Young ballet dancers often leave comments casually, referring to their self-esteem issues. Whether it’s a body image issue, a perfection issue, a weight control issue, or a slightly depressed lack of energy issue, they either don’t come out and say it, or they can’t really articulate what the problem is. Recently, when I started reading about hypoglycemia and blood sugar balancing, I began to relate its symptoms to many of the statements I have heard.

I became more interested in hypoglycemia and its sometimes subtle symptoms, due to a conversation I had with a non-dancer, a talented artist, in another field. This person has performed in many countries, is driven by all his teachers, and yet he cannot accept the praise of teachers or peers, or the enthusiasm of fans, because he simply cannot.

This person’s lack of self-esteem confuses me. A person who won the number one state award for acting while still in high school? That’s like winning the ballet competition by performing the pas de deux Blue Bird or Swan Lake.

Eating disorder is defined more broadly as behavior that results in an emotional outcome from controlling what you eat. This does not necessarily mean anorexia or bulimia, but it can refer to a practice of self-control or self-approval regarding the food you eat, the calorie content, and this does not only apply to dancers.

It can involve an extreme situation like that of a teenage girl who insists on being vegan, in which I have personally witnessed the result of causing stress fractures in this dancer who still thought she was going to be able to get stronger en pointe and have a professional career. in ballet, while looking at his X-rays.

Recently, I took a look at hypoglycemia and its symptoms. Now this is complicated. The symptoms are almost exclusive to the individual. But the dominant symptoms, as I have read, are:

• sadness
• self-criticism
• despair
• feelings of absolutely no self-worth
• periodic complete failure of energy, dizziness, mental confusion
• thoughts of suicide, although there is not enough energy to think beyond that

Hypoglycemia is … drum roll … blood sugar too low!

It is caused by a nutritional protein deficiency or simply a lack of food.

Hypoglycemia does not mean that you are diabetic or near diabetic. More concisely called reactive hypoglycemia, this is a condition that results from a poor diet or not eating often enough for whatever reason. Or eating too many carbohydrates without enough protein.

The most common recommendation for hypoglycemics is to eat some protein every two hours.

Also, I would like to mention the nutritionists’ rule, that breakfast is the most important meal of the day. Why? Proteins set the brain chemicals for the day. Skip those, and your brain chemicals won’t work properly until the next day if you have protein for breakfast.

Dancing Parents Reading This: How Often Does Your Dancing Daughter Or Son Run Out Of The House And Skip Breakfast Because They Slept In Late?

And what will they eat when they get to the school food dispensers? Or will they go hungry until they get to the school cafeteria for lunch? This is a miserable situation for a student who is not an athlete, not to mention a ballet dancer or any other athlete.

And later when they escape to their ballet academy? Are you one of those ballet parents who have to suffer hearing “I’m not that good” … “I’m not good enough” … and worse? While the ballet teacher tells you that your son should aim higher, auditioning for intensive summer professionals?

Confused yet? Let me give you some relief. Hypoglycemia-without-Diabetes at http://benjimester.hubpages.com is an eye-opening discussion. The whole thread is worth reading.

Personally, I believe that hypoglycemia is caused by:

• lack of nutrition education
• processed food products, fast food, frozen
• not enough time to serve fresh food to indicate what nutritious foods are
• sugar addiction (nutritional ignorance)
• ignorance about grains, transgenic grains, glutin and transgenic sugars

And sadly, I can’t cover much more here. BUT please, if your dancing child or any member of your family has any energy problems or depression, but not severe enough to consult your doctor (who will probably not have any nutrition education) or therapist, investigate hypoglycemia . It is an insidious condition, but it can be reversed with a good diet!

It is not so difficult. I would love to never hear from a ballet dancer or any other type of artist feeling moody, depressed, sad or desperate about their talent or potential, when they have no idea where all this negativity is coming from. And they skip meals, they eat snacks without nutrients, and they have low blood sugar …

I would love to never hear from a sad and depressed ballet parent whose amazing and talented child is failing, sinking, not even stepping on water, suffering from body image issues or self-esteem issues, and contemplating quitting ballet or even suicide. Due to lack of nutritional balance.

This may require a lot of extra food prep for ballet parents! If you are still reading this post, I bet you agree with that.