All carbohydrates, including the sugar in juice, can cause your blood sugar to rise. Just how high your blood pressure will rise can be somewhat subjective; not everyone responds to stimuli in the same manner. Hyperglycemia occurs when your level of blood glucose, or blood sugar, is too high. This sometimes happens if you have diabetes, but it can also happen if you are highly stressed or are recovering from an illness.
Glucose
Different testing methods are used to determine your blood glucose levels. If you conduct your own testing at home, your normal range varies from what would be considered normal in lab testing. For home tests, a normal blood sugar range is 70 to 130 milligrams per deciliter. If you are diabetic, your doctor may advise you to also perform postprandial testing; that is, after consuming a meal. A normal postprandial at-home blood sugar test result is less than 180 milligrams per deciliter.
Impact
The two ways to measure how juice and other carbohydrates might affect your blood sugar are the glycemic index and the glycemic load. The glycemic index measures the speed at which certain foods impact your blood sugar levels. Glycemic load, which some doctors consider a more accurate measurement, accounts for portion size as well. On both scales, foods with lower numbers impact your blood sugar less than foods with higher numbers.
Variety
Some juice varieties will impact your blood sugar less than others. A 250-gram serving size of cranberry juice cocktail has a glycemic index of 68 and a glycemic load of 24, but the same serving of tomato juice has a glycemic index of 38 and a glycemic load of 4. In this case, tomato juice will have less impact on your blood sugar than cranberry juice. Even if you are not diabetic, you should monitor how much sugar you intake each day. The U.S. Department of Agriculture recommends that Americans consume no more than 32 grams of added sugar each week, meaning sugar that is added during the manufacturing process or sugar that you add to your own food and drinks.
Research
Other juice varieties may actually benefit your blood sugar. For instance, in the August 2006 issue of "Atherosclerosis," researchers from the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in the Medical Sciences in Israel write that daily pomegranate juice consumption did not increase the blood sugar levels of a group of noninsulin-dependent diabetics. Study participants drank 50 milliliters of pomegranate juice daily. Researchers note that although the pomegranate juice contained sugar, the participants' blood sugar levels and other blood evidence of diabetes did not worsen "but even improved." Speak with your doctor or a nutritionist about what juice varieties will have the least impact on your blood sugar.
References
- New York University Langone Medical Center: Home Blood Glucose Test
- Harvard Medical School: Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load for 100+ Foods
- U.S. Department of Agriculture: Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010
- "Atherosclerosis"; Anti-oxidative Effects of Pomegranate Juice Consumption by Diabetic Patients on Serum and on Macrophages; Mira Rosenblat, M.Sc., et al.; August 2006
