insulin resistance and obesity

by Melissa Sweitzer

Does this sound familiar?

You have been eating and exercising the same amount all your life, but suddenly around age 35, you start putting on weight in the middle of your body. You diet and exercise, but you cannot seem to lose weight.

How did this happen to me?

According to recent clinical studies, this is an indication that your body may have developed Insulin Resistance. Over 80 million adult Americans are insulin resistant. Insulin resistance is a condition that precedes the onset of Type II diabetes. Insulin resistance can occur after glycemic stress (repeated spikes in blood sugar) cause the pancreas to produce increasing levels of insulin to aid the transport of glucose from your blood to the cells of your body. When the pancreas is no longer able to produce enough insulin, blood sugars rise, and Type II diabetes is present.

How can insulin resistance affect my health?

Research has shown that the cells lining our blood vessels become constricted or inflamed when under glycemic stress. Since the smaller capillaries carry blood deep into the muscle tissue, this creates a barrier to the transport of glucose to muscle. This is an early and important event in the process of becoming insulin resistant, and also the reason that people tend to gain weight in the abdomen, where weaker barriers to glucose transport exist. In response to the difficulty of getting blood glucose to your cells, your pancreas continues to elevate the production of insulin. Continued high levels of insulin in the blood have very negative metabolic effects on your body, resulting in elevated triglyceride and LDL (“bad”) cholesterol, lower HDL or “good” cholesterol, high blood pressure, and cardiovascular disease.

But I am eating a healthy diet with only complex carbohydrates!

You have done just what you have been told. Unfortunately, the concept of simple and complex carbohydrates is not this straightforward. In 1981, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition considered the measured response of blood sugar to food ingested and came up with the Glycemic Index.

Glycemic Index and Glycemic Load and what they mean to your health

Glycemic index is the rate blood sugar will rise following the ingestion of a particular test food relative to the ingestion of a standard food (usually glucose). Glycemic load is an indication of how much ingestion of a particular food will raise your blood sugar, taking into account the number of carbohydrates in a typical serving of that food. To demonstrate the importance of understanding both of these concepts, let’s look at two foods that have similar glycemic indices, but differing carbohydrate content and therefore differing glycemic loads.

Looking at the glycemic index alone, one would conclude that macaroni or carrots would be equal in terms of your body’s response; in fact both will raise blood sugar at the same rate. However, the amount that blood sugar will rise, as indicated by the glycemic load, is much higher for macaroni than for carrots because of the higher quantity of carbohydrates in a single serving.

I believe I may be Insulin Resistant. What should I do?

The main thing one should do if they suspect they may have this problem is to begin an exercise program and avoid all highly processed carbohydrates, as these are the carbohydrates with the highest glycemic loads. Best-selling author and nutritional health expert Dr. Ray Strand has authored a very educational book on this subject titled Releasing Fat. This book is very useful in determining which foods will spike blood sugar and which are safe to eat. He also has a 15-month "Releasing Fat/Healthy for Life" program which he designed based on his clinical studies to help permanently change people’s lifestyles and improve their health through optimal diet and nutrition. Dr. Strand believes that until the underlying problem of insulin resistance is corrected, permanent weight loss is not possible.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR Melissa Sweitzer is a Certified Team Leader for the "Releasing Fat/ Healthy for Life" program created by Dr. Raymond Strand. She and her colleagues will be hosting seminars about this program free of charge starting in January. To sign up please contact Melissa at (585) 259-9680.