Insulin Resistance And Lifestyle Habits

According to CDC, more than 100 million adults in the U.S. are living with diabetes or prediabetes as of 2015. Putting this in perspective, there are over 3.6 million cases of COVID-19 in the U.S. as of July, 2020.

For the longest time, diabetes was thought to be sugar issue. Diabete Mellitus, which is proper name for diabetes, which derived from Greek word Diabetes means to pass through and Latin word Mellitus means honeyed or sweetened. This is because, when the diabetes was first diagnosed, scientists found that the taste of urine of the patient to be sweet.

Recently though, this concept of diabetes being blood sugar issue, has been shifted towards hormonal issue and this hormone name is insulin. Insulin plays important role in our life. Without insulin we would not have survived. To prove that you can look at people with Type 1 diabetes where the pancreas does not secrete insulin at all. Before the insulin therapy was available, Type 1 diabetes was death sentence. Without insulin our body cannot regulate carbohydrate, fat and protein, which negatively impact the cell division and growth.

However, because of recent trend of high sugar consumption through food and beverages, and lack of sleep causing stress hormone to rise, the body has to secrete more insulin than it needs to, which leading to condition called insulin resistance. In insulin resistance condition, the cell in the body does not accept insulin causing the blood sugar level and blood insulin level to elevate. Although the body cannot utilize insulin, however, because the body still secretes insulin, this will cause the metabolism to slow down, gaining body fat especially in mid-section, and age faster.

To learn about your insulin condition, you can take a blood testing and look for HbA1c. HbA1c test tells how much insulin is in your blood in percentage. The testing results will show from 4-14%. 5.7% or below is considered to be normal. 5.7-6.4% is considered to be prediabetes. And 6.5% and above is considered diabetes.

HbA1c can be used as lying detector for dieters. Sometimes those who are "following" strict diet to lose body fat may struggle and blame on dietary plan. This is where HbA1c comes in. If the person was following the diet religiously, then the HbA1c should be low. If not, then the diet plan has not been followed.

So how can someone lower their insulin level and bring back normal hormonal balance? Well it is not very complicated task but it does require consistent effort.

First is stress management. Stress can be coming from so many places. Obvious one is poor sleeping habit. It is vital for our body to be taking at least 8 hours of quality sleep. If you have not been taking sleep seriously, you may want to start today. Initially, it is challenging because you are breaking your habit. However, once sleep quality and quantity is properly set, energy level and brain functioning will be skyrocketing. Another thing you need to work on is stress management from food and drink. Highly processed, coated with sugar, battered with refined flour, does give stress to the body. You should enjoy once in a while, like once a month and not once a day. But the body need to recover from junk food. Avoid them!

Second is consuming nutrient dense food. Majority of time, when insulin level is elevated to HbA1c of over 5.7%, food consumption with nutrient dense food is severely low. Think about it. If the food consumption was only from meat, fish, egg, beans, vegetables, seed and nuts, do you think the body will have a health issue? Why? Because those food are low in sugar and highly nutritious. Another interesting thing is to eat huge bag of chips are easy and it contains over 1200 calories. Try eating 1200 calorie worth of vegetables or steak. For steak to get to 1200 calories, it would be 17 oz steak. For broccoli, that would be over 120 oz. By the way average weight for crown of broccoli is 9 oz.

Last is hydration and minerals. Most hydration advice ignore the importance of minerals. However, with out minerals, especially salts, the body may not able to retain water that you drank. You don't necessary have to add salt to your water but you can add more salt to your food while you are keeping the carbohydrate and sugar intake low. Kidney can handle more than 80g of salt easily so there should not be any fear of adding a little. Quality of salt is also important. Celtic, Himalayan, and Sea salt are the good place to start.

So where should you start?

1. Start with vegetable based diet. Yes, meat and fish are important for health fat and essential amino acids but the first step to control insulin is to manage stress and vegetable based diet has been shown to minimize inflammation. Beans, leafy greens, such as spinach, kale cabbage, romaine lettuce, root vegetables, such as carrots, turnips, beats, as an example.

2. Drink water and add more salt to your food for better water retention.

3. Improve your sleep quality and quantity. Sleep is most unproductive part of our life but it is most important to have a productive day. Work on consistency with going to bed and waking up.

By managing insulin, we are managing the blood sugar level as well. Mismanaged insulin can cause so many health issues even outside of diabetes, including heart diseases, high blood pressure, compromised immune system, dementia, and some types of cancers.

As mentioned before, it is not very complicated to manage insulin, however, it is time consuming. Depending on the degree of insulin resistance, reversing the condition may take anywhere from 3-12 month.

Kota Shimada