Those who experience this after their meals feel hungrier and consume more calories than others.
People whose blood sugar level drop too low after their meals experience nearly a 10 percent rise in hunger compared to those whose blood sugar dips less, a study suggests.
Big dippers are more likely to feel hungry two or three hours after a meal and eat hundreds of extra calories each day.
Scientist think personal metabolism is the reason why some people keep putting weight on, even if they go on a controlled diet.
A nutritional research team collected data on blood sugar levels and other health markers of 1,070 adults after their standardized breakfasts.
Participants had muffins for breakfast, which contained the same calories but were different in make-up regarding fat, carbohydrates, protein, and fibre.
They also had an oral glucose tolerance test (OGTT) to check how well the body responds to sugar.
During the two week study period, subjects’ blood sugar levels were measured by continuous glucose monitors (CGM).
How many times they were hungry, what and when they ate through the day were all recorded on an app.
The team noticed that some participants experienced glucose dips two to four hours after their meal (mild hypoglycemia).
The results suggest that those with big dips in blood sugar levels, despite having the same meals as little dippers, saw a nine percent increase in appetite and ate their next meal half an hour earlier than the others.
Also compared to little dippers, big dippers consumed 75 more calories a few hours after their breakfast and 312 more calories throughout the day.
Consuming these amounts of calories would eventually cause people to put on 20 pound (9 kg) in a year.
Professor Ana Valdes, the study’s leader said:
“Many people struggle to lose weight and keep it off, and just a few hundred extra calories every day can add up to several pounds of weight gain over a year.
Our discovery that the size of sugar dips after eating has such a big impact on hunger and appetite has great potential for helping people understand and control their weight and long-term health.”
In this study, men experienced slightly bigger dips than women.
Everybody experienced some day-to-day variability in the dip sizes, even after having the same meals, suggesting differences in metabolism, gut flora and, activity levels are the key parameters.
Therefore, eating the right foods helps each individual’s unique biology to feel satiated longer and eat fewer calories.
Professor Tim Spector, study co-author, said:
“Food is complex and humans are complicated, but our research is finally starting to open up the black box between diet and health.
We’re excited to have been able to turn this cutting-edge science into an at-home nutrition and microbiome test so that everyone has the opportunity to discover their unique responses to food to best support their metabolism and gut health.”
The study was published in the journal Nature Metabolism (Wyatt et al., 2021).
