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To make matters worse, these large food manufacturers also influence government recommendations, provide funding to universities (so academics spout the same incorrect nutritional recommendations) and pour millions into marketing their products under the loosely veiled guise of ‘healthy’! At the same time they suppress and criticise information that covers the potential dangers that their products may pose!
In this article our goal is to expose the truth about high carbohydrate diets, why you must carefully control your carbohydrate intake, especially if you have insulin resistance, what happens in your body when you eat too much carbohydrate, and the long-term impact a high-carbohydrate diet has on your overall health and body functioning.
Over the last 60 years thousands of research studies have been conducted on laboratory animals of virtually all species with reference to calorie restriction in combination with adequate nutrition, i.e. the animals had low food intakes but high nutrient intakes.
The researchers found that, without exception, the animals were able to live far longer by following this nutritional approach. Furthermore, studies on centenarians (people who live to be over 100 years old) support these findings. In fact, the only things that all the centenarians have in common are: relatively low blood sugar levels, low triglycerides, and low insulin levels.
Whenever you consume foods containing carbohydrates your blood sugar level increases. This increase in blood sugar stimulates the pancreas to release insulin into the blood stream. Insulin is a storage hormone and is designed to take nutrients, including glucose, from the blood stream and store them in body cells.
Unfortunately though, every time a body cell is exposed to insulin the receptors on the cell membrane become a little more . This means that it becomes harder for glucose in the blood stream to be transported into cells (which can then damage blood vessels and nerves) and the level of insulin in the blood stream also remains high.
High blood sugar and high insulin levels are classic symptoms of type 2 diabetes! Of course, sugar and other concentrated forms of carbohydrate result in the largest increase in blood sugar and therefore, insulin response as well. As we will cover in a moment, it is so important from a health perspective that most people focus on keeping their blood sugar level as stable as possible. For people with insulin resistance it is important to keep their blood sugar level as low as possible in order to help them reverse the insulin resistance condition. In both cases insulin should also be kept as low as possible.
If you consider the nutritional recommendations that have been promoted by many nutritionists, dietitians, doctors and even governments over the years, you’ll see that concentrated carbohydrate sources like, bread, pasta, rice and cereals have formed the foundation of their recommendations!
Furthermore, these recommendations have contributed to the exponential growth in the number of health-related conditions and diseases, including insulin resistance, that we see in today’s society.
High blood sugar levels stimulate insulin release. Since insulin is a storage hormone, if its level in the blood stream is high the body cannot access and use fat as a fat source. Fat burning stops!
Plus, the body has a limited capacity for storing carbohydrates (which includes sugar). It can store some in the liver and muscles (as glycogen) but once these storage sites are full the rest of the carbohydrate gets stored as body fat!
Of course, if this is combined with some degree of insulin resistance these effects are magnified even further.
The thyroid gland produces two hormones, thyroxine (T4) and triiodothyronine (T3). These hormones are responsible for increasing the metabolism of all body cells. T3 is about 5 times more powerful than T4.
Furthermore, the thyroid gland mainly produces T4 and only a very small amount of T3. Most of the T4 goes to the liver where it is converted into T3. However, the liver cells are the first cells in the body to become resistant to the action of insulin. Since glucose is required for the conversion of T4 into T3, insulin resistance impairs this process, resulting in the body’s metabolism slowing down.
Vitamin C is required by white blood cells in order to destroy bacteria and viruses in the body. However, since vitamin C requires insulin in order to be taken up into the white blood cells, it competes with glucose (which has a similar structure to vitamin C), in order to be delivered into the cells.
Therefore, a high blood sugar level severely lowers the ‘phagocytic index’ of white blood cells, which means their ability to destroy a virus or bacteria is compromised.
High blood sugar levels may increase heart disease risk through several mechanisms.
If you are interested in living a long, healthy, and disease-free life then the first thing you must do is find ways to keep your blood sugar level low initially (if you have insulin resistance) and then stable thereafter once the condition is reversed. It is also imperative that insulin is always kept low. By doing so, you can avoid the various health problems that result from high blood sugar levels and high insulin levels and therefore have a much better chance of living a long, healthy, disease-free life!
Also, it has been shown that chronically elevated insulin suppresses growth hormone release and growth hormone is one of the body’s most powerful anti-ageing hormones!
In order to keep your blood sugar level low you must follow these nutritional strategies:
is an important part of reducing your blood sugar level and avoiding the dangers of high blood sugar levels because it keeps insulin low and makes the body cells more receptive to the action of insulin.
Furthermore, resistance training has been proven to be the most effective form of exercise for increasing insulin sensitivity, which can help to reverse insulin resistance.
As a result, a combination of aerobic exercise and resistance exercise is the best for reversing insulin resistance by lowering blood sugar and reducing insulin secretion.
It is best to perform some form of exercise every day.
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