I don't think it's possible to talk about insulin, glucose, or diabetes without thinking of Wilford Brimley.
One of the readers of EMF and a good friend of mine recently asked me to do a post on insulin. He told me that he was really interested in the subject and wanted to find out as much as he could about it in relation to his diet. I started doing some reading to refresh my memory, and that was when I realized that you can't talk about insulin without talking about carbohydrates and sugars as well. (It's a packaged deal, you see.) I hope I give him the answers he was looking for.
Let's look at the big picture first. Everything we eat is fuel for our bodies. If we don't use it right away (most of the time we don't need to), then we store it for later or flush it out of our system.
Any type of carbohydrate you eat (breads, pastas, cereals, grains, fruits, and sweets) will be broken down into one of those forms of fuel called glucose. Glucose is a simple form of sugar. If the glucose is not burned up right away, then the pancreas creates insulin to combine with the glucose and helps the liver and the muscles find a way to store it in the form of glycogen.
Once all of the cells being filled with glycogen get full, they have to be turned into something else. Anyone want to take a guess as to what it is that they convert to?
(Insert the voice of the teacher in Ferris Bueller's Day Off) Anyone? Anyone?
Saturated fat. That's how the Twinkie and the the Tootsie Roll you ate yesterday are making you fat today.
Sometimes, the pancreas can't handle the load of insulin needed by the body and isn't able to make enough. This is called Type 1 Diabetes. It's also known as Juvenile Diabetes, but don't be fooled by the name. Many adults can get this for of diabetes.
In other, many more common cases, the glucose created by the body is insulin resistant. It doesn't bond with the insulin much or at all. This is commonly known as Type 2 Diabetes. Type 2 Diabetes is the one of the most common diseases in the world, and with most people it is incurable.
The problem with both of these diseases is that high levels of blood glucose are poisonous to our bodies. This can lead to the onset of strokes or heart attacks that can sometimes have deadly results.
There is also a third problem that can sometimes rise called Hypoglycemia. This is commonly caused when the body gets (or makes) too much insulin, is starved, or under the influence of alcohols or poisons. Hypoglycemia can usually be fixed by having the person affected eat something with complex carbohydrates.
The root of all these problems seems to be carbohydrates. However, we will be told by doctors, nutritionists, health teachers, and the government that the problem is not with the carbs, but with our own bodies. Doesn't it seem simple enough that we could cut out the problem of our bodies being overloaded on glucose and glycogen if we narrowed out the carbs we were getting?
Would it surprise you to hear that our hunter-gatherer ancestors like the cavemen ate an average of 80 grams of carbohydrates a day? Did you know that the average person eats between 250-300 carbohydrates daily now? It's no wonder that Diabetes is becoming an epidemic.
Mark Sisson, of Marksdailyapple.com, suggests that we try to consume anywhere between 100 to 150 grams of carbohydrates daily to maintain our current weight, although this number can fluctuate with our weight. He also says that if we eat between 50 and 100 grams of carbohydrates daily, that we hit a "carbohydrate sweet spot" for losing weight. He states that with a controlled carbohydrate diet and regular exercise, we could possibly lose up to two pounds a week!
This was how all of those people back in the 1990's and early part of the 2000's lost all of those pounds on the Atkins Diet. They learned that through controlling their carbohydrate intake, they could regulate their weight gains and losses.
And for those of you that said that the Atkins Diet was dangerous, those people are still alive today.
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