Gettit #1: It’s not your willpower. It’s your insulin that’s out of control! Insulin disruption is epidemic .
OK, before I start on my insulin rant, you’d have every right to accuse me of being hypocritical. “Why, Phil, did you condemn diet marketers and supplement sellers for indicting carbs and cortisol when you’re about to indict insulin?” With all due respect, let me explain. Insulin is not the cause as much as the effect, or at least, an intermediary, but a failure to understand what the 21st century has done to human insulin levels will leave you limited in your ability to find optimal health and fitness.
You likely know insulin as “the thing diabetics inject.” It is. It’s a “storage hormone” that removes excess glucose (sugar) from the bloodstream and stores it as fuel in the muscles and the liver. Insulin-controlled diabetics are managing their blood sugar exogenously (using something outside of the body to drive something inside the body) because something internal is malfunctioning.
We’ve always had a segment of our population suffering pancreas pathology, the pancreas being the gland that manufactures insulin, but never before have we had an epidemic of what is now referred to as “type 2 diabetes.”
“Type 1” is the diabetic disease we’ve known for years. The pancreas is broken and exogenous insulin keeps blood sugar in check. Type 2 is newer. In fact, it used to be called “adult onset diabetes.” It is a lifestyle disease. In other words, in the great majority of cases, it is self-induced, and it used to take 20, 30, or 40 years of poor nutrition and inactivity to create this condition. Today, nutrition has changed so radically (not in a good way) insulin compromise is showing up in 10 and 12 year olds, thus the shift from “Adult Onset” to Type 2.
When insulin is disrupted, the body has a difficult time efficiently managing fuel and fat loss ability is compromised. The simplest way to explain what is going on epidemically is . . . the American pancreas is confused and the damage trickles downward! High carb intake, then low carb intake, then dieting, then sugar binging, and the erratic or continued ingestion of refined, bleached, and processed carbohydrates lead to blood sugar eruptions and drops, and the pancreas tries desperately to keep up. It begins going often into “insulin dominance” but the receptor sites at the cellular level become lazy or blocked. In other words, insulin is present, but isn’t doing its job, and blood sugar gets higher, and higher, and higher as the endogenous control is weakened.
If you’ve been on 10 or 12 diets in your life, if you’ve been diagnosed with “elevated blood glucose,” if there are dramatic differences in your energy between 10 AM and 3 PM, if you’re fighting or indulging sugar cravings every evening, if you’re storing more fat than you used to, and if you go through any sugar binges, it’s quite likely you’re a statistic.
Now the good news. Fix insulin (I’ve found, simply from my own experience in taking clients through my A.L.I.V.E. protocol most Type 2 cases to be fixable without medication) and you do wonders to fix metabolism! The pancreas wants for consistency. It wants a steady and slow release of glucose from nutrient complete meals. It doesn’t want simple sugars, it wants thermic meals, meals that ask the body to work in the act of digestion, allowing proteins to break down gradually into building blocks of cells, and maintaining a blood glucose constant as it gradually stores fuel for the near future. Eating frequently is vital, as is reducing refined carbohydrate intake and simple sugar intake, but so too is ensuring adequate protein, balanced meals, and a daily exercise “spike” and “recover” so the body becomes efficient at “storing” and “releasing” fuel as you need it. Of course, this plays into the Synergy I’ve always touted as ”what works,” the right nutrition (eating, not starving), moderate aerobic exercise (you’ll find later how moderate it’s become), and a concern for muscle. If any piece of the Synergy is absent, you’re going to wind up frustrated, but if you learn to make all three pieces a habitual part of the life you enjoy, your pancreas will thank you in many ways, and your mirror will reflect the gratitude.
Click here for Gettit #2 or download the entire piece as a pdf