9 Steps to Finally Heal from Insulin Resistance

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“The CDC reports that as many as 80 million Americans were insulin-resistant, and most don’t pay attention to insulin resistance being a precursor to diabetes.”(1) Insulin resistance can affect all organs in the body including the skin. Making simple changes in your life may help you feel better and encourage healing from within. Simple bite size changes include:

1-In the morning our body needs quick energy adrenal energy and dumps the sugar  into the muscles and mobilize keen mental energy, increase blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing.  This is why we eat a balanced breakfast within one hour after rising.

What to do in the morning. Never skip breakfast. Foods feed your body, brain and moods. Make excellent choices in foods for good moods and balanced blood sugar levels. For instance: breakfast is not coffee, a bagel and cream cheese or a processed cereal. Wheat and gluten products spike blood sugar levels just like refined sugar. Suggestions for eating a balanced breakfast includes: organic green smoothies or homemade organic oat groats with almond butter. Ditch the caffeine. Caffeine may increase insulin resistance because it increases cravings for sugar.

Note: To make matters worse, a positive association was found between depressive disorders and insulin resistance.(2)

 

2- “Inflammation is linked to insulin resistance.(3) This affects, muscles, liver and fat tissue. Insulin resistance is associated with obesity and metabolic syndrome.”

What to do now. Take a path to make simple changes to be well and relieve inflammation. Choose an anti-inflammatory diet. This includes eating more whole foods from Mother Nature’s Table and drinking more pure clean water. According to Journal of Human Nutrition, “those eating less plant-based foods were found to have higher levels of oxidative stress and inflammation in their bodies. Find a way to add exercise to your day and create better sleep habits at night. When we take time to include healthy habits, obesity will be a thing of the past.

 

3- Cortisol protects the body from adrenal fatigue.(4) Recurrent infections, low energy, constipation, hypoglycemia, and depression often indicate adrenal fatigue. As adrenal fatigue progresses, blood glucose levels are disrupted. The body responds to hypoglycemia by causing the person to crave anything that will rapidly raise blood sugar levels such as a soda, a candy bar, orange juice, chips, a cup of coffee or even cigarettes.

Lets look at what causes disrupted cortisol levels? Stress and emotions such as anger, guilt and fear, poor oral health, malabsorption, poor digestion and insomnia are just a few.

What to do now. There is a mind/body connection. Take time out. Be kind to yourself. Build healthy gut microbiome and delete junk foods. Drink more hot water with fresh ginger, fresh lemon and organic raw honey for infection. Purchase Dr. Lam’s ‘Adrenal Fatigue’ cookbook.(5)

 

4- When adrenals are stressed our body shuts down repair of tissues, growth, and the immune system, disrupting digestion.  Over time, this can increase gut inflammation, heart disease, high blood sugar disorders, and aging.  There may be an increase risk for ulcers, poor brain function, and lost libido.

If we are frequently acting in short term survival mode, there’s no time for thinking long term, it’s right now, put the fire out, get away, or move on.

What to do now. Take time out for self care. Exercise at least 3 days a week. Learn how to meditate.  Find healthy ways to release stress.

 

5- Insulin Resistance interferes with absorption of cholesterol. (6)   Our adrenal hormones are made from cholesterol, so we may find that it’s hard to keep our cholesterol in balance under stress. Why? Because the body needs this raw material to make more hormones, especially under stress. Our brain, hormones and liver need cholesterol. We can’t live without it.

Cutting our dietary cholesterol is not the point. Restricting cholesterol can starve the adrenals. The result is poor adrenal function and poor cholesterol levels.

What to do now. The secret is to cut the sugar and all trans-fats, (7)  including fried foods, chips, margarine and junk foods that are causing disrupted cholesterol levels. This step can be more important than you think, because junk foods are directly related to insulin resistance and diabetes.

 

6- Antibiotics can increase risk for disrupted microbiome, diabetes (8) and candida. Antibiotics risk include an overgrowth in candida in the digestive tract, which kills off good gut bacteria, leaving the intestinal walls exposed, which then allows fungus to eat its way through the intestinal lining and get into the bloodstream. Diabetes, insulin resistance and candida are also blamed on an abundance of refined sugars, HFCS, gluten, and alcohol. Diet and an abundance of antibiotics in our water, foods, soil and environment can snowball into Leaky Gut Syndrome.

What to do instead. Treat your gut bacteria right. Ditch the processed foods, dairy and gluten products. Store bought yogurt is not a probiotic rich food. Store bought yogurt usually contains sugar and is a pasteurized dead food. Fermented foods are the real probiotics. Purchase raw fermented organic sauerkraut and fermented raw organic Kombucha drinks, or make your own. Eat foods that are alive. Include more organic green veggies and berries.

 

7- Metabolic Syndrome and insulin resistance are associated with elevated serum CRP. (9)  “Researchers in Denmark began by noting that dietary glycemic load has been associated with elevated C-reactive protein. CRP is an inflammation marker that plays a key role in the development of Cardiovascular Disease.”

What you can do now.  Avoid a sedentary lifestyle, toxins and stimulants that can be linked to a fatty liver. These include sugar, alcohol, nicotine, excitotoxins (MSG, Aspartame, Fluoride), synthetic vitamins, diet pills, and over the counter drugs.  These items deplete vitamins (especially B vitamins) and minerals particularly potassium and magnesium.

Note: Artificial Sweeteners increase glucose intolerance.(10) Aspartame is an excitotoxin (used as a sugar substitute) may trigger an irregular heart rhythm, and interacts with cardiac medication. Over the years studies have pointed to the fact that aspartame damages the cardiac conduction system and is linked to diabetes and brain disruption.

 

8- Aspirin causes tissue insensitivity to insulin.(11) For people who use various forms of aspirin, such as Bayer™ and Advil, they are risking their health for short term pain relief. Yes, you may obtain the illusion of pain relief, but do you know how the various aspirins work against pain? ANSWER: By deadening our nerves! Long term aspirin use is sure to disrupt the digestive system, liver and nervous system risking certain central nervous system disorders such as, Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, and even Stroke.

What you can do now. Stop self-medicating. Read labels on the many side-effects of OTC medications.

 

9- Question Metformin, Statins and SSRI’s. Metformin is now being prescribed to cancer patients to lower their blood glucose levels. Metformin is marketed as a diabetic medication with side-effects that include lactic acidosis, decreased vitamin B 12 levels, difficulty in urination and coma.

Chronic use of statins induce insulin resistance and diabetes plus have side effects that include heart disease and weight gain.(12)

SSRI’s/ Antidepressants interrupts metabolism, gut microbiome and can increase risk of obesity.

What you can do now. Add spices such as fenugreek, turmeric and garlic to your daily habits.

“A 2009 study published in the journal Biochemistry and Biophysical Research Community explored how (TURMERIC) curcumin might be valuable in treating diabetes, finding that it activates AMPK (which increases glucose uptake) and suppresses gluconeogenic gene expression  (which suppresses glucose production in the liver) in hepatoma cells. Interestingly, they found curcumin to be 500 times to 100,000 times (in the form known as tetrahydrocurcuminoids (THC)) more potent than metformin in activating AMPK and its downstream target acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC).”

Fenugreek is recommended for lowering blood sugar.(13)

Garlic is recommended for lowering blood sugar.(14)

 

Let’s Recap

Stress by many designs equals Metabolic Imbalances. (disrupted glucose regulation) “Research published in 1998 in the journal Diabetes reported that nearly two-thirds of the test subjects who were insulin resistant also had other health issues including high blood pressure.” This crucial connection between insulin resistance, cancer, poor gut microbiome, Alzheimer’s, diabetes, hypertension and adrenal fatigue is yet another example of how wide-ranging the debilitating effects of high insulin, leptin and blood glucose levels really are. It may be time to make time for change.

Connie Rogers is a Certified Integrative Nutritional Health Coach and Published Author of Path to a Healthy Mind & Body

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Footnotes:

1- http://www.encyclopedia.com/medicine/diseases-and-conditions/pathology/insulin-resistance

2- http://care.diabetesjournals.org/content/33/5/1128.full.pdf

3- https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ije/2015/508409/

4- https://www.drlam.com/articles/adrenal_fatigue.asp

5- http://www.afscookbook.com

6- http://www.jlr.org/content/45/3/507.full.pdf

7- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19032965

8- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4596043/

9- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16493453

10- http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v514/n7521/full/nature13793.html

11- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/6355137/

12- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4561915/

13-  http://www.diabetes.co.uk/natural-therapies/fenugreek.html

14-  http://www.advances.umed.wroc.pl/pdf/2012/21/6/705.pdf

Connie Rogers
Connie Rogers is a Certified Integrative Nutritional Holistic Health Coach, Published Author, Certified Skin Health Educator for 40 years, Expert in non-pharmaceutical applications to chronic illnesses for endocrine, metabolic, and skin health.

Connie believes health and wellness are established with proper nutrition, fitness, and mindfulness. Connie takes a natural and holistic, common sense approach to rebuilding well-being from the ground up. As she works with each client, together they open a door that empowers them to rewrite their life, one bite size step at a time!