Huh?
Yep, diabetes came to exist in people's lives because they don't have a clue about insulin resistance, the forerunner to type 2 diabetes. They are inundated with info from their doctors and the drug companies about blood sugar but blood sugar is only a signal that insulin chemistry is screwed up. And although high blood sugar is dangerously inflammatory, the real deal is about insulin not blood sugar.
Blood sugar falls in line when insulin is normalized.
So, 3 questions are pertinent.
One, what is insulin resistance, two, how do you get insulin resistant and three, what are the therapies to reverse insulin resistance?
Insulin resistance, like any other hormone resistance is caused when there is too much of the hormone hanging around. The effect of a hormone in your body is much like a lock and key. The hormone is the key and th receptor on the cell membrane is the lock. When there is too much " key turning", the receptors become sluggish and much less responsive. To counteract this sluggishness, more insulin is secreted further compounding the problem., To reverse insulin resistance, the solution is to lower the amount of insulin to restore the insulin receptor's sensitivity.
There are many theories on how people get insulin resistant. I have studied many sources and here is what I have come up with. There seems to be problems with carbs and fat consumption in America for at least the last 50 years. Probably longer. The type, quality and amount of fats and carbs in the American diet have seriously messed with insulin receptor physiology. Also, and much more complicated, insulin physiology is markedly influenced by inflammation.
This article is about the fats and carbs, not about the inflammation.
Here is the deal: what you eat has a powerful impact on reversing insulin resistance. Many of the fats you stick in your mouth get incorporated into your cell membranes. Cell membranes, the outer wrapper on every cell in your body are made of of mostly fat. In this matrix of fats lie the receptors for insulin. If the fats are weird man made fats,the kind that are found in packaged food, the receptors don't work right thus causing more insulin than normal to be secreted to complete the job of allowing the blood sugar to enter the cell for energy. This excess insulin being secreted is really bad for your body. I have written other articles for ezine that outline how nasty this can be.
The other aspect of nutrition causing insulin resistance is carbohydrate consumption. America has a love affair with carbs. This country eats not only too much carbohydrates in a day, but the kind of carbohydrates eaten are mostly foreign to our bodies, producing unnatural surges in blood sugar.
The response? You guessed it! Large secretion of insulin.
The human body, except in the last 50 or so years, was never exposed to weird carbs like high fructose corn syrup which is in many if not most packages foods and drinks. And there are other sweeteners like high fructose corn syrup,some natural such as agave, that are equally destructive to insulin physiology.
So, what to do about it?
Eat fibrous carbs that come from local growers. Avoid packaged food. Eat protein at every meal and snack. Eliminate fruit juice and pop.
These suggestions are starters and also need amplification. For instance, what do I mean by a fibrous carb? What specific chemicals am I looking to avoid when I am reading a label? How much protein is too much? Not enough? How many grams of carbs in a day are too much?
I will address these questions on how to reverse insulin resistance in another article. Keep looking for additional articles from me on this critical subject.
In addition, some moderate exercise and some supplementation is necessary if you want to reverse insulin resistance to reverse type 2 diabetes naturally.
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