What You Need to Know about Sugar and Insulin Resistance

In today’s post our fructose journey comes to a sweet conclusion, with answers to the questions that really matter:

Earlier in this series we discovered that fructose is not scarier than glucose. In fact, consuming too much glucose is even riskier than consuming too much fructose because glucose is a more powerful trigger for “insulin resistance.” It is excess glucose that raises blood sugar and insulin levels, turns off fat burning, shifts fat and cholesterol production into overdrive, feeds cancer cells, and sets the stage for inflammation throughout the body.1) People with insulin resistance are at high risk for developing type 2 diabetes in the future, so insulin resistance is often referred to as “pre-diabetes.”

So, should you focus on reducing the amount of glucose-y food you eat and lean towards fructose-y foods instead?

Good luck with that…people talk about fructose as though it’s a separate sugar from glucose, but practically speaking, it’s not. In real foods, fructose never exists alone—wherever fructose is, glucose is right there beside it, so it’s not easy to separate them in your diet. Even the vast majority of manufactured foods and beverages contain a mixture of fructose and glucose, as you’ll see in the infographic later in this post.

Who wants any of those? Nobody.

It may seem sweet and innocent, but sugar is actually your worst nightmare.

That is why, no matter what type of diet you eat, how healthy you are right now, or how much you weigh, it is extremely important to take control of your sugar intake! I’m sorry to tell you that counting calories, exercising, and eating more vegetables will NOT save you from the insulin resistance, inflammation, and chronic disease caused by excess sugar.

How much sugar is too much?

It depends on who you are, and what kind of sugar we’re talking about.

Eating sugar is a game of Russian roulette—risk varies from person to person. There’s no way to know for sure what the safe threshold is or which diseases you will get if you overdo it. However, we do know that some people can get away with more sugar than others.

There are two types of people in the world: INSULIN SENSITIVE and INSULIN RESISTANT. 

There are two types of carbohydrates in the world: NATURALLY-OCCURRING SUGARS AND STARCHES and REFINED CARBOHYDRATES.

Let’s break ’em down…

Insulin sensitive people

These lucky dogs have what is commonly referred to as “good metabolism.” Most can usually get away with eating to their satisfaction without gaining weight or losing control over appetite. Generally speaking, if you are physically and mentally healthy, you feel good, and your body weight is naturally normal and stable, you probably fall into this category. If so, you can probably eat naturally-occurring carbohydrates such as fruits and starchy vegetables relatively safely, just like our healthy ancestors did, without worrying about how many carbohydrate grams you eat per day. However, you could still easily become insulin resistant if you eat refined carbohydrates, especially as you get older. Carbohydrate metabolism tends to worsen with age. To protect yourself from insulin-resistant conditions down the road, stick to whole foods and hopefully you won’t lose your ability to process carbohydrates later on. I wish I’d known this when I was a teenager!

Insulin resistant people

We are the unlucky, growing majority—most of us gain weight by simply thinking about a muffin, and if we actually give in to our cravings and consume the afore-mentioned muffin, we then cannot stop thinking about…another muffin. Mmmm…muffin…muffin…muffin…If you have insulin resistance, then your carbohydrate metabolism is badly damaged. I’ll show you lots of ways to figure out whether you have insulin resistance shortly. For those of us who are insulin-resistant, the sad truth is that we need to limit ALL types of carbohydrate, including fruits, starchy vegetables, grains and beans, not just added sugar and refined carbohydrates. The happy truth is that since carbohydrates lie at the root of most of our problems, we have the power to change the course of our future simply by changing our diet!

Naturally-occurring sugars and starches

Fruits: All fruits contain sugar (a mixture of fructose and glucose), so they can raise blood sugar and contribute to problems in insulin-resistant people. However, fruits also contain water and fiber, making them more filling than other sweet treats. They also contain fructose and sugar alcohols, which can result in a laxative effect or other uncomfortable symptoms if you overeat them. These ingredients are nature’s built-in stop signs. It’s a LOT harder to overdose on sugar eating whole fruit than it is to overdose on sugar by eating candy, cookies, cake, or by guzzling fruit juice or soda. The sweeter a fruit is, the more dramatically it can raise your blood sugar. Examples of low-sugar fruits are strawberries, blackberries, raspberries, apricots, and papayas. Examples of high-sugar fruits are grapes, pineapples, watermelons, mangoes, and figs.

Vegetables: Most above-ground vegetables that don’t taste sweet (such as lettuce, broccoli, and spinach) are very low in sugar and are safe for everyone’s metabolism. However, any vegetable that tastes sweet contains some sugar (think beets, carrots, acorn/butternut squash),4), and most root vegetables (potatoes, yams, turnips, etc) are full of starch, which breaks down quickly into pure glucose and can spike blood sugar. Insulin-resistant people should minimize sweet and starchy vegetables.

Grains and Legumes: Grains (wheat, corn, rice, oats, etc) and legumes (beans, peas, soy, lentils, etc) are very high in starch, most of which breaks down into glucose in our bodies. If you eat these foods whole, their outer bran coating slows down their digestion, so they raise blood sugar more slowly than if you eat them in their more refined forms (ground up into flours or powders). If you have insulin resistance, you should stay away from all legumes and grains, even whole grains. Luckily, grains and legumes aren’t good for people anyway, so it’s wise to avoid them regardless of your insulin sensitivity status.

Refined Carbohydrates

These include all processed and pure sugars, whether they come from a natural source or not: white sugar, high-fructose corn syrup, glucose syrup, agave syrup, molasses, honey, maple syrup, brown rice syrup, fruit juice concentrates, etc.

Contrary to popular belief:

  • Honey is not healthier than other forms of sugar. In fact, it contains more grams of sugar per teaspoon than any other sweetener (see infographic below).
  • “High-fructose” corn syrup is not worse than other forms of sugar. White sugar contains 50% fructose and high-fructose corn syrup contains 55% fructose. Numerous studies have confirmed that there is no difference between white sugar (sucrose) and HFCS -55 when it comes to your health.5) 6)
  • Agave syrup is not a natural sweetener. It is manufactured by adding enzymes to inulin, the indigestible starch found in agave roots. Agave syrups contain in the neighborhood of 70% to 90% fructose, making agave syrup the mother of all high-fructose syrups. 7)

Flours and purified/processed starches such as corn starch are also considered refined carbohydrates because they don’t exist in nature and can cause sharp blood sugar spikes. Because flours and refined starches break down rapidly into glucose, most cereals and baked goods are high in sugar, even if they have no sugar added or don’t taste sweet. Examples include bread, pasta, crackers, white rice, and non-sugary cereals like Special K®, Corn Flakes®, and Rice Krispies®.

How much refined carbohydrate can you eat? 

Everyone should avoid refined carbohydrates. They are bad for all of us, whether we are insulin-resistant or not. The less you eat of these the better.

The World Health Organization (WHO) officially recommends in its new 2015 guideline8) that people of all ages should limit sugar to less than 5% of total daily calories. So, if you eat 2,000 calories per day, the WHO says that no more than 100 calories should come from added sugars, including “sugars naturally present in honey, syrups, fruit juices and fruit juice concentrates.” That amounts to 26 grams of sugar per day, which is just over 2 tablespoons of sugar per day, maximum.

The WHO guidelines were created with healthy people in mind, not people with insulin resistance.

So… How do you know if you are insulin resistant?

If you already have type 2 diabetes, you definitely already have insulin resistance.Type 2 diabetes is the body’s way of saying you can’t process carbohydrate anymore. 

If you have any of the following health problems, you are likely to have insulin resistance:

  • Central obesity (too much belly fat, shaped like an apple instead of a pear)*
  • Fatty Liver Disease
  • Gout
  • High blood pressure
  • Heart Disease
  • Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS)
  • Erectile Dysfunction

*While being overweight or having an “apple shape” increase the chances that you have insulin resistance, there are some normal weight “pears” (and even a few underweight folks) out there who have insulin resistance, so don’t go by weight and shape alone.

Medical Tests for Insulin Resistance

There is no simple direct test for insulin resistance on the market, so most health care providers use a combination of tests along with other information about you to determine how insulin resistant you are. Some of the most useful tests are listed below:

  • Fasting insulin
  • Fasting blood glucose
  • Fasting triglycerides (fat in the blood)
  • HDL (so-called “good cholesterol”)
  • HsCRP aka highly-sensitive C-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation)

What to do if you have Insulin Resistance

If your current numbers don’t look good, or if you already have an insulin-resistant condition such as diabetes or fatty liver, it is extremely important to take action as soon as possible, or your health will continue to decline. But take heart: your fate is NOT sealed! You have SO much more control over your health than you may realize. Want to reverse insulin resistance and all the diseases that come with it? Resist those carbs! Here’s a wonderful TED talk by obesity specialist Sarah Hallberg M.D. about how to treat insulin resistance and Type 2 diabetes with low-carbohydrate diets.

While the cutoff values vary from person to person, most enlightened experts recommend that people with insulin resistance lower their total NET carbohydrate intake to 60 grams per day or less in order to improve metabolism [net carbs = total grams of carbohydrate minus total grams of fiber]. Everyone has a different threshold (mine happens to be about 30 grams per day), so you’ll have to see for yourself. You’ll know if you’re over your personal limit if your lab tests or health problems are not improving (or are getting worse), you have carbohydrate cravings, or you are gaining weight. It only takes a few weeks to see improvements in appetite, weight, and even most blood tests!

How to Find Your Sweet Spot

How to begin depends on your personality. If you’re an all-or-nothing person who prefers cold-turkey approaches, start by removing almost all carbohydrates for a couple of weeks by eating only meat/seafood/poultry/eggs, healthy fats (olive/palm fruit/avocado/coconut/saturated animal fats), and non-starchy, non-sweet vegetables. Then, if you wish, you can gradually add back healthy whole food sources of carbohydrates until you find your personal limit. If you’re a one-step-at-a-time person, start with your usual diet and gradually remove carbohydrate until you find your personal limit. If you go this route, remove the refined and high glycemic index carbs first, as these are the most powerful triggers for insulin resistance.

One helpful way to track your progress is to invest in a blood glucose monitor so you can check your own blood sugar at home. The most important time of day to check is first thing in the morning, before breakfast (“fasting”). Your goal should be to get your fasting blood sugar down into the 80s. There are many glucometers on the market, and they vary widely in price and accuracy. I own two myself that I can personally vouch for, but there are less expensive systems available. The cost of the meters themselves is usually not the issue, it’s the blood test strips that run into money, so compare strip prices when shopping.

Many doctors still advise people with insulin resistance, even people with full-blown type 2 diabetes, to continue to eat large amounts of carbohydrate per day. Often these physicians will prescribe blood sugar lowering medicines or even insulin to control your blood sugar, instead of advising you to remove sugar from your diet. They may tell you that your problem is due to too much fat in your diet, or not enough exercise. This advice is outdated, illogical, and misguided. Where does high blood sugar come from in the first place? FOOD. If you are confused about whether to follow your doctor’s advice or the advice you’re reading here on this site or on the many other excellent sites that recommend a low-carbohydrate approach to diseases like diabetes, don’t take anyone else’s word for it—do your own experiments and see what works best for you. I am confident you will discover for yourself that removing sugar from your diet is a lot more effective in helping you reach your health goals than other approaches.

If lowering your carbohydrate alone is not enough to see results, there are additional tips in the infographic below.

Preventing and Fighting Insulin Resistance

Whether you have insulin resistance or not, if you care about your health, want to cut your medical bills, avoid or get off medications, stay out of the hospital, and greatly increase your chances of living a long, disease-free life, the single most important thing you can do for yourself is to eat as little sugar as you possibly can. 

The infographic below includes simple steps you can take to remove hidden sources of sugar in your diet before it does any more damage to your health, along with additional strategies to control your blood sugar and insulin levels. I hope you find it useful, and if you do, please pass it along to others. 

 

10 Tips to Improve Your Metabolism and Reduce Insulin Resistance Infographic

Source : www.diagnosisdiet.com

Source: http://www.diagnosisdiet.com/how-to-diagnose-prevent-and-treat-insulin-resistance/