Insulin is a food hormone. Every time you eat, you need insulin. Its primary job is to take sugar out of your bloodstream. But the key is how much insulin you need. If you use too much, you can develop insulin resistance.
Dr. Martin looks at three new studies on insulin resistance. Researchers have discovered that apart from food, you can develop insulin resistance. A stressful environment, for example, can cause prolonged cortisol that can lead to insulin resistance.
Join Dr. Martin as he teaches on insulin resistance and shares the other ways insulin resistance can be caused.
TRANSCRIPT OF TODAY'S EPISODE
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Dr. Martin:Â Well, good morning everyone. Hope you're having a great day. Okay, well, let me start out. I was going to talk about insulin, what's new, okay? But what I wanted to do is sort of bring you three new studies on insulin resistance. Okay? And guys, remember, what's insulin resistance? So you know me and my illustrations, I like to use illustrations. For me, it's how I remember things, okay? Insulin is what? A food hormone. You don't eat insulin if you don't eat, okay? Its biggest thing is food, okay? Every time you eat, you need insulin. Now, the key, of course, is how much insulin you need. Insulin's primary job is to take sugar, glucose, and all the things that turn to glucose and get them out of your bloodstream. We talked about that yesterday. And insulin's job is to store it, get it out of blood, store it somewhere else, okay? That's how it works. Get it out of blood and store it. Got it? Okay.
Now we're finding out, okay, in these three new studies that apart from food, you can develop insulin resistance. Okay, so let me take it one step further. What is insulin resistance? It's when your cells in your body, your muscle cells, your heart cells, your brain cells, your stomach cells, whatever cells in your body, they can't stand the sight of insulin anymore. Comes around too often like that pesky neighbor, and they go, would you get out of here? Get lost out, out, out. I can't stand you. But it doesn't matter whether the cells can't stand them or not, insulin has a job to do and it will just pour out more insulin to do the job. So, if you develop insulin resistance, which by the way, 93% of the population have this condition, 93%. They have what we call metabolic syndrome, which is how your body. Metabolic, don't get all uptight about that word. All it means is how your body uses energy. How your body uses food as energy. How does it break it down? Is it storing it all the time? Instead of burning? How does it burn it? That's what metabolic syndrome is, okay? And it's all due to food, and it's all due to insulin resistance. Now, three things that aggravate or even can cause on their own insulin resistance without eating. This is significant guts, okay? This is significant. How can you get insulin resistance without eating a carbohydrate? It can happen. This is a person. You can take a perfectly healthy individual, a good eater, no insulin resistance, put them in a stressful environment, prolonged cortisol, and they can develop insulin resistance.
Can you imagine? So apart from eating, if you're in stress, major stress for a period of time, your body's made for stress. Okay? You have organs dedicated to stress. They're called your adrenals on top of kidneys. Those are normal, okay? Those are normal, but it's not meant to laugh. So this study looked at people who had no insulin resistance. Their cells were working perfectly fine. They had no sign of metabolic syndrome at all. Then they were put into a stressful situation, measured again, over a period of time, they developed insulin resistance. Isn't that crazy? Cortisol? Cortisol is your friend. If someone scares you, you're in a dark alley, you're walking to your car and you hear footsteps behind you. Cortisol is your friend. It's the fight or flight, and you run or you turn around and start fighting. I would run even at my age. Okay? So that's normal. Cortisol's your friend, but it's not your friend. If it lasts, it's not your friend if it stays around, because there's a lot of things it does. It pours gasoline on inflammation. But what we didn't know is that it can literally turn a person insulin resistant.
And if you don't fix that, that can lead to metabolic syndrome. It's the start of it. And it can change your triglycerides and your hdl. It can create inflammation in the body. It can do a lot of things on metabolic syndrome. So isn't that interesting? What stress does right now, what is a low hanging fruit to help cortisol? You know what it's called? Sleep. Sleep helps you get a good night's sleep and your cortisol goes right down. You know what the problem in the world is today? About 70% or more have trouble sleeping. They don't get a good night's sleep. Now, look, that insomnia has been around as long as man has been around, okay? But it's worse today than ever because there's so much stress that when your cortisol is high, you don't sleep properly. If you don't sleep properly, your cortisol desire, it's a vicious sightful.
And cortisol, again, pours gasoline on everything. It doesn't necessarily start the fire, but it pours gasoline on the fire. Isn't that an interesting study? Take a healthy person and they go through a severe trauma or stress changes big time. And again, like the low hanging fruit is, if you can sleep, if you can get a good night's sleep, that helps. So I always tell people, look, what you do during the day is really going to make a difference on how you sleep. What you do during the day is going to make a big difference on how you sleep. That's why I always talk about your pineal gland. That's your third eye. And there it produces melatonin. When you see the sun, okay, get out in the sun. Why do you think you feel better in the sun? So remember that to help you get a good night's sleep, start your day when it's sunny, get sun, get outside, okay? Bright day goes in through your eyeballs and to the third eye, your pineal gland, and you produce a lot more melatonin. People ask me almost every day, doc, can you help me sleep?
And often the other question is, what about melatonin as a supplement? I'm not that big on that. Sometimes I argue with doctors because they say, well, what is research showing? I like to refer to me as a clinician, and I'm not a researcher per se, but I am a clinician. I was a clinician for a lot of years, and you know what you think? I didn't hear about melatonin. Of course, I heard about melatonin. Of course, I tried melatonin with my patients with very mixed results. Wasn't that happy about it? Because if it did work at the start, it usually had a shelf life on how long it would work. You were much better, in my opinion, to let your body make melatonin. Your body makes melatonin, and it especially makes it when during the day, you get sunlight, vitderma, sunlight. You know, what did John Denver sing?
Sunshine on my shoulders make me happy. Okay, listen, it's important. Sleep is a low hanging fruit. So sleep has something to do with insulin resistance. Obviously, if cortisol can cause insulin resistance, and listen, when you're stressed, think about this, even for eating, most people that are stressed, you know what? They're looking for comfort food. Now they're getting a double wamble. The cortisol goes up, their insulin resistance goes up. As insulin resistance goes up, they are looking for comfort foods and they're going to eat more crappy carbohydrates. And the more crappy carbohydrates they eat, the more insulin resistance they create. Man, oh man, what a vicious cycle. So that's one. That was a study that came out recently. Take a perfectly healthy person, put them in the furnace, put them under fire, high stress, and they can develop in insulin resistance at the cellular level. So you got to try and fix that. If you're under stress, understand how your body operates. Number two, this came out in the last few days. Statins brand new. What is statins? Statins is a classification of medication that lowers cholesterol. Now you want to give me a migraine?
Talk to me about cholesterol. Gives me a migrant because there's so much nonsense out there, yada, yada, yada. Every day, every day, every day, every day. It's cholesterol, cholesterol, cholesterol. The boogeyman. Cholesterol causes heart disease, cholesterol, cholesterol, all the time. I hear it every day. But what this study's showing, statin drugs work. By the way, did you hear what I said? Statin drugs work. They lower your cholesterol. Hello? So what? Be careful what you wish for. Statin drugs. Do lower L D l cholesterol, okay? And people get excited about that. Goody goody gumdrops. I just lowered my L D L, okay? I'm sorry. I don't buy it. I haven't ever bought it. I never was big on lowering cholesterol. As a matter of fact, I try and get people to elevate their cholesterol, and I know that's difficult. Not so much for you guys because you watch me all the time, but it's difficult to understand when the whole world is cholesterol crazy.
Why do you think statin drugs were the number one selling drugs of all time? The Wayne Gretzky of medication. Okay, the Connor mcd David of medication, the number one selling man of all time. Lipitor, just going to get sidetracked for a second. What has it done? Has it made a dent in heart disease? Not even a bit. Heart disease is worse than ever because you know me looking for love in all the wrong places. Anyway, let's get back to this stuff. The study shows people that take statin drugs develop insulin resistance. Wow. You don't want to develop insulin resistance. You want to be insulin sensitive. You want to have a little bit of insulin in your life. And this is the connection that they finally seen. I said this 20 years ago on radio, more than that, statin drugs, lower cholesterol, but caused diabetes. That was always a controversial statement, but I was looking at research 20 years ago, especially women taking statins that were much more susceptible to becoming diabetics afterwards, but now they're showing white insulin resistance.
Your cells develop like a coating, and your cells don't like the presence of insulin, and it doesn't matter whether they like it or not. Insulin will keep coming. And let me use another illustration. See this pen? I've used this 10,000 times over the years. Take out a ballpoint pen. See that? That's about the size of your pancreas. It's no bigger than that. And that sits right underneath your stomach. That's your pancreas. Now, for illustration purposes, inside the pen is ink. Inside the pancreas is insulin. Okay? So insulin, every time you eat, you eat a little bit of it. But if you insist on eating carbs that turn to sugars rapidly, and most people do, obviously 93% of the population have trouble with food. They use way too much insulin. Well, think of this pen. Okay? Now it's got a lot of ink. I don't know if you can see that or not.
Okay? Because this is a brand new pen, and I'm very fussy with my pens. Ask the girls who used to work with me at the office, don't touch my pen. This is my pen. I like to write and I like to write with my pen, not yours. Mine. Don't touch it. Okay? That was me. No, see all the ink in here? Take this to another level. This would be a person. Pretend this is your pancreas that doesn't eat a lot of carbs. They got lots of insulin. They don't use it much. Their pancreas are going to last forever. Insulin resistance is now you need a lot of insulin to leave the pancreas. A lot of ink to leave the pen and you're going to run out. That's what diabetes is, my friend. Diabetes is when insulin doesn't work, and it always starts with insulin resistance always.
Somebody asked me the other day, Dr. Emeran, what about fruit? Okay, what about fruit? Why do I call fruit god's candies? Why do I do that? Well, because we live in a different world today. Some say that fruit is a lot sweeter than it used to be, eh? Yeah, probably. But that's not even what I think about. All I know is if you are upside down, if you suffer from insulin resistance, I wouldn't eat a lot of fruit. I know they're God's candies, but don't live on fruit. Do you think? I don't like fruit. I love fruit, but fruit don't like me, so I got to be careful. It doesn't mean I never have any. All I'm saying is if you have insulin resistant, we live in a different world. We're consuming 200 pounds of sugar each a year. Now I don't, and I hope you don't.
But that's the average in North America, 200 pounds. It's a dump truck load. Plus high fructose corn syrup is the worst of the worst of sugars. We live in that world today, my friend. That's why people, they can't understand the reset in some way, doctor, right? How am I going to live without fruit? Well, you can for 30 days. If you want to refill your pen, get the illustration if you want to fix insulin resistance. So cortisol stress, ooh, it's a heart on a lot of things, but now we know it even makes your cells insulin resistant. Statin drugs, insulin resistant statin drugs. Okay? Your cells don't like it, and they create insulin resistance just by taking the medication. Oh, Dr. Martin, but my cholesterol went dumb. I'm sorry. I'm not impressed by that. You can't impress me with low cholesterol. I don't want low cholesterol.
I want low triglycerides and high cholesterol. What? You heard it? I want low triglycerides because that's the bad lipids. Okay? Number three. Let me finish with this. Inflammation. Isn't it interesting? This study looked at people with rheumatoid arthritis, and when they kept their insulin, they were insulin resistant. People with autoimmune disease, what comes first, the chicken or the eighth? According to this study, the chicken comes first. That is the arthritis are the autoimmune. Rheumatoid Ms. Parkinson, Sjogren's, ulcerative colitis, Crohn's, eczema, psoriasis, they're all autoimmune, all caused by leaky gut. And that makes your cells in your body insulin resistant. Holy moly. You learn something every day. And this is one of the reasons that the reset is so good for you, because even if you have autoimmune, it's good for you. You're lowering your insulin resistance. You're preserving your pen. Do you like that illustration? Sometimes people think I'm silly, but that's the way my mind operates. I need illustrations in my head, okay? When I think of a pancreas, I think of a pen. How crazy is that? But that's me. I'm crazy. Okay, guys, I'm breathing. We love you. We'll talk to you soon.
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