Insulin Resistance
Do you tend to gain weight mostly around the middle of your body? Is your cholesterol “a little high?” Do you crave sweets or alcohol? Do you feel tired at times during the day, especially after lunch? Are bread and pasta your favorite foods? Do your friends consider you a "carbo-holic?"
If so, you may have a common condition known as "insulin resistance". Insulin is the hormone that primarily regulates our blood sugar level. Insulin comes into play especially after meals, when it triggers the liver and our muscles to take up the nutrients that enter our bloodstream after we eat. With insulin resistance, our bodies lose their responsiveness and sensitivity to insulin. As a result, the liver and muscles fail to properly clear the bloodstream of sugar, fats, and proteins.
These nutrients become "stuck" in the bloodstream, and are therefore unable to provide nourishment and energy for the cells of our body. So despite eating an adequate diet with ample calories, our body actually becomes starved for nutrients, because these nutrients can’t get into the cells where they provide energy.
The pattern that results is someone who is tired and fatigued despite eating enough calories. To make matters worse, hunger increases as the brain recognizes that our cells are not being properly nourished. This hunger often leads to a search for a high-energy type of food, usually containing high amounts of sugar. This explains the sugar and carbohydrate craving in people with insulin resistance. Unfortunately, the increased intake of sugar actually aggravates and worsens the insulin resistance itself, creating a vicious cycle.
Ultimately, this produces weight gain, which tends to occur particularly around the middle of the body. This explains the typical “apple” shape (round around the middle) of people prone to insulin resistance. This weight gain around the middle is fat that is deposited deep inside the abdominal cavity, surrounding and encasing organs such as the liver, the bowel and pancreas. This fat further impairs the action of insulin making the condition worse. If added pounds have a tendency to gravitate straight to your tummy, you may suffer from insulin resistance, and it becomes vitally important to your health to lose weight.
The long-term consequences of insulin resistance include weight gain, high cholesterol (particularly with a low level of the HDL, or “good” cholesterol), high triglycerides, high blood pressure, hardening of the arteries that often leads to heart attack and stroke, high blood sugar and at times even the adult-onset form of diabetes.
How does insulin resistance happen? First, there is a genetic tendency. The family history of someone with insulin resistance often includes heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, and high cholesterol. This genetic tendency is then accentuated by improper diet.
Second, if susceptible individuals are exposed to high levels of insulin for prolonged periods of time, their bodies lose their responsiveness to insulin and begin to develop more resistance to the effects of insulin. The same is true of many other substances including alcohol, painkillers, and most medications as well as hormones such as insulin.
The treatment of insulin resistance is relatively straightforward and effective. The goal of treatment is to lower insulin levels, and keep them low long enough for our bodies to regain their sensitivity to insulin. In order lower insulin levels, we must avoid the two main causes of high insulin: 1) SUGAR, as well as any foods our bodies convert to sugar rapidly, and 2) Large meals.
Therefore, the person with insulin resistance should be sharply reducing sources of sugar from their diets. They should also be limiting those foods such as bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, cereals & excess alcohol, which our bodies convert rapidly to sugar. They should also be eating smaller, more frequent meals as opposed to larger meals once or twice a day.
|
Ceonex, Inc.