Insulin Resistance

Broomthebeast said:

why: 'more than that, diet will'? I believe both are equally important?

Click to expand...

Hi Broom, first I'm a huge advocate of exercise to improve control Insulin Resistance.
If I have picked you up right your questioning why diet first because you agree with the argument that diet is damage control and exercise is fixing the problem.

So why "more diet" simply because it is the easier goal to achieve exercise is not always an option for some people, as may will testify to on here, which makes diet the first place to start. If you can get meaningful results by doing nothing i.e eat less that is much easier to achieve. Your creating less insulin for your system to deal with.

Exercise takes work, effort, time and commitment in fact the better you get at it the more work time and commitment it takes.

Both equally important but not everyone can do both.

I can control my blood sugar levels through diet

I cant exercise as I have ME

Exercise is not essential to blood sugar control, but diet is.

So, for me, diet is the primary and most important ingredient in controlling my diabetes.

And someone would have to exercise a very great deal for it to do the job that dietary changes does. I suspect exercise on its own wont work, but diet on it own does.

I also struggle with the idea that one can remove ones insulin resistance, by whatever means, and go back to eating high carbs, again proving that, while exercise helps some of us, diet is the key to management for type 2's.

There is also the big factor (for T2s) that having insulin resistance is actually a deterrent to exercise. Tiredness, heavy limbs, lack of energy, a lack of get-up-and-go. That leaden feeling in the arms and legs that makes exercise unappealing and sitting down in front of the tv appear the only sane option.

Now yes, exercise is a possible, partial solution. Exercise lowers insulin resistance, so forcing yourself up off the couch and pounding the pavements, or the gym machine will help. But the next time a T2 eats enough carbs to trigger high insulin levels, then the insulin resistance comes back, so it is a very short term solution lasting hours. For exercise to reduce insulin resistance long term, then the exercise must be sustained, daily, and each session needs to be hard enough to force the body to overcome the resistance.

Lets face it, if heavy aching limbs are stopping you standing in the kitchen cooking a proper meal, then imagine how insurmountable it feels to go out and spend an hour getting even more tired in a gym? Every day. For months. If you can't face the stairs at work, then a walk in the hills is torture, not a pleasure.

Insulin resistance affects T2s to varying extents, and people who don't have insulin resistance often underestimate the extent it can impact our daily lives. Plus, of course, it is a vicious cycle. The less we are active, the more insulin resistance we probably have, and the less we feel like being active.

Reducing circulating insulin via reducing carb intake for T2s will bring relief for many T2s. Some of them post on the forum to say that once they have settled into a low carb diet, they are stunned at how much more energy they have, how much better they feel, how they now actually feel like exercising and enjoy it when they do it. And at that point exercise becomes a possibility, not a dreaded chore. But it is the diet choices that enable the insulin levels to drop, and the insulin resistance to lower enough for increased activity.

Interesting factoid: Did you know that the average suit of medieval armor weighed somewhere in the region of 15-30 pounds? Made of metal, and spread out over the body from hands to feet.

Now compare that to someone who is 4 stone (56 pounds) over weight. Their excess weight is carried spread around the body. That is 2 to 4 suits of armor they wear, every day - from getting out of bed in the morning, to getting back in at night. Every step. Every stair. Every time they nip out to the shops, or get up to make a cup of tea.
No wonder they seem reluctant to bounce around a tennis court, or do a bit of light jogging.
Quite apart from the potential joint damage!

Brunneria said:

There is also the big factor (for T2s) that having insulin resistance is actually a deterrent to exercise. Tiredness, heavy limbs, lack of energy, a lack of get-up-and-go. That leaden feeling in the arms and legs

Click to expand...

I feel like this even though my blood sugars are near normal. A lot better than I did, but still leaden and tired. Is that the IR which i still have and is it possible that that could go if I can reduce my IR.

I mean (sorry, a bit garbled here) Is IR a different challenge to bs levels and does that mean that, as IR reduces we get more energy even if our near normal bs levels stay the same? Sorry, i cant think of the specific bit of info i am asking for.

I am assuming that the ME diagnosis I got from my GP, around the same time as i took the drugs which put on all the weight suddenly, is ME. But what if it isnt? what if its IR? it would mean that, while keeping my bs levels steady, if I can also reduce my IR with this slow weight loss, I could end up without the ME symptoms?

Yes I feel like that too @lucylocket61 . Right now I can hardly lift my arm to comb my hair. I would like to think that you are right, but am despairing that I will ever lose this weight. I have been ill for over a month which doesn't help my physical or mental state so I am not even managing to focus on low carbing.

zand said:

Right now I can hardly lift my arm to comb my hair.

Click to expand...

I know my situation was completely different, but I experienced fatigue to the extent I could barely lift my arms to comb hair or hang something up, and even to clean my teeth I had to sit down. Walking was like walking through treacle. So I can and do sympathise. Mine was purely and simply muscle fatigue brought on by chemo for a week during each chemo 3 week cycle. It was nothing to do with insulin resistance. Just saying, because there are other reasons for muscle fatigue.

lucylocket61 said:

I feel like this even though my blood sugars are near normal. A lot better than I did, but still leaden and tired. Is that the IR which i still have and is it possible that that could go if I can reduce my IR.

I mean (sorry, a bit garbled here) Is IR a different challenge to bs levels and does that mean that, as IR reduces we get more energy even if our near normal bs levels stay the same? Sorry, i cant think of the specific bit of info i am asking for.

I am assuming that the ME diagnosis I got from my GP, around the same time as i took the drugs which put on all the weight suddenly, is ME. But what if it isnt? what if its IR? it would mean that, while keeping my bs levels steady, if I can also reduce my IR with this slow weight loss, I could end up without the ME symptoms?

Click to expand...

Sorry, this is a long 'un.
feel free to glaze over and skip to the next post

Lucy, you have the other stuff going on as well, and so do I (although my 'other stuff' is different from yours).
And as @Bluetit1802 says, there are most definitely other reasons for muscle fatigue. It is impossible to say.

But broadly speaking, yes, leaden and tired are symptoms of insulin resistance. But there are other reasons we may feel leaden and tired, too. If you have ME then IR may be contributing to the feeling, but I don't know any way to gauge it.

And yes, reducing IR is a very different (but related) issue from controlling blood glucose.
IR is caused by many things, hormonal dysfunction (including menopause, post menopause, PCOS, being fat, being sedentary, other health conditions, certain drugs... Some people are genetically pre-disposed to IR). But the biggest cause of all is too much circulating insulin. And we only have that when we eat more carbs than our body can cope with.

IR can be reduced by exercise (short term and v effective), reducing carb intake and insulin spikes (longer term and slower, but consistently effective), losing weight, changing medication, stopping medication, and fasting.

Different parts of the body are differently insulin resistant. Liver, brain, muscles and fat deposits vary. One of the reasons T2s get fat while being ravenously hungry is because the fat cells are less insulin resistant than muscle. So the circulating blood glucose => insulin release => glucose being pushed out of the blood to the places that are least insulin resistant which are the fat cells. So the muscle cells stay 'hungry' and the fat cells get fatter. The person is always wanting to eat, to feed the muscles, but the food ends up in the fat cells rather than where it needs to go.

If we use intermittent fasting to reduce IR, then we can jusdge the aextent of our IR by the length of time it takes to get the benefits. Some people find skipping a single meal reduces IR. Other people need to fast for 3+ days to feel the difference.

Sorry, I am probably not writing this in the most helpful way
Actually, the best source I have seen on this is Jason Fung and his series of blog posts on insulin resistance. He sets it all out in bite size chunks all freely available on the internet.
https://idmprogram.com/tag/insulin-resistance/

It is IR which has made me choose to eat ketogenically, and stay below 20 g carbs a day.
My body can tolerate more carbs than that. My blood glucose levels are acceptable at up to around 50-70 g carbs a day (nowadays, so long as I eat strictly gluten free). But if I eat that much carb then I get the IR misery back - the lack of energy, the reluctance to get off my backside, the apathy watching the washing up pile grow... and the weight starts to go back on - because the IR is pushing blood glucose into the fat deposits.

I know that a single high carb day will hike my IR for 24-36 hours, then ease off.
Whereas a good brisk piece of exercise will reduce my IR until I next eat carbs.
The problem is that my experience is anecdotal. Measuring IR and fasting insulin levels is a right phaff, requires blood tests, money and hassle. Doc's don't care/understand/aren't equipped to understand or test it. No one is going to run studies to test it. It took me getting a Libre and seeing my daily bgs on the screen before I realised that we CAN see IR on the graph, if we know what to look for.

For me, keeping my IR down is a harder fight than keeping my blood glucose down, and it is made worse by my understanding that long term raised insulin is at least as dangerous as raised blood glucose. Ivor Cummins' you tube videos on insulin resistance are a good source of info on that.

There is no Spoon said:

Hi Broom, first I'm a huge advocate of exercise to improve control Insulin Resistance.
If I have picked you up right your questioning why diet first because you agree with the argument that diet is damage control and exercise is fixing the problem.

So why "more diet" simply because it is the easier goal to achieve exercise is not always an option for some people, as may will testify to on here, which makes diet the first place to start. If you can get meaningful results by doing nothing i.e eat less that is much easier to achieve. Your creating less insulin for your system to deal with.

Exercise take work, effort, time and commitment in fact the better you get at it the more work time and commitment it takes.

Both equally important but not everyone can do both.

Click to expand...

Thank you for understanding and answering my question @There is no Spoon !

Twickers said:

My question is, if my body can’t deal with insulin anyway, why am I flooding it with more and more? Is it ever going to work? Or am I just creating extra stress for my system?

Is there another way of looking at it?

Click to expand...

Nope. You hypothesis is 100% correct @Twickers! Treating insulin resistance with more insulin is pure madness. It is merely treating a symptom, not the underlying root case of your metabolic dysfunction. To quote Dr. Jason Fung: "you must treat the disease and not the symptom":
https://idmprogram.com/two-big-lies-type-2-diabetes-video-lecture/
https://idmprogram.com/ukpds-futility-blood-sugar-lowering-t2d/