The primary driver of insulin resistance is known as metabolic syndrome, which 93% of us now have. Metabolic syndrome is primarily driven by food, and in particular, high fructose corn syrup. HFCS is processed differently by our bodies than regular glucose.
Join Dr. Martin in today’s episode as he explains why stress and sugar both cause our cortisol and insulin levels to spike.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin: Well, good morning everyone, and once again, welcome to another live this morning and at a different time. Yes, but at least we're here. Okay guys, as you know, and even if you're new here today, I talk about insulin resistance all the time, right? Now, the primary driver of insulin resistance. Now, here's what we know. Always repetition. Here's what we know. 93%, 93% of the population have insulin resistance. Okay? We call that metabolic syndrome. Medicine calls it metabolic syndrome. It's caused by insulin resistance. How do you know if you have metabolic syndrome? High blood pressure. You only need one or two of these. High blood pressure, belly fat, a low H D L cholesterol, low cholesterol, high triglycerides, and I mean, I throw a few others in there like fasting blood glucose is high. I like A 1 C. So if your A 1 C is above 5.4, you have insulin resistance. That means you have metabolic syndrome. Okay?
Now, the primary driver of insulin resistance, of course, is the elephant in the room. And that is, what? Food, carbs. And it's interesting because I was talking about this to someone yesterday. It's interesting that fructose, God wanted you to eat fruit and not drink it. I'm very much against any kind of fruit drink. You can have Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie with a few berries in there, okay? We allow you to have a few berries, no problem. Okay? Even on the reset, if you want to drink a Dr. Martin's perfect smoothie with heavy cream, make sure you're getting lots of fat. You can put protein powder in there too, and that can be part of the reset because it will lower your insulin.
Now, one thing about fructose, when you eat a fruit fructose in that fruit will not elevate insulin, okay? It doesn't elevate insulin, fructose doesn't, but high fructose corn syrup, okay? And this is why they thought it was so good because it doesn't elevate insulin, but what it does is it makes your cells insulin resistant because at the end of the day, yes, insulin goes up, but the biggest key is what happens at the cellular level when your cells go, hey, insulin, I can't stand you anymore. You're always around and your cells become insulin resistant. Last week we talked about this, okay? We talked about this because we talked about the brain and we talked about the brain swimming in a fuel that it can't use. It's like you're swimming in an ocean and you can't drink the water. And we talked about Alzheimer's. We talked about a brain that was swimming in fuel, sugar that it couldn't use because it couldn't get inside the cells because insulin resistance. Okay, so you got that?
So, high fructose corn syrup is the worst of the worst of sugars. Not only what it does to your liver, it gives you fatty liver. Unbelievable. This is why we see so many kids. Do you know the Coca-Cola changed from glucose to fructose, high fructose corn syrup in 1982 and since then, what a disaster. What a disaster. And the whole food industry switched sugars. They switched fats long time ago because they thought, well, fat makes you fat. We need to get a polyunsaturated fat. We got to get away from the saturated fat. You know, man thinks they're smart compared to God, and they're not. They're not because when they change things, they think, oh, I'm doing such a good thing. No high fructose corn syrup is the antichrist of sugars. Okay? So we talked about that and I'll talk about it again and again and again and again because it's so key to understand this.
And so insulin resistance, it's when your cells, because remember what insulin does, insulin primary job is to take sugar and put it in cells. It'll start with muscle cells. And if there's no room in the muscle, if you don't have bins, it'll put it in the liver and it will put it in fat cells. And your body, some people especially have an unlimited ability to make fat cells. And my friend, if you left the planet in the 1970s and you happened to go up to Mars or whatever, and then you came back in 2023, you'd be shocked at the changing of the world. You'd look at people and look at the size of people, incredible. What happened? They changed the sugar to high fructose corn syrup and it's in everything.
But that's not what I wanted to talk to you about today, okay? I wanted to talk to you about insulin resistance, and the primary driver is food, and especially high fructose corn syrup. It's one of the worst creations that man has ever invented. By the way, it sounds natural, doesn't it? High fructose corn syrup. No, it ain't natural at all. Okay? It's not natural at all. It is a manmade sugar. It's a manmade fructose. It is nothing to do with fruit that you would eat, okay? God's candies, I call it.
Now, listen to this. What I wanted to bring to you today is two other things that drive insulin resistance. Okay? You can take a person, you can take a person, measure insulin resistance. Remember, we used to do this in the office. You can take a person that has no insulin resistance, put them in a stressful position for several weeks, get their cortisol to go and go up and up and up. And you know what? If cortisol goes up over a period of time, stress, you can actually put a patient into insulin resistance. Isn't that incredible? Think about that. Besides food, stress.
Now you guys know me. I've been talking about cortisol for so long. I've been talking about something that doctors don't even measure, and it's not like doctors don't understand stress. Of course they do. They know stress is a factor in a lot of things, but you can take an insulin sensitive person, okay? You want to be sensitive. You do. You want to be sensitive because if your cells are sensitive to insulin, they'll open up to allow glucose to come inside, okay? You don't want sugar outside your cells. You want sugar inside your cells, okay? So you want to be sensitive to insulin, insulin sensitivity, okay? You don't want to be resistant to insulin because that is metabolic syndrome. And metabolic syndrome is a driving factor in cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer's, diabetes obviously.
Insulin resistance really is diabetes without the diagnosis because the diagnosis for diabetes comes only when your blood sugars hit a certain number. If your blood's sugars hit a certain number, you're labeled a diabetic. But before that happens, it takes time and your body is already screaming. Your body has already developed insulin resistance way before you're a diabetic. I used to tell patients when I used to test for insulin resistance, I said, I want you to leave here today in your mind saying, my name is Tony, I'm a carboholic and I have insulin resistance, and effectively I'm a diabetic even without diabetes. It was a mindset because I used to get people, look, you are on the Titanic. I know you're cruising and you think you're invincible. Just like people on the Titanic. They said this was the unsinkable ship. And they were warned and warned and warned as they go across the North Atlantic. There are icebergs there.
Man, I've been to Newfoundland in St. John's, and you see the icebergs, holy moly, like no wonder the Titanic went down, but guys, listen, okay? Insulin resistance is the biggest, biggest thing in medicine that medicine doesn't know anything about. They just don't know. And it's really ignorance because they're not teaching it. They wait till you get, oh, now you're a diabetic, here's medication. Okay, let me come back to this point of cortisol. In the absence of bad eating, you can take a person, put them in stress, and the cortisol's going through the roof. Family dynamics, financial, whatever, put 'em in, stress, loss, loss of a loved one, a sickness in a home, a family, and you guys, stress.
But stress, even in the absence of bad food, bad eating can cause your cells to become resistant to insulin. Now, you've got a double whammo. People that don't sleep, their cortisol goes up, their cortisol goes up, they don't sleep. So one of the factors, and this is an article that I was reading, I found it very interesting that within a couple of weeks of high stress, a person who's disciplined, for example, and they're not carboholics, their cells can become resistant to insulin. It's a good thing to know because you got to do everything you can to get that stress level down. Now, what are you supposed to do? Leave the planet? No, but just understand that. One of the lowest hanging fruits in terms of helping with insulin resistance caused by cortisol is to get sleep.
And again, yesterday, I'm here in Guelph, by the way. I'm doing a senior's conference. I have no idea why they would ask me to do a senior's conference. A guy my age, I'm a senior, but I was telling a person yesterday that the low hanging fruit to help with cortisol is sleep. And I was saying too, that one of the things, they've shown this, that they've proven it. Look, if you can't sleep at night, I've had patients tell me this for years and years, Dr. Martin, I don't sleep during the day because I won't sleep at night. I said, well, I thought you weren't sleeping at night. Well, I don't. I said, well, then you better take a cat nap during the day. Do you know that by taking a little siesta, 15, 20 minutes during the day will lower your cortisol and lower your insulin resistance? Yes. Okay. It doesn't fix it, but it lowers it. And so it's important.
Now, we talk about this all the time too, the brain and the self-cleaning oven, and that you need to get into that deep REM sleep. And so there's no substitute for a good night's sleep. There really isn't. But I talk about napping, and that's not a bad idea. During the day, I mean, I literally like to have about a 15, 20 minute little siesta. I can fall asleep during the day. I trained myself. I can do it within a few nanoseconds and I'm asleep. It always shocks my wife how fast I can fall asleep. Amazing, okay? But isn't that an interesting thing that even in the absence of bad eating, you can get insulin resistance through high levels of cortisol? Man, we live in a crazy world.
Tony Jr. and I talked about this again and again and again, is this like high cortisol? And I measured it because I was looking at chronic fatigue syndrome. And you know what? Actually there was an interesting case that came out and I flagged it. Maybe I'll talk about it tomorrow on chronic fatigue syndrome, also called M-E. As you guys know, I've written many of books about it, but one of the things that I talked about was the adrenal exhaustion that occurs, high levels of cortisol over a long period of time, and how that messes your body up. You're not meant for that. Your body's not made for that. It's supposed to be temporary. It's the fight or flight.
Anyway, so we know what crappy carbs and sugars do, especially that high fructose corn syrup. Okay? So if you do nothing else and get rid of sugar in your life, just lose that sweet tooth. You have no idea how good that is for you. And the 30 day reset, I tell you is so effective. It is so effective by getting rid of insulin resistance at the cellular level. Guys, I'm telling you, that is for everyone. The reset is for everyone because 93% of the population have insulin resistance. But the other thing I wanted you to think about is cortisol, getting that cortisol down, okay? Sleep is the low hanging fruit. One thing too is exercise. Vitamin E guys, it really helps with cortisol.
When you're out walking, you are lowering your cortisol. You're also helping with insulin resistance through blood glucose, but two ways. You get insulin resistance through what? Food. So if you take a walk after you eat. Take a walk. They've shown within two minutes of walking, you start to lower blood sugar. So it's a great idea to do a little walk after a meal, especially at night, get that blood glucose down. But also what's doing when you're out for that walk or you're going to the gym. You are lowering your cortisol. That will help lower insulin resistance. Your cells are going to become more sensitive. You want to be sensitive at the cellular level. Okay?
I'm a big teddy bear. I'm sensitive. I got that big voice, but I'm sensitive. And your cells need to be sensitive at the cellular level. Okay, guys, we appreciate you guys so much. Thanks for your patience this week, and thanks for tuning in spite of the fact that I changed the time. I'm going to do this right through Friday and probably I might hold off on question and answer Friday unless we do question and answer Friday and Monday, because I probably wouldn't be able to get all the questions in, in a short period of time I have. I got to speak today, guys. Okay, I got to speak today. Okay, guys, we love you dearly, and we'll talk to you soon.
Announcer: You've reached the end of another Doctor Is In Podcast, with your hosts, Doctor Martin Junior and Senior. Be sure to catch our next episode and thanks for listening!