For diabetics and Non-diabetics : Know your signs of pre diabetic and post diabetic insulin resistance (IR).
Type 2 diabetes is nothing but insulin resistance. It begins with insulin resistance and it keeps growing as one turns a diabetic until finally one day your body becomes completely resistant to insulin and you die.
Insulin resistance begins when you take a diet especially rich in carbohydrates over long periods of time in life.
Too much carbohydrates / sugars leads to too much production of insulin in the body in order to digest the sugars and after some time either your pancreas becomes completely exhausted and stops producing insulin ( resulting in type 1 diabetes), OR , your body cells become resistant to insulin ( resulting in type 2 diabetes).
Some of the more common problems observed in diabetics in the later stages of their lives are simply due to bad/severe insulin resistance but unfortunately neither people nor our diabetologists are aware of it.
The following are the signs of both--prediabetic and post diabetic /growing insulin resistance. .
1. If your blood glucose numbers remain high for long hours after eating it is indicative of insulin resistance.
In diabetics, if these numbers don't come down for hours even upon taking external insulin or other anti diabetic drugs, ..............or if you find you require more amount of insulin to bring down the same quantity of sugar over time, then all these are signs of growing insulin resistance. Your cells don't pick up the insulin signals quickly as they are growing more and more resistant to the insulin . You can consider this as stage 1 insulin resistance. During this stage your body may grow thin as your high sugar in the blood for prolonged hours starts eating up different organs inside your body and you may also see wrinkles on your hands and faces.
2. If you find your blood sugar begins to disappear real fast even after a good crab meal and you begin to feel hungry again long before your next meal is due , this is yet another sign of insulin resistance. This happens because there is too much insulin coursing your blood . You can call this stage 2 IR. ( seen in pre as well as post diabetics again)
When blood glucose levels remain high for long hours , over time, the pancreas begins to think that there is not much insulin in the blood to bring down the sugar ( instead of reading it as insulin resistance) , and so it now begins to secrete more insulin than usual and there are bursts of extra insulin into the blood just before meal times. This extra insulin ( coupled with your external insulin in diabetics ) , leads to lots of insulin coursing thru your blood and the moment the sugar enters your blood, your cells pounce upon it.
( Sometimes ppl may observe their blood glucose numbers remain high all thru the day inspite of taking insulin ( insulin resistance) , and then all of a sudden begin to fall rapidly in the evening. This is again insulin resistance. Its the pancreas releasing a burst of insulin into the blood leading to sudden fall in the sugar levels)
But unfortunately the cells pouncing upon the glucose are mostly fat cells rather than the muscle cells. The muscle cells become insensitive to the signals of insulin and hence do not pick up the glucose. ( Muscle cell IR). So your body now begins to pack the glucose into your fat cells. The fat cells convert the glucose into fat and store it inside themselves. As a result the person finds himself gaining weight or becoming fat . But not gaining much energy.
(You get energy when glucose is picked up by the muscle cells and burnt therein. You grow fat when glucose is picked up by the fat cells and stored therein.) . Muscle cell IR is the most common form of IR observed.
3. So if you find yourselves growing fat but weak at the same time ( this is clearly visible in diabetics as they grow old especially those taking insulin.), then this is a SURE sign of insulin resistance.
And as there are more fat cells around the stomach, it results in the stomach or the middle portion of the body growing big and the body becoming pear shaped. A pear shaped body in diabetics is generally indicative of severe IR .
4. Infiltration of fat into the liver (fatty liver) in diabetics is also another sign of insulin resistance. Excess glucose is now packed as fat in the liver cells too resulting in a fatty liver.
Once you have diagnosed the signs correctly, now go for the correct treatment. If your doctor refuses to give you the right treatment, then change your doctor and keep changing till you get the right doctor or simply go ahead and treat yourselves.
( For those interested in treating themselves, here's a couple of things for you :
Go in for some tests that tell you the amount of insulin in your blood before meals. C-peptide test is one such test. It will tell you the amount of insulin coursing thru your blood. A high level of fasting c-peptide in your blood indicates a high level of fasting insulin which in turn is indicative of insulin resistance.
At present there are two classes of drugs used to treat insulin resistance--biguanides and thiazolidinediones. The most common biguanide used is metformin marketed under the more common trade name glucophage all over the world.
Some of these drugs not only increase insulin sensitivity but also bring down your blood sugar levels. So if you are already on insulin, you will have to decrease the insulin dosage or simply substitute the insulin with them.
Read enough about these drugs before you use them--their mode of working, their effects , side effects and drug interactions in case you are taking other medicines and pick up what suits you best and begin with a small dose first. ( I have been treating my mother for insulin resistance for sometime now as none of the big specialists in the city would treat her for it coz they are not even aware that these signs in the patient indicate IR. They simply kept changing the insulin and i kept changing them )
Keep taking K vitamins . K2 is said to enhance insulin sensitivity.
Green tea is also said to increase insulin sensitivity.
Give up oil and fatty foods as there's already enough carbs now being converted into fat inside your body instead of being burnt. Taking more oil or fat will only worsen the condition.
And last but not the least, reduce high crab diet. Replace the carbs in your diet slowly with other nutrients. More carbs in your diet leads to more insulin being produced in your body and more IR.
If you must take lots of carbs, then space out the carb diet eating it in little quantities all thru the day instead of consuming them at meal times all at once. This will release little little quantities of insulin in the blood instead of
sudden heavy bursts of insulin.
Keep in mind the multivitamin therapy too. Diabetes--both type 1 and type 2 also occurs when you become deficient in vitamin D i.e. when there is no more vitamin D flowing freely in your blood.
Fatty foods and the crab rich diet coupled with sedentary life style and no activity leads to more and more fat being stored inside your body cells which in turn depletes freely circulating vitamin D levels in the blood as vitamin D being a fat soluble vitamin remains trapped inside the fat in the cells. And then the genes regulating blood sugar don't get enough vitamin D to work properly and body throwing your blood sugar control mechanism out of gear.
Just reduce carbohydrates in your food. Take only that much carbohydrate as much energy as you require for your daily activities. Coz if you don't burn all your carbs by doing active work, then the remaining carbs will be stashed away inside the body cells as fat.
Rice and wheat/bread are already staple foods in many parts of the world and eaten in large quantities. On top of that everything in the market that we get nowadays is "sweet" and filled with all kinds of sugars in it. Plus the crazy addiction to chocolates and cakes by kids. It leads to too much production of insulin and your pancreas getting exhausted or your cells becoming resistant or obesity and depletion of free vitamin D in blood.
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