My Blood Sugar Was Rising for 8 Years. My GP Never Mentioned It.

“My Blood Sugar Was Rising for 8 Years. My GP Never Mentioned It.”

Begins at 60 seconds. Opening 60s from CSV is sacred and reproduced exactly below.

[OPENING HOOK — 0-15s] For eight years my blood sugar was getting worse. Every single year. And my GP never mentioned it once.

[OPENING BRIDGE — 16-30s] I wasn’t diabetic. I was always within range. And that’s the thing — within range doesn’t mean what most people think it means. My HbA1c was 38 in 2015. By 2023 it was 46. One point from a diabetes diagnosis. And at every blood test appointment in between, I was told the results were fine.

[OPENING ROADMAP — 31-60s] I’m Neil. I’ve got NHS blood tests going back to 2012, and I’ve been tracking HbA1c since before most people know what it is. What I found in that data — and what happened in the fourteen months after I started taking it seriously — changed more than just one number. If your GP has ever told you your blood sugar is fine and something still feels off, this video is probably the one you’ve been looking for. Because fine and optimal are two completely different things, and the gap between them is where most of the damage happens.

First, what blood test data going back to 2012 actually shows — how blood sugar drifts toward a diagnosis years before anyone flags it. | Second, the moment the trajectory reversed — fourteen months, and I’ll show you the exact numbers. | Third, why this mechanism connects to almost everything else that was going wrong — because it wasn’t just about blood sugar. We start in December 2023. Eighteen stone. One point from diabetes. Here’s what the data showed.

THE SCIENCE — 5 to 7 minutes

[60s — Expert Introduction]

Tim Spector has spent years studying why the same food does completely different things in different bodies. He’s a professor of genetic epidemiology at King’s College London, co-founder of ZOE, and one of the most cited scientists in the world when it comes to metabolic health. His PREDICT study — over two thousand volunteers, a hundred and thirty thousand meals, continuous glucose monitors — produced a finding that I think should be on the wall of every GP surgery in the country.

Less than one percent of people respond to food in an average way across sugar, insulin, and fat combined. Less than one percent. The other ninety-nine percent of us are metabolically individual in ways that standard blood test ranges simply cannot capture.

Which means the question “is my HbA1c normal?” is almost the wrong question. The right question is: what direction is it heading, and how fast?

[The Mechanism — How Blood Sugar Drifts]

Here’s how this works. And I want to be clear — this isn’t a condition that suddenly appears. It develops quietly, over years. The mechanism doesn’t wait for a diagnosis to get started.

Every time you eat — particularly refined carbohydrates, processed foods, anything that hits the bloodstream quickly — your pancreas releases insulin. Insulin’s job is to knock on your cells’ doors and say: let this glucose in. Cells comply. Glucose moves out of the blood and into tissue. Job done.

That works brilliantly when it happens occasionally.

But when it happens constantly — multiple meals, frequent snacking, highly processed food that digests in minutes — insulin has to knock on those doors forty, fifty, sixty times a day. And here’s where the analogy lands.

[ANA-002 — Insulin Resistance Mechanism]

Imagine knocking on your neighbour’s door forty times a day. First week, they answer. By month two, they’ve stopped. They’ve tuned you out. That’s insulin resistance. Your cells have heard “let glucose in” so many times, they’ve stopped listening properly. So your pancreas knocks harder — pumps out more insulin — trying to get the same response. And for a while, it works. Blood glucose stays roughly normal. Which is why your GP looks at the number and says fine.

But the system is straining. Quietly. Year on year.

Fasting stops the knocking. Give cells silence — sixteen hours, twenty-four hours, longer — and in week three, they start answering the door again. That’s not a metaphor. That’s the mechanism behind insulin sensitivity restoration.

[Why It Matters — Both Entry Points]

This matters whether you have a diagnosis or not. The mechanism I just described — the door getting ignored more and more — operates in people for ten to fifteen years before anyone puts a name on it. HbA1c rising from 38 to 46 over eight years is that mechanism, running in the background, showing up quietly in numbers that were always described as fine.

The reason this matters beyond any single condition is that insulin responding this way — to poor food timing, to constant eating, to the wrong types of food — is a mechanism, not a diagnosis. It operates in people years before anyone flags it. Understanding it at 38 or 42 gives you more options than understanding it at 52.

[Supporting Expert — Sarah Berry, ZOE Big IF Study]

Sarah Berry is ZOE’s chief scientist at King’s College London. Her team ran the Big IF Study — hundreds of thousands of participants — looking at what a simple fourteen-hour fasting window actually does. Just fourteen hours. Most people are asleep for nine of them.

Within two weeks, people reported weight reduction, better mood, less hunger, and more energy. Two weeks. Not six months. Not after a dramatic intervention. A fourteen-hour eating window, consistently applied, and the body starts responding differently within a fortnight.

That matters because it tells you the reversal mechanism isn’t dramatic. The door doesn’t need battering down. It just needs fewer knocks.

[ANA-004 — Metabolic Flexibility]

Think of metabolic flexibility like a gearbox. A car with a functioning gearbox uses different gears for different situations — first gear pulling away, fifth gear on the motorway. Uses fuel efficiently. Adapts to the road.

Most people eating constantly are stuck in third gear. Engine running, fuel burning, but inefficiently. Loud. Redlining. The car works — but it’s working harder than it needs to, all the time.

Metabolic flexibility means teaching your body to shift gears properly. Fasted state — body burning fat, running clean, quiet engine. Fed state — glucose available, used efficiently, insulin responsive. The gearbox works both ways.

The first month of changing how and when you eat feels clunky. You’re learning where the gears are. By month three, you shift without thinking. That’s what happened to me. That’s what the data shows.

[Common Misconceptions]

Two things people get wrong about blood sugar that I got wrong myself.

First: that HbA1c within range means you’re fine. It doesn’t. It means you haven’t crossed a threshold. There’s a significant difference between 38 and 46 — both within range at different points in my history — and the direction of travel between them matters enormously. Within range is not a destination. It’s a position on a spectrum.

[ANA-009 — Meal Frequency Myth]

Second misconception: eating little and often keeps your metabolism running. I believed this for years. Six small meals. Keep the engine ticking over. Except your kitchen oven doesn’t work that way. Leaving it on twenty-four hours a day doesn’t make it more efficient. It just runs up the gas bill. Every meal is an insulin spike. Every insulin spike locks fat in place for three to five hours minimum. Six meals a day means insulin is elevated almost constantly. The oven never switches off. And when the oven never switches off, the body never switches to fat burning.

I didn’t understand that. Nobody told me. And I suspect nobody told you either.

MY EXPERIENCE — 4 to 6 minutes

[Which Aspect I Tested]

I wanted to know if the trajectory could actually reverse. Not theoretically. In my body. With my NHS blood tests as the measure.

Because the data going in one direction for eight years is one thing. Watching it go the other way — documented, GP-reviewed, confirmed — is something else entirely.

[Moment A — The 8-Year Arc]

Let me give you the actual numbers. Not rounded. Not approximate.

September 2015: HbA1c 38. Normal. October 2016: 40. Borderline, but fine apparently. July 2020: 43.2. Pre-diabetic. I was told it was something to keep an eye on. October 2022: 47. One point from a diabetes diagnosis. Still described as pre-diabetic, not urgent. December 2023: 46. Still pre-diabetic. Eighteen stone. On statins, gout medication, asthma inhalers, antihistamines.

Eight years. Eight data points. All described as fine, within range, something to monitor. The trajectory was pointing somewhere specific. Nobody said so.

And here’s the thing that bothers me about that. It’s not a criticism of any individual GP. It’s a systems problem. A single reading in a normal range gets a tick. A reading that’s drifted eighteen points over eight years — that’s a story the system isn’t set up to tell you.

I had to tell it myself.

[The Intervention — Honest Account]

December 2023. Boxing Day, actually. I looked in the mirror and decided that was it. This ends now.

I started with a ten-day water fast. I won’t pretend it was pleasant. It was hard. Really hard. Days three and four were rough in ways I wasn’t prepared for. But something shifted around day six. The hunger quietened. The mental clarity arrived. And when I came out of it and moved to whole food eating — time-restricted window, roughly eight hours — I felt different in a way I hadn’t felt in years.

A few months later I did a seventeen-day water fast. Again, not an experience I’d describe as enjoyable. But what those two extended fasts did — the way they reset something in how my body was running — I genuinely believe they were the foundation everything else was built on.

Then months of time-restricted eating. Whole food. Non-UPF as much as possible. Not perfect. Never perfect. But consistent.

Something I didn’t expect: after coming out the other side of those fasts and cleaning the system out, my taste completely changed. I still mentally reach for sweet things sometimes. Old habit. But when I eat them, they don’t deliver what I thought they would. My masalas, my soups, my whole food dishes — the things I’d never have chosen willingly before — I enjoy those far more now. The body recalibrates. It genuinely does.

[The Metabolic Cascade — one sentence]

And what I noticed in my data is that the mechanism running through my HbA1c numbers — the slow drift, then the reversal — isn’t specific to my circumstances. It’s a metabolic process. The numbers tell the same story in a lot of people. They just don’t always have a name for it yet.

[Moment C — The Reversal Confirmed]

January 2025. First blood test after the real work began. HbA1c: 40. Back in normal range. Fourteen months after December 2023.

April 2025: 37. Optimal.

November 2025: 37. Held.

And it wasn’t just HbA1c. My liver enzymes — ALT — had been elevated in December 2023, sitting at 69. By November 2025: 10. My triglycerides, which had been chronically high throughout the drift years, came down. Kidney function: excellent.

Off all medication since February 2024. No statins. No gout medication. No asthma inhalers. No antihistamines.

I’m not telling you that will happen for you. I’m telling you it happened for me, tracked against NHS blood tests going back to 2012, which I took to my GP afterwards. The data is the data.

[Timeline Honesty]

First month: adaptation. It’s not comfortable. The hunger, the mood, the adjustment. Normal.

Months two and three: something starts to shift. Energy more stable. Hunger signals changing.

Month six: first meaningful blood test comparison. Numbers moving.

Month fourteen: HbA1c from pre-diabetic to optimal. That’s the timeline. Not three weeks. Fourteen months.

[Subscribe Proposition Beat — Version D]

If you’re at the stage where you’re asking questions before things get serious — this is what this channel is for. Real data, real GP conversations, properly documented. Subscribe if you want to follow it properly.

WHAT TO DO — 2 to 3 minutes

[Minimum Effective Dose]

Right. What to actually do. And I’m going to be specific, because vague advice is what got us here.

If your HbA1c is sitting anywhere between 40 and 47 — whether your GP flagged it or not — here’s what I’d suggest based on my own experience.

Start with fasting. Not forever. Not dramatically. But do it.

If you’re a woman: I’d say no longer than 72 hours for any single extended fast. The research I’ve read suggests longer than that starts to affect hormones in ways that aren’t helpful, particularly for women. But a 72-hour fast — three days, water only, electrolytes, sensible preparation — done once, or once a month for a few months while eating whole food the rest of the time, is something I believe is genuinely worth doing. The 16 to 18 hour daily window alongside that is your everyday tool.

If you’re a man: A seven to ten day water fast is, in my experience and from the research I’ve read, unlikely to do you harm if you’re otherwise healthy, not on relevant medication, and have no history of eating disorders. That’s a big if. But if those boxes are ticked, it’s worth considering seriously. It’s what moved the needle for me.

For everyone: after the fast, whole food. Non-UPF as much as you can manage. And here’s what I want to say about that — it doesn’t mean no dessert, no bread, no things you enjoy. It means those things become the ten or fifteen percent, not the baseline. You can have ice cream. You can have cake. There are ways to manage the blood sugar impact — adding cream or fat to slow the glucose absorption, for instance — and they work. But the foundation is real food. Soups. Stews. Things that look like what they are.

[How to Track]

Get your HbA1c tested if you haven’t recently. Ask your GP or use a private blood test service — they’re not expensive. That’s your baseline. Retest in three months. You’re looking for direction, not perfection.

If you want more granular data, a continuous glucose monitor — even for two weeks — will show you exactly how your body responds to different foods. Tim Spector’s PREDICT data showed up to tenfold individual variation. Your response to oats or rice or bread may be completely different to mine. The monitor tells you the truth.

[Safety Warnings — Non-Negotiable]

If you are on diabetes medication — metformin, insulin, anything that directly manages blood glucose — speak to your GP before fasting. This is not optional. Fasting changes medication requirements and the interaction can be dangerous if unsupervised.

Same applies if you’re on blood pressure medication.

History of eating disorders: extended fasting is not appropriate. Different intervention needed.

Red flags during any fast: dizziness that doesn’t resolve with electrolytes, chest pain, confusion, severe headache. Break the fast. Contact your GP or NHS 111.

And I’d say this directly: I did my extended fasts on my own initiative, and that is not what I would tell you to do. Not because I was told to. Because I chose to. That’s the right approach.

CTA + SAFETY — 1 minute

I’ve built a fasting and blood test tracker that logs your HbA1c over time alongside your fasting windows — so you can see the direction of travel the way I started tracking my own data. Link’s in the description. Free.

One more thing before you go, and I mean this seriously.

Everything I’ve shared today is educational. It’s based on my own experience, my own NHS blood tests, my own GP conversations. It is not medical advice. It is not a diagnosis. It is not a prescription.

Speak to your GP before changing your fasting pattern, your diet, or any medication. Especially if you’re on diabetes or blood pressure medication. All of my experiments were self-monitored with regular GP reviews, and that matters.

If this helped — if you saw yourself somewhere in that eight-year arc — there’s a lot more where this came from. New video Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.