keto diet and insulin resistance what are some of the basics that you need to
understand to cut through the hype and make healthy choices? Coming right up
so keto is incredibly popular right now and the reason is that it reverses
insulin resistance and so many people are insulin resistance that's why it's
popular that's why it works so let's look at those in a little bit more depth
so that we can understand a lot more about the big picture so it's all about
blood sugar to start with so the brain needs blood sugar absolutely whether
you're in ketosis or eat high carb your brain needs blood sugar but if you're in
ketosis you taught your brain to also burn ketones so you're not as dependent
on carbohydrates the volume of carbohydrates but it still needs to be
maintained within a certain range so that range is about 80 to 120 and if you
eat whole Foods primarily low carb the way our ancestors did for tens of
thousands of years your blood sugar is gonna stay right in that narrow range of
about 80 to 120 today for example I had my coffee with some butter and a little
coconut cream then a few hours later I had a big omelet and there was a lot of
stuff in that omelet I put some bacon I put lots of cheese I put avocado put
some vegetables and spinach so it was probably 12 to 1,500 calories but even
if after eating all of that I checked my blood sugar and he was a hundred and
twelve thirty minutes later so you can eat the right kinds of food and still
maintain your blood sugar and that's what the keto diet does when we eat high
carb however then it is more like this blue line here that the carbohydrates
will drive up the blood sugar and when the blood sugar is a lot higher than 120
it's an emergency so the body releases a ton of insulin to help that sugar out
of the bloodstream and into the cell and we're going to look at that in more
detail and if everything is working in the early stages of this your body can
still bring it down to a normal level it still keeps it within here the redline
illustrates what happens a lot after a while when your blood sugar gets more
and more dysregulated by different factors such as stress and malnutrition
and carbs now you can have high blood sugar and low blood sugar called
hypoglycemia alternating so you can have insulin resistance and hypoglycemia at
the same time and then once you just totally wear out that machinery then you
have diabetes which means you're starting off high it rises and it tries
to come down but it never gets down to where it needs to be so that's different
scenarios so let's look at what's happening in a little bit more more
detail so here's the the red tube here that's the blood stream and it has
glucose because this the food you eat results in blood sugar eventually the
way that's absorbed into the blood stream is in the form of glucose and
that's the only form that circulates in in the bloodstream and in order for the
glucose to get into the cell these blood vessels they become capillaries and they
come really really close to the cell so that with some help that sugar can get
into the cell and the cell has insulin receptors those are the little blue
why's here and the red triangle that's insulin and they don't look like this
that's just an illustration and when that red insulin fits into the receptor
now that receptor changes the configuration it's like a key in a lock
that opens up a door and now the glucose can get through and that's the ultimate
goal so in a healthy person that can maintain blood sugar
doesn't have the spikes of blood sugar or insulin there's going to be a balance
between blood glucose and insulin and insulin receptors the body is going to
decide it's going to adapt over time and create just the right amount of all of
those but when we start eating a lot of carbohydrates when we start creating
high blood sugar especially on a regular basis now we change the equation we
change the components and there is a lot more blood sugar around so the body has
to make a whole lot more insulin and that's the pancreas that makes that
insulin so over time that that pancreas can get exhausted it gets overworked
what also happens now though is the cell the purpose of the glucose is that the
cell has certain metabolic needs and when those needs are met the cell
doesn't need anymore glucose but the glucose keeps coming so the cell says
hey hey hey back off wait up a little bit enough is enough and when it still
keeps getting more and more glucose it says well now I'm going to start getting
rid of some of these receptors I'm going to down regulate the receptors because
this is just getting out of hand I don't need that much glucose and since the
receptors are what's bringing it in I'm just going to reduce the number I'm
gonna down regulate and now we have insulin resistance so think about it
this way yeah just like a metaphor if you're living in a cabin in the
wilderness and the only source of fresh water is rainwater and you're collecting
it in buckets so you have 50 buckets and you go around you put the buckets out
and wait for the rain and then the rain comes and you get an inch in every
bucket and you collect it all and you have enough for a couple of weeks until
the next rain now imagine that it rained all the time
it was just pouring down and it almost never let up then after a few months or
a few years would you still put out 50 buckets of course not you would have
learned that it's enough to put out two or three buckets because they're gonna
fill up anyway and before you can use one there's going to be another one so
you're not going to put out the buckets that's what the body is doing it's not
going to keep all the receptors because there's an overflow there's an abundance
but here's the problem the blood sugar is still high the cell doesn't want it
but the blood sugar is still high and it has to get out of the bloodstream
because it's creating problem it's creating every problem that you ever
heard of in diabetes is from that high blood sugar and the inflammation
associated with insulin so the body keeps trying to make more insulin
but the problems compounded by high sugar and fewer receptors and now we're
really really pushing that pancreas to work work work and eventually it gets
exhausted and when it can't keep up then we have diabetes so let's look at this
just one one other version of this so we eat the carbs it results in high blood
glucose because of the high blood glucose it results in high insulin for a
while the high insulin can bring the blood sugar back down to normal and it
looks like we're doing fine and we could probably keep this up for years maybe
even decades this is why this didn't used to happen until we got into our 50s
and 60s now that we are abusing our bodies more than ever it starts coming
down in age to 30 and 20 and even teens and what we want to understand is it's
all about blood sugar and insulin and carbs result in high blood sugar they
have a very strong insulin response and this holds true for all starchy carbs it
is not true for non starchy vegetables so when
people say oh you can't eat any carbs on keto that's incorrect you can eat non
starchy vegetables leafy greens green beans there's lots and lots of things
you can eat plenty of to get you lots and lots of different nutrition that
doesn't trigger insulin protein has a mild to moderate insulin response and
fat has a negligible insulin response so that's the whole idea about this and non
starchy vegetables also have a negligible insulin response
so I'm I'll make another video to talk more about what types of foods to eat
like the the food pyramid for keto but for here we're just going to leave it at
that so the body can keep up oftentimes for a long long time but eventually when
we push the system too far for too long and we wear out that pancreas now we
have the high carb and we get the high blood glucose but now the high insulin
is insufficient and the pancreas can't make anymore it's it's reached its peak
and it's starting to decline because it's worn out so we still have the high
blood glucose and now they tell us in the diabetes management to eat moderate
carbs but it's not enough because we destroyed the machinery so moderate
carbs is not going to fix this you want to think of this whole system as your
carbohydrate tolerance machinery okay it's like a machine it processes carbs
as they come in it takes care of them but if you break the Machine then you
can't just cut back to half okay you have to do something more drastic you
have to cut way way way way back to to allow the body to to recover for that
pancreas to back up so much on the carbs that the pancreas has a chance to get to
keep keep up to catch up and to cut way way back so that the
cells actually become a little bit hungry for that blood sugar because then
they're gonna start to increase those insulin receptors again they're going to
up regulate those insulin receptors so that's a key to understand in the body
that you can change some things rather quickly by changing lifestyle but some
other things you have to be patient because your body needs time to heal
someone said you you can never step in the same river twice because the water
is always changing well it's the same in the body your body is not the same that
it was last year ninety percent of the cells have changed so if you give the
body a year and it allow it to make some new cells then the new cells will have a
chance to upregulate you have a chance to heal the machinery so most people
start kedo because they want to lose weight and great whatever it takes but
it's not about the weight it's about the insulin resistance because insulin
resistance is responsible for 95% of all degenerative disease or if not fully
responsible at least associated with 95% of all degenerative disease so what that
means is once you do the keto and reverse insulin resistance you are
getting healthier and that's the whole goal and when you get healthier the
weight will come off as a result it's not about the weight it's about health
and insulin resistance is the greatest threat to health that we know of now
when people talk about a balanced diet what does that mean okay for some people
that the recommendations today is to eat 60 percent of carbs from carbohydrate
that's about 300 grams a day for a small person and 400 grams a day for a large
person like myself and for some people then they say Oh eat a balanced diet
they probably mean maybe cutting that my half I don't know what they mean but
seen some examples like that but 150 or 200 grams is still way high
and if you want to reverse this if you want to fix if you want to have a chance
of healing your broken machine then you can't keep high or moderate you have to
go low or even very very low so a healthy person without insulin
resistance can probably lead a healthy life somewhere around 70 grams of carbs
but that's still not going to cut it for someone who has broken their machine
they might need to get down to 40 or 30 or 20 and no two people are the same so
it's not like a set rule it's a principle the keto diet is not a diet
it's a principle of how to reduce the carbohydrates enough to reverse the
damage to this machinery and it doesn't mean that you eat all fat it means you
start off with vegetables you eat moderate protein and then you fill up
with quality fats just enough to feel full so again I'll do a different video
on the keto food pyramid so we can clarify some of those things so I want
you to dive in a little bit more in detail because there's so much confusion
and I hope this has been helpful in understanding some of the basic
mechanisms of physiology and some of the dynamics that that influence all of that
so please share this video make your comments I'll answer questions and make
videos if you have more interests and as always thanks for watching