Everyone who has tried a diet is aware of how frustrating it is when, despite cutting down on food, the weight just doesn’t move, in particular, the spare tyre around the middle of both men and women.
Everyone who has tried a diet is aware of how frustrating it is when, despite cutting down on food, the weight just doesn’t move
Those with this problem could consider themselves a victim of bad genes, a lumbering, sluggish metabolism, or just plain unlucky.
However, new research has found that the most likely cause is linked to insulin secretion. This is a factor within your control.
The new evidence from Boston, the US, is that people who have high levels of circulating insulin have far more difficulty losing weight than those with normal insulin levels (JAMA, 2007). Such people also have impaired or desensitised insulin receptors, so the body’s only remedy is to increase the production of insulin.
When insulin is released, it inhibits the ability of the hormone lipase to burn fat as fuel. The body then turns to burning muscle and carbohydrates, which stimulates your appetite. A vicious circle.
Insulin regulates glucose sugar in blood cells and helps it to enter other body cells to be used as fuel or stored for future use. Produced by the pancreas, insulin is released into the blood when blood glucose levels rise after eating.
The body becomes insulin-resistant when it is so bombarded with insulin that it turns down receptor activity in an attempt to protect itself from the toxic effects of high-insulin levels. As the body stops recognising insulin, it produces more and more, simply to regulate the amount of glucose in the blood.
This condition heralds diabetes, when the pancreas can no longer produce adequate insulin to control blood glucose levels. Even more worrying, insulin resistance can also lead to all the major degenerative diseases, including heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke and even cancer.
Insulin resistance may also be brought about by:
• A diet high in processed foods, which usually involves large amounts of sugar or high glycaemic index (GI) foods.
• Stress – being constantly on a ‘fight or flight’ alert increases insulin production so that the glucose in body cells can be used for energy to respond to the stressor. It also causes the body to crave high GI foods for instant energy.
Marilyn Glenville wrote in her book Fat Around the Middle: “Eating fatty or sugary foods during bouts of stress is usually deposited around the middle, because it is close to the liver, where it can most quickly be converted back into energy if needed.”
• Lack of exercise – evidence from Harvard shows that just a single bout of exercise increases the rate of glucose uptake into the skeletal muscles that have been put to work by the exercise.
Furthermore, any exercise training can help to correct insulin resistance by causing an increase in glucose transporters. Although some studies do not show that exercise helps diabetics improve overall glucose control, there is copious evidence that exercise can help to prevent non-insulin dependent, or type 2 diabetes.
• Lack of chromium – after conducting a study of thousands of patients over many years, nutritional pioneer Stephen Davies discovered that, as patients age, they invariably develop low levels of chromium.
Adequate amounts of this nutrient are necessary for insulin receptors to work and at least 15 controlled trials show that taking high levels of chromium can reduce insulin resistance and normalise blood sugar levels (Diabetes Technol. Ther., 2006).
Some advice to help beat the blood sugar yo-yos:
• Eat organic wholefoods.
• Determine your metabolic type and eat the right amount of carbohydrates for your type. The website www.healthexcel.com offers a simple test to check whether you should eat more carbohydrates or more protein.
• Eat little and often. Graze on healthy snacks such as nuts and seeds. Don’t diet by cutting down on your frequency of eating. When you restrict your meals, the body assumes you are suffering a famine and starts to store fat. So plan your small meals throughout the day.
• Stop eating all junk foods, processed foods and sugary snacks.
• Take essential fatty acids, such as the omega 3s, which will help against insulin resistance.
• Take supplements, such as a good multivitamin/mineral with adequate B, C, zinc, magnesium and manganese. Glenville suggests in her book that you also take chromium to stabilise the blood sugar levels, Siberian ginseng, coenzyme Q10, alpha-lipoic acid, green tea extract and amino acids. A qualified nutritional practitioner can help sort these out for each individual.
• Incorporate a stress-reduction regime into your diet.
• Take cinnamon. There is evidence that half a teaspoon each day of this common spice improves the glucose control in diabetics (Diabetes Care, 2003).
kathryn@maltanet.net