Insulin resistance signs and symptoms. Everyone knows today that insulin
resistance is a big problem but how do you know that you have it? Do you have to go
get blood work or are there certain things that you can tell anyway? Today
we're going to talk about that and we're going to explain it so that you have a
good understanding. Coming right up (Wellness For Life)
when I started planning this video I wanted to see what was available in the
medical world so I went online and I looked up the Mayo Clinic science and
symptoms of insulin resistance and I had to say I was surprised when the Mayo
Clinic says that it generally has no signs and symptoms that insulin
resistance is not generally associated with any signs and symptoms and I'm
thinking but there's all these things we're going to talk about don't they
have isn't Mayo Clinic supposed to be like the best of the best maybe they
have the doctors just see patient and someone else writes the website I'm not
sure about anyway then I looked at a website called
diabetes dot co dot uk' and I don't think it's a government
website but it's like a community for diabetes and they have certainly heard
of a few things so they had listed one sign would be lethargy or or fatigue
that you you're tired all the time you don't have any energy second would be
hunger and that is certainly a common sign because insulin keeps you insulin
resistance keeps you from using the fuel that you have stored on your body so if
you I did a video on the basics of insulin resistance if you haven't seen
that yet then go and go and check that out as well third they have poor focus
and concentration number for weight gain you know anyone who has gained weight
well that's a sign of insulin resistance and when we go through these keep in
mind that insulin resistant doesn't mean that you have
have all of these you could certainly have this without instantly resistance
meaning that there's another cause for it and you could be insulin resistance
without having all or most or hardly any of these anything is possible but when
we look at it we see what large groups of people have found associated with
insulin resistance number five belly fat that's a big one
because the insulin tends to create insulin resistance and start in the
liver and then the fat starts building up in the midsection so that the classic
apple shape of weight gain is typically associated with insulin resistance and
therefore it is also associated with the greatest health risks that's the kind of
fat that is strongly associated with degenerative disease so those were
things that I found online and then I've had some courses also in functional
medicine and we're gonna get into a little more detail and talk about these
things so number six fatigue in general is a sign but especially if it happens
after a meal because when you eat and your blood sugar goes up that blood
sugar is supposed to go into the cell but if your insulin resistant the cell
is resisting that glucose it can't get out of the bloodstream and the food you
ate just keeps jacking up the blood sugar now the only way the body can get
rid of the glucose is to turn it into triglycerides so that's why the blood
triglycerides go up but it's also why you get tired because converting that
glucose to triglycerides is very expensive digesting food is expensive it
uses a lot of energy to start with but then if you have to convert the glucose
to triglycerides now you're kind of wasting or spending energy on two fronts
seven you wake with sugar cravings because with insulin resistance you're
not using you're not having a steady blood sugar you're not using the sugar
in your body because it can't get into the cell so your body constantly has
cravings and want more and if you wake with sugar cravings that's a sign of
insulin resistance if you have sugar cravings after meals that you have
already eaten food your body is supposed to be satisfied but the sugar can't get
into the cell because of the insulin and now your body just wants more the
insulin makes you hungry it gives you the cravings sugar cravings not
satisfied by sweets that you eat sugar and you still have cravings for more and
more sugar if you crash after lunch you can get fatigued in general but
especially after lunch you crash and you can't make it through the afternoon
without caffeine or without stimulants if you wake up and you're not rested
that's another sign or if you are unable to lose the weight so it's one thing to
gain the weight insulin is responsible mostly for most weight gain in terms of
packing on the way but then if you try just about everything if you try the
calorie restriction and the smaller meals and the exercise and the
deprivation and nothing happens then chances are very good that you are
insulin resistant if you have difficulty falling asleep that's another sign of
insulin resistance if you have joint pain if you have depression or anxiety
then that those are also signs of insulin resistance and now we're getting
to some of the fun stuff here it's not so fun for the people who have it but
it's sort of interesting how how far-reaching these these effects can be
androgen there's an androgen shift in females the females turn more masculine
that's an androgen shift and what happens there is there's a an enzyme
called lyase that is up regulated by insulin and in females it has the
tendency to convert estrogen into testosterone so the female
body makes estrogen but the insulin starts a process to convert it into
testosterone so now they have testosterone excess more testosterone
than a female should have and this affects as many as 10 percent of the
women in childbearing age because of that with the testosterone within
hormone imbalance then they can't get pregnant so this is actually the number
one reason for infertility in the Western world is insulin resistance they
also get hirsutism or hirsutism however you want to pronounce that and what that
is it's unwanted hair growth so males and females grow hair in slightly
different places and especially males when they get older and they have more
testosterone then the hair stops growing in places where you might want it and it
starts growing more so in the places you don't want it such as out of the ears
and out of the nose and on the chin so with females getting this androgen shift
and this testosterone dominance they start getting that same kind of unwanted
hair growth in males the opposite thing happens so in males there is something
called aromatase upregulation so it's a different enzyme but it's the same
sort of effect but opposite so insulin resistance a lot of insulin up regulates
aromatase which in men converts testosterone to estrogen so it's the
kind of the same problem but opposites females turn more masculine and men turn
more feminine as a result of that with too much estrogen then man can get
erectile dysfunction and they can get what's commonly known as man boobs and
we did a video on that and explain that in a little more D
tail also and it's so important to understand these principles because a
lot of guys go in and get their blood work and they get a hormone panel and
they see that they're low in testosterone so they give them a cream a
testosterone cream to start rubbing but in the presence of insulin they're just
up regulating their aromatase and all the testosterone that they're rubbing in
the cream gets converted into estrogen so they're just making the problem worse
if they don't understand this and it's also really really tough on the
grandkids because when grandma turns into grandpa and the kids can't tell
them apart anymore that's really hard on them so if you're a grandpa and your
grandkid comes up and calls you grandma that could also be a sign of insulin
resistance so that's 21 signs and symptoms that you may be insulin
resistant and a signer symptom is something that either someone can
observe that's a sign or something you experience that's a symptom so if you
find something on blood work then that's a test that's not really a sign or a
symptom but I wanted to include a few more here at the end because most people
in the Western world get blood work some kind of blood work with some regularity
so most of these things are known to us most women go to an ob/gyn and they get
an ultrasound or something and they find out so if you have PCOS that is also
very strongly associated with insulin resistance PCOS is polycystic ovarian
syndrome it can give very irregular periods very painful symptoms with with
your menstrual period and it also often results in infertility number 23
most people know if they have high blood pressure that is often associated with
insulin resistance cholesterol imbalances raised total cholesterol but
also an increased LDL and a decreased HDL meaning the
between the two gets worse often associated with insulin resistance and
increased triglycerides like we talked about if the body has no place to put
the sugar it has to convert it into triglycerides that's one of the fastest
and simplest ways of understanding this and when people go on a low-carb or a
ketogenic diet where and this amazes a lot of people but if you understand that
mechanism it is so obvious that if you cut your carbs to almost zero and you
start eating lots and lots of fat your blood fats go down and it happens very
quickly and because insulin is a hormone and it is the dominant it's like the
sledgehammer of all hormones if it is out of balance it's very likely that a
lot of other hormones will be out of balance not just testosterone and
estrogen but it can influence virtually every other hormone in the body so in
addition to blood work which we're gonna go over on some later videos and talk
about how to analyze that and what tests to do to really understand this there
are lots and lots of ways that you can start noticing if you might have insulin
resistance and since the Mayo Clinic hadn't heard of any of these maybe
someone would be nice enough to to share the link with them so that they could be
informed as well right now the official guidelines for insulin resistance is to
eat low fat and high carb diet with lots and lots of grains and that's really sad
because that's a diet that's pretty much guaranteed to cause diabetes if you are
insulin resistant it will make it worse and I was very very pleased to notice on
this British website that they said a low-carb diet or a ketogenic diet which
is a very low carb diet can be the most beneficial and most helpful in reversing
insulin resistance and that's of course what everyone in the keto and low-carb
community knows is that that's the mechanism that that actually
works so if you're new to this channel then make sure that you subscribe and
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with people you care about because this is killing millions and millions of
people there are tens of millions of new cases of insulin resistance every year
and it doesn't have to be that way all they have to know is how it really works
and that's what we talk about on this channel thanks for watching