A lot of blood sugar enters the bloodstream. The pancreas pumps out more insulin to get blood sugar into cells. Over time, cells stop responding to all that insulin—they’ve become insulin resistant.
There are two main types of diabetes mellitus type 1 is an autoimmune condition that affects the pancreas to the point of no longer being able to make insulin and it’s usually associated with children and teenagers now type 2 diabetes mellitus that’s due to insulin resistance which is what leads to metabolic syndrome in other associated conditions like high blood
Pressure fatty liver disease and more now can you make the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes by checking your blood sugar level no mainly because it’s a single point in time and blood glucose levels fluctuate pretty dramatically and it’s a very indirect measure of the real problem of insulin resistance what about hemoglobin a1c which is a measure of hemoglobin that
Has glucose attached to it it’s essentially an indirect measure of sugar levels over a three month span the higher this number and the longer it remains high the more likely organs become damaged like eyes nerves and kidneys so when type 2 diabetes is diagnosed most people are started on oral medications or insulin injections all with the goal of lowering that
Hemoglobin a1c number so you would think that these medications are a great thing right because studies showed that they reduce imputations but on the flip side of that coin is that these medications can have really bad side effects mainly low blood sugar levels which can lead to dizziness drowsiness confusion seizures coma and sometimes death let’s put it this
Way these side effects are responsible for 100 000 er visits per year in the united states so with way more people being diagnosed with type 2 diabetes than ever before it makes way more sense to treat the underlying problem as opposed to treating the symptoms simply with medication but most people think that the problem with diabetes is the problem having too
High of blood sugar levels the blood glucose is an indirect proxy for the real villain the blood insulin level yes a high blood glucose level can cause an insulin response but most of the time most of the time blood insulin levels are not related to glucose levels now in this study they had eight groups of mice each group had an insulin receptor that was missing
In a single organ they accomplished this by means of genetic engineering by knocking out the gene that code for the insulin receptor in that specific organ insulin receptors were knocked out in the liver brain kidneys muscle fat cells brown adipose tissue vascular smooth muscle in the beta cells of the pancreas where insulin is made so eight groups in total only
The brain and the liver insulin receptor knockout mice developed high blood glucose levels only the brain insulin receptor knockout mice developed metabolic syndrome and became obese the kidney insulin receptor knockout mice had normal blood glucose levels but still developed diabetic kidney disease what how is that even possible this study was remarkable because
It showed that it’s not the high blood glucose it’s the insulin resistance that’s at the root cause of the problem well maybe you’re saying yeah but that was in mice but we know that this is actually the case in humans too for example for someone with type 1 diabetes it takes them 10 to 20 years of high glucose levels to develop diabetic kidney disease but on the
Other hand with type 2 diabetes they already have some degree of kidney disease before their blood glucose starts to rise the problem is that insulin resistance has been lurking underneath the surface so insulin it’s necessary for us to live but just like about anything else in life too much of it is a bad thing now on one hand it lowers blood glucose levels which
Helps to prevent microvascular disease now on the other hand too much insulin stimulates smooth muscle growth in the walls of the arteries in the heart and kidneys which leads to narrowing of those arteries there which means increased risk of heart attack and kidney disease in fact there’s been multiple well-conducted trials that looked at tight glucose control
You have the uk perspective diabetes the action to control cardiovascular risk and diabetes study the accord trial the veterans affair diabetes trial he also had the advanced trial in which they had very tight control of glucose levels by using insulin and they actually had to cut that study short because of the high mortality from heart disease the bottom line
Is that we need insulin to live but if we are insulin resistant adding extra insulin it lowers glucose but at the cost of contributing to chronic disease so the real issue is the insulin resistance in the first place and simply giving more insulin doesn’t fix that problem to fix the insulin resistance it comes down to exercise and more importantly what you eat the
Short answer is to eat unprocessed foods or minimally processed foods which means cutting out the added sugar because that’s what’s driving the problem in the first place
Transcribed from video
High Blood Sugar and Insulin Resistance with Doctor Mike Hansen By Doctor Mike Hansen