Blood Sugar Basics: What is Insulin Resistance, What is Diabetes?

For the purposes of this blog I am only referring to Type II Diabetes, and its precursor state, insulin resistance.  Type I Diabetes will require a separate treatment in the future.

Diabetes is one of the top 10 causes of death in the US, and is the most expensive illness one can have over the lifetime of an individual. This series of blogs I am producing is intended to educate on WHY the conventional medical approach to diabetes is failing miserably, and what your options are to restore your health. 

First, lets get to the definitions.  What exactly is diabetes, what is insulin resistance are the key questions.

Normal Blood Sugar Control

We eat food, and gain most of our nutrition, from three categories of macronutrients: proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, or Carbs for short.  Carbs are different ways of package sugar molecules, and almost entirely come from plant foods such as fruits, berries, vegetables and grains.  Regardless of the original source the body’s digestion process converts all carbs into sugars.

Historically simple carbs were rare. They are found in ripe fruits and berries, raw honey, and in a few starchy root crops.  In all these forms, these sources of carbs also contain the nutrients such as vitamins and minerals needed for the body to process those carbs and use them appropriately. The sweet taste found in fruits and berries was a signal to eat as many of these as we could, because they are highly dense packages of nutrients such as bioflavonoids and other health promoting natural phytochemicals.  Fruits and berries were only ripe for a short period of time, so we ate what we could and learned to dry them to preserve them throughout the year.

The problem became when we learned to refine the carbohydrates, which in the case of grains such as wheat, meant stripping away the bran (fiber needed by our GI tract) and the germ (proteins, fats and vitamins/minerals), leaving behind only the starch -easily and quickly absorbed sugar.

Our pancreas constantly monitors our blood, and when blood sugar levels rise, such as after eating a meal, the hormone Insulin is released telling other organs to absorb that sugar from the blood.  The liver is the primary organ involved.  Later, several hours after eating and blood sugar levels decline, the pancreas releases the hormone Glucagon, which tells the liver to release some of that blood sugar it stored.

We are programmed to keep our blood sugar within a narrow range.  The brain is the organ which drives this, which uses blood sugar as its primary fuel source.  It can also use ketones, which derive from converting fats into energy; more on this in a later blog on nutrition and blood sugar.   Our body thus keeps blood sugar balanced by the pancreas and liver engaging in a delicate dance of the hormones insulin and glucagon, and the storing and releasing of sugar.

This is what is supposed to happen.

Insulin Resistance and Diabetes

For a few specific causes, the liver and other organs which are supposed to absorb insulin which in turn is supposed to trigger the absorbing of sugar from the blood.  Because the blood sugar levels remain high, the pancreas is stimulated to produce still more insulin.  Eventually, the brute force efforts of excess insulin causes enough insulin to make it into the cells of the liver and other organs, and blood sugar declines.  This is the beginning of a condition known as Insulin Resistance. 

During this phase it is possible for fasting blood sugar levels to be completely normal, the Hemoglobin A1C levels to be completely normal, but if checked you might find insulin extraordinarily high.  This is the best time to intervene, before this situation becomes overt diabetes.

Diabetes happens when a threshold is crossed, and no matter how much insulin the pancreas produces, the body can no longer respond, and blood sugars and A1C both start to climb.  This is when the high levels of blood sugar begin to cause osmatic damage to blood vessel linings, circulation becomes impaired or organs and tissues, meaning those organs don’t get enough oxygen or nutrients for normal health.  The peripheral limbs are among the first to be affected, causing neuropathy and if unchecked, possibly even gangrene, resulting in amputations.  Other organs include the eyes and kidneys.  As one of the top ten causes of death, most deaths from diabetes are the result of  kidney failure.

The causes of insulin resistance are therefor the key to understanding these disorders of blood sugar control.  Fatty liver, nutrient deficiencies and environmental toxins top the list.  The next blog in this blood sugar series will start to examine conventional medical treatments and why they almost universally fail.  Future blogs then go into the natural treatments that actually have a very high degree of success.