Insulin is a hormone that a pancreas makes to bring your blood sugar down. When you eat foods like carbohydrates, such as rice, pasta, and potatoes, they digest into glucose or sugar and that sugar is transported in the bloodstream into tissues. In order to get from the blood vessels into the tissues, they need insulin to serve as the gateway to the cell membrane and into the cells. Once in the cells, glucose is broken down either for fuel or stored as fat; you need insulin for that. When you eat a lot of carbohydrates or your blood sugar is high most of the time, the pancreas will continue to make a lot of insulin. Unfortunately, in the presence of very high insulin, the tissues become lazy or resisted to the effect of insulin and that condition is therefore called insulin resistance. Insulin resistance has been linked to a lot of medical problems including obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even risk of chronic inflammation. If you want to effectively deal with weight loss and you have insulin resistance, you must have strategies to lower your insulin level.
Here are five ways that you can deal with insulin resistance.
Number one is trying a low carb diet. You want to reduce the daily consumption of carbohydrates to about 50 to 150 grams of carbohydrates. If you can do that, you decrease the amount of blood glucose to begin with and as a result, you lower the insulin production by the pancreas.
Number two is fasting. In a fasting state, your insulin level will drop and that is why intermittent fasting can be an effective strategy for weight loss.
Number three is exercise. Exercise improves the sensitivity of the insulin receptors and allows your tissues to use less insulin. In that situation, your pancreas will produce less insulin and improve your insulin sensitivity.
Number four, you can use medications. There’s a class of drugs that can be used to treat diabetes called the flexans. An example is Jargons which you’ve probably seen the commercial for it. The way flexans works is that they encourage exertion of excess blood sugar through the kidneys without necessarily simulating the pancreas to make more insulin. With lower blood sugar, the pancreas production of insulin will drop.
Number five, the perhaps most dramatic option is weight loss surgery. When you have weight loss surgery, it can dramatically alter the gut hormones that communicate with the brain and that can lead to dramatic weight loss. When you lose weight, you improve your insulin sensitivity.
These are five ways to effectively deal with insulin resistance and help you lose weight.
