules and stores them in the liver, muscles, and fat cells. Over time, chronically elevated insulin levels are the primary driver of type 2 diabetes — and a major contributor to weight gain.
Hidden Sources of Glucose You Might Be Overlooking
One of the most eye-opening parts of this conversation is the revelation that glucose doesn’t just come from obvious sources like candy or soda. Your body doesn’t distinguish between the sugar in an orange juice and the sugar in a can of Coca-Cola — both cause a glucose spike.
Breakfast Foods Are the Biggest Offenders
Common breakfast staples — orange juice, fruit smoothies, granola, cereal (even “no added sugar” varieties), oatmeal with honey, and Nutella on crepes — are packed with glucose. And because your stomach is empty in the morning, those glucose molecules rush into your bloodstream almost instantly, creating a massive spike followed by an inevitable crash.
Other Surprising Sources Include:
- Dried fruit — concentrated sugar without the fiber of whole fruit
- Fruit juices and smoothies — even 100% natural ones
- Large quantities of grapes — today’s fruit has been selectively bred to be far sweeter and more sugar-dense than it once was
- “Low sugar” packaged foods — these often still contain naturally occurring sugars that spike blood glucose
The Glucose-Mental Health Connection
Jessie’s personal journey into this field began not with physical health, but with mental health. After breaking her back in an accident as a teenager and undergoing intensive surgery, she experienced years of anxiety, depression, and depersonalization — a feeling of being a stranger in her own body.
Nearly a decade later, while participating in a pilot study using continuous glucose monitors, she noticed something striking: on days when her glucose levels were spiking and crashing, her mental health was worse. On days when her levels were steady, she felt significantly better.
This opened the door to understanding the deep connection between blood sugar and brain health.
Glucose Spikes Affect Your Brain in Multiple Ways:
- Brain cells also rely on glucose for energy — and are vulnerable to mitochondrial stress, glycation, and inflammation
- Glucose spikes impact tyrosine levels, a molecule that plays a critical role in mood regulation
- Unstable blood sugar activates the brain’s craving center, making you feel controlled by food rather than empowered
One particularly memorable study had 200 married couples use voodoo dolls representing their spouses, placing pins in them every time their partner annoyed them. The finding? People with the most irregular glucose levels had placed the most pins. Unstable blood sugar was directly correlated with irritability and emotional reactivity.
Managing your glucose levels won’t replace therapy — but it can provide the biological foundation that makes every other mental health practice more effective.
The Glucose-Sleep Cycle: A Vicious Loop
Sleep and glucose are deeply intertwined — and not in the way most people expect.
- When you’re sleep-deprived, your body cannot regulate glucose as effectively, meaning the same meal will cause a bigger spike on a tired day than a rested one
- A bigger spike means a bigger crash, which means more cravings — making you reach for sweet, high-glucose foods when you’re exhausted
- Being on a glucose roller coaster then disrupts your sleep quality that night, reducing how deep and restorative it is
- Some people even wake up in the middle of the night with a pounding heart or night sweats — a sign their glucose levels are crashing while they sleep
Breaking this cycle starts with applying the hacks below — particularly around breakfast and post-meal movement.
5 Practical Hacks to Prevent Glucose Spikes
The good news? You don’t have to overhaul your entire diet. You don’t have to go cold turkey on sugar or count a single calorie. These five evidence-backed hacks are about adding things to your life, not removing them.
Hack #1: Switch to a Savory Breakfast
The glucose spike from your breakfast sets the tone for your entire day. A sweet breakfast — orange juice, cereal, oats with honey, a fruit smoothie — creates a spike that leads to a crash around mid-morning, which then activates your brain’s craving center. You’re not weak for wanting sugar at 10:30am. You’re biochemically compelled to seek it out.
The fix: Build your breakfast around protein (eggs, tofu, Greek yogurt, smoked fish, leftover protein from dinner), add some healthy fats, and limit sweet ingredients. If you love your sweet breakfast foods, don’t eliminate them — save them for dessert after lunch or dinner, when there’s already food in your stomach to buffer the glucose hit.
Hack #2: Eat Your Vegetables First (Food Order Matters)
Research shows that simply changing the order in which you eat the components of a meal can reduce the glucose spike by up to 75% — without changing what or how much you eat.
Here’s the science: when you eat vegetables first, the fiber in those veggies coats the lining of your upper intestine, creating a protective mesh that slows down how quickly glucose from the rest of the meal enters your bloodstream. This applies across cultures — the French tradition of crudités before a meal, Italian antipasti, the herbs eaten at the start of Middle Eastern meals — all reflect this principle intuitively.
The order to aim for:
- Vegetables first
- Proteins and fats
- Starches and sugars last
If you do nothing else, add a small plate of vegetables to the beginning of your next meal. Three baby carrots, a simple salad, some roasted cauliflower — anything counts.
Note: This is also why restaurant bread before a meal is a trap. You eat it on an empty stomach, spike your glucose, and 90 minutes later when the waiter asks if you’d like dessert, you’re crashing and craving sugar intensely. Delay the bread. Start with veggies.
Hack #3: Diluted Vinegar Before High-Carb Meals
Vinegar contains acetic acid, a molecule that slows the rate at which food breaks down into glucose in your digestive system. Taken before a carb-heavy meal, it reduces the size of the glucose spike, helps you feel fuller longer, and is completely free — you almost certainly already have it in your kitchen.
How to use it: Mix one tablespoon of vinegar in a large glass of water and drink it 5–10 minutes before your highest-carb meal of the day. Any vinegar works — apple cider, white wine, cherry — just avoid balsamic glaze, which is loaded with sugar.
Important: Never do a straight shot of vinegar. It damages tooth enamel and can irritate your esophagus. Always dilute it. Alternatively, you can make it into a vinaigrette dressing on your starter salad — that way you get the fiber benefit of veggies and the acetic acid benefit of vinegar at the same time.
Hack #4: Move Your Body for 10 Minutes After a Meal
When your muscles contract — whether you’re walking, doing calf raises at your desk, or tidying your home — they burn glucose for energy. This means that moving after a meal allows your muscles to absorb some of the glucose from that meal before it can cause a significant spike.
The hack: After one meal per day, use your muscles for just 10 minutes. A short walk, a light tidy, playing with your dog — anything that gets your muscles working. The more intense your exercise, the more glucose you burn, which means athletes can eat more carbohydrates without experiencing the same spike as a sedentary person. If you want a cookie or a piece of cake, eating it around your workout window is genuinely one of the best times to do it.
Hack #5: Never Eat Naked Carbs
This hack is especially important for snackers. Whenever you eat carbohydrates — whether it’s a slice of bread, a cookie, a cracker, or a protein bar — never eat them alone. Eating carbs on an empty stomach with nothing to slow their breakdown causes a rapid glucose spike.
Put “clothing” on your carbs by pairing them with:
- Protein (Greek yogurt, cheese, a hard-boiled egg)
- Fat (avocado, nut butter, a handful of nuts)
- Fiber (vegetables, whole fruit with its fiber intact)
Examples:
- Bread → add avocado or cheese
- A cookie → eat alongside five almonds or a dollop of Greek yogurt
- A protein bar → check the ingredients list; if any form of sugar appears in the first five ingredients
