Insulin (2)

Weight Loss: Insulin (2)
Video class with Jon Gabriel

 

Join Jon Gabriel as he talks about:

• Insulin, blood sugar and Type-2 diabetes
• What happens when your body becomes insulin resistant
• How to balance your blood sugar levels

OR

Read The Lecture Transcripts Here

So that eventually if your body pumps out enough insulin your cells will listen to it and your sugar levels will go back down. So when your fat programs are on and you get this condition called insulin resistance and the cells in your body stop listening to insulin, it takes much more insulin to get the job done. So your insulin levels go up; you become what’s called hyperinsulinemia, you have what’s called hyperinsulinemia. Hyper means high, insulin is insulin, emia is a condition, so it’s a condition in which your insulin levels are too high, and they have to be too high to manage your blood sugar. But, insulin is also the fat storage hormone. So when there’s insulin in your bloodstream your body goes into a kind of fat storage mode where it activates all the different enzymes in your body that make fat, and so your body goes into fat making mode. The sugar goes into the fat cells, your body starts making fat.

Now when you have hyperinsulinemia then your insulin levels are too high, your body is always in this fat storage mode when your insulin levels are too high, when you have this hyperinsulinemia. As long as your insulin levels are high, you lose the ability to burn fat, and the reason you lose the ability to burn fat is because insulin stops your body from producing the hormones that burn fat, like glucagon and the enzymes that burn fat. When your insulin levels are high, if you think about it your body is going to say if we’re in fat storage mode we don’t want to burn fat; it doesn’t make any sense. So your body is going to stay in a perpetual state of fat storage. Now because your body is resistant to insulin and because your insulin levels are too high, once your blood sugar goes down low again your insulin levels are still higher than they should be. Now what’s supposed to happen is once your blood sugar levels go down too low, insulin is supposed to be out of your system. But, because you’ve got this hyperinsulinemia and your fat programs are on, your insulin levels are still higher than they should be. So when your blood sugar goes down again you can’t raise it back up because glucagon doesn’t go into your system. So you lose the ability to retrieve the sugar that you stored. So it’s a bit like putting money into a bank account and having the account perpetually frozen. You’re storing sugar, but you can’t retrieve it again.

So your blood sugar levels go lower and lower and lower, and the only way to get your blood sugar back up again is to eat something. When your system is functioning properly your blood sugar goes down and it retrieves that sugar from your liver, your muscle cells, your fat cells, it gets it back, but it can’t do that anymore. You’ve lost the ability to retrieve, you’ve lost the ability to burn fat efficiently, and you’ve lost the ability to retrieve sugar efficiently. So what happens is you end up getting low blood sugar episodes, and low blood sugar episodes cause ravenous hunger cravings for sugar because sugar is the quickest way to get – processed sugar or junk food is the quickest way to get sugar in your system. So you end up having sugar cravings all day long, not because your body needs nutrition or calories or even energy, but simply because you’ve lost the ability to regulate your blood sugar. You’ve lost the ability to retrieve that sugar. And that’s a huge issue that needs to be addressed.

So the whole approach that I’ve outlined helps reverse this condition of insulin resistance because the types of things that cause insulin resistance are for example stress. Stress causes insulin resistance. Severe dieting and starvation causes insulin resistance. So what you get are these low blood sugar episodes and you end up eating all day or craving sugar all day simply because your body has lost the ability to raise your blood sugar, and the only reason you can raise your blood sugar is by eating. So what happens is this – around 11 O’clock, if you don’t have a big breakfast for example, around 11 O’clock you start craving something sweet. And that’s because your blood sugar is starting to fall. So then you eat something sweet, and your blood sugar goes through the roof. And then your body produces way more insulin than you need and that causes your blood sugar to plummet about an hour later, and then an hour later you’ve got sugar cravings again. Then you eat some more junk food, and then about 4 O’clock the same thing happens; you eat more junk food, and so all day long you’re getting these swings where you’re getting these low blood sugar episodes, craving junk food, goes through the roof, two hours later it’s back down again. So learning how to regulate your blood sugar is crucial in the beginning. Eventually, your body won’t be insulin resistant anymore. Your insulin levels will get normalized and your body will re-gain the ability to burn fat, and that’s one of the reasons why this approach is so different than dieting in that you end up losing weight faster as time goes on because your body gets more and more efficient at burning fat as time goes on. See in the beginning, you’re not that efficient in burning fat because our insulin levels are too high. But eventually, your insulin levels normalize, your body re-gains the ability to burn fat.