Insulin Resistance Syndrome - Why you don't lose weight.

If you have tried low-fat or reduced calorie diets with little result, it is strongly likely that you are insulin resistant.

A disruption in blood sugar metabolism, known as insulin resistance syndrome, metabolic syndrome, and dysglycemia, is primarily caused by diet. It is a common cause of carbohydrate cravings, obesity, fatigue, hypoglycemia, high blood pressure, prediabetes and Type 2 (adult-onset diabetes) and polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS). Much research further indicates that such health concerns as cancer, stroke, and heart disease are strongly related to dysglycemia.

Understanding Insulin

Insulin is a hormone produced in your pancreas that communicates with every cell in your body.  When sugar (glucose) is present in your blood, insulin "tells" your cells to use it for energy.  When we eat a carbohydrate-heavy diet, containing loads of bread and pasta and rice and fruit and potatoes and soft drinks and juice and donuts and cookies and candy, our pancreas churns out insulin to help eliminate all that resulting glucose from our blood.  And our cells are then not just being "talked to" by insulin, but being "screamed at" by insulin.  And the more insulin screams, the less our cells "listen."  Our cells become insulin resistant.  And this results in sugar remaining in our blood, increasing our blood glucose level.  This increased level causes our pancreas to send out more insulin.  Insulin screams louder.  Our cells become more deaf to insulin.  Our blood glucose rises...  you get the picture.

Characteristics that may mean you are Insulin Resistant:

(Not all symptoms found in all Insulin Resistant people.)

1. Brain fogginess and inability to focus.
2. High blood sugar. (Dr. Rosedale suggest that a fasting blood glucose of more than 80 is too high.)
3. Intestinal bloating - most intestinal gas is produced from carbohydrates in the diet.
4. Sleepiness, especially after meals.
5. Weight gain, fat storage, and difficulty losing weight - excess blood glucose is always stored as FAT.
6. Increased blood triglyceride levels - which is simply carbs we ate and can't burn for energy, being stored as FAT.
7. Increased blood pressure. One of insulin's effects is to control arterial wall tension throughout the body.  When our cells can't "hear" insulin, high blood pressure may result.  Also, high insulin levels cause higher salt in our cells, and water retention (swelling).
8. Increased inflammation in the body.
9. Depression. Due to the deranged metabolism resulting from insulin resistance, psychological effects, including depression, are common.
10. Increased hunger.  Carbohydrate craving and binges.

Insulin resistance causes weight gain, and frequently, elevated cholesterol and triglyceride levels, with lowered HDL cholesterol levels, and hypoglycemic episodes (causing shakiness and anxiety if food isn't consumed frequently enough).

According to health experts, elevated triglycerides is a good indication of insulin resistance. If your triglyceride to HDL ratio is greater than 3, you probably have insulin resistance. For example, if your triglycerides are 172 and your HDL cholesterol is 50, your triglyceride to HDL ratio is 172 divided by 50 which equals 3.4 – which would indicate insulin resistance.

As long as you keep your carbohydrate intake high, which keeps your insulin level high, your body will be unable to burn off excess fat, and will, in fact, store excess sugar as fat, while your liver sends the signal to your fat stores to “stay in place.” Your body is simply defending itself against high blood glucose (high blood sugar). And the more insulin resistant you become, the more difficult it will be for your body to get rid of excess sugar, the more it will store as fat...and the vicious cycle leads to further weight gain, greater cravings, and disease of all sorts. 

A few markers of insulin resistance syndrome:

• Elevated waist circumference: Men - greater than 40 inches  Women - greater than 35 inches
• Elevated triglycerides: Equal to or greater than 150 mg/dL
• Reduced HDL (good) cholesterol: Men - Less than 40 mg/dL  Women - Less than 50mg/dL
• Elevated blood pressure: Equal to or greater than 130/85 or using hypertension medication
• Elevated fasting glucose: Equal to or greater than 100 mg/dL or use of medication for hyperglycemia.

In other words:  Insulin Resistance Syndrome, sometimes called Metabolic Syndrome, is a pretty straight path to diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer's, cancer, or just about any other age-related disease you can name.

And, most importantly of all, you aren't stuck with being Insulin Resistant. It can be REVERSED. (And so can Type 2 diabetes.)

Dr. Rosedale's Diet, followed carefully, promises to reverse insulin resistance.  By restricting consumption of carbohydrates, whether they be so-called "complex" carbohydrates, or simple sugar, you can awake from this metabolic nightmare.  Interestingly, even full blown Type 2, or Adult Onset Diabetes, can be reversed.  But you will have to quit eating carbohydrates, except for those found in fibrous vegetables.  Most doctors don't think you will do that, so they don't even tell you that you could heal yourself of insulin resistance or of diabetes.  They think the only way they can keep you alive a little longer is to medicate you.  Their typical approach to insulin resistance and diabetes is to stimulate your already stressed pancreas to produce more insulin, or they actually administer more insulin to you.  This only serves to increase your insulin resistance.  And, typically, your weight.  But since doctors don't expect that you will decide to make this positive change in your diet in order to be healthier and live longer, they don't even tell you that you could.

Dr. Rosedale's approach is to be straightforward with information, carefully explaining how your metabolism works and what has gone wrong, then expecting that you will want to do something about your own health, he lays out a plan for eating those foods that will reverse the effects of the diet you have been eating heretofore.  If your pretty sure that you are headed down the insulin resistant path, or if you've been diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes, and you want to be well, be healthy, lose weight, have energy, live longer, and watch your children and grand children and great grands grow up, then it is completely up to you.  Nobody, not your doctor, not your best friend, not your mom, not your spouse, not your pastor, not your anybody can do this for you.  You have to make a positive choice to make a positive difference in your health.  Take control, rather than just floating along in the current of the Carb River, placidly tubing toward a giant waterfall of disease.