Insulin is a hormone that carries glucose (sugar) from your blood into your cells so that it can be burned for energy. Insulin is produced by the pancreas AND ?
Insulin resistance is ALLEGEDLY a state in which your cells are not responding to insulin appropriately, so the sugar in your blood cannot get into your cells. To compensate, your pancreas pumps out more insulin to try to get the sugar out of your blood and into your cells. The hyperinsulinimia (high blood insulin) that results is able to maintain normal blood sugar levels and delay the onset of diabetes.
Is it bad to have high blood insulin levels?
Yes! ALLEGEDLY High insulin levels are not a good thing to have. For one, hyperinsulinimia is ALLEGEDLY an independent risk factor for heart disease. Second, your pancreas ALLEGEDLY eventually wears out and can’t continue to produce excess insulin to maintain normal blood sugar levels. When this happens, blood sugar rises and diabetes develops. Third, insulin can contribute to increased appetite (especially for carbohydrates and sugary foods), which can lead to increased calorie intake and weight gain. Insulin also makes it easier for you to store (vs. burn) body fat, thus worsening the weight gain problem and making weight loss more difficult.
Hyperinsulinemia may be a contributing factor in the higher rate of miscarriage. Elevated levels of insulin ALLEGEDLY interfere with the normal balance between factors promoting blood clotting and those promoting breakdown of the clots. Increases in plasminogen activator inhibitor activity (PAI-Fx) associated with high insulin levels may result in increased blood clotting at the interface between the uterine lining (endometrium) and the placenta. This could lead to placental insufficiency and miscarriage.
While sometimes genetic, some disease states (like PolyCystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS) have also been associated with insulin resistance and weight gain.
The medical literature suggests that the endocrinopathy in most patients with polycystic ovary syndrome can be resolved with insulin lowering therapy. This is clinically very important because the therapy reduces hirsutism, obesity, blood pressure, triglyceride levels, elevated blood clotting factors and facilitates reestablishment of the normal pituitary*ovarian cycle, thus often allowing resumption of normal ovulatory cycles and pregnancy. We know the polycystic ovary disease is associated with increased risk of heart attack and stroke because of the associated heart attack and stroke risk factors, hypertension, obesity, hyperandrogenism, hypertriglyceridemia, and these are ALLEGEDLY to a large degree ALLEGEDLY resolved by therapy with these medications.
"Lots of times what happens is people will come to their physician with multiple systems involved that don't seem to make sense. For instance, they'll complain of memory loss and brain fogging up - in particular, when they're in closed buildings. They'll complain of digestive things - bloating, gas, musculoskeletal pain, lots of times asthma. And it looks like the patient has multiple problems or - unfortunate for some patients, particularly women - they get told that they can't possibly have all this stuff, it's all in their head, and therefore, they need to see a psychiatrist to attend to the underlying psychiatric conditions which makes them want to manifest all this illness. I think before any person, particularly women, told they have a psychiatric condition - it's important that the biology of the body be looked at first, and high insulin with it's ability to disregulate so many things is often the underlying theme. One of the things that insulin will do is ALLEGEDLY cause the little energy producers in the cells to not function properly. Scientific studies have shown that the people who have fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndrome get chronic fatigue syndrome; actually these little power houses don't work right and high insulin will ALLEGEDLY contribute to that. So anyone with those conditions needs to really seriously have an insulin test."
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