insulin resistance and intermittent fasting what's that all about these are
two terms that are thrown around a lot when it comes to diabetes and weight
loss and keto and so forth today we're going to make sense of them and see how
they fit together coming right up
I'm dr. Ekberg I'm a holistic doctor and a former Olympic decathlete and if you
want to truly master health by understanding how the body really works
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miss anything insulin resistance and intermittent
fasting what are they and how do they fit together so first of all insulin
resistance what is insulin insulin is a hormone
that helps you get your energy the glucose out of the bloodstream and into
the cell that's the purpose so when you eat things that raise blood sugar more
then your body makes more insulin so the more carbs the more sugar you eat the
more insulin your body produces to get that sugar out of the bloodstream and
into the cell this is one of the driving factors of insulin resistance because
when it's balanced when you don't eat too much carbs and you don't eat all the
time then the body raises the blood sugar and the insulin but then the blood
sugar comes down and the insulin comes down and your body gets time to burn off
the fuel that you ate since the last meal and you become you stay insulin
sensitive but if you eat too much carbs and you eat too frequently now there is
a whole lot of excess energy that excess energy has to be stored so the insulin
starts pushing this glucose into the cell until the cell is full and then the
cell starts converting the glucose into fat and once it's full of fat then the
cell becomes insulin resistance it says I'm full I can't take anymore whatever
reasons you have to push that glucose on me I don't want it anymore and now we've
developed insulin resistance that's how insulin and insulin
resistance works so the things that drive insulin resistance the most are
factors that raise blood sugar so foods that are what we call high glycemic
those are primarily sugar and grains and specially processed grains but all
grains really do it very very significantly because sugar is a single
molecule grain and starch is are chains of these single molecules but it only
takes the body a few minutes to take these chains of starch and carbohydrates
and lop off those single sugars and turn that into blood sugar that's why there's
very little difference in blood glucose blood sugar response between table sugar
and bread they're basically the same the first factor are things that
increase blood sugar a lot the second factor are things that increase liver
congestion when that insulin starts stuffing the cell full of fuel the cell
has to burn off that fuel before it's ready for more and there's one sugar in
particular and that's called fructose you may have heard of high fructose corn
syrup well table sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose but high fructose corn
syrup is more than 50% fructose and what does fructose do well fructose can only
be metabolized can only be processed by one type of cell in the body and that's
the liver and the liver is the metabolic it organ of the body it's the chemistry
factory so anything chemical or metabolic that happens in the body for
processing it probably happens in the liver and when we have a lot of fructose
large volumes of this one sugar that can only be processed in
the liver now the liver gets very very quickly
overwhelmed because it's a small organ relative to the rest of the body all the
cells in the body can burn off glucose and fat but only the liver can burn off
the fructose blood glucose liver congestion and the third thing that
really matters that really drives insulin resistance is how often we eat
so we'll look a little more closely on that in just a moment so that's what
insulin resistance is and what drives it now what is intermittent fasting
intermittent fasting is the fasting is when you don't eat
simply put so if we look at a typical pattern of eating let's say that you're
the average person you eat like you were told you wake up in the morning and you
have a breakfast you have your skim milk and your cereal and your orange juice
and your toast and jam and then you get off work and you have your mid-morning
snack coffee and a doughnut or maybe a fruit if your or a granola bar if your
health minded and you think that's a good idea then you go out for lunch then
you have your afternoon snack then you have dinner and then you have a late
evening snack so six times a day you eat things that increase blood sugar so from
7:00 in the morning to 9:00 at night you're eating at certain intervals so
the time that you're not eating is called fasting so if you had your last
meal at 9:00 then during the night from 9:00 until breakfast now you're fasting
that's your intermittent fasting period so with the time as we described here
you have a 10 hour fasting window and a 14 hour feeding window so there's only
10 hours that the body has the opportunity to not be stimulated by
insulin that it has a chance to burn through the stores and become less
resistant to insulin okay so another way of looking at that would be like this
we're sleep during the night then we wake up for breakfast and so the the
same colors here so the green would be the time that we're not eating and the
red would be the time that we're eating and during our our eating period we six
times during the day we eat something that triggers blood sugar that triggers
insulin so this is a message to pack more things into the cell to store more
fuel for the future but the future never comes where we need the fuel because
we're always filling up more we eating six times a day and then after all this
storage we only have ten hours to try to lower insulin to burn through those
stores this is a recipe for insulin resistance when we're eating high
glucose foods and we're eating frequently intermittent fasting is when
you extend the fasting window so let's say that you just decide to skip the
snacks you eat a little bit healthier a little more protein a little more fat a
little bit less carbs and you skip the snacks because now when you eat fat and
protein you stay full longer and now you eat breakfast at seven you skip the
snack you have lunch at noon you skip the afternoon snack you have dinner at
five and you skip the evening snack now we have shortened your feeding period to
ten hours and increased your fasting to fourteen when we look over here there's
a whole lot more green a whole lot more fasting a longer opportunity for your
body to burn through the fuel and not need to release insulin in response to
food and there's a shorter feeding window and there's only three times
during that feeding window that we are telling the body to release insulin and
to store more fuel for for future use and then what happens a lot
if you start teaching your ball in this pattern and you cut back on the
carbohydrates then you don't become hungry and I have patients all the time
they come in and said I used to eat six times a day but now that I eat this way
I'm not hungry anymore do I really have to eat breakfast and the answer is no
okay it is one of the most widely spread
myths that breakfast is the most important meal of the day that's if you
have taught your body that it needs blood sugar topped off every three hours
then you might depend on breakfast but as your body gets into balance then
there is no need to eat breakfast unless you're really hungry then you eat
breakfast and maybe skip another meal so on this pattern now we skip breakfast we
eat lunch at noon and then we have dinner at 6:00 and that is all we eat in
a day so now we see the fasting the feeding window is very short relative to
the fasting window and there's only two times during the day that we eat
something that raised blood sugar that tell the body to stimulate to release
insulin to store some of that food to to remove the glucose from the bloodstream
and store the excess but there's less and less excess because there's a longer
fasting window so not only does this help with weight loss
that's why the low carb and the intermittent fasting groups are getting
so popular because finally people are reversing insulin resistance and they
are losing weight with no effort and of course insulin resistance isn't just
about weight gain it is also about diabetes and a whole host of
degenerative diseases so by using intermittent fasting we are helping
ourselves on in all those areas so intermittent fasting is about eating
less frequently eating fewer meals that's what it means and if you think
about it you carbohydrates stimulate blood sugar and
insulin then low-carb stimulates less blood sugar results in less blood sugar
and stimulates less insulin but even less than that is zero carbohydrate so
by the during the time that you're fasting your eating is zero carb so
that's the ultimate low carb diet if you will so what I would recommend if you do
intermittent fasting though is to combine it with a keto
or a low carb diet because it's gonna make it much much easier on you you'll
stay fuller you have less sugar cravings you have less blood sugar spikes and the
more you can stabilize your blood sugar the more time the longer you can go
between meals and the more you will control your hunger you'll be fuller you
won't have cravings so insulin resistance and intermittent fasting go
very much hand-in-hand insulin resistance can be reversed very
powerfully by intermittent fasting but it's not the only thing so if you want
to do address this if you want to approach this from as many directions as
possible if you want to give yourself more tools then you want to look into
things like low carb intermittent fasting exercise and also stress
reduction if you enjoyed this video you're going to love all the other
videos that we have done on all these topics we have plenty of instruction and
education on all things relating to this so how common is insulin resistance
well insulin resistance is the primary factor involved in weight gain and since
eighty seven point five percent of the population in the US are now officially
overweight that will give you an idea of how prevalent this is if you're like
most people and you probably have a lot of people you know that are insulin
resistant and that have diabetes and that might be overweight this is rampant
and these are the mechanisms that will help you understand how to reverse it
thanks for watching