What is Insulin Resistance?
As defined by WebMD Insulin resistance is when cells in your muscles, fat, and liver don’t respond well to insulin and can’t use glucose from your blood for energy.
Who Has Insulin Resistance:
Overall 70-80% of people are insulin resistant. This includes thin folks too as 2/3 of people with a healthy weight have a metabolic illness. Insulin resistance damages our brains and can cause depression, anxiety, dementia, diabesity, Alzheimer’s, and more. NHANES data from 2009-16: shows that just over 10% of adults are in optimal health.
Are we in a health emergency?
Yes.
What Variables Can we Examine to Improve Insulin Resistance?
- Carbs are not the devil, but the average intake of carbs in a day is 300 grams and that’s astronomically too high to thrive on. Side note, if we want to demonize something let’s point our finger at seed oils, vegetable oils and man-made oils from our diet. These are found in commercial dressings, grains, baked goods, dried fruits, etc.
- For how many carbs one should eat per meal and per day? We all have different thresholds. Someone with a high carb tolerance can metabolize carbohydrates better than someone with low-carb tolerance as shown by blood sugar control. Activity levels, age, genetics, gender, wasite-to-hip ratio or mid-section weight influence how well we handle carbs.
- Eating too often. Three square meals and maybe 1 snack is usually more appropriate for the grown adult. The more often we eat, the more we stack insulin (or our pancreas produces insulin) and the next thing we know, our hunger hormones jump on board the constant movement of blood sugar and we end up eating more overall and teach our body to rely only on the calories coming in and not to use the calories on our hips.
- 1 night of sleep deprivation makes us insulin resistant.
- Eating processed foods or foods we are sensitive to, makes us insulin resistant.
- Movement. Sitting for more than 45 minutes, especially in poor posture makes us insulin resistant. More of us are working from home and is it possible to have some walking meetings?
- Hydration. Being well-hydrated allows our insulin to work better. Drink half of your weight in ounces daily.
- Stress – my video on how to zen the stress in the video below. This is my 3, 3s tool.
