People with Diabetes are fighting a silent war against the hormone insulin. This conflict is what is known as Insulin Resistance and is a prime characteristic of Type 2 Diabetes and Pre-Diabetes. In this article, decipher the truth behind insulin resistance and learn ways to make the body more receptive to insulin which can help to fight diabetes.
Understanding Insulin Resistance
Most people falsely think that diabetes is a result of too little insulin. On the contrary, insulin resistance happens when it induces the body to produce more insulin to overcome the resistance.
Insulin is responsible to transport glucose from the blood to the cells. And, when it is unable to do so, glucose is unable to pass through the gate of the cells and less glucose gets inside the cell. As a result, the blood glucose piles up outside the cell and this causes high blood sugar becoming detectable as the clinical diagnosis of diabetes.
In turn, the pancreas produces more insulin in an attempt to usher the glucose into the cells again, but it still doesn’t work. Eventually, the pancreas gets too stressed producing more insulin and gets confused about how to regulate all the excess glucose. At this point, you are diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes or can be in the pre-diabetes stage.
Causes of Insulin Resistance
In order to understand the root cause of insulin resistance, we need to decipher why insulin is not able to perform its role of transporting glucose to the cells? Most believe that inflammation, free radicals, and oxidative stress hinder the insulin receptors of the cell and cause the gates to close when insulin tries to enter with its supply of glucose.
However they are not really a prime cause of insulin resistance, but rather they only mark the presence of the disease. To say inflammation is the cause of insulin resistance is like saying that wounds are caused by bleeding. If inflammation was a cause, then insulin therapy should decrease inflammation which sadly does not happen.
In a nutshell, the primary problem in insulin resistance is hyperinsulinemia or too much insulin. Perhaps the glucose is unable to enter into a resistant cell because it’s already overflowing. Essentially, it is “insulin that causes insulin resistance”.
Continuous Exposure to Insulin Causes Insulin Resistance
According to a study, continuous exposure to insulin causes a reduction in the number of receptors on the cell’s surface by promoting internalization as well as degradation of hormone-occupied receptors.
This has also been proven experimentally. A forty-hour constant insulin infusion into a group of healthy young people caused 15 percent greater insulin resistance. High hormonal levels on their own cannot cause resistance.
However, it’s only persistently higher levels of insulin that trigger insulin resistance. Even in our daily lives, when we are exposed to loud noise, we develop resistance towards it. The same way when we are exposed to too much insulin, we develop resistance.
A New Paradigm to Reverse Diabetes and Insulin Resistance
The therapeutic approach to treat diabetes in some patients is to further increase insulin by giving insulin shots. But is this really a good remedy? It may actually exacerbate the disease and put you in a vicious cycle of hyperinsulinemia.
On the contrary, you can reverse diabetes and mitigate insulin resistance only by reducing your insulin load. And how would that be possible? The two possible ways you can manage the overflow of insulin in your body is through LCHF or Low Carbohydrate High Fat Diet and Intermittent Fasting.
The current paradigm of treating insulin resistance with medications and more insulin tends to be less effective and leads to more complications of heart disease, hypertension, etc. These contemporary medications only try to drive the glucose inside the cell at all costs. They do not really treat the root cause of insulin resistance in the first place.
Understanding insulin resistance as a phenomenon of overflow model of insulin can lead to radical and simple treatments that address the root cause. The treatment for insulin resistance should be to improve the effectiveness of insulin receptors with simple dietary and lifestyle measures.
Old Wisdom, New Hope
At a time when medicines were not available to control Diabetes, it was only diet and a healthy lifestyle that came to the rescue. In fact pictures of a cookbook from 1917 for people with type 2 diabetes advocate a low carb diet.
Modern lifestyle with processed food and too many carbohydrates are largely to blame for the current epidemic of insulin resistance and diabetes. Understanding insulin resistance will help you to take timely corrective actions. Try to incorporate a low carb diet along with intermittent fasting regimen to lower your overflow of insulin and reverse diabetes naturally.