Insulin Resistance Explained

Insulin Resistance is the underlying cause of Diabetes Type II as well as contributing to other conditions such as PCOS, metabolic syndrome and possibly Alzheimer’s and dementia. For such a significant process, it is surprising how few providers take the time to explain it. Making any change tends to be easier when we understand why we are being asked to make that change, nevertheless the significant dietary change needed to reverse insulin resistance. So, let’s get to explaining.

First, we need to explain how sugar metabolism occurs normally. When we eat sugars and carbohydrates, amylase enzyme breaks those down into glucose which is the body’s preferred energy source. The glucose is then absorbed in the small intestine into the blood stream. The pancreas senses the increase in blood glucose levels and releases insulin. Insulin activates gated channels in cell membranes which allow glucose to come into the cells to be used for energy.

So what is insulin resistance? Too much glucose inside cells will cause them to take in too much water and kill them, so the body has a system in place to make sure that doesn’t happen. If insulin levels stay high for too long, the cells begin to remove gates from the walls so that less glucose can come in even if insulin is telling it to let the glucose in. In response to this, glucose in the blood stream goes up even higher because less can get in the cells to which insulin goes up even further. This feedback loop continues until the pancreas becomes damaged from too much stress and stops producing insulin resulting in insulin dependent Diabetes Type II.

The great thing about this process is that it is completely reversible if caught before insulin dependence sets in. Just as the body is intelligent enough to limit too much glucose from entering cells and destroying them, too little glucose has the opposite response. If blood glucose is chronically on the low side, the cells put out extra gates for insulin to activate so that they can take advantage of any glucose that they can snag from the blood. This means that a low number of gates (insulin resistance) can be normalized by a period of restricting sugary and carb heavy food. Once insulin resistance is corrected, some foods can be added back in, but a healthy whole food style diet should be followed long term to prevent the same process from occurring again.