in today's video we're going to be going over how to overcome pre-diabetes and insulin resistance
specifically by improving metabolic flexibility pre-diabetes is diagnosed when fasting blood
sugar is between 100 and 125 milligrams per deciliter or 5.6 to 6.9 millimoles per liter
more than one in three americans has pre-diabetes and this rate is comparable for others in western
countries such as canada and australia as well if you catch pre-diabetes early it's easier to bring
your fasting blood sugar back down than if you catch it later and when you are pre-diabetic your
body is not efficient at using energy the cells in your body are not taking in glucose properly
which is what is leading to your high fasting blood sugar but because your blood sugar is
high and the energy is there your body is also not efficient at burning fat
but thankfully there are things you can do to improve your metabolic health improve your
metabolic flexibility and ultimately overcome pre-diabetes keep watching to find out how
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 if you like this video please give it
a thumbs up feel free to share and make sure to subscribe and make sure to follow me on instagram
twitter facebook and now tick tock where i shoot new posts every single day as i mentioned at the
start of this video pre-diabetes is characterized by having high fasting blood sugar higher than
what is considered to be normal but not high enough to be classified as type 2 diabetes
at least not yet up to 70 percent of people with pre-diabetes will eventually develop
type 2 diabetes so the odds of avoiding it are not in your favor but just because the odds are
not in your favor does not mean it is impossible to avoid you can overcome pre-diabetes and reverse
the diagnosis and that's what we're going to be talking about today so in today's video we're
going to start out talking about what pre-diabetes is and what causes it and then we'll get into
how you can overcome it by improving metabolic flexibility and improving your metabolic health
overall what causes pre-diabetes as previously mentioned pre-diabetes is very likely going to
eventually lead to type 2 diabetes but there is something that occurs before pre-diabetes years
before in fact and that is insulin resistance insulin is the hormone that is responsible for
transferring excess sugar from our bloodstream to our cells but over time our cells can become
resistant to the signals of insulin this means they aren't taking in glucose efficiently
and in response to this the body creates more insulin to deal with the excess glucose
so for a while the extra insulin that's being pumped out is enough to keep your blood sugar
in check but eventually it can no longer keep up and this is when you're going to start to see a
rise in your fasting blood sugar and you'll be diagnosed with pre-diabetes so you can think of
insulin resistance as on a spectrum on one end you have someone who is just beginning to be resistant
their blood sugar is normal but they might start seeing some of the side effects of having high
insulin such as weight gain skin tags and hair loss and then on the other end of the spectrum
you will have someone with full-blown type 2 diabetes who requires insulin or other medication
to keep their blood sugar in check they are going to be dealing with more serious side effects
such as blurred vision and numbness in their hands and feet so what can you do to overcome
pre-diabetes focusing on improving metabolic flexibility is one very effective strategy
metabolic flexibility so our bodies have two fuel sources they can use carbs or they can use fat
and metabolic flexibility is the ability to switch between burning these two fuel sources seamlessly
now you'll remember that at the start of this video i said that people with pre-diabetes are
not efficient energy burners they are not metabolically flexible because insulin is
always elevated trying to deal with excess glucose burning fat is difficult essentially
when insulin is high this is a signal to the body that there's excess glucose in the bloodstream
aka energy that's ready to be used so it doesn't see a need to tap into our fat stores for energy
because there's already energy readily available if that makes sense but the issue is is that our
cells are resisting the signals of insulin so they're not taking in glucose as they should
and this is why symptoms such as fatigue sugar cravings and hunger after eating are so common for
those with pre-diabetes but the good news is is that becoming more metabolically flexible improves
insulin sensitivity and with a few simple diet and lifestyle tweaks you can become more metabolically
flexible and eventually overcome pre-diabetes and one tool that can help you achieve this is lumen
a metabolism tracker that lets you know if you are burning mainly carbs or fat for energy lumen
provides insights and guidance to enhance your body's use of its fuel sources and it does this
by measuring your carbon dioxide concentration in your breath so for example ideally you want to
wake up in a fat burning state overnight your body should have burned through your glycogen which is
your stored glucose and then it will switch to burning fat instead and lumen's nutrition
recommendations throughout the day can help you to make sure you wake up in a fat burning state
especially in the beginning when you first start using lumen it's going to make recommendations
that are low in carbohydrates and this is going to help you to keep your insulin levels low
and your blood sugar more stable carbohydrates are the macronutrient that triggers the greatest
release in insulin so by keeping carbs low in your diet your circulating insulin levels are going to
be lower helping your cells to become more insulin sensitive again staying under the carb limit that
lumen recommends will help your body to burn fat more efficiently based on your morning reading
and your exercise plan for the day lumen will formulate a nutrition plan and recommend recipes
that fit within this plan you can also take readings before and after you eat to see how
the meal affected your metabolism and you can take readings before and after exercise as well
exercise can help you to use up the glucose that's in your bloodstream and your stored glucose as
well and help you to get back into fat burning mode faster all of this to say lumen is a very
valuable tool for monitoring your metabolic health and your lumen flex score will help you to track
your metabolic flexibility improving as i mentioned before improving your metabolic
flexibility is going to help you to become more insulin sensitive ultimately helping you to
overcome pre-diabetes if you want to check out lumen you can click the link in the description
box down below and be quick because the first 100 people to use the code kait50 are going to save
50 off their order i've been using lumen since i think early december and i find it really helpful
not only for monitoring my metabolic health but also for planning to fuel my workouts and
even holding myself accountable with lumen i've discovered that if i eat too close to my bedtime
i'm more likely to wake up burning more carbs than fat and i've also made the connection that i feel
way better throughout the day if i wake up burning fat but anyways guys that's all i have for today
i hope this video helped you to understand the connection between metabolic flexibility and
pre-diabetes and insulin resistance let me know in the comment section down below if you knew
what metabolic flexibility was before this video and remember to click the link in the description
box down below to check out lumen if you did enjoy this video you might also enjoy my video
where i do a full day of eating for metabolic flexibility you can check that out here if you
want to catch up on my most recent upload you can find it here and if you want to check out my keto
diet and cardboard coaching programs you can find those here thanks guys i'll see you next time bye