Insulin Resistance and Accelerated Aging

Hello Everyone,

Tomorrow is 3 weeks on the Women To Women Program to rebalancemy hormone system.
In the last blog I discussed accelerated aging, today I will delve a little deeper into this modern dis-ese so we can fully understand how this happens and how to reverse it.

Insulin resistance is a cellular condition where the cells are so filled with sugar that they cannot admit any more sugar molecules. To protect against any further sugar overload, the cells reduce the number of insulin receptors (think of them as doors), so that insulin will not be able to unload as much sugar (think of this as no more room here for any more sugar molecules). This is insulin resistance. What happens next is the pancreas produces even MORE insulin in order to over come this resistance, which results in too much insulin in the bloodstream. Your body's cells then react to too much insulin by locking even more insulin receptor doors. Any extra sugar introduced into the body at this point, is stored directly into fat cells (basically around the midsection). If this continues - the high level of sugar in the bloodstream with no place to go, type II Diabetes results.

Insulin is a hormone, just like estrogen, testosterone, adrenalin, thyroid etc. Hormones are the communicators of the body. When one goes out of balance, the others do as well, like a house of cards.

If we go back to the hormone insulin which is there for regulating sugar levels in the body, if we back up just one more step, to diet, we now have the potential and great possibility of control.

The American Diet is and has been schizophrenic, at best. Michael Pollen writes in his book, In Defense of Food, about how he grew up on a largely immigrant diet from Europe: but real food, of course. He wonders in his book if his grandmother would even recognize the items in a grocery store, as food.

Same with my grandmother, as well. Gram lived with us from 1945 when my grandfather passed away until she passed in 1991 at the age of nearly 91. On her death certificate was "natural causes". Gram was not sick, she left. Her diet was good healthy food. It was her familial job to cook the meals, the kitchen was her domain. Being Serbian, she cooked the traditional fair: piggies in a blanket (sarma); roasted chickens and rice; homemade pastries and all with whole fat butter, milk, etc.

Since Gram's parents were farmers, Gram learned how to grow food and preserve it, which was passed on to me if I was paying attention. Summers in Ohio were marked by "seasons", peaches came in, corn came in, apples, etc. And each crop in its turn was purchased from a local farmer or harvest from Dad's garden, and "put up" for the winter. In short, we ate whole foods and for the most part, organically grown.

Gram's physician was a wizened guy who would lecture her on her weight. "Mrs. Zegarac, "he would intone, "you must lose 30 pounds. This is done by eating a diet restricted to 1800 calories a day for your height." "Doctor," Gram would answer, "I sample 1800 calories a day when I cook." Gram not only cooked well, but she worked hard physically. She cleaned house every Friday like the President was coming to visit. I mean, furniture was pulled away from the walls, windows and woodwork washed. We're talking physical, aerobic work. And the other days were vigorous trips into the garden, hoeing, raking, weeding, bending stretching, sweating. Gram's doctor passed away at the age of 61.

If we are looking with the eyes to see, we have a road map for a healthy life style. While Gram's doctor tried to put her onto a low fat diet, she intuitively refused, but more importantly she did what felt best to her. Her heart and love went into not only the food she made and served to us each evening at dinner, but her heart and love went into all the efforts of her days. In other words, she felt purposeful, happy, and loved and needed.

We started this blog on insulin, as a hormone and talking about the modern day phenomenon of insulin resistance. When we follow a diet of low fat/no fat we have just cut off the building blocks to hormones. Hormones are manufactured in the body from proteins and fats. And the body needs to consume cholesterol (butter, cheese, eggs, animal protein), because if it doesn't, it will take all those carbs and begin manufacturing cholesterol which blocks your arteries.

Insulin resistance is the result of too many carbs in too many places for too long a period of time.
i.e. low fat/high carb diets. This path leads directly to hormone imbalances, heart disease and diabetes.

So, you must consume fat in your diet; good fats. The fats that nature places in the pork, in the steak, in the chicken, in the egg, in the cheese. Wholesome fats that are grass fed and organic, of course. You cannot become fat from eating fat. Fat does not trigger insulin production in the body. Good fats for cooking (saturated): Butter (Yeah!), cheese, chicken fat, coconut oil, dairy only cream, duck fat, eggs, goose fat, nutmeg oil, sheanut oil, sour cream, turkey fat.
Good fats for cooking (monounsaturated): almond oil, apricot kernel oil, avocado oil, canola oil, grapeseed oil, hazelnut oil, mustard oil, oat oil, olive oil, peanut oil, rice oil.
The following fats are polyunsaturated and should NEVER be used for cooking, as heat damages these: corn oil, essential fatty acids like primrose, flaxseed and borage, herring oil, fish oil, salmon oil, sardine oil, sesame seed oil and wheat germ oil. The very best oils to use are cold or pure-processed oils, essential fatty acids, extra virgin olive oil, fish oil, and mayonnaise made from pre-pressed canola oil and containing no hydrogenated oils.

So you can begin eating meat again, but now cook it slowly, no charbroiling it to damage the fats, and never eat hydrogenated fats (man-made) like shortening and margarine.

It's about common sense, folks. My sort of "default" question is "what would they have done 100 years ago? This seems to put me back into common sense territory and prior to the chemical alteration of our foods.

By all means, of course, if you are experiencing any kind of symptoms, you should consult a health care practitioner. But now you are armed with some common sense information: diet is everything. Return yourself to the four basics: protein, fat, non-starchy vegetables and carbohydrates (those that can be harvested, grown, etc.) and eliminate completely man-manufactured foods, processed foods.

Feed yourselves good whole food, America. And while you're at it, dance!
All this food discussion is taken from The Schwartzbein Principle:The Truth About Losing Weight, Being Healthy and Feeling Younger, by Diana Schwarzbeing, MD and Nancy Deville.

It's all pretty much common sense.

Thanks for reading!

Kath