Improved meals lower danger of insulin resistance

What is insulin resistance? It’s that “spare tire” around our middles! Seems like that fat on our waistlines is there for the duration. No matter how much we diet, that stubborn fat… just … will … not … move!

We hate it. Our best jeans end up at the thrift store. We sit down in our underwear and there’s our stomach: rolls of fat, like a big, segmented caterpillar. It’s depressing!

But, it’s also a red flag. Those rolls of fat indicate that our tissues are becoming insulin-resistant, and this fat is just the tip of the iceberg.

Insulin resistance is serious; it means there are excess levels of insulin circulating in our bloodstream.

“When insulin levels are kept high too long, the result “is a body physiology that promotes excessive body-fat gain, a physiology prone to infections and all the chronic degenerative diseases of aging: osteoarthritis, different types of cancer, cholesterol abnormalities, coronary artery disease, less lean body mass (refers to muscle and bone mass) with excess body fat, high blood pressure, osteoporosis, stroke and Type II diabetes.”

This is a quote from Dr. Diana Schwarzbein. In 1990, after nine years of medical training in endocrinology and metabolism, she began working with Type II diabetic patients.

Schwarzbein soon became convinced that the insulin resistance factor seen in diabetes was, in the first place, the result of the patients’ own poor eating and lifestyle habits.

And, secondly, she was quick to realize that the dietary regimen newly diagnosed diabetics patients were put on, the American Diabetes Association – “a low-calorie, high-carbohydrate, low-fat, low-protein program … only caused their conditions to worsen.”

She saw her patients gaining weight and requiring more insulin, their cholesterol levels were getting worse. She thought to herself, “My God, we are making diabetics worse!”

In 1999 she published her first book, “The Schwarzbein Principle,” in which she explains the complex process of insulin resistance. She offers her findings and a suggested eating plan that she says is the result of true science, not “studies.”

My research revealed that Schwarzbein was not the only doctor to conclude the ADA’s dietary plan for diabetic patients was seriously flawed.

Arthur Agatston, a cardiologist and author of the book “The South Beach Diet,” was another.

His book also teaches the reader to rely on eating the right carbs and the right fats, and he has an easily understood explanation on how insulin resistance impacts our health and weight.

Here is the skeleton key to a very complex lock: All food eventually turns to sugar in the body, some faster than others. The objective in managing, preventing and even reversing the condition of insulin resistance is to slow down the rate at which food converts to sugar in the body.

How to do this? There are three types of foods that will slow down this process: fats, acids and fiber. Eating sugary drinks and foods or high-carb, low-fiber foods (things such as bread, crackers, pasta, chips, rice, potatoes and ketchup) are like mainlining insulin.

So the plan is to eat balanced meals, learning which foods to eat and which foods not to eat.

So much for low-fat diets! Eating a low-fat meal deprives your body of one of its very tools to slow down the rate at which food is converted to sugar. And kiss those high-carb diets goodbye. All carbohydrates are recognized as sugar by the body, whether they are in the form of grains, starches, dairy, fruits or sweets. And no other nutrient group converts into sugar as fast as carbs.

We don’t need to go on a “diet.” Rather, we need to have a balanced eating plan for life if we’re to return to health and normal weight and stay there.

Today, insulin resistance, a precursor to Type II diabetes, is rampant. It’s even occurring in young people because of diets too high in carbs and sugary, refined, over-processed, fast-foods. Schwarzbein cautions her patients to “eat only ‘real’ foods, which they could, in theory, pick gather, milk, hunt, or fish.” Words to live by.

The books I researched to address this vital issue of insulin resistance, “The South Beach Diet” and “The Schwarzbein Principle,” are wonderfully readable and valuable. Another worthwhile book is “The Insulin Resistance Diet” by Spokane physician Cheryl Hart.

These doctors concur in their belief that even when a hereditary predisposition to obesity and related chronic medical conditions exists in someone, the onset of insulin resistance can be delayed or prevented altogether with healthy eating and lifestyle, plus regular exercise.

So, there it is – almost anyone can take charge of their insulin resistance and stave off premature aging and chronic diseases, genetics notwithstanding. Arm yourself with a carb counter and a glycemic index, and learn the principles of right eating.

Here’s one spare tire that can be disposed of with no threat to the environment.