The Insulin Factor: Can’t Lose Weight? Can’t Concentrate? Can’t Resist Sugar? Could Syndrome X Be Your Problem?. Antony Haynes
This is compounded by a sedentary lifestyle and the resulting lack of muscle tissue, by ageing, stress, high blood pressure and by excess consumption of refined carbohydrates, over-processed food, saturated fat and processed vegetable fat. Interestingly, digestive health also plays an important role. Obviously, with the exception of genetic factors and ageing, many of these factors are under our control and we can take positive action. You can look at how these factors are playing a part in your health in chapter 3, with the Insulin Resistance questionnaire.
Contributory factors in Insulin Resistance
Insulin Resistance results from the body’s protective mechanism to prevent high blood glucose. Insulin Resistance is an extremely common problem that can cause disease and limit life span. There are many things that raise blood glucose (e.g. refined carbohydrates, sugar stress) but just one that lowers it: insulin. Insulin Resistance is reversible if you make changes to your diet and lifestyle.
Summary of key points
They’re sweet, they’re comforting, they give you an instant feelgood high – small wonder that so many of us keep on turning to refined carbohydrates and sugar. We’re also surrounded by food products containing these instantly gratifying substances – fizzy drinks, chocolate bars, bagels, pasta, ice cream, sweets to suck, chew or swallow – and because the ‘fix’ we get from them is sweet and addictive, we are tempted time and time again.
We have been refining foods for centuries, as far back as the ancient Pharaohs who also observed the dangers of excess carbohydrates, but never as intensively since the middle of the 20th century. Too busy, too tired, too dissatisfied or too depressed, we are easily seduced by the promise of a quick sugar or carb high. So, you may not want to hear it but carbohydrates and sugars really are the bad guys, especially when it comes to Insulin Resistance and all of its knock-on effects. Understandably, it is a message that most people don’t want to hear. We are consuming more sugar in our diets today than ever before: in the UK the average person consumes 1201b of sugar a year, while in the USA the average person eats a staggering 1951b. This equates to people in the UK eating nothing except sugar every fifth day and in the US every fourth!
Captain Cleave on sugar
As early as the 1930s a Royal Naval doctor, Captain Thomas Latimer Cleave, identified the dangers of refined carbohydrates and sugar. He observed the correlation between rising incidences of heart and bowel disorders, obesity, diabetes, varicose veins, dental decay, haemorrhoids and related diseases with the under-consumption of dietary fibre and over-consumption of refined carbohydrates. Sailing around the world between different countries and communities, he observed that there was a close correlation between the degree to which a society’s diet was refined with cereals, rice and sugar plants, and the incidences of these diseases. For instance, tribal communities eating a traditional wholefood diet were free from these diseases, whereas tribal communities who had adopted a more refined diet were not. He continued to study the effects of refined foods on health, eventually publishing The Saccharine Disease in 1974.
The sugar-body fat connection
The single most significant cause of being overweight is eating too many refined carbohydrates, for example white bread, bagels, white pasta, white rice, biscuits, cakes, sweets, chocolate. It is virtually impossible to be obese on a natural food diet. It is very easy to overeat refined carbohydrates because they are a denser form of calories: an apple contains the same amount of calories as a single teaspoon of sugar. You could quite easily eat 10 teaspoons of sugar in a fizzy drink but you’d be hard pushed to eat 10 apples in one sitting! The best way to prevent being overweight is to avoid refined carbohydrates. The ultimate refined carbohydrate is white sugar.
The key difference between natural foods and refined sugars is that natural foods contain fibre, vitamins, minerals and other nutrients, whereas sugar and refined carbohydrates do not. This is why sugar and refined carbohydrates are often referred to as empty calories. What is more, sugar and refined carbohydrates also deplete nutrients in the body when they are metabolized. For example, every time you eat white sugar, you deplete your zinc and chromium levels as your body needs zinc and chromium in order to make insulin.
Although fat consumption and exercise play a part in weight control, they are not as important as you may think. It is quite possible to lose weight by reducing refined carbohydrates and not making any changes to your fat consumption and exercise routine. However, the Insulin Factor Plan does still recommend moderate exercise and emphasizes the need for good quality fats.
Sugar and diabetes
There is also a strong link between sugar and diabetes. This is because refined carbohydrates encourage the body to produce high levels of insulin, which ultimately exhausts the pancreas so it is unable to make enough insulin to control blood glucose, leading to diabetes.
Sugar and heart disease