Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects, Part 4

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http://www.mercola.com/2001/jul/14/insulin4.htm

 

Insulin and Its Metabolic Effects

 

 

Part 4 of 4 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3)

By Ron Rosedale, M.D.

 

Presented at Designs for Health Institute's BoulderFest August 1999 Seminar

 

The receptors self-regulate.

 

If you want to know if insulin sensitivity can be restored to its original

state, well, perhaps not to its original state, but you can restore it to the

state of about a ten year old.

 

One of my first experiences with this, I had a patient who literally had sugars

over 300. He was taking 200+ units of insulin, he was a bad cardiovascular

patient, and it only made sense to me that you don't want to feed these people

carbohydrates, so I put him on a low carbohydrate diet.

 

He was an exceptional case, after a month to six weeks he was totally off of

insulin. He had been on 200 some units of insulin for twenty-five years. He was

so insulin resistant, one thing good about it is that when you lower that

insulin, that insulin is having such little effect on him that you can massively

lower the insulin and its not going to have much of an effect on his blood sugar

either. 200 units of insulin is not going to lower your sugar any more that 300

mg/deciliter.

 

You know that the insulin is not doing much. So we could rapidly take him off

the insulin and he was actually cured of his diabetes in a matter of weeks. So

he became sensitive enough, he was still producing a lot of insulin on his own,

then we were able to measure his own insulin and it was still elevated, and then

it took a long time, maybe six months or longer to bring that insulin down.

 

It will probably never get to the point of the sensitivity of a ten year old,

but yes, your number of insulin receptors increases, and the activity of the

receptors, the chemical reactions that occur beyond the receptor occur more

efficiently.

 

You can increase sensitivity by diet, that is one of the major reasons you want

to take Omega 3 oils. We think of circulation as that which flows through

arteries and veins, and that is not a minor part of our circulation, but it

might not even be the major part. The major part of circulation is what goes in

and out of the cell.

 

The cell membrane is a fluid mosaic. The major part of our circulation is

determined by what goes in and out. It doesn't make any difference what gets to

that cell if it can't get into the cell. We know that one of the major ways that

you can affect cellular circulation is by modulating the kinds of fatty acids

that you eat. So you can increase receptor sensitivity by increasing the

fluidity of the cell membrane, which means increasing the omega 3 content,

because most people are very deficient.

 

They say that you are what you eat and that mostly pertains to fat because the

fatty acids that you eat are the ones that will generally get incorporated into

the cell membrane. The cell membranes are going to be a reflection of your

dietary fat and that will determine the fluidity of your cell membrane. You can

actually make them over fluid.

 

If you eat too much and you incorporate too many omega 3 oils then they will

become highly oxidizable (so you have to eat Vitamin E as well and

monounsaturates as well) There was an interesting article pertaining to this

where they had a breed of rat that was genetically susceptible to cancer.

 

What they did was they fed them a high omega 3 diet, plus iron, without any

extra Vitamin E and they were able to almost shrink down the tumors to nothing,

because tumors are rapidly dividing. This is like a form of chemotherapy, and

the membranes that were being formed in these tumor cells were very high in

omega three oils, the iron acted as a catalyst for that oxidation, and the cells

were exploding from getting oxidized so rapidly. So omega 3 oils can be a double

edged sword.

 

Most food is a double edged sword.

 

Like oxygen and glucose, they keep us alive and they kill us, eating is the

biggest stress we put on our body and that is why in caloric restriction

experiments you can extend life as long as you maintain nutrition. This is the

only proven way of actually reducing the rate of aging, not just the mortality

rate, but the actual rate of aging, because eating is a big stress.

 

It has actually been shown by quite a number of papers that resistance training

for insulin resistance is better than aerobic training. There are a variety of

other reasons too. Resistance training is referring to muscular exercises. If

you just do a bicep curl, you immediately increase the insulin sensitivity of

your bicep. Just by exercising, and what you are doing is you are increasing the

blood flow to that muscle. That is one of the factors that determines insulin

sensitivity is how much can get there. It has been shown conclusively that

resistance training will increase insulin sensitivity.

 

Back to the macronutrients because that is real simple, you don't want very much

in the way of non-fiber carbs, fiber carbs are great, you are going to get some

non-fiber carbs. Even if you just eat broccoli you are going to get some

non-fiber carbs. That is OK since at least for the most part you are getting

something that is really pretty good for you. Protein is an essential nutrient.

 

You want to use it as a building block because your body requires protein to

repair damage and replenish enzymes. All of the encoded instructions from your

DNA are to encode for proteins. That is all the DNA encodes for. You need

protein, but you want to use it as a building block, but I don't believe in

going over and above the protein that you need to use for maintenance, repair

and building blocks.

 

I don't think you should be using protein as a primary fuel source. Your body

can use protein very well as a fuel source. It is good to lose weight while

using it a s a fuel source because it is an inefficient fuel source. Protein is

very thermogenic, it produces a lot of heat, which means that less of it is

going into stored energy, more is being dissipated. Just like throwing a log

into a fireplace.

 

Your primary fuel should be coming from fat.

 

So you can calculate the amount of protein a person requires, or at least

estimate it by their activity level. The book Protein Power actually went very

well in to this. You have to calculate how much protein is required by their

activity level and their lean body mass. There is still some gray area as to how

many grams per kilogram of lean body mass, depending on the activity that person

requires.

 

Anywhere perhaps one to two grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass,

maybe even a little bit higher if someone is really active.

 

You don't want to go under that for very long. I'd say that it is better to go

over than to go under that amount for very long. But I especially don't want my

diabetic patients, which means all of us, because in a very real sense we really

all have diabetes, it is just a matter of degree, we all have a certain degree

of insulin resistance.

 

If you can cure a diabetic of diabetes, you can do the same thing to a so-called

non-diabetic person and still improve that person. I want to improve my insulin

sensitivity just as much as I do my diabetics because insulin sensitivity is

going to determine for the most part how long you are going to live and how

healthy you are going to be. It determines the rate of aging more so than

anything else we know right now.

 

What about supplements such as Chromium for example?

 

Chromium, it depends on whom you are dealing with, but are we talking about a

diabetic patient, who is supposed to be the topic of this talk, yes, all my

diabetics go on 1,000 mcg. of chromium, some a little bit more if they are

really big people. Usually 500 mcg for a non-diabetic. It depends on their

insulin levels.

 

I don't care so much what their sugar levels are, I care what their insulin

levels are, which is a reflection of their insulin sensitivity. We are talking

about hyperinsulinemia or non-hyper-insulinemia. Its insulin we should be

concerned about.

 

I use a lot of supplements. What you really want to do, and my purpose mostly is

to try to convert that person back into being an efficient burner of fat. We

talked about when you are very insulin resistant and you are waking up in the

morning with an insulin that is elevated, you cannot burn fat, you are burning

sugar.

 

They don't know how to burn fat anymore and that is your best fuel.

 

One of the reasons that sugar goes up so high is because that is what your cell

is needing to burn, but if it is so insulin resistant it requires a blood sugar

of 300 so that just by mass action some can get in to the cell and be used as

fuel. If you eliminate that need to burn sugar, you don't need such high levels

of sugar even if you are insulin resistant.

 

 

So you want to increase the ability of the cells in the body to burn fat.

 

You want to make that glucose burner into a fat burner. You want to make a

gasoline burning car into a diesel burning car. Did anyone ever look at the

molecular structure of diesel fuel in your spare time? It looks almost identical

to a fatty acid. There is a company right now that can tell you how to alter

vegetable oil to use in your Mercedes. It's just a matter of thinning it out a

little bit. It is a very efficient fuel.

 

You can look at other variables that will give you some idea too such as

triglycerides. If they are very sensitive to high levels of insulin, they come

in with insulin levels of 14 and they have triglycerides of 1000, then you would

treat them just as you would if they had an insulin level of 50. It gives you

some idea of the effect of the hyperinsulinemia on the body.

 

You can use triglycerides as a gauge, which I often do. The objective is to try

to get the insulin level just as low as you possibly can. There is no limit.

They classify diabetes now as a fasting blood sugar of 126 or higher. A few

months ago it might have been 140. It is just an arbitrary number, does that

mean that someone with a blood sugar of 125 is non-diabetic and fine? If you

have a blood sugar of 125 you are worse than if you had a blood sugar of 124.

Same with insulin. If you have a fasting insulin of 10 you are worse off than if

you had an insulin of 9. You want to get it just as low as you can.

 

With athletes, let's think about that. What is the effect of carbohydrate

loading before an event. What happens if you eat a bowl of pasta before you have

to run a marathon. What does that bowl of pasta do? It raises your insulin. What

is the instruction of insulin to your body?

 

To store energy and not burn it. I see a fair amount of athletes and this is

what I tell them, you want everybody, athletes especially, to be able to burn

fat efficiently. So when they train, they are on a very low carbohydrate diet.

The night before their event, they can stock up on sugar and load their glycogen

if they would like.

 

They are not going to become insulin resistant in one day. Just enough to make

sure, it has been shown that if you eat a big carbohydrate meal that you will

increase your glycogen stores, that is true and that is what you want. But you

don't want to train that way because if you do you won't be able to burn fat,

you can only burn sugar, and if you are an athlete you want to be able to burn

both.

 

Few people have problems burning sugar if they are an athlete, but they have

lots of problems burning fat, so they hit the wall. And for a certain event like

sprinting it is less important, truthfully, for their health it is very

important to be able to burn fat, but a sprinter will go right into burning

sugar. If you are a 50 yard dash man, whether you can burn fat or not is not

going to make a huge difference in your final performance.

 

Beyond your athletic years if you don't want to become a diabetic, and if you

don't want to die of heart disease and if you don't want to age quickly…It is

certainly not going to do you any harm to be able to burn fat efficiently in

addition to sugar.

 

Vanadyl Sulfate is an insulin mimic, so that it can basically do what insulin

does by a different mechanism. If it went through the same insulin receptors,

then it wouldn't offer any benefit, but it doesn't, it actually has been shown

to go through a different mechanism to lower blood sugar, so it spares insulin

and then it can help improve insulin sensitivity. On someone who I am trying to

really get their insulin down I go 25mg 3X/day temporarily.

 

I put people on glutamine powder. Glutamine can act really as a brain fuel, so

it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings while they are in that transition

period. I like to give it to them at night and I tell them to use it whenever

they feel they are craving carbohydrates. They can put several grams into a

little water and drink it and it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings between

meals.

 

It is a high protein diet that will increase an acid load in the body, but not

necessarily a high fat diet. Vegetables and greens are alkalinizing, so if you

are eating a lot of vegetables along with your protein it equalizes the

acidifying effect of the protein. I don't recommend a high protein diet. I

recommend an adequate protein diet.

 

I think you should be using fat as your primary energy source, and fat is kind

of neutral when it comes to acidifying or alkalinizing. In general, over 50% of

the calories should come from fat, but not from saturated fat. When we get to

fat, the carbohydrates are clear cut, no scientist out there is really going to

dispute what I've said about carbohydrates.

 

There is the science behind it. You can't dispute it. There is a little bit of a

dispute as to how much protein a person requires. When you get to fat, there is

a big grey area within science as to which fat a person requires. We just have

one name for fat, we call it fat or oil. Eskimos have dozens of names for snow

and east Indians have dozens of names for curry. We should have dozens of names

for fat because they do many different things. And how much of which fat to take

is still open to a lot of investigation and controversy.

 

My take on fat is that if I am treating a patient who is generally

hyperinsulinemic or overweight, I want them on a low saturated fat diet. Because

most of the fat they are storing is saturated fat. When their insulin goes down

and they are able to start releasing triglycerides to burn as fat, what they are

going to be releasing mostly is saturated fat. So you don't want to take anymore

orally. There is a ration of fatty acids that is desirable, if you took them

from the moment you were born, but we don't, we are dealing with an imbalance

here that we are trying to correct as rapidly as we can.

 

You have plenty of saturated fat. Most of us here have enough saturated fat to

last the rest of our life. Truthfully. Your cell membranes require a balance of

saturated and poly-unsaturated fat, and it is that balance that determines the

fluidity. As I mentioned, your cells can become over-fluid if they don't have

any saturated fat.

 

Saturated fat is a hard fat. We can get the fats from foods to come mostly from

nuts. Nuts are a great food because it is mostly mono-unsaturated. Your primary

energy source ideally would come mostly from mono-unsaturated fat. It's a good

compromise. It is not an essential fat, but it is a more fluid fat. Your body

can utilize it very well as an energy source.

 

Animal proteins are fine and are good for you, but not the ones that are fed

grains.

 

Grainfed animals are going to make saturated fat out of the grains. Saturated

fat in nature occurs to a very tiny degree. Not in the wild there is very little

saturated fat out there. If you talk about the Paleolithic diet, we didn't eat a

saturated fat diet. Saturated fat diets are new to mankind. We manufactured a

saturated fat diet by feeding animals grains. You can consider saturated fat to

be second generation carbohydrates. We eat the saturated fats that other animals

produce from carbohydrates.

 

Zone was a good diet compared to the American diet it was unusual. Is it an

optimal diet? No. Is it optimal for what is known today about nutrition, it is

not. He is stuck in this mold he can't get out of but now he is trying to get

out of it through the back door. Initially the author spoke about how it made no

difference if you got your carbohydrate from candy or vegetables.

 

The Volkswagen was a good car, but eventually they had to change it to keep up

with modern technology. What he is doing now is changing his recipes so that the

40% carbohydrates are coming primarily from vegetables, and the carbohydrates

are going way down because he knows that if he doesn't it's not as good a diet.

 

I would go 20% of calories from carbs. Depending on the size of the person, 25

to 30% of calories from protein, and 60-65% from fat. You can get non-grain fed

beef.

 

Insulin is not the only cause of disease.

 

There are other considerations such as iron. We know that high iron levels are

bad for you. If a person's ferritin is high, red meat is out for a while, till

we get their iron down. SO there are other things involved about if we are going

to allow a person to eat red meat or not.

 

There is a great deal of difference between a non-grain fed cow and a grain fed

cow.

 

Non-grain fed will have only 10% or less saturated fat. Grain fed can have over

50%.

 

There is a big difference. A non-grain fed cow will actually be high in Omega 3

oils. Plants have a pretty high percentage of Omega 3, and if you accumulate it

by eating it all day, every day for most of your life, your fat gets a pretty

high proportion of Omega 3. I would try for 50% oleic fat, and the others would

depend on the individual, but about 25% of the other two.

 

In a fat diabetic I would probably go down on the saturated fat and go 60%

oleic. I would go 1 to 1 on the omega 6 to 3, that would be therapeutic. The

maintenance ratio would be about 2.5 to 1 omega 6 to 3. Arachadonic acid, DHA,

to EFA. Therapeutic, I would go lesser on the saturated fats. I would try to do

most of this through diet. There are some practicalities involved. I would ask

the person if they like fish and if they practically puke in front of me they

are going on a tablespoon of cod liver oil, the best brand is made by Carlson

which doesn't taste fishy at all.

 

There are probably some others too that are okay. Most people end up going on a

supplement of Omega 3 oils because most of them are not going to eat enough fish

to get it, which would be about four days a week, and it can't be overcooked

etc., it is a little hard to get that much entirely from diet.

 

I like sardines if they will eat them. Sardines are a very good therapeutic

food. They are baby fish so they haven't had time to accumulate a bunch of

metal. They are smoked so they are not cooked and the oil is not spoiled in

them. You have to eat the whole thing. Not the boneless and skinless. You need

to eat all the organs and they are high in vitamins and magnesium.

 

DNA glycates.

 

So if people are worried about chromosomal damage from chromium, what they

should really be worried about instead is high blood sugar. DNA repair enzymes

glycate as well. Insulin is by far your biggest poison. They disproved that

study that was against chromium many times. They showed that it only happens if

you put cells in a petrie dish with chromium but in vivo studies prove

otherwise. The lowering of insulin is going to be better than any possible

detriment of any of the therapies you are using. Insulin is associated with

cancer, everything.

 

Insulin should be tested on everybody repeatedly, and why it is not is only

strictly because there hasn't been drugs till recently that could effect

insulin, so there is no way to make money off of it. Fasting insulin is one way

to look at it, not necessarily the best way. But it is the way that everybody

could do it. Any family doctor can measure a fasting insulin. There are other

ways to measure insulin sensitivity that are more complex that we do sometimes.

 

We use intravenous insulin and watch how rapidly their blood sugar crashes in a

fasting state in 15 minutes and that assesses insulin sensitivity, then you give

them dextrose to make sure they don't crash any further. There are other ways

that are utilized to directly assess insulin sensitivity, but you can get a

pretty good idea just by doing a fasting insulin.

 

Designes for Health Institute

 

 

 

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