Insulin Resistance: WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
The key to longevity and vibrant living: INSULIN REGULATION!
When you eat anything that breaks down into sugar - sweet foods/beverages, desserts, sugar, fruit juices and carbohydrates like grains, legumes, & beans - your pancreas releases insulin. Insulin is a hormone that is responsible for soaking up the sugar (i.e. glucose) from your blood stream and delivering it to your cells for energy.
That is usually a good thing but if glucose gets too high or sticks around for too long, it can cause inflammation, tissue damage, cell death, and a whole slew of downstream consequences that can lead to diabetes, heart disease, obesity, dementia, and various other chronic diseases.
The longer your body responds to waves of high blood sugar, the more insulin it needs to direct glucose into your cells for fuel.
At a certain point, your body gets tired and simply stops listening to the insulin signal. This is called insulin resistance.
Insulin resistance is often accompanied by:
abdominal obesity
fatigue after meals
sugar cravings
high triglycerides
low HDL
high blood pressure
blood clotting problems
chronic inflammation
If you’re experiencing several of the above symptoms, you might have insulin resistance. Next time you’re at your doctor’s office, ask them to order a “fasting insulin” level. It can help detect the early signs that your body is not able to manage sugar optimally. This is usually due to consuming too much sugar, having too much stress, insufficient pancreatic function, or a combination of all three. Regardless, it’s important to address because it leads to type 2 diabetes when left untreated.
More Specifics About A Fasting Insulin Test
Fasting insulin is a measure of your insulin levels unaffected by a recent meal. It detects insulin resistance long before a fasting blood glucose test does. If it catches insulin resistance early, then you can still reverse metabolic dysfunction using personalized nutrition, diet, and lifestyle interventions. Metabolic health experts agree that fasting insulin in healthy individuals should be between 2-5 mIU/mL. Anything above 10mIU/mL is concerning and anything over 15mIU/mL is significantly elevated. The “standard” reference range is anything below 25mIU/mL. That’s a big range!!!
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So, if your blood sugar levels and Hgb A1c are “borderline high” or “okay”, consider having your PCP run a fasting insulin level to see if you truly are becoming insulin resistant. Anything over the level of 5 should be of concern.
In health and a whole bunch of happiness,
We’d love to be a part of your wellness journey!
The Shore Integrative Health Team
(443) 339-9713
kristin@shoreintegrativehealth.com
508 Idlewild Avenue, Unit 5
Easton, MD 21601
Written by Virginia Conner, PA-C