Type 2 Diabetes (T2D) is a condition where your body has trouble dealing with blood sugar.
For most people with T2D, the reason for this is that the body’s insulin cannot do its job properly.
Insulin is a hormone that is produced by the pancreas and its job is to lower your blood sugar in your bloodstream. It does this by moving the sugar from the bloodstream into the cells.
When insulin cannot do its job properly, sugar builds up in the bloodstream and the blood sugar level increases.
Another word for this scenario is that you have insulin resistance.
Excess sugar in the blood is a problem because it can damage blood vessels. What’s more, the body’s tissues aren't getting enough sugar for energy because too much of it stays in the bloodstream instead of entering the cells.
This is not something that simply happens overnight. Most likely, your insulin resistance has built up slowly in the background for years before you are alerted.
It’s a very silent condition that creeps up on you, often without showing any signs or symptoms until you have a regular health screening and blood test.
But the good news is that insulin resistance is very repairable with diet & lifestyle changes!
Your cells become desensitized to insulin and in the end it cannot do its job properly.
Why can’t insulin do its job properly?
There are many reasons as to why the body’s insulin is having trouble moving sugar from the bloodstream into the cells. Often it's not only one thing. Instead it’s a combination of many reasons adding up to insulin resistance.
First of all, you may be pre-disposed to the condition. Genetics, medical history, or certain medications may increase your risk of developing insulin resistance and T2D.
The second reason is food and lifestyle. Prolonged consumption of foods that drastically increase blood sugar levels often result in insulin resistance.
The body’s way to deal with this excess blood sugar is for the pancreas to increase insulin production. The extra insulin forces the sugar into the cells, temporarily overcoming the resistance.
This works for quite a long time and during this time the blood sugars appear to be normal. But in the end your cells become desensitized to this increased amount of insulin, ‘pushing’ the sugar into the cells.
Is it bad to have elevated insulin levels?
Apart from the implications on T2D and blood sugars, insulin is a fat storage hormone. This means that high insulin levels increase fat storage and reduce the body’s ability to use fat for fuel. This can lead to weight gain which, in turn, can lead to worsened insulin resistance…
You can see that this creates a vicious cycle:
Insulin resistance → high insulin levels → easier to gain weight by accumulating fat → increases insulin resistance → high insulin levels → more weight gain, and so on…
Since most people with T2D and insulin resistance has increased insulin levels, this makes it really hard to lose weight. This is why simply going on a ‘diet’ is not necessarily the answer for weight loss.
Instead you need to target ‘the insulin resistance’ and thereby remove the driver for the weight gain.
As mentioned earlier, the good news is that since insulin resistance is driven by food & lifestyle, you can reverse-engineer the whole process!
Ready to learn more? Register to my Free Masterclass '3 Evidenced-Based Strategies to Repair your Blood Sugar & HbA1c'.