in today's video we are going to be talking about what diet is best for insulin resistance is it a
diet low in carbs and high in fat or high in carbs and low in fat insulin resistance will
eventually lead to type 2 diabetes and it also increases your risk of developing heart disease
and pcos signs you are insulin resistant include excess abdominal fat cravings after eating
and dark skin patches by addressing insulin resistance early you can stop it in its tracks
and reverse it before it escalates and leads to other diseases the best way to do this is through
changing your diet but there is some debate over which diet is the best at reversing insulin
resistance does fat cause insulin resistance or is it the carbohydrates in today's video we're
going to compare the low fat diet to the low carb diet look at the evidence and talk about
which works best for reversing insulin resistance hey guys welcome back to my channel if you're new
here my name is kait i'm a health coach and i post videos on a high fat nutrient dense way of eating
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talk about what diet is best for reversing insulin resistance supporters of the low fat diet will say
that fat is the cause of insulin resistance and to reverse it you need to limit fat supporters
of the low carb diet will say that carbs are the reason for insulin resistance and to reverse it
you need to limit carbs now thankfully this has been a subject that has been highly studied over
the last few decades researchers have compared low fat versus low carb diets to see which is
better for weight loss type 2 diabetes and pcos all of which tie in with insulin resistance
so we are going to start off today looking at a few significant studies done on low carb and
low-fat diets in the context of insulin resistance and then we will talk about how you can apply this
information to your own situation to reverse your insulin resistance what it means to be insulin
resistant before we get into it i am going to give a quick recap of what insulin resistance is
if you are already familiar and want to skip ahead i always have time stamps or
chapters as youtube calls them on the progress bar down below the tldr of insulin resistance is
that it is a state where your cells are no longer responding to insulin in the way that they should
one of insulin's main roles in the body is to regulate blood sugar usually when we eat blood
sugar rises and the pancreas releases insulin in response the insulin then ushers the excess sugar
out of the blood and into your cells now when you become insulin resistant your cells basically
shut the door they stop responding to insulin this leads to your insulin levels remaining high
which makes you become more insulin resistant and it becomes a vicious cycle and high insulin
or hyperinsulinemia leads to a whole host of other problems when insulin is high it is difficult to
lose weight because high insulin indicates there is excess energy that needs to be stored as fat
high insulin can also lead to pcos because insulin blocks the ovaries from turning testosterone into
estrogen because of this there's no spike in estrogen that usually happens before ovulation
and no ovulation cysts then form on the ovaries and testosterone remains high and these are just
a few examples of the role insulin resistance plays in other diseases what the science says
now as i said before there have been a lot of studies comparing low carb and low-fat diets
we are going to look at a few individual studies that i found to be very striking and then we're
going to take a look at a meta-analysis which pulled together a whole bunch of studies and
then came to a conclusion the first study we were going to look at was done on 83 obese subjects
over 12 weeks obesity and insulin resistance tend to go hand in hand most people who are obese
are also insulin resistant participants were split up into three groups the first ate 70
percent of their calories from carbs and 10 from fat the second had 50 of their calories from carbs
and 30 from fat and the final was a ketogenic diet with less than 5 percent carbs and over 60 percent
fat all three groups ate the exact same amount of calories over the course of the study at the
end of the study fat loss was similar between the three groups but when it came to insulin levels
the results were significantly different the very low carb high fat group lowered fasting insulin by
33 and the moderate carb group by 19 there was no change in fasting insulin with the high carb group
this study i found extremely fascinating because all three groups ate the same amount of calories
but the changes they saw to fasting insulin were very different to reverse insulin resistance
you want to keep your insulin low when insulin is low your cells become more sensitive the
study went on to conclude very low carb diets are effective in improving insulin concentrations very
low carb diets may be useful in the short term management of subjects with insulin resistance
the next study went over one year and had just under 350 participants all with type 2 diabetes
now we need to remember that type 2 diabetes happens as a result of insulin resistance if
you let insulin resistance progress far enough the insulin will no longer be able to control
your blood sugar and that is when you will be formally diagnosed with type 2 diabetes
in this study everyone ate a very low carb ketogenic diet most of the participants were obese
and 87 of them were on type 2 diabetes medication this study was actually trying to compare the
difference it would make if participants were able to work more closely with a health coach or doctor
as opposed to the standard care model where they only saw their doctor infrequently after one
year 94 of the participants who were prescribed insulin medication previously were able to reduce
or stop their medication entirely one hundred percent of those prescribed sulfur lunarius
a medication that also plays a role in increasing insulin no longer had a need for it the patients
who were only receiving the standard amount of care did not see any changes in medication use
and other biomarkers the study concluded this suggests the novel care model study here using
dietary carbohydrate restriction and continuous remote care can safely support adults with type 2
diabetes to lower hba1c weight and medicine use so what can we take away from this the participants
who are working with a health coach or doctor were much more likely to understand and adhere
to the low-carb diet which is why they saw better results than the other group and almost 100 of
these individuals saw improvements in their type 2 diabetes so much so that they were able to reduce
or get off their medication entirely and this means that their insulin sensitivity was improving
because the thing you need to know about type 2 diabetes is that the medication prescribed
is often insulin or something that increases insulin production it is thought that because
the cells are not responding to insulin correctly the solution is to add more insulin this works
temporarily but then the body becomes more resistant and this is why type 2 diabetics
often find they have to continually increase their dose these medications make you more and more
insulin resistant and the fact that they were able to reduce or eliminate their medication shows how
much of an improvement they sought their insulin resistance simply through a diet change now the
other thing we can learn from this study is that low carb diets can be difficult to understand
and adhere to so if you are insulin resistant or type 2 diabetic and you have previously tried a
low carb or keto diet without success i urge you to give it another go if it seems overwhelming
or confusing i've put together a seven day crash course that will give you everything
you need to know to start the keto diet in the simplest way by joining the program you also
get access to an exclusive facebook group where you can ask me questions and i can offer support
if you want to check that out you can click the link in my bio or head to healthcoachkate.com
forward slash keto start so that was a study that showed overwhelmingly the effectiveness
of low-carb diets for insulin resistance and i wanted to show a study specifically done on
low-fat high-carb diets next but here's the thing i could not find a study on low-fat diets for
insulin resistance or type 2 diabetes that yielded anywhere near the same results and the more i dug
into it the more evidence i found supporting low-carb diets for insulin resistance there was
one study that compared a low-fat vegan diet to the conventional diabetes diet for 72 weeks with
roughly 50 subjects following each diet at the end of the 72 weeks there really was not a significant
difference between the two groups both groups lost weight the low-fat vegan group lost 4.4 kilos on
average and the conventional group lost 3 kilos on average although blood sugar control seemed
to be slightly better with the low-fat vegan group another study looked at 477 different studies done
on people with type 2 diabetes and found that a vegetarian diet was associated with improved
glycemic control but the fact that there was no mention of reducing or eliminating medication
i think says a lot just about every study done on low carb diets to treat type 2 diabetes
mentions this one small study concluded the low carb ketogenic diet improved glycemic control in
patients with type 2 diabetes such that diabetes medications were discontinued or reduced in most
participants because the low-carb ketogenic diet can be very effective at lowering blood glucose
patients on diabetes medication who use this diet should be under close medical supervision
or capable of adjusting their medication low carb diets are so effective at reversing insulin
resistance and type 2 diabetes that anyone who is on medication needs to be extremely careful
because their need for it will reduce very quickly there have also been studies done
that show high carb low fat diets actually sustain insulin resistance one study done
took four groups of eight metabolically healthy women and fed them meals of either 30 carbs or 60
carbs the low carb group showed a reduction in insulin resistance after the third meal
in the evening the high carb group experienced sustained high post meal insulin now i have one
more meta-analysis we're going to look at that took several randomized control trials comparing
low carb and low-fat diets specifically but before we get into that i'm going to take a quick moment
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so this next study is a meta-analysis that looked at 23 randomized control trials comparing low carb
diets with less than 45 percent carbs and low fat diets with less than 30 carbs before we get
into the study i just want to say that a diet with 45 carbs is not really a low carb diet
let's say you're eating 2 000 calories a day 45 of that would be 900 calories from carbs or 225 grams
usually low carb diets are less than 100 grams with very low carb diets having less than 50.
but anyways the study concluded that both diets were equally effective at reducing body
weight and waist circumference both diets reduced participants blood pressure total
to hdl cholesterol ratios and total cholesterol ldl cholesterol triglycerides blood glucose and
serum insulin levels and raised hdl cholesterol so this is pretty underwhelming but there is one
additional note the authors had that i'm going to mention participants on low carbohydrate
diets had greater increases in hdl cholesterol and greater decreases in triglycerides and here
is why that is important your triglyceride to hdl ratio is a really strong indicator
of your insulin resistance or sensitivity if you take your triglyceride number
in milligrams per deciliter and divide it by your hdl number in milligrams per deciliter
that is your triglyceride to hdl ratio now if your numbers are in millimolars per liter
as they are in most places outside of the u.s you will have to multiply the triglyceride number by
89 and the hdl by 39 and then enter them into the equation if your number is less than 1.9
you are insulin sensitive two to three and you are somewhat insulin resistant and over three
you are very insulin resistant so this meta-analysis concluded that the people
on low carb diets saw the greatest increase in hdl and the greatest decrease in triglycerides
meaning that these people saw the greatest improvement in reversing insulin resistance
so when it comes to the debate over whether low-carb or low-fat diets are better for reversing
insulin resistance there really is no contest low carb diets come out overwhelmingly on top
and when you reverse insulin resistance you reduce your risk of developing type 2 diabetes you reduce
your heart disease risk and your overall health will improve now if you want to know more about
reversing insulin resistance and the best foods you can eat you can check out this video next
and if you did enjoy this video please remember to give it a thumbs up and let me know down below
if you have tried a low carb or a low fat diet and if you saw any improvements for insulin resistance
let me know down below and thank you again to squarespace for sponsoring this video if you did
like this video next you might want to check out my video on reversing insulin resistance which i
mentioned before you can find it right here you can also catch up on my most recent upload which
will be right here and if you want to check out my keto diet and carnivore diet coaching programs
which i also mentioned earlier you can find them here thanks again guys i'll see you next time
bye