Insulin Resistance – The Silent Killer! The 1 Secret You Must Know.

Insulin resistance is a very common health problem. Around 60-75% of people worldwide have insulin resistance. And it is often undiagnosed until you get officially diagnosed with pre-diabetes or type 2 diabetes.

 

All pre-diabetics and diabetics have insulin resistance. Insulin resistance always comes before type 2 diabetes. In most cases, you develop insulin resistance ten-twenty years before being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. Why is insulin resistance a silent killer? I will uncover the truth about insulin resistance and why you should care in this article.

 

 

What are some of the symptoms of insulin resistance?

 

The most common ones include excess belly fat, frequent urination, constant hunger and a need to snack between meals, feeling tired after meals, craving carbs, brain fog, inflammation, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, and fatty liver. If you or someone who you know has excess belly fat, it is almost certain that they have insulin resistance. You would be surprised how common, yet undiagnosed is this condition.

 

And if you have insulin resistance and don’t do anything to reverse it, you have high chances of becoming obese and getting the most common chronic health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer’s disease, which is now being called type 3 diabetes or diabetes of the brain.

 

It is called this way because Alzheimer’s patients have insulin resistance in their brains, resulting in a lack of energy to their brain cells. Similarly, people who are insulin resistant, have starving cells, and excessive amounts of body fat that can not be assessed and used for energy. That is because the hormone insulin, which is elevated with insulin resistance, inhibits fat burning.

 

What is insulin?

Insulin is a hormone produced in the pancreas. It is responsible for regulating blood sugars. It has many other functions and we would die without it. However, excessive amounts of it are what causes us problems.

 

What do we use insulin for?

 

 

When you eat food, that consists of carbohydrates, fats, and protein, you digest your food and absorb the digested food molecules into the bloodstream.

 

When you eat sugar and other carbohydrates, it gets converted into glucose and it raises your insulin. Insulin comes to lower that sugar in the blood and helps glucose to get to where it needs to.

 

Insulin is like a key that opens the door to the cell, allowing the cell to get the glucose in. Once the cell has enough glucose, it will send a signal back to the pancreas to say that it’s fed, it had enough, and then the pancreas stops producing insulin. So, there’s this on and off communication between the cells and the pancreas. It’s called the feedback loop.

 

Insulin allows the cells to get their fuel – glucose, and then put the rest into storage, in a form of glycogen, and the rest gets converted into fat and stored in the adipose tissue. So, when you see someone with a lot of body fat, keep in mind that a big part of it comes from sugar and other carbs.

 

 

We have only around 350 – 600g of storage space for glucose in a form of glycogen. This would be equivalent to 1,400 – 2,400kcal. We store it in our muscles and liver. And then, we have around 100,000kcal worth of fat stores. Which is around 11,000 grams of stored body fat. That’s equivalent to 11 kg of stored body fat!

 

Just for a second, let’s compare the storing capacity of the two fuels: carbs – 0.350 – 0.600 kg vs fat 11 kg!

It seems that we are quite efficient at storing body fat and have almost unlimited storage capacity. Maybe this excess fat is not that bad after all…

 

 

So how do you develop insulin resistance?

 

 

Some people would tell you that you get an accumulation of fat in your muscle cells because of eating too much fat and these poor cells can’t take in any glucose anymore…

But is it really the case?

 

To understand this, we have to first look at how much glucose our bodies need?

 

You are supposed to have constant levels of 80-100mg/dL of glucose in your blood. This amount is equivalent to around 3.3 – 7g or 1 teaspoon of glucose in the blood. That’s a tinny teaspoon of sugar floating around in 5 litres of blood in an average person.

 

And if your numbers exceed the 100mg/dL concentration, let’s say you had a soda or a serving of breakfast cereal, it becomes toxic to your body.

 

Over time, it can lead to cardiovascular disease, nerve damage, kidney damage, blindness, and several other conditions. So, the insulin is there to keep these levels at around 100mg/dL. Even slightly higher levels might cause damage over time.

 

And what do I mean by slightly higher levels? Even 0.5 a teaspoon more than you need, let’s say instead of 100mg/dL, you have 150. Even this smallest increase is toxic.

 

I’ll use an example to help you visualise what that means in a typical person’s diet. Let’s say you had a plate of pasta. A serving of pasta will be around 100g. Pasta has around 70g of carbs per 100g.

 

Then, almost 100% of it will get converted into glucose. It won’t get released into your bloodstream all at the same time, that would be deadly. But it will go into your blood gradually, to be used as energy by the cells or to be put into storage as glycogen and fat.

 

The speed it is released will depend on the glycaemic index and glycaemic load, and it will be released over a few hours period. However, this high amount of glucose will have to be dealt with by insulin. Your body will release high amounts of insulin to deal with this high carbohydrate meal.

 

And what if you eat this 3 times a day and snack between your meals? You will have constantly elevated blood glucose and insulin levels. That’s what I mean by elevated glucose. High carbohydrate meals provide you with crazy high amounts of sugar!

 

Then, another important question to ask, how much sugar or other carbs should you be getting a day to maintain this blood glucose concentration of 100mg/dL?

 

The answer is 0.

Wait, what???

 

The amount of glucose we need to get through our diets every day is 0 grams. That’s because our bodies can make their own glucose from the protein and fat that we eat.

 

The amount of glucose needed for the parts of the body that can run only on glucose and the maintenance of correct blood glucose concentration can be achieved without eating any carbohydrates. That’s why they are not essential.

 

There are essential fatty acids, essential amino acids, we must get these through our diets, and there are no essential carbohydrates.

 

 

Wait a second. Carbohydrates are our main energy source, it’s the preferred fuel source. At least, that’s what we’ve been told for most of our lives. I even remember studying this at school.

 

Is glucose actually a preferred fuel source? And is it the only source of energy we can use?

 

We can run either on glucose or on ketones. Around 85% of the body can run on ketones. And only the rest 15% can run only on glucose. And our bodies can produce that glucose.

 

We use glucose first because high concentrations of it are toxic. Our bodies do their best to get rid of it immediately and prevent it from causing further damage. Some would call it a preferred fuel source. However, I call it a toxic substance that has to be eliminated first.

 

When we rely on glucose as our main source of fuel and follow the dietary recommendations that we should be getting 50-60% of our daily calories from carbohydrates, we’re getting these huge amounts of glucose into our systems. Way higher amounts than our bodies can handle.

 

So when we have too much sugar and insulin over a prolonged period of time, we develop a condition called insulin resistance. That’s a fancy way of saying too much insulin until the point where it’s causing damage and cells try to protect themselves.

 

Insulin resistance is basically a defensive mechanism our bodies use to prevent the toxic levels of glucose from invading our bodies. The more time we spend following the high carbohydrate diet, the harder it becomes to keep our blood glucose and insulin at normal ranges.

 

Just look at this graph, comparing the effects of each of the macronutrients on blood glucose levels. Carbohydrates affect blood glucose the most, and fats affect blood glucose the least. Protein is somewhere in the middle.

 

 

 

And there is one more important insulin trigger – The frequency of eating.

 

As you eat a diet that is based on carbohydrates, you will have these huge blood sugar fluctuations. And you will feel hungry all the time. You will want to snack once those blood sugars crash a few hours after your meals.

 

Just look at this graph showing the low fat, high carb vs the low carb high-fat meal on blood glucose levels over time. Low carbohydrate meal provides you with a steady supply of glucose, without those huge spikes. You not only get a steady supply of energy but also reduce or fully eliminate cravings.

 

 

And on the other hand, when, you eat carbs, you have more hunger and cravings. Plus, as you are insulin resistant, and your cells are starving, you will most likely be even more hungry.

This will result in frequent eating. And frequent eating will keep your blood glucose and insulin high all the time. Just look at this graph. Each time you eat your insulin gets elevated and you are in a fat-storing mode. Your insulin is low only between meals and during the night.

 

 

Of course, this does not apply to those who snack all the time and have a late-night snack! This would create a “24/7 fat-storing”, and “never fat-burning” state, that would very likely result in some serious weight gain.

 

So these two things, a high carbohydrate diet and frequent eating are the root cause of your insulin resistance.

 

So now, as you are insulin resistant, you eat carbohydrates, it elevates your blood glucose, the insulin comes, tries to put it into the cell, but the receptor is blocked. The insulin can’t bring glucose into the cell.

 

Now the glucose can’t get into the cell because the key is no longer working. Your cells are starving, the energy is there, but you can’t get it. As glucose can’t get into the cell, there’s no signal back sent to the pancreas to stop pumping insulin, there’s no feedback loop to turn the pancreas off.

 

Then the pancreas keeps producing high amounts of insulin. Typically, with insulin resistance, you get around 5-7x more insulin. We tend to focus on excess glucose the most. However, excess insulin is just as bad, if not even worse than glucose!

 

 

Insulin is like this invisible slow killer. Most people live with insulin resistance without ever being diagnosed. Everyone’s focusing on glucose. Doctors wait for 10-20 years and diagnose you when the problem is much bigger. What’s going on?

 

You end up having these extremely high levels of insulin that are ineffective. It can’t feed the cells. It can’t lower your blood sugars. It takes all the glucose it can and puts it into storage as glycogen and body fat. Especially around your belly.

 

And then, you have a really hard time trying to get back that stored body fat. It becomes very stubborn. You can’t use this stored body fat for energy, because you have constantly elevated insulin and it blocks fat burning. When you’re insulin resistant, all your body does, is asking for some new calories and ignores the ones you have in your fat stores.

 

Then, a very important question to ask…

 

 

How can you reverse insulin resistance? So that insulin resistance wouldn’t become a silent killer…

 

You simply have to remove the root cause, which is frequent eating and the high carbohydrate diet. Especially foods high in sucrose and fructose. Foods such as sodas, fruit juice, white sugar, breakfast cereals, muffins, cakes, and all the other foods you’ve been told are ok in moderation.

 

Apparently, moderation is not enough. We wouldn’t have that many people with insulin resistance, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer if moderation advice worked. Some foods are just not worth the side effects.

 

Insulin resistance is a silent killer because insulin can be silently elevated for years, damaging our health and creating diseases, without any obvious signs. Until one day we wake up with chronic diseases, that are often deadly.

 

I wish more emphasis was put on prevention, and people were tested for insulin resistance, rather than having only their glucose checked.

 

Following a low carbohydrate diet and practicing intermittent fasting works better than anything for reducing insulin. Type 2 diabetics manage to put their type 2 diabetes into remission by following this simple advice.

 

I hope this post was useful, thanks for reading!

 

If you want to learn more about how to reverse insulin resistance, watch my YouTube video where I share useful tips.

Or, if you prefer reading, check out my blog post explaining How to Start a Low Carb High Fat Ketogenic Diet.