When we talk about insulin resistance, it can be identified in several ways. Some people find out when they get their A1C tested or track their actual blood sugar. Others realize it when they struggle to lose weight or build muscle. It can also show up as feeling tired after meals or going long periods of time without feeling hungry, especially in the morning. Even having to wake up to pee a lot could be an indicator.
The fact is, when people go on a "sugar detox," low carb or keto diet, or start intermittent fasting and think they feel better, they probably have insulin resistance. It's not Candida, sugar addiction, or any of the various reasons people have made up to demonize sugar.
However, these symptoms do indicate a much bigger underlying problem: chronic stress.
You see, insulin resistance is a stress response. It's intended to keep more sugar available in the blood stream to deal with resolving the cause of the stress. The stress could be external, like getting chased by a bear or finding out you're going to be audited. It could also be internal, like an injury, infection, poisoning, or actual nutritional problem. For example, this is why it seems that intermittent fasting works well because it's adapting to the stress response, instead of mitigating it.
External stressors and injuries are obvious, as are acute poisoning and infections. However, many people have succumbed to the belief that you can have a "chronic infection" and somehow not know it. This is easily disregarded, since real infections are apparent and life threatening. "Chronic infections" are merely imbalances of the microbiome that are the correct response to the current circumstances. This is why people may do extreme diets like keto, Candida cleanses, or other detoxes and perhaps get temporary relief from symptoms, at best. It's also why probiotics may help at first, and then eventually fail, or contribute to overgrowth like SIBO.
These extreme diets and obsessively focusing on the symptoms actually exacerbates the underlying issue: stress hormones that disrupt healthy metabolism and cause insulin resistance.
Candida, for example, is always present in the body. But Candida doesn't eat sugar. You can't grow mushrooms on sugar, and Candida is a fungus. Mushrooms grow on dead and decaying tissue, like a fallen tree in the forest or poop. Candida also competes with your body for iron, as it's an essential nutrient for all life, which means Candida is a good indicator of iron accumulation. If Candida is overgrown in your body, it's a sign that there is excess iron, chronic tissue damage, and a build up of waste (poop).
So the obvious question is what's causing the excess iron, tissue damage, and build up of waste?
Stress.
Stress hormones disrupt healthy metabolism, the same way birth control makes women infertile (estrogen is a stress hormone). One of the ways metabolism is disrupted by stress hormones is a process called "anemia of inflammation or infection." This is an appropriate response to stress, but it can also be a response to artificial stress like taking birth control or D3 supplements (because D3 is also a stress hormone). This stress response, whether natural or artificial, suppresses a key iron regulating protein called hepcidin that is responsible for getting iron into the blood. Reducing iron in the blood keeps it away from areas where iron might exacerbate injury or fuel infection, which is ok short term, but disastrous long term.
When hepcidin is low, iron quickly accumulates in tissues like the liver, reproductive organs, nervous system, heart, and eventually body fat. So to protect the vulnerable organs, the body may put on excess fat to keep the excess iron somewhere "safe." Iron and insulin directly affect each other for this reason. The body has to protect itself from excess iron which is highly reactive, and causes the excess tissue damage that feeds Candida and causes chronic inflammation.
That damage process is called oxidative stress.
Iron reacts with the fats surrounding the cells, and the fats become oxidized (damaged), causing injury or death to the cell, plus the accumulation of toxic chemicals like aldehydes. So inflammation becomes necessary as it is part of the healing process. This is why people get confused and think sugar is causing inflammation when in fact the sugar is just providing fuel for the body to heal - but we must first stop the damage!
Diabetics do not experience the change in their hepcidin when they are on insulin injections, which helps slow the accumulation of iron. This helps us understand that the diabetes is actually the correct response to incorrect conditions. So in order to fix the insulin resistance, we must first fix the incorrect conditions requiring it.
Here are the three simple things we must do:
1. Reduce stress hormones
This is simple, but not easy. Obviously it can start by simply eliminating unnecessary sources of stress hormones. That can include birth control, D3, or other endocrine disruptors like retinoid skincare products and synthetic fragrances, among many others. However, the iron that was accumulated, often over a lifetime, does not just simply disappear, so knowing how to support the body is critical, which I discuss in my other articles. It can also mean making sure we are consistently meeting our body's needs nutritionally. So many people with insulin resistance are simply under eating or not getting enough protein which makes things worse. Finally, we need to look at lifestyle choices to see how we can create more opportunities to reduce stress.
2. Stop fearing sugar
Especially at the beginning, reintroducing sugar may be more mentally challenging than physically. However, there's a concept in German New Medicine of a "morsel conflict." If you have been denying yourself sugar for a while, you create an emotional conflict that will be resolved when you finally do have it again. The immediate response is not because of the sugar, since it could be anything you avoid (gluten, dairy etc) that would allow you to resolve the emotional conflict once reintroduced. This can show up as a digestion problem or "flare up" but disappears quickly if we are guided with awareness. Then, sugar is a key regulator of hepcidin to help our body improve our iron regulation, and therefore our overall metabolism. Sugar itself when used properly and not in excess is a significant stress reduction tool. And if we want to fix insulin resistance, we have to teach our body how to use sugar effectively.
3. Allow our body to return to balance
Homeostasis is impossible when we are stress eating, constantly changing our diet or doing detoxes and cleanses, taking tons of supplements or hormones, and otherwise not trusting our own body. These things also make it impossible to focus on the emotional causes of many of our health problems by distracting us with being obsessed with our physical bodies instead of dealing with our emotional conflicts. If we are living in fear or doubt our body's innate ability to be healthy, that will keep us in a highly reactive state. It is allowing trauma or fear to guide our decisions instead of love and desire. We want to learn to be proactive - have a plan to consistently nourish ourselves, regulate our nervous system, and trust our bodies to know what it needs to do. What would you like your body to look and feel like? How would you do things differently if you believed you were already healthy?
Stepping out of the paradigm of forcing our bodies to do what we want without changing the circumstances needs to be the goal. If we want the body to stop being insulin resistant, we must change the conditions that require it. If we want the body to detox heavy metals or stop being anemic, we must change the conditions to allow for that to happen naturally.
These are the three simple things that must happen to fix insulin resistance. They are simple, in theory, but more challenging in practice. Everyone is unique, so how they arrived in this condition is going to be different from everyone else, and require a personalized solution. These are complex ideas that can be understood simply with the right guidance. My goal is not to tell you what to do, but to help you be informed to make proactive decisions that actually change the circumstances.
If you don't want to do it alone, I'm here to help guide you.
Schedule a free clarity call so we can figure out a plan that will fit your unique needs and goals.