I wrote here about the potentially damaging effects of sugar. But to recap, it’s been heavily associated with weight gain, heart disease, insulin resistance and diabetes, cancer, and dementia, just to name some of the big ones. It’s important to keep yourself out of the danger zone (fasting glucose over 100, or Hemoglobin A1c over 5.6). But ideally, I like to see fasting blood sugar in the 70s or 80s, and HbA1c around 5.0 to 5.3 or so.

For some people, no matter how clean they eat, this just doesn’t seem to happen. A few possible reasons for this might be deficiency in some critical nutrients.

(In order to understand what follows, you’ll need to understand the relationship between glucose and insulin. This article might help if you need a reminder on that.)

Nutrients That Stabilize Blood Sugar

Even if you’re not overtly low in some of these nutrients, the addition of them into your clean eating lifestyle can go a long way to stabilizing and lowering blood sugar.

The Upshot

I’d love to think that we could get all the nutrition we need from food alone—and there was a time when I think that was true. But unfortunately, that time has passed—and at this point, there are four supplements I think everyone should be on just to maintain health. Three of them are represented above: a high quality multivitamin should, in theory, cover you for the minerals mentioned; a fish oil or other EFA supplement, and an antioxidant. (The fourth, probiotics, can also help maintain a healthy weight!)