Too much insulin or Too many calories

Our genetics play a role in how our bodies use food. Our bodies break down most of the calories we eat - from carbs, protein and fat into glucose (a sugar) which gives energy to our cells. The bad news is that there are many people whose bodies are very sensitive to glucose levels and their bodies develop something called insulin resistance to protect their cells from getting too much glucose in them. Their bodies produce more and more insulin to try to get the glucose into the cells. People who are insulin resistant are hungry because the glucose can't get into the cells and they have high levels of insulin floating around. So they eat more. Meanwhile, their bodies put those excess glucose calories into storage - fat in our stomachs and livers. People who don't have insulin resistance can still store some of the extra calories in the muscle cells and liver as glycogen not fat. Since the glucose levels are high, the body thinks it has to produce more insulin and the more insulin causes more glucose to be stored as fat. It becomes a viscous cycle!

The problem in this is that too much glucose in your blood can cause damage to your kidneys, eyes and nerves and can also damage or destroy the cells in your pancreas that make insulin. Too much insulin can cause inflammation which can damage our hearts and blood vessels and can cause increased blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks. Type 2 or adult onset diabetes is diagnosed when your body can no longer produce enough insulin to keep your blood sugars in the normal range (70-110). This is most often the result of the body having to produce too much insulin to try to overcome the insulin resistance and damage to the pancreas cells from too much glucose in the blood when the insulin isn't effective in getting the glucose into the cells.

If you have family members who have been diagnosed with type 2 diabetes, or if you are overweight, there is a good chance that you could have insulin resistance. (Estimates are that 1 in 4 Americans are insulin resistant.) If you wait to be diagnosed with diabetes to change how you eat, you will already have lost 60 to 80 percent of your bodies ability to produce insulin and will most likely need medications to help you control your blood sugars so that you can reduce the damage your body. Plus you probably will also need medications to treat high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels that can be a result of this problem!

The good news is that by making wise food choices now, and being physically active we can actually decrease our insulin resistance. We can protect the cells in our pancreas so that we have enough of our own insulin to help us process glucose properly without having to rely on oral medications or injecting insulin.

There are many good places you can go to get information on making wise food choices. I like the ideas of Mark Hyman M.D. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/5-steps-to-reversing-type_b_263424.html but caution you that he will regularly try to sell you something. Many insurance plans will pay for you to visit with a dietitian. Make sure the key message you hear is that you need to carefully keep track of the calories that you get from carbohydrates and that the carbohydrates that you do eat should be good sources of fiber and not overly processed - a blog idea for another day.