Insulin Resistance

If you fear Chronic Diseases, you should be fearing Insulin Resistance

These 8 chronic diseases account for 75% of our health care costs.
1. Type 2 Diabetes
2. Dyslipidemia
3. Hypertension
4. Cardiovascular disease
5. Dementia
6. Fatty liver
7. Cancer
8. PCOD
And they all have one thing in common i.e., INSULIN RESISTANCE. They are linked up with your eating habits. They may have strong genetic component but it’s the lifestyle which is pulling the trigger. 

Insulin Resistance
* The most common disease in the world
* most poorly diagnosed
* most dangerous
* most misunderstood
*most mismanaged
* most easily reversed
(Although can take weeks to months and even years to reverse)                                                                                                                                                  

 

Are you having insulin resistance and surprisingly 1 in 3 of us is insulin resistant.

What could be the signs?

 

If you get tired after eating a meal or feel sleepy, it’s because your body can’t process it properly. Your blood sugar goes up then your body spends a lot of energy to convert that sugar into triglycerides and fats. And that is one of many presentations that insulin resistant people have. They have roller coaster blood sugars; it drops suddenly and then after meal, it goes up from 100 to 200 or even more.

 Irritability or inability to go several hours without meal. Our body is designed to create blood sugar level in narrow range. If we don’t eat, our body has the ability to maintain blood sugar level from stores like glycogen and fats. But if your body can’t do that, you get irritable, you get hungry and you get headache. If you feel that you will have to eat something every 2 -3 hours, then you probably have insulin resistance along with episodes of hypoglycemia because you taught your body to rely on sugars/ carbohydrates for energy.

Relying on sugar, you increase your insulin levels. Now you can’t take out energy from storage sites as long as insulin is there. So, your body now doesn’t have backup for energy, that’s why you will have to rely on food especially on carbs for energy. Now you depend on it. Once you have this habit, every time your body is going to protest whenever you don’t get food. What you need to do is to increase healthy fats and proteins and move away from carbs gradually, to get more stability in blood sugar levels. As a healthy person, you should be able to go 6-8 hours without food and that too without fainting or irritability or anything like that.

Tired/feeling sleepy after eating is normal?????

This is called Post prandial Somnolence or Food coma due to Blood sugar+ high insulin.

Whether we use carbs or fats as source of energy, it depends upon the hormone Insulin. And it determines what energy the body is using.
When we eat carbs, insulin can climb 10 times higher than normal, and it stays elevated up to 3-4 hours and in contrast if someone eats fats in his diet and it has negligible effect on insulin. Now we have 2 fuels, when insulin is elevated, body makes the decision. It starts using more of its carbohydrate resources, body goes into sugar burning mode. It starts burning blood sugar. In contrast when the insulin levels are low, it starts burning fat resources, body goes into fat burning mode. 

It’s the topic I focus on the most. The reason I care about Insulin Resistance, and the reason we must care about IR is that Insulin is the cause for making diseases worse. You should be fearing insulin resistance. So high insulin means shift to carbohydrates burning and less insulin means shift to fat burning. If insulin stay too high & for too long, it leads to insulin resistance.

Solution in this case is we should reduce carbs in the diet and then allow the insulin to come down and that means we can start burning fat as fuel.
It’s so simple. If you fear chronic disease, you should be fearing insulin resistance. There is no regard or respect for insulin and we push the insulin even higher with wrong food choices. Risk for dying from heart disease triples and risk for cancer mortality doubles.


Let’s know in simple words, what the insulin resistance is and why it’s such a problem for our body?

Insulin is a hormone secreted by beta cells of pancreas. Insulin is very important for metabolism. It tells your body what to do with carbohydrates we eat. When we eat carbohydrates, it is broken down into your digestive system into sugar(glucose). When pancreas sees this glucose in the blood, it secretes insulin, and the very 1st role of insulin is to move that glucose from the blood into cells (muscle cells…fat cells). Job of insulin is to open up the doors of these cells and glucose enters in. What happens now is:-
Glucose in the blood decreases that is much more desirable state of our body. Body wants to get rid of extra sugar. It tells the liver to store excess sugar in form of glycogen.

Now in insulin resistance, these cells don’t respond to insulin like they supposed to do. Now the door does not open and what happens is

1. Now we have excess glucose in the blood (IMPAIRED GLUCOSE LEVELS OR PREDIABETES)

2. Now Insulin is there and it’s very hard for body to burn fat and your cells don’t have access to high glucose in the blood. You feel low, you feel tired, you feel hungry, and you feel sleepy. You crave carbohydrates and weight gain is much easier.

Now pancreas makes more insulin to match up high glucose in the blood. A person with Insulin resistance secretes 10-15 times more insulin to keep glucose levels in control and now there is hyperinsulinemia.

Very important topic if you are struggling with weight issues. You can’t lose weight unless you keep your insulin levels low all day. Exercise plays only minor role, if you eat frequently, you take cabs (chapati, rice, biscuits, table sugar, jam, sauces, ready-made juices, cold drinks, bread etc). You keep your insulin up. It shuts down fat burning, in fact with insulin you store fat.