New information on insulin resistance....

Today's Post: Thursday, 9-17-2009

In much the same way that too many fires for the available fire fighters to put out will make the fire fighters look inefficient, the main cause of insulin resistance is to cause so many more and so much stronger blood sugar surges than your body is programmed to overcome will make its insulin seem ineffective and your blood sugar will rise above desirable and health OK levels.

Our immediate ancestors that optimized and set our body’s digestion genetics tended to eat less than 3 teaspoons of sugar a day. They virtually always got that in fresh fruit that included some fiber that slowed the entry of that sugar into their blood. And, they all got lots of daily exercise. They had no TV and ate no free sugars other than honey on rare occasions. They ate no artificial sweeteners or refined grains.

So insulin resistance was extremely rare if it happened at all.

The American Heart Association just published data showing that the average adult American eats 22 teaspoons of sugar a day and the average school aged child or young person eats 34!

(The largest source of this excess sugar is drinking regular soft drinks, they found.)

That doesn’t even include the massive increases in eating refined grain foods and lack of exercise.

(See our last post for Tuesday this week for ways to avoid these blood pressure surges. The two most important recommendations in it were to NOT drink soft drinks and to get regular exercise.)

But in addition to simply being swamped, insulin apparently also becomes less effective in other ways if the system is overloaded like this.

This insulin resistance results in excessively high levels of blood sugar that cause health problems which is diagnosed as type 2 diabetes if it gets too extreme. It also causes an excessive insulin level that begins to cause you to gain excess bodyfat. So it would be great to get additional ways to reverse prevent insulin resistance.

Yesterday, Health Day online news published a study that indicates that excessive saturated fat from fatty, grain fed beef and dairy fat also tends to cause or worsen insulin resistance.

In addition, that study found that this excessive intake of that kind of saturated fat causes leptin resistance. Since normally when you eat enough, leptin is released and that reduces your appetite enough you stop eating, that means that this excessive intake of that kind of saturated fat makes you fat in two ways! It causes you to overeat. And it increases your body’s tendency to store the energy in the food you eat as fat. Ouch!

How do you use this information to lower your insulin resistance and avoid being or becoming fat?

Eat meat up to two or three times a week instead of two or three times a day. Only eat meat from animals fed only grass or eat something else. Or, eat the leanest most fat trimmed meat you can and don’t eat as much of it or as large a serving when you do eat it.

Use extra virgin olive oil instead of butter almost all the time.

If you eat cheese, eat it far less often in small servings and usually eat it with foods that have lots of fiber to muffle its effects. Some feta or blue cheese in small chunks in a salad a few times a week is one way to do that.

Eat skinless poultry, eggs, nuts, wild caught fish, some seafood, beans and lentils, and perhaps take whey or egg based protein supplements for most of your protein. Also eat very lowfat dairy products.

When you use dairy products use lowfat, very lowfat or 1% lowfat, or nonfat dairy products. Most nonfat and very lowfat cheese tastes dreadful and tends to stick to your teeth. So with cheese eat smaller portions less often mostly. But 1% lowfat milk and nonfat, plain yogurt aren’t bad.

And, since this response may be mediated by this excess saturated fat increasing your LDL cholesterol, it may also help to take sterol supplements such as beta sitosterol and up to 600 to 900 mg a day of niacin, taking 300 mg after a meal two or three times a day.

Eating foods high in soluble fiber such as apples, beans and lentils, and “Old Fashioned” rolled oat oatmeal or steel cut oatmeal can also help.

And, to come full circle, we also know that not eating refined grains and very little sugar also tends to lower LDL and increase HDL.

Lastly, note that one of the health risks from the excessive increase in blood sugar that insulin resistance causes is that it damages your blood vessels and makes heart disease and heart attacks much more likely. Since the methods to lower insulin resistance also protect your heart, that makes doing them twice as valuable.

Important Fat Loss News....

Today's post: Monday, 4-20-2009

Insulin resistance increases your blood levels of insulin. And that tends to cause you to gain fat and belly fat.

Insulin resistance, when it gets worse as it often tends to do, harms your health by elevating your blood sugar enough to cause capillary and immune system damage and can then be very hard to get rid of as it causes type 2 diabetes.

We’ve often posted that regular progressive strength training and regular interval cardio each turn down insulin resistance. And if you do them every week and keep doing them, they can often turn it off.

Consuming lots of junk foods, soft drinks, commercial desserts, candy, and refined grain foods tends to cause insulin resistance or make it far worse.

That is becoming better known fortunately. But many people are just learning this or don’t yet exercise or haven’t stopped eating and drinking the things that cause insulin resistance or cut back on them enough yet.

What if there was an inexpensive supplement that would also improve insulin resistance and a kind of food already known to make fat loss easier ALSO turned down insulin resistance directly and increased fat loss in two ways we didn’t realized it did before?

Given the number of people that could help (and how important that is to help keep good health for people who are just getting into protecting their health) that is front page news.

That news exists and is real as I just discovered over the weekend by reading the Saturday, Early to Rise email.

So, here’s that article.:

"This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, a free newsletter dedicated to making money, improving health and secrets to success. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com ."

"Big Health News Flew Under the Radar

By James B. LaValle

I read a study recently that could be some of the most important health news I've seen in a long time, especially for you "apple" shapes out there. Yet there have been no headlines - at least not yet.

The study - published in the Journal of Nutrition - found that taking in plenty of non-starchy vegetables and more magnesium helped increase the production of adiponectin, a hormone found in fat cells. The researchers were careful to look for any other factors that could have affected the results, but found none.

Adiponectin increases the effectiveness of insulin. In other words, it helps your cells absorb glucose. If you have plenty of adiponectin, your insulin production is lower, your blood sugar is better controlled... and that adds up to a lower risk of diabetes and heart disease. But it may also mean you would have a much easier time controlling your weight.

Unfortunately, when we gain weight - especially in the waist or belly - adiponectin production goes down. (This is one reason belly fat is so harmful for your health.) And, indeed, the researchers found that the higher the subject's adiponectin level, the lower the subject's weight. The lower the adiponectin, the higher the weight.

So the big news is that simply by increasing your intake of non-starchy vegetables and supplementing with magnesium, you can increase a hormone that will help you lose that belly fat and decrease your insulin resistance.

Reduce your intake of starchy carbs - especially refined flours and sugars. And eat eight to 10 servings of non-starchy vegetables every day. Non-starchy vegetables are very low in carb grams and calories. They are nutrient-dense foods - loaded with antioxidants, vitamins and minerals, and other beneficial phytochemicals in a very low-sugar, high-fiber package.

A little extra magnesium helps too. The best food sources are nuts, seeds, and beans. However, I recommend taking in at least an extra 300 mg per day, especially if you show any signs of being low in magnesium (e.g., tense and tight muscles, constipation, or restless leg syndrome). The best forms are magnesium malate or amino acid chelates like magnesium glycinate or magnesium taurate. "

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Other forms of magnesium in supplements that are well absorbed are magnesium citrate and magnesium asporotate. If you don’t take milk of magnesia or other magnesium containing laxatives (since doing that plus taking magnesium supplements can overdose you), taking 200, 400, or 600 grams of magnesium each day plus eating foods high in it tends to prevent constipation and lower or helps prevent high blood pressure also.

In addition, one of the several ways to lose fat without going hungry is to eat a wide variety of nonstarchy or green vegetables each day.

You get great nutrition without significant calories by eating enough vegetables. By eating some health OK protein and fats and some spices and eating enough vegetables, the fiber and nutrition in the vegetables keeps you feeling full and your hunger turned down to manageable levels.

To find out that getting enough magnesium and eating enough vegetables also turns off insulin resistance, lowers excessive insulin, and directly shuts off the fat gaining process by doing so, is incredibly good news.