Midtown Chiropractic and Vital Principal Functional Medicine

Midtown Chiropractic and Vital Principal Functional Medicine Dr. Lindsey Carr, DC, CACCP, IFMCP, DABCI and Dr. Allison Bomar-Hyong, DC Dr. Lindsey Carr is a chiropractor at Midtown Chiropractic in Memphis, TN.

If you are struggling with neck or back pain, headaches or migraines, carpal tunnel, sciatica, or any other health condition please call us today or visit our website.

❌Not all cravings are the same.💥And treating them all the same is why most strategies fail.There are three distinct crav...
04/29/2026

❌Not all cravings are the same.
💥And treating them all the same is why most strategies fail.

There are three distinct craving types.

Each has a different:
✅origin
✅fingerprint
✅solution.

📌Emotional cravings:
➔Timing: appear in response to specific emotional states, stress, boredom, loneliness, anxiety, or right before bed as a comfort ritual.

➔Fingerprint: specific, often textural. The craving is usually for something creamy, crunchy, or a childhood comfort food. The feeling driving it is not physical hunger. You could eat other things, but you want that specific thing.

➔Root cause: nervous system activation seeking a dopamine reward to soothe dysregulation. The gut-brain axis is involved. Serotonin depletion from stress, poor sleep, or dysbiosis often underlies this pattern. The craving is a nervous system event, not a nutrition event.

📌Metabolic cravings:
➔Timing: highly predictable, typically 2 to 3 hours after eating, at 3pm, or late evening. Follow a reliable schedule regardless of emotional state.

➔Fingerprint: carbohydrates, sugar, fast food. A physical urgency that can feel like shaking, irritability, or difficulty concentrating if not addressed. The craving has a physical edge to it.

➔Root cause: blood sugar instability, reactive hypoglycemia, insulin resistance, impaired GLP-1 signaling. The body is pulling the emergency cord for fast glucose because the fuel delivery system is unreliable.

📌Hormonal cravings:
➔Timing: cyclical in premenopausal women, most pronounced in the luteal phase, 7 to 14 days before menstruation.

➔Fingerprint: strong pull toward chocolate (magnesium and serotonin), salty foods (adrenal and aldosterone signaling), or high-carbohydrate comfort foods. Comes with a mood component.

➔Root cause: progesterone-driven insulin resistance, declining estrogen and serotonin precursors, and magnesium depletion in the luteal phase. Often amplified by cortisol and poor sleep.

The craving type tells you which system to address first.

📣I want to be clear that the people who come to me after trying to fix their blood sugar on their own are not doing anyt...
04/28/2026

📣I want to be clear that the people who come to me after trying to fix their blood sugar on their own are not doing anything wrong.

🚩The information available online is simply incomplete. And incomplete information produces incomplete results.

Mistake 1️⃣
Cutting carbohydrates without addressing cortisol. Low-carbohydrate diets reduce glucose load and can improve fasting metrics. But for someone running high cortisol from chronic stress, sleep deprivation, or HPA axis dysregulation, cutting carbs without addressing the cortisol piece often worsens the morning blood sugar surge, increases cravings in the afternoon and evening, and stresses the system further. Carbohydrates support serotonin production and help buffer cortisol. Removing them entirely from a stressed body often backfires.

Mistake 2️⃣
Using supplements without knowing your specific driver. Berberine, chromium, cinnamon, alpha-lipoic acid, inositol. These are all legitimate blood sugar support tools. But berberine works primarily through AMPK activation and is most relevant for insulin resistance with glucose overload. Inositol is specifically relevant for insulin resistance in PCOS. Alpha-lipoic acid supports mitochondrial glucose metabolism. Using them without knowing which mechanism is most relevant to your pattern is guessing. It might help somewhat. It probably will not produce lasting change.

Mistake 3️⃣
Treating blood sugar as a diet problem when it is also a sleep problem, a stress problem, and a gut problem. One night of poor sleep produces insulin resistance measurable the following morning. Chronic gut dysbiosis impairs GLP-1 secretion and short-chain fatty acid production, both of which support blood sugar regulation. A blood sugar protocol that only addresses food is working with one quarter of the picture.

🔎Investigation is what turns incomplete information into a complete approach.

❌Your metabolism is not broken.❌I want to say that again because I think a lot of people arrive in my office carrying a ...
04/24/2026

❌Your metabolism is not broken.❌

I want to say that again because I think a lot of people arrive in my office carrying a private story that their body is uniquely defective. That everyone else manages to eat well and have energy and not spiral into cravings at 9pm. That something is fundamentally wrong with them.

❌Nothing is fundamentally wrong with you.❌

Your metabolism is doing exactly what it was designed to do in circumstances it was never designed for.

➔The human stress response evolved to handle acute, short-term threats and then recover. It was not designed for the sustained, low-grade, relentless stress of modern life.

➔The insulin signaling system evolved when food was intermittent and glucose exposure was seasonal. It was not designed for processed carbohydrates available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.

➔Your cortisol rhythm evolved to sync with sunlight and darkness. It was not designed for blue-light screens at midnight.

When the system produces predictable biological responses to chronically abnormal inputs, that is not malfunction. That is precision engineering meeting an unprecedented environment.

Understanding this changes everything. Because a body responding to circumstances can be supported. A body that is broken requires fixing. And you do not need to be fixed. You need an investigation into the circumstances.

💥Stress does not just make you feel worse….….it changes your blood sugar in ways that are specific, measurable, and inde...
04/23/2026

💥Stress does not just make you feel worse….
….it changes your blood sugar in ways that are specific, measurable, and independent of everything you eat.💥

This is one of the most under-discussed mechanisms in blood sugar management.

And it explains why some of the most disciplined, informed people still cannot stabilize their energy, cravings, and metabolism, because the cortisol piece is never addressed.

📌(btw, my favorite slide is 8… “What cortisol testing tells us, and how it changes the protocol”)

04/22/2026

1️⃣I run fasting insulin alongside fasting glucose and calculate HOMA-IR. Because insulin resistance shows up here 10 years before glucose flags. Fasting glucose alone is not a blood sugar assessment.

2️⃣I assess adrenal function. Because if cortisol is driving the glucose dysregulation, no dietary intervention will produce lasting results without addressing the adrenal picture.

3️⃣I look at thyroid function comprehensively. Not just TSH. Free T3, free T4, reverse T3, thyroid antibodies. Hypothyroidism reduces glucose uptake in peripheral tissues and slows metabolism in ways that profoundly affect blood sugar behavior.

4️⃣I assess gut health. Short-chain fatty acid-producing bacteria directly support insulin sensitivity and GLP-1 secretion. Dysbiosis impairs both. A blood sugar protocol without a gut component is incomplete.

5️⃣I look at the triglyceride-to-HDL ratio and fasting triglycerides. Elevated fasting triglycerides above 100 mg/dL alongside low HDL is one of the strongest surrogate markers for insulin resistance. It tells me what the standard glucose metrics often do not.

Two people sitting in front of me with identical fasting glucose values and identical HbA1c readings can have completely different root causes and need completely different approaches.

That is what investigation reveals. And it is the difference between a protocol that works and one that helps a little for a while.

❌Blood sugar is not just a diet problem.✅It is a hormone conversation.And if you have ever noticed that your:📌Cravings📌E...
04/21/2026

❌Blood sugar is not just a diet problem.
✅It is a hormone conversation.

And if you have ever noticed that your:
📌Cravings
📌Energy crashes
📌Blood sugar symptoms

….are significantly worse at certain points in your cycle, this is exactly why.

🔄Cortisol and blood sugar
Cortisol's primary metabolic job is to raise blood glucose. It does this through gluconeogenesis in the liver, meaning it signals the liver to make new glucose from non-carbohydrate sources, and through suppressing insulin signaling in peripheral tissues. Under chronic stress, cortisol runs chronically elevated. That means blood glucose runs chronically elevated. That means insulin runs chronically elevated. That leads to insulin resistance over time without changing a single thing about your diet.

🔄Estrogen and insulin sensitivity
Estrogen supports insulin sensitivity, meaning it helps cells respond appropriately to insulin. In the follicular phase of your cycle, when estrogen is rising, many women notice better energy, fewer cravings, and better glucose tolerance. As estrogen drops in the luteal phase heading toward menstruation, insulin sensitivity drops with it. This is one reason cravings for carbohydrates are more intense in the week before your period. The cells are less sensitive to insulin, the brain is harder to fuel efficiently, and the body reaches for fast glucose.

🔄Progesterone and insulin resistance
Progesterone has an insulin-antagonizing effect. It raises blood sugar by reducing insulin sensitivity in a mechanism similar to the insulin resistance of pregnancy. In the luteal phase, when progesterone peaks, you may notice more pronounced post-meal spikes, stronger cravings, more significant energy crashes, and worse blood sugar symptoms overall.

Understanding your blood sugar through the lens of your hormonal cycle is not optional. It is essential.

⚠️Because a blood sugar protocol built without accounting for your cycle is working with half the map.

🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️
04/20/2026

🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️🤷🏼‍♀️

04/17/2026

Who else? 😅

The 3pm crash is so normalized that most people assume it is just adulthood.
It is not. It is a blood sugar event. And blood sugar events have causes that are findable and fixable

🧪Most people who come to me with blood sugar concerns have already had bloodwork.🤦🏻‍♀️And most of those results came bac...
04/16/2026

🧪Most people who come to me with blood sugar concerns have already had bloodwork.
🤦🏻‍♀️And most of those results came back normal.

✅Fasting glucose in range.
✅HbA1c below 5.7.
✅Your doctor said you are fine.

Here is what that workup tells us and what it does not.👇

➠Fasting glucose tells us where your blood sugar sits after an overnight fast. It does not tell us how your blood sugar behaves over the course of a day, how sharply it spikes after meals, or how hard it crashes afterward.

➠HbA1c gives us a 90-day average. An average can look perfectly normal while hiding significant glucose variability underneath it. Someone who spikes to 180 and crashes to 60 regularly can average out to a completely normal HbA1c.

What a comprehensive functional assessment adds:
✅Fasting insulin alongside fasting glucose. The ratio of these two numbers reveals insulin resistance years to a decade before glucose becomes abnormal. Most conventional labs never order fasting insulin.

✅HOMA-IR, calculated from fasting glucose and fasting insulin together, quantifies insulin resistance on a spectrum. It catches the early stage that fasting glucose alone entirely misses.

✅A 2-hour post-meal glucose challenge, or ideally continuous glucose monitoring data, to see actual glucose behavior in real time after eating. Spikes above 140 mg/dL and variability patterns that a single fasting value could never capture.

✅Fasting triglycerides and the triglyceride to HDL ratio. Elevated fasting triglycerides and a ratio above 2.0 are strong surrogate markers for insulin resistance and impaired glucose clearance.

✅Adiponectin, a fat-cell-derived hormone that regulates insulin sensitivity. Low adiponectin predates insulin resistance by years and is almost never tested in standard panels.

🔑The absence of a diagnosis is not the same as the absence of a problem. It often just means the right questions were not asked yet.

❌The craving is not a character flaw.That is the first thing I want to say to almost everyone who comes to me frustrated...
04/15/2026

❌The craving is not a character flaw.

That is the first thing I want to say to almost everyone who comes to me frustrated with their:
➠Eating
➠Energy
➠Inability to stop reaching for something sweet at 4pm even though they know better.

✅You know better.
✅You have known better for years.
✅You have read the books and followed the plans and been very disciplined for stretches of time.

💥And then the craving comes back, and it feels like failure.

It is not failure.
It is biology communicating through the only language your conscious mind can hear.

📌A craving for sugar at 3pm is often a blood sugar crash signaling that cells are not being adequately fueled.
📌A craving for salty, crunchy food in the evening is often an adrenal and cortisol signal.
📌A craving that appears right before your period is often a progesterone and serotonin conversation.
📌An emotional eating trigger that hits specifically when you are exhausted is a nervous system asking for a reward pathway because the body's resources are depleted.

Every one of these is information. And information can be worked with in a way that willpower alone never could.

When we stop treating cravings as the enemy and start treating them as data, everything changes. Because data can be investigated. And investigation leads to answers that last.

When I look back at the women I have worked with for blood sugar and metabolic health, certain things are almost univers...
04/14/2026

When I look back at the women I have worked with for blood sugar and metabolic health, certain things are almost universally true.

✨If six or more of these are true, this is your sign.

Most people think insulin resistance is a diabetes problem.👀It is not.📉It is a slow, decades-long shift that starts sile...
04/14/2026

Most people think insulin resistance is a diabetes problem.
👀It is not.

📉It is a slow, decades-long shift that starts silently, produces symptoms that no one connects to blood sugar, and shows up on a standard lab report only after years of compensatory work by the pancreas have finally run out.

💥By the time fasting glucose flags on a routine panel, insulin resistance has typically been developing for 10 to 15 years.

This carousel explains the full picture.

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204 N Evergreen Street
Memphis, TN
38112

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Dr. Lindsey Carr, DC, CACCP and Dr. Allison Bomar-Hyong are a chiropractors at Midtown Chiropractic in Memphis, TN. If you are struggling with neck or back pain, headaches or migraines, carpal tunnel, sciatica, or any other health condition please call us today or visit our website and take advantage of our new patient special.