Are you Insulin Resistant?
- By:JoAnn Graham
Do you feel tired and sluggish all the time? When you try to diet, do you get so hungry that it defeats all your efforts to stay on your diet? Have you been gaining weight and can't seem to get it off? If these conditions apply to you, you could be Insulin Resistant. And if you are insulin resistant, you are at risk for morbid obesity--that's weight gain so extreme that it threatens your life--and even developing Type 2 Diabetes.
Insulin resistance can be caused by a number of things, or combination of several: A lack of exercise; a diet of too much fast food or too many carbohydrates; not enough fiber, complex carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables in your diet; or simply not getting enough sleep at night can contribute to insulin resistance. Here's what happens when you are insulin resistant:
Insulin is the hormone "key" that unlocks your body's tissues, enabling them to process sugar and use it as fuel. This is vital to a healthy body, because your muscles need sugar to function, and so does your brain! When you are insulin resistant, your body's tissues "resist" the insulin's attempt to unlock the door so the sugar in your blood can be used as fuel. This can raise your blood sugar to dangerously high levels. Prolonged, elevated levels of blood sugar can cause nerve and circulatory damage that may lead to heart attacks, strokes, kidney failure and blindness.
When your body's tissues resist the insulin your body produces and your blood sugar levels begin to rise, your pancreas responds as it is programmed to do, by producing and releasing still more insulin. Too much insulin in your blood has two very undesirable side effects: it makes you feel hungry, and causes your body to store all that excess sugar as fat! No wonder your every attempt to lose weight ends in failure! Not only that, but if this "insulin resistant" condition continues for too long, your pancreas can simply become exhausted from producing all that insulin and greatly reduce its output or stop altogether. When that happens, it causes the condition known as diabetes. Diabetes simply means your body does not produce enough insulin. Without insulin to activate the processing of sugar in your body's tissues, the sugar simply builds up in your blood--causing the damaging effects described above.
That doesn't mean you are doomed to become a diabetic. If you make changes to your diet and lifestyle now, you can reverse the process and your body will again accept and utilize insulin the way it should to keep your blood sugar levels within safe, normal range.
Diet and exercise are the key to making this happen! (You knew I was going say that, didn't you?) Exercise is the number one, best way to increase your body's sensitivity to insulin! Your muscles are fueled by sugar. When you exercise, your muscles stop resisting the action of insulin and allow the sugar to be utilized as the fuel they need to meet the demands placed upon them by the exercise. A combination of aerobic exercise--such as walking--and strength training--working with small weights to increase muscle mass--has proven to be the most effective combination to combat insulin resistance or lower your blood sugar levels, if you are already diabetic.
And yes, diet is important, but how you diet is even more important! Simply cutting calories or eating less just doesn't work, if you are insulin resistant. What DOES work is paying attention to the "glycemic index" of the foods you eat to avoid dumping a large amount of sugar into your blood all at once, thereby triggering a flood of insulin your body refuses to use, and starting the hunger/fat storing cycle caused by too much insulin in your blood all over again.
Put simply, the "glycemic index" of a given food is a number assigned to that food, based upon how fast it turns to sugar in your blood, once it's digested. Many foods, when broken down, turn to sugar, since that is your body's primary fuel. But it happens much faster with some foods, than with others. In general, "white" foods have a low glycemic index, meaning they will very quickly turn to sugar in your blood, triggering a flood of insulin. These white foods include white bread, potatoes, white rice and (go figure!) white sugar.
But you don't need to count "glycemic points" to make this work for you. Just remember that instead of simple carbohydrates that break down quickly to sugar, you need to eat complex carbohydrates that digest more slowly, thus slowing the release of sugar into your blood. Instead of white pasta, eat whole wheat pasta. (It looks "brown" before it's cooked, but once it's cooked and paired with sauce, it's hard to tell the difference!) Instead of white bread, find a good, whole-grain bread you like, and eat that, instead. Instead of orange juice--which is high in sugar and is transformed almost instantly into sugar in your blood--eat the whole orange. The fiber in the orange will slow the arrival of the sugar into your blood. So: eat complex carbohydrates like whole-grain pasta, whole-grain breads, beans and lentils. (Like split pea soup with ham? That's an excellent choice of a low-glycemic index food! Fresh fruits and veggies are good, too.) Mixing these more complex foods with protein slows the breakdown into sugar even more.