The Insulin Factor: Can’t Lose Weight? Can’t Concentrate? Can’t Resist Sugar? Could Syndrome X Be Your Problem?

Can’t Lose Weight?

Can’t Concentrate?

Can’t Resist Sugar?

Could SYNDROME X Be Your Problem?

THE INSULIN FACTOR

ANTONY J. HAYNES

Introduction

Why should I read this book?

If your answer is ‘yes’ to one, two or more of these questions you may well have an imbalance of a hormone in your body called insulin. And you are not alone: as many as four out of every five people have some degree of what is known as Insulin Resistance. Most of us aren’t even aware of it and, generally speaking, it is only the 22 to 25 per cent of the population who have full-blown Insulin Resistance who are more likely to get a proper diagnosis.

What is Insulin Resistance?

Insulin Resistance, also known as Syndrome X and the Metabolic Syndrome, is a condition that occurs when, for a variety of reasons, your body makes too much insulin.

Insulin is a powerful hormone secreted by the pancreas in order to control the way the body stores and uses carbohydrates in the body. Under normal conditions, insulin is produced within moments of blood glucose levels increasing, which occurs after we eat something. In simple terms, its purpose is to enable the muscles and other tissues to take up the glucose they require for activity and to keep blood sugar levels to an acceptable level by storing any excess glucose for future use. However, for a variety of reasons – which of course we’ll look at in detail – this mechanism can become faulty, with the result that some tissues become resistant to the effects of insulin and the pancreas has to produce more insulin to get the blood glucose level down. This has many important implications for your metabolism and your general health – in essence, it makes you overweight and tired, and it dramatically increases your risk, first of heart disease and then of type II diabetes. If left untreated, Insulin Resistance will often lead to type II diabetes.

The good news is that whatever degree of Insulin Resistance you may have, you can completely reverse it by following the Insulin Factor Plan. This means that you will:

In short, you’ll feel healthy, energetic and ready for anything – it will dramatically improve your quality of life!

How do I get started?

The Insulin Factor Plan is not a one-solution-fits-all programme because there are a range of imbalances that together or individually cause Insulin Resistance, and there are also different degrees of Insulin Resistance. With the help of questionnaires throughout the book you will be able to identify what degree of Insulin Resistance you have and which imbalances are causing it. Once you have pinpointed your imbalances – some of you will only have one or two, while others may need to address them all – you can turn to the end of the book and find out how to put together your personal plan of action. Generally speaking, you will need to make changes to your diet, take particular nutritional supplements and look at your lifestyle. The Insulin Factor Plan will help you with all three. You will of course need to commit yourself to making these changes, but the fact that you have this book and are already reading it is a very positive first step. Whilst Insulin Resistance doesn’t happen overnight, it can take only a few weeks before you notice an improvement in your symptoms. However, do also be patient since it will take an average of six months to permanently rebalance your insulin levels. Also, the more weight you need to lose the longer you will need to allow.

Medical conditions

Balancing insulin and glucose and eating a healthy diet is something that everybody would benefit from, so the Insulin Factor Plan should complement any medical treatment you are receiving. However, you should always check with your doctor before embarking on any dietary or lifestyle changes, particularly if you are taking any medication. This is because the improved diet and lifestyle may alter your dosage needs.

To help keep your motivation high, keep returning to the list above of all the health benefits that will be yours when you have balanced your insulin levels. Write them down or photocopy them and pin them up on your fridge or stick them in the front of your diary – wherever you will see them. Know that if you follow the Insulin Factor Plan you will not only turn your back on all the health problems but you will, in their place, enjoy all the benefits. Good luck, and enjoy!

What is insulin?

Although we’ve been talking about Insulin Resistance you shouldn’t think that insulin is really the bad guy in all of this. Although it is a dangerous hormone when it is produced in excessive amounts, as in the case of Insulin Resistance, it is actually vital for the body to function normally and to control how the body uses and stores glucose. Glucose is what gives your muscles and other organs the energy to function. Too little insulin is also just as dangerous, if not fatal, as seen in people who have type I diabetes: they can’t produce insulin so they need to regularly inject themselves with this hormone. Without these injections their blood sugar level would be too high which has serious and indeed fatal consequences. So, as with many things in life, it is a question of balance: too much or too little insulin in the body are just as dangerous for your health.

What exactly does insulin do?

Insulin is one of many hormones in the body, and is also a protein. It is made in and secreted from cells in the pancreas called the Islets of Langerhans, named after the German pathologist who discovered them. The pancreas is one of the most important organs involved in digesting food and storing the nutrients in what you eat in your body’s cells. To give you an idea of proportion, about 98 per cent of the cells of the pancreas are devoted to digestion, with the Islets of Langerhans cells accounting for the remaining 2 per cent. The cells in the Islets of Langerhans that produce insulin are called beta cells, or B-cells. There are also alpha cells, or A-cells, which produce glucagon, a hormone that raises blood glucose levels.

Insulin and carbohydrates

Insulin’s main function is storing glucose from the bloodstream into cells. This first involves converting glucose released into the bloodstream from the digestion of foods into glycogen. The body only has a limited capacity to store glycogen – the primary stores of glycogen in the body are the liver and muscles – so all other glucose is then stored as fat, known as adipose tissue. People who have Insulin Resistance typically store this fat around their middles. Either way, insulin lowers the concentration of glucose in the blood.

Insulin and proteins

Insulin doesn’t just determine what happens to the carbohydrates that we eat, it also plays an important part in the way that proteins are metabolized. During the digestive process, many proteins are broken down into amino acids, which are then transported into the bloodstream. Insulin promotes the transport of amino acids into the liver and muscle cells. In this way it is involved in storing proteins away in the body, just as it does carbohydrates. It also inhibits the breakdown of protein in muscle for fuel. This is because if insulin is present, the body concludes that there is adequate glucose available and there is no need to break down muscle proteins for energy.

Insulin and fats

Similarly, insulin also has command over how fats are handled in the body. It inhibits the release of fats from fat tissue. This means that insulin prevents the use of your fat for energy in a similar way to how it prevents your body breaking down proteins. Insulin also promotes the production of fatty acids in the liver, which increases the amount of fats (bad cholesterol and triglycerides) circulating in the bloodstream – a potential risk for heart disease when present in excess.

Essentially, what all this means is that insulin prevents the body from overly using itself up and breaking down structural proteins and fats, especially if you do not eat enough food. Obviously this worked well when we were hunter-gatherers, as it meant the body did not begin breaking down its reserves at the first sign of hunger. These days, few of us go hungry for any length of time, so insulin’s supreme ability to store glucose at fat for future use is not nearly so important. Indeed, the modern diet that encourages high insulin levels means that the body stores more glucose as fat and we are at greater risk of becoming overweight and obese.

How much insulin your body releases depends on what you eat

Under normal conditions, insulin is produced moments after we eat something, so insulin levels will always be higher after we eat than before. As our blood glucose levels increase, the pancreas secretes insulin into the blood and insulin then performs the storage roles described above. The rate at which the blood glucose level increases is primarily determined by the amount of carbohydrate you eat. The volume of amino acids (proteins) you eat also has an effect on insulin production but much less than carbohydrates. If you eat a portion of carbohydrates, for example, this raises your blood glucose far than if you ate the same amount of protein, resulting in more insulin being released to store the glucose away. Once the glucose and amino acids are stored away, levels of insulin reduce accordingly. In this way, insulin levels vary throughout the day depending on the food we eat.

Insulin Resistance

If the body is continuously exposed to high levels of insulin, the insulin receptor cells in the liver, adipose (fat) tissue and muscle start to become inefficient. The way insulin binds to the receptors in the liver, fat and muscle tissues becomes partially blunted. In essence, this means some tissues in the body become resistant to the effects of insulin so that insulin is not able to carry out its normal role. The body recognises that there is too much glucose in the bloodstream so the pancreas produces even more insulin to try and compensate. When your body is consistently producing high levels of insulin it is a sure indication that you are resistant to insulin, hence the term ‘Insulin Resistance’. The pancreas will ultimately become exhausted and unable to produce the insulin needed to maintain optimal glucose levels and this is when you become diabetic.

The harm Insulin Resistance does

We already touched on this in the introduction but it is worth looking at the knock-on health effects of Insulin Resistance in detail.

You may wonder why it is vital for the body to keep down glucose levels in the bloodstream. As much as we need glucose to function, glucose at too high a level leads to oxidation and this causes tissue damage. This is what happens in poorly controlled diabetes, which can lead to peripheral neuropathy, renal conditions and cataracts. Since high blood glucose is so damaging to your health, your body will do everything it can to maintain normal glucose levels. The only means the body has to do this is with insulin. As you will see, the list of health conditions associated with Insulin Resistance is long and unpleasant:

What causes Insulin Resistance?

While your genes (see chapter 11) can be a contributory cause of Insulin Resistance – there is a higher risk of Insulin Resistance amongst people of South Asian origin – generally speaking there are numerous controllable factors that cause or exacerbate Insulin Resistance. The most significant one is related to body weight, or more specifically body over-fatness, especially around the middle. This is compounded by a sedentary lifestyle and the resulting lack of muscle tissue, by ageing, stress, high blood pressure and by excess consumption of refined carbohydrates, over-processed food, saturated fat and processed vegetable fat. Interestingly, digestive health also plays an important role. Obviously, with the exception of genetic factors and ageing, many of these factors are under our control and we can take positive action. You can look at how these factors are playing a part in your health in chapter 3, with the Insulin Resistance questionnaire.

Contributory factors in Insulin Resistance