You can lower your blood sugar through a combination of dietary changes, physical activity, stress management, and better sleep. A normal fasting blood sugar is below 100 mg/dL, while readings between 100 and 125 mg/dL fall into the prediabetic range. If your numbers are elevated, the strategies below can make a meaningful difference, often within weeks.
Know Your Target Numbers
Before working to bring your levels down, it helps to know where you stand. A fasting blood sugar below 100 mg/dL is considered normal. After eating, a reading below 140 mg/dL (measured two hours after a meal) is the healthy benchmark. Readings between 140 and 199 mg/dL after a meal indicate prediabetes, and anything above 200 mg/dL points toward diabetes. These thresholds give you a concrete goal to aim for as you make changes.
Restructure What You Eat
The single most effective dietary lever for blood sugar control is reducing how quickly carbohydrates enter your bloodstream. Not all carbs are created equal: a food’s glycemic load (GL) tells you how much a typical serving will actually raise your blood sugar. Foods with a GL of 10 or below (most non-starchy vegetables, beans, berries, nuts) have a mild impact. Foods with a GL of 20 or above (white rice, white bread, sugary drinks) cause a sharp spike.
Swapping high-GL foods for lower ones doesn’t require eliminating entire food groups. Brown rice instead of white, steel-cut oats instead of instant, whole fruit instead of juice. These substitutions slow the rate at which sugar hits your bloodstream.
Fiber plays a starring role here. Soluble fiber, found in oats, beans, lentils, and many fruits, dissolves in water and forms a gel in your stomach that slows digestion. That gel buffers the absorption of sugar into your blood. Most adults should aim for 22 to 34 grams of fiber daily, depending on age and sex. The average American gets roughly half that. Adding a serving of lentils, a handful of almonds, or an extra portion of vegetables to each meal can close the gap faster than you’d expect.
Use the Order You Eat In
Eating protein, fat, or vegetables before you start on the starchy portion of your meal blunts the glucose spike that follows. The mechanism is straightforward: fiber and protein slow gastric emptying, so the carbohydrates you eat afterward enter your intestines more gradually. If you’re having chicken, salad, and rice, eat the chicken and salad first. This is a zero-cost change that requires no new foods or supplements.
Add Vinegar Before Meals
A tablespoon or two of vinegar (any type, though apple cider vinegar is most popular) diluted in water before a carb-heavy meal can reduce the post-meal blood sugar spike by roughly 20%, based on research published in Diabetes Care. The acetic acid in vinegar appears to slow carbohydrate digestion and improve how your muscles take up glucose. It’s not a replacement for dietary changes, but it stacks well on top of them.
Move Your Body, Any Way You Like
Exercise lowers blood sugar through two separate pathways. During and immediately after activity, your muscles pull glucose out of your blood for fuel, even without the help of insulin. Over time, regular exercise also makes your cells more responsive to insulin, so less of the hormone is needed to do its job.
Both cardio and strength training are effective. A large meta-analysis in BMJ Open Diabetes Research & Care found no statistically significant difference between resistance training and aerobic exercise for lowering long-term blood sugar markers. What mattered more than the type of exercise was consistency and, for strength training, getting meaningfully stronger over time. People who gained more muscle strength saw greater reductions in their average blood sugar levels.
Even a 10 to 15 minute walk after a meal helps. Post-meal walks specifically target the glucose spike that follows eating, pulling sugar into working muscles right when it’s peaking in your blood. If you can only add one habit, this is a strong candidate.
Manage Stress Directly
Stress raises blood sugar even if you haven’t eaten anything. When you’re under pressure, your body releases cortisol, a hormone that signals your liver to produce and release glucose into the bloodstream. This is a survival mechanism: your body is preparing for a physical threat that, in modern life, rarely arrives. Cortisol also breaks down fat and muscle tissue to provide raw materials for even more glucose production, compounding the effect.
Chronic stress keeps this system running at a low boil all day. The practical fix is whatever consistently lowers your stress response: deep breathing, walking, meditation, time in nature, or reducing commitments that keep you in a constant state of tension. The specific activity matters less than whether you actually do it.
Prioritize Sleep Quality and Timing
Poor sleep increases insulin resistance, sometimes after just a single bad night. Your body becomes less efficient at clearing glucose from the blood, and cortisol levels rise to compensate for fatigue, creating a double hit. Consistently sleeping fewer than six hours is associated with higher fasting glucose and greater difficulty managing blood sugar throughout the day.
Finishing your last meal earlier in the evening may also help. Early time-restricted eating, where you consume all your food within an earlier window and stop eating several hours before bed, has been shown to lower 24-hour glucose levels, reduce glycemic variability (the size of your spikes and dips), and improve fasting insulin and glucose. You don’t need to skip meals. Shifting dinner from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m. and having breakfast a bit earlier captures most of the benefit.
Consider Chromium Supplementation
Chromium is a trace mineral involved in insulin signaling, and supplementation has shown real, if modest, effects on blood sugar. In a trial of 180 adults with type 2 diabetes, those taking 1,000 mcg of chromium picolinate daily for four months had an average fasting glucose of 128 mg/dL, compared to 159 mg/dL in the placebo group. Their long-term blood sugar marker (HbA1c) dropped to 6.6%, down from 8.5% in the placebo group.
Most chromium supplements provide 200 to 500 mcg per dose. The evidence is strongest for people who already have type 2 diabetes or insulin resistance. If your blood sugar is only mildly elevated, the effect will likely be smaller. Chromium is generally well-tolerated, but it can interact with certain medications, so check with a pharmacist if you take anything for diabetes or thyroid conditions.
Stay Hydrated
When your blood sugar is elevated, your kidneys try to flush the excess glucose through urine, which pulls water with it. Dehydration concentrates the remaining sugar in your blood, making readings look even worse. Drinking water throughout the day supports your kidneys in clearing glucose and prevents the mild dehydration that can quietly raise your numbers. Plain water is ideal. Flavored drinks, even “zero sugar” options, can trigger insulin responses in some people.
Warning Signs That Need Immediate Attention
If your blood sugar is above 200 mg/dL and you experience excessive thirst, frequent urination, nausea, vomiting, abdominal pain, or a fruity smell on your breath, these are signs of a potentially dangerous condition called diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA). Confusion, rapid breathing, or a racing heart alongside high blood sugar also warrant emergency care. DKA can develop quickly, particularly in people with type 1 diabetes or those who are ill or dehydrated, and it requires medical treatment that lifestyle changes alone cannot provide.