Insulin resistance explained

Incredibly clear explanation of why some people get insulin resistance and some don’t. If your blood markers on the image shown are not in the “normal” range, watch this video.

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Most of the literature that I have been reading about insulin resistance indicates that getting old is not good. :smile:

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@Joseph_Lavelle, thank you for the video! I just learned about the personal fat threshold idea this summer and it’s really been helpful and explains a lot about my own experience that never made sense before. People (even doctors) have always assumed from appearance that I’m healthy but my blood work reflects a different story and markers start moving in the wrong direction if I go over around 20% body fat.

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I have a similar problem. My BF% is around 15% and I still have IR. I think my issue is stress and sleep deprivation. I can combat it with IM fasting and fasting, which I’m getting back into. Of course resolving stress / sleep problems is the key. It’s my top priority right now.

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Body composition from Dexa.

:sunglasses:

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This is something I learned from Lustgarten in his amazing book. A high microbial burden will cause T2D. They took healthy 26 year old volunteers and injected them with LPS (this is the broken pieces of e coli bacteria killed by AMP’s (your good guys) in the blood stream) and these people briefly had T2D… until the LPS was cleared out. Microbial burden normally comes from leaky gut (loose junctions caused by wheat etc…), oral microbiome, and even through a lousy skin barrier function.

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Joseph, I’m between 15.5-17% body fat (estimated by biometric scale and the navy method) and I’m about to get repeat blood work. My insulin and blood glucose were good at my last check but my lipids were still a bit high (although trending down) so I guess I’ll find out soon if my lifestyle measures are enough. I suppose some of us have a really low personal fat threshold.
@Bicep, that makes perfect sense in my case. Thank you so much for the info! Hopefully my super gut yogurt is doing something.:blush:

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Genetics also play an important role. A lot of my family members (including me) are overweight or even obese and eat unhealthy food. Despite that, all our blood sugar levels are in ideal range and none of our ancestors ever had issues with type 1 or 2 diabetes.

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Check out the paper on leaky gut I put up earlier today. I don’t think particular foods cause leaky gut but rather a poor diet (leading to poor microbiome), stress, etc can cause it, and then some foods are worse when they leak through into the bloodstream. Worse in terms of immune system reaction. Also eating the same things all the time can lead to over reaction of the immune system to proteins it sees over and over. A diverse diet is better.

@Virilius, lucky you! That’s how my husband and friend are too. Perfect labs and seemingly great health for being in the obese bmi range. If I gain even a little weight it apparently goes to my visceral fat and organs and everything goes south quickly.

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I’ve recently started fasting again, and I feel a ton better. 24 hour fast 1x/wk and daily 12 hour IM between brkfst and dinner (and brkfst). I’m sure my glucose is good again. I’m confident this is my best program for my body.

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Wheat Germ Agglutinin is so good at opening up the barriers in the gut they use it as a carrier for drugs. Here’s an abstract from the first paper I came on:

Abstract

Wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) is a plant protein that binds specifically to sugars expressed, among many others, by human gastrointestinal epithelial and immune cells. WGA is a toxic compound and an anti-nutritional factor, but recent works have shown that it may have potential as an anti-tumor drug and as a carrier for oral drugs. To quantitate the toxicity threshold for WGA on normal epithelial cells we previously investigated the effects of the lectin on differentiated Caco2 cells, and showed that in the micromolar range of concentrations WGA could alter the integrity of the epithelium layer and increase its permeability to both mannitol and dextran. WGA was shown to be uptaken by Caco2 cells and only approximately 0.1% molecules were observed to cross the epithelium layer by transcytosis. Here we show that at nanomolar concentrations WGA is unexpectedly bioactive on immune cells. The supernatants of WGA-stimulated peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) can alter the integrity of the epithelium layer when administered to the basolateral side of differentiated Caco2 cells and the effects can be partially inhibited by monoclonal antibodies against IL1, IL6 and IL8. At nanomolar concentrations WGA stimulates the synthesis of pro-inflammatory cytokines and thus the biological activity of WGA should be reconsidered by taking into account the effects of WGA on the immune system at the gastrointestinal interface. These results shed new light onto the molecular mechanisms underlying the onset of gastrointestinal disorders observed in vivo upon dietary intake of wheat-based foods.

I agree leaky gut is more complex than just stopping wheat, but it’s a good start. And I think it will help push you toward T2D and a shorter more miserable life.

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Interesting. But, perhaps this isn’t settled science. Here’s what I found from a 2014 paper on the topic:

“Despite these growing concerns over WGA-rich foods, there have been no in vivo randomized controlled trials in humans assessing the health effects of WGA, in normal dietary concentrations as present in heat prepared foods, to the best of our knowledge. Even without such data, the consumption of foods high in WGA was discouraged (Hamid and Masood, 2009, Jönsson et al., 2005), while others found that through (heat) processing, such as extrusion, cooking, or baking, lectins denature and lose their binding activity (Srivastava and Vasishtha, 2013).

Full paper

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0733521014000228

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Actually a great paper. Maybe I’ve been a little too harsh. I wonder if they cook wheat germ long enough to get rid of the lectins. I actully love the flavor and would prefer to use it.

You probably know how to steal papers with sci-hub. This is the full paper:

https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcs.2014.01.010

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I’d love to read the whole thing. Alas I cannot access it. Anyone here have access to this paper?

As I tell people, getting old is better than the alternative.

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That’s old school thinking. It’s definitely better to age slowly.

Really? If you click the link I gave what happens? It should pop right up.

Lol. With current science, I only know one alternative to aging.

I only get a single page that looks like a gateway to getting a pdf but I can’t find a link