"Simply eating less or avoiding carbohydrates altogether is not the answer for managing blood sugar. What matters is building small eating habits you can keep up every day."
Kim Jung-kyu, director of Seocho Endo Internal Medicine Clinic, said this in an interview with The Seoul Economic Daily on the 14th, adding that "managing blood sugar and metabolic health depends on sustainable eating habits rather than temporary dietary restrictions."
In clinical practice, many patients know they need to change how they eat but struggle to follow through. Eating out and work dinners make it hard to control every meal strictly. "I often hear patients say they need to manage their diet but find it difficult to cut out carbohydrates completely," Kim said. "Quite a few also report drowsiness or hunger after meals, cravings for sweets and difficulty managing their weight. That is why we need approaches that are realistic enough to sustain, rather than blanket restrictions."
Interest has recently grown in managing post-meal responses such as blood sugar by changing everyday habits — the order in which foods are eaten and fiber intake — not just the amount or type of food. Drawing on experience with a wide range of patients, Kim has taken part in developing dietary management products. He recently helped determine the ingredients and formulations for Sikjeondangbu, a pre-meal supplement, and Mildang Sotbap, a low-sugar packaged meal, both launched by HLB Life Care. The aim is to offer healthy dietary management that carries through from before the meal to the meal itself. The following is an edited interview.
Q: What eating habit should people change first to manage blood sugar?
A: Rather than cutting carbohydrates or restricting meals outright, what matters is building habits you can sustain within your usual diet. You can start by giving a second thought to how much you eat and in what order, getting enough fiber, or moving around lightly after meals. In particular, instead of trying to manage things only after eating, you need the habit of thinking about what and how much you will eat before the meal begins.
Q: Attention has grown recently around "blood sugar spikes," or sharp increases in blood sugar after eating. How should we view this?
A: It is a positive development that people are paying more attention to post-meal blood sugar, but there is no need to fixate on a single reading. You have to look at your overall lifestyle together — how much you eat, carbohydrate intake, fiber and exercise. Rather than avoiding specific foods at all costs, the realistic approach is to find what you can change in your own eating habits and manage it consistently.
Q: Is that thinking what led you to take part in developing Sikjeondangbu?
A: Yes. What I have come to feel in practice is that knowing about health management and actually putting it into practice are different things. Rather than quitting carbohydrates, I thought about methods people could follow while keeping their usual meals, and I took part in developing Sikjeondangbu based on the concept of a "pre-meal routine" — something taken easily before eating. Feeling moderately full before a meal can help in controlling how much you eat.
Q: Why did you choose berberine and psyllium husk as the main ingredients? Is there any connection to glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1), the hormone that regulates blood sugar and suppresses appetite?
A: Berberine is a plant-derived compound that has been studied in metabolic health, including blood sugar, insulin resistance and lipid metabolism. Psyllium husk is a raw material containing both soluble and insoluble fiber, and it forms a viscous gel when it meets water. The two work in different ways, but I judged that they could complement each other in metabolic management and satiety.
Berberine also has reported mechanistic research related to GLP-1. That said, further study is needed before one can say that Sikjeondangbu directly increases GLP-1 secretion in humans. It is more appropriate to understand it as a lifestyle management method that takes both pre-meal satiety and post-meal metabolic response into account.
Q: You also took part in developing Mildang Sotbap, launched with HLB Life Care. What was the thinking behind it?
A: What you do before a meal matters, but in the end what you actually eat matters. Mildang Sotbap was developed with the aim of putting together a more balanced single meal, and I took part in reviewing its ingredients and formulation. It takes into account the nutritional balance of carbohydrates, protein and fat, and applies a low-sugar rice production technology using tofu. If Sikjeondangbu proposes a habit before the meal, Mildang Sotbap can be seen as one option for the meal itself.
Q: Finally, what would you like to say to people interested in blood sugar or dietary management?
A: Health management is not something you can start only when everything is perfect. Since you cannot avoid every restaurant meal or work dinner, what matters is thinking once before you eat and changing the amount and composition of your food little by little, rather than holding back or skipping meals altogether. I hope Sikjeondangbu and Mildang Sotbap can also be used as options that help with this kind of everyday dietary management.