Reversing Insulin Resistance to Avoid Chronic Disease

Insulin resistance, when your body needs more and more insulin to remove glucose from the bloodstream , is a vicious cycle that left unresolved can lead to diabetes, fatty liver disease, and even heart disease. It can manifest as an irregular menstrual cycle, brain fog, sugar cravings, and fatigue, but the best clue is accumulating weight around your middle.

Insulin resistance (also called prediabetes) is one of the most common hormonal disturbances. Almost 34% of adults in the US have been diagnosed with prediabetes but over 50% have some form of insulin resistance. It is more common with age and even more common in women.

• ·Hemoglobin A1C is the best blood test for assessing insulin resistance. It measures average blood sugar levels over the past few months. This blood test should be easy to get from your doctor and does not require fasting.

• A1C Levels between 5.7-6.4 are prediabetic and anything above 6.5 is Type 2 diabetes. If your number is 5.5 or more, ask to have it checked every 3-6 months to monitor.

Many women over 40 have insulin resistance primarily because of three factors:

1) the slow decline in sex hormones (namely, estrogen, progesterone, testosterone) that comes with perimenopause

2) a decline in muscle mass in our 30s (skeletal muscle is necessary for our cells to take in excess glucose)

3) and a carbohydrate-heavy diet (particularly over many years).

How Insulin Works: Your body is a fine-tuned instrument striving to tightly regulate your blood sugar.

• When carbs enter the digestive track, they get broken down into glucose (sugar) and cause a blood sugar spike immediately after a meal. Sugars in liquid are the worst (such as in hot and cold beverages, smoothies, and alcohol). That is why it is important to eat fiber, fat, and protein at every meal to slow the glucose absorption.

• When glucose enters your system, your body sends a message to the pancreas to make insulin. Insulin works to remove glucose from the blood, feeding it to your fat cells and muscles. That is why you want a lot of skeletal muscle, in part to soak up the glucose to use for energy.

• Insulin also alerts the kidney to help take the excess glucose and store as glycogen for later use.

• When your body becomes resistant to insulin, insulin cannot do its job. More and more insulin is released by the pancreas but the cells start to resist insulin trying to get more glucose into the cells that are already loaded with glucose.

• So, you can end up with elevated glucose, even if you haven’t eaten anything. Glucose stays elevated in the blood and this excess glucose damages blood vessels, kidneys, organs, and cells and leads to disease.

• The chronically elevated insulin turns into a fat storage hormone, telling the liver to make more triglycerides which are stored in fat cells for later use. You end up with stubborn weight gain around the belly and fatty liver disease.

A proven way to reverse insulin resistance is to lose the excess body fat, particularly the visceral fat around the organs and along the mid-section.

But how do we get the body to burn the stored fat? We must wait longer between meals or do an extended overnight fast (12-15 hrs.) (often called time-restricted eating) so that the body would have burned through its free glucose and can start to turn to burning stored fat.

• It is more efficient for body to use incoming energy than go into the cells to pull out glucose/stored energy (in the fat). So, you’ll need to focus on decreasing the body’s incoming glucose supply so you can tap into fat reserves.

Tips to Reverse Insulin Resistance and Lose Stubborn Belly Fat

1. High Quality Sleep. It is important to reset your circadian rhythm, with evening and morning rituals. Keep at least 3hrs+ between dinner and going to bed. The brain needs digestion to be done before it can clean its house, removing excess toxins and junk that has accumulated during the day. Taking 300 mg of magnesium glycinate before bed will help the body settle into a restful sleep. Remember to avoid electronics 30 minutes before bed, and to keep a dark, cool bedroom. A morning routine to turn on your cortisol awakening response involves going outside in nature sometime during the first 30 mins of your day to lower stress and energize the body and mind. Maybe try exercising outside before you eat, allowing the body to tap into glycogen or even fat stores for fuel. This will boost your insulin sensitivity and metabolism.

2. Intermittent Fasting, Intermittent fasting is a proven way to reduce inflammation, lower Blood sugar, boost energy and focus, and get the body in fat burning mode. Ideally leave 13-16 hours between dinner and your first meal of the day, 3-5 times a week. The extended window of no eating helps to reverse prediabetes or even diabetes. A longer fasting window of 17-18 hours will start cellular autophagy, where old and damaged cells are cleared out of the system and excess glucose is burned off, significantly extending longevity.

3. Break Your Fast with Powerful Nutrition with Protein. Hydrate first before taking tea or coffee and try to swap out the sugar in your drinks for cinnamon, which boosts metabolism and is heart protective. Make sure you have plenty of protein at every meal, at least 25-30 grams, which helps to stabilize glucose. Protein needs 10% more fuel for digestion and blunts a big sugar rise when eaten before and during a meal. Always also add fiber to every single meal. Fiber helps control blood sugar spikes, dissolving into a gel-like substance that lays on the lining of the digestive track and slows carb digestion. So, your blood sugar sees a steady rise and fall, rather than a spike. Your microbiome and colon love fiber. Try eating a salad or lightly cooked veggies before your biggest meal of the day, to soak up starch and sugar from meal.

4. Walk 20-40 Mins After Meals, particularly after dinner. Walking immediately following a meal is the best time to walk, but you’ll also see a benefit walking 30-60 minutes after. Try to walk for about 30 minutes. Try to get up from the table and stretch the legs after your meals; your digestion and your body will thank you!

5. Cut out Processed Food, particularly Carbs. Aim to eat whole foods with no ingredient list or foods that contain optimally 5 (no more than 10) ingredients.

6. Two or Three Meals & No Snacks. Focus on eating high quality meals 2-3 times a day and forgoing snacks. If you are eating all the time, you never give the body an opportunity to enter fat burning mode. Taking longer breaks between your meals allows the body to rest from the heavy work of digestion.

7. Swap your 45-60 min cardio for lifting weights 15-30 min (3-4 times a week). Lift until the muscles are fatigued using heavy weights. This can often be a game changer to stabilize insulin because you are building more muscle that can then work to burn more fat.

8. Breathe. Deep breathing activates the parasympathetic nervous system, the rest and digest system and increases vagal tone, lowering your blood pressure. Stress drives insulin resistance so anything we can do to reduce our stress through breath work, yoga or meditation will bring big benefits.

9. Reduce your Sugar Intake. Nutritionists say we should get no more than 5-10% of our calories from added sugar. They recommend at most 13 teaspoons of sugar a day while most Americans eat about 42 teaspoons of sugar a day! Try swapping your vanilla chai latte or Frappuccino for sparking water, black or green tea, or matcha. Replace desserts with fruit sprinkled with cinnamon. If you are going to snack, make them high in protein and fat by eating jerky, nuts and seeds, or hummus and veggies. If you are eating substantial meals with healthy fat, protein, and fiber, you’ll likely not need sugary snacks.

10. 
    

Supplement with Magnesium, Chromium, Berberine. These function as health boosters, providing extra support. Chromium and Berberine are effective in controlling blood sugar spikes, and berberine has been shown to reduce cholesterol. Some studies show berberine as effective as metformin in counteracting insulin resistance.

**Content provided for educational and informational purposes only. It is derived from information from Dr. Mariza Snyder’s podcast. It is not to be considered medical advice.**