Why? Part 3 - Insulin resitance.

To totally understand this post you will need to check out Why? Part 1 and Why? Part 2 (even regular readers would benefit from a quick recap). Now we move on to the next major catastrophe that your previous diet was causing; Insulin Resistance.

Remember, when we eat carbohydrates (regardless of the type of carbohydrate) they are eventually converted to glucose, a simple sugar, either directly in the gut or after a brief visit to the liver. That means all the bread, pasta, cereal, potatoes, rice, beer, fruit, lollies, sauces and every other carbohydrate source you can think of eventually winds up as glucose. You have all heard of people having to get their blood sugar level checked. Well that is a measure of how much glucose they have in their blood stream. Too much glucose in the blood stream is toxic, so your body (actually to be specific, it's your pancrease) releases the hormone Insulin to transport the glucose to your liver and muscle cells to be stored as glycogen. This Glycogen can then be used as a fuel source for aerobic exercise.


So far, so good. But here is where we begin to run into our first problems. Once those muscle and liver cells are full, we still have to deal with any excess glucose. Your body does this by storing it as adipose tissue. Adipose tissue is a fancy way of saying EXCESS BODY FAT! This was an ideal situation back in the days of our Paleolithic ancestors. They would gorge themselves on Carbohydrates (and any other type of food they could get their hands on) while they were in season and that would allow them to fatten up for the inevitable famine that would come their way in Winter. However, it is not so good for us in the 21st Century as we are always stuck in the feast, we never reach the famine part of the cycle.

Today we can get our hands on Carbohydrate rich sources of food or drink at will. Condider that for most people, a normal day looks something like this:


Breakfast:
Cereal with Milk
Toast
Orange Juice

Lunch:
Salad Sandwich
Softdrink

Dinner:
Stir fry with sauce
Rice
Beer

Dessert:
Apple Pie

Now consider the fact that all of the bold selections are carbohydrate rich foods. Can you see a problem here?

Every cell in the body has insulin receptors on it. When we eat too many carbohydrates, the pancreas continues to pump out insulin, but if the liver and muscle cells are already filled with glycogen, those cells start to become resistant insulin. The insulin receptor sites have begun to 'down regulate'. (Robb Wolf has a great example of resistance: Have you ever walked in to a room and smelt some reaally strong perfume. If you stay in the room for long enough you stop noticing the smell. Your senses have down regulated or become resistant to the smell. If you leave the room for a while and then come back again you will be able to smell it again as your receptors have had time away from the smell to reset.)

If the Glucose can't be stored in the liver or muscles, it is stuck in the bloodstream.  Your body senses that there is too much glucose in the blood, so it gets the pancrease to pump out some more insulin. As excess insulin is also toxic, the Insulin receptors on the cells become even more resistant.  Eventually, all that Insulin rushes the Glucose to your Adipose tissue cells causing them to increase and you to become more FAT.

As you continue to eat Carbohydrates things get worse and worse. How bad can they get? Here is a list from Mark Sisson over at Mark's Daily Apple:

1) The levels of blood glucose stay higher longer because the glucose can’t make it into the muscle cells. This toxic glucose is like sludge in the bloodstream clogging arteries, binding with proteins to form harmful AGEs (advanced glycated end-products) and causing systemic inflammation. Some of this excess glucose contributes to a rise in triglycerides, increasing risk for heart disease.

2) More sugar gets stored as fat. Since the muscle cells are getting less glycogen (because they are resistant), and since insulin inhibits the fat-burning enzyme lipase, now you can’t even burn stored fat as easily. You continue to get fatter until eventually those fat cells become resistant themselves.

3) It just gets better. Levels of insulin stay higher longer because the pancreas thinks “if a little is not working, more would be better.” Wrong. Insulin is itself very toxic at high levels, causing, among many other maladies, plaque build-up in the arteries (which is why diabetics have so much heart disease) and increasing cellular proliferation in cancers.

4) Just as insulin resistance prevents sugar from entering muscle cells, it also prevents amino acids from entering. So now you can’t build or maintain your muscles. To make matters worse, other parts of your body think there’s not enough stored sugar in the cells, so they send signals to start to cannibalizing your precious muscle tissue to make more – you guessed it – sugar! You get fatter and you lose muscle. Woo hoo!

5) Your energy level drops, which makes you hungry for more carbohydrates and less willing to exercise. You actually crave more of the poison that is killing you.

6) When your liver becomes insulin resistant, it can’t convert thyroid hormone T4 into the T3, so you get those mysterious and stubborn “thyroid problems”, which further slow your metabolism.

7) You can develop neuropathies (nerve damage) and pain in the extremities, as the damage from the excess sugar destroys nerve tissue, and you can develop retinopathy and begin to lose your eyesight. Fun.

Eventually, the pancreas is so darn exhausted, it can’t produce any more insulin and you wind up having to inject insulin to stay alive. Lots of it, since you are resistant. Congratulations, you have graduated from Type 2 to Type 1 diabetes.

So in summary. If you cut out all of the rubbish in your diet and eat like your Paleolithic Ancestors you will be avoiding the following:

• Inflammation
• Higher Triglycerides
• Heart Disease
• Excess Bodyfat
• Some typess of Cancer
• Decreased muscle mass
• Decreased Energy levels
• Decreased Thyroid function
• Nerve Damage
• Loss of Eyesight
• Type I and Type II diabetes.

It's a bit of a no brainer really isn't it!