This is How Insulin Resistance Science Has Changed in 10 Years

[00:00:00]If I woke up tomorrow morning and I was insulin resistant, my HBA1C was 5.9 or six, these are the 13 things that I would start doing immediately that wouldn't really need any prep. I would just start doing them right out the gate. Jumping right into it, the first thing that I would do is I would only eat in a 12-hour block. There is strong evidence to support that having these periods of time between meals can be highly effective when it comes down to insulin resistance. It's really simple math. I mean, you're basically allowing your insulin levels to come down for such a period of time that you start to develop a new homeostasis with insulin levels being a little bit lower. And the longer that you stay away from spiking insulin, the quicker you can start to regain that insulin sensitivity. So, although there's a lot of different things that we can potentially do to improve insulin sensitivity, one of the most important things that we can do is abstaining from food for periods of time. No extreme fasts unless you want to. Simply not eating from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m. or 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m.

[00:01:00]Simple things like that. Eating inside of a 12-hour block. Simply giving your cells a break, giving insulin a break so that you can regain that sensitivity and start being able to signal insulin and glucose uptake better. This is awesome.

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[00:04:57]What we don't always realize is that with insulin resistance, oxidative stress plays a huge role in why we are insulin resistant. If we can combat some of the oxidative stress by helping the body with enzyatic function and mitochondrial function, then the body doesn't have to be in this rocky situation and it can start to function better. So by increasing mitochondrial function, you're actually increasing glucose uptake. Remember, the mitochondria is where we process carbohydrates, where we process fats. So the healthier the mitochondria, the more mitochondria, the more fuel we can use.

[00:05:28]The more glucose we can take up, whether it's insulin dependent or insulin independent, meaning the cell is going to take up glucose with insulin's help or without insulin's help, like in the case of exercise. Now, additionally, red light therapy might reduce the inflammation. If we think about insulin resistance as sort of a white noise or a static that is preventing insulin from hitting the actual receptor on the cell and triggering glute 4 transllocation.

[00:05:54]If we think of it like that, we realize, oh, we just need to clear the static and then things can start to work better. As a matter of fact, insulin resistance is arguably more of an inflammatory condition than anything else. Yes, it's metabolic, but it's definitely inflammatory. So, by reducing inflammation, exercise, good diet, hydration, red light therapy, this can improve. The next thing that I do is I'd allocate carbohydrates to the evening.

[00:06:16]And this sounds so different compared to what we would normally think. Why would I have carbs before I'm inactive? I want you to flip everything on its head for a second. I'd rather have you consume very little carbs throughout the course of the day when you're active because then it's putting you into more of a deficit and more of sort of a deficit from an insulin perspective, too. you're actually straining the body a little bit to force that adaptation just like we do when we have our fasted exercise in the morning. Okay? So, by having carbs in the evening, you're not necessarily causing a problem. You can mitigate the entire issue by having carbs just earlier. So, what I mean by have your carbs in the evening, but have dinner at 5:00 p.m., not 8:00 p.m. There's more and more evidence that's suggesting that carbs in the evening are not problematic. As a matter of fact, carbs in the evening might be the best time for you to have it because it can end up inducing a little bit more of tryptophan to enter into the brain, not having to compete with compete with so many large neutral aminos and be able to get into the brain and induce a melatonin response and help you sleep. Sleep is something I'm not even going to put on this list because it's so obvious. One of the biggest ways that you can improve insulin resistance is your sleep. So, by having carbs in the evening time, you might sleep better, which is going to help insulin resistance. And then it's also going to make it so in my case, since I magically became insulin resistant, and I used to be very insulin resistant, by the way, I'm able to tap into those fat source throughout the day, lose the weight, lower the inflammation. Next, I want to talk about the fat intake. People don't often realize that in the case of someone that is insulin resistant. Saturated fat can be problematic, especially if carbohydrates are in the equation. Now, if you are zero carb or very low carb, saturated fats aren't going to matter as much. But if you're eating a regular diet, you do want to control your saturated fats. The pulmonyleic acid can actually or excuse me pulmitic acid in this case can influence beta cells and can also influence pancreatic eyelet cells to sort of have a distorted insulin response. In fact, in rodent model studies they induce insulin resistance by overfeeding high amounts of saturated fat. So what I would recommend is from your fatty acid intake I would recommend about 30-ish% of your fats be saturated fat. I would recommend about 40% be monounsaturated fats. Okay?

[00:08:18]and then the rest coming in from various other short- chain saturated fats or maybe from things like ghee or maybe occasional polyunsaturated fats that are coming in from nuts and fish. Now I want to talk about the kinds of saturated fats. There's increasing evidence that saturated fat from dairy is actually quite effective. So really really good protective stuff. So cellular really good stuff. So what I mean by that is we want to have things like aged parmesan.

[00:08:44]We have have things like pecarina romano. These kinds of things are really, really good when it comes down to cellular fragility or protecting cellular fragility, particularly things like C-15 that are in like goat cheese and sheep cheese, things like that. I would start doing periodic fasts, periodic 18our fasts for the same reason that I've talked about, but I don't recommend doing it constantly, unless you need to lose a bunch of weight. If I woke up and I was all of a sudden insulin resistant, what I would do is I would start doing maybe two 18-our fasts a week as a shock to the system. a shock to the system to trigger this effect that would trigger my body to start utilizing fats more and change mitochondrial function for the better.

[00:09:20]Next, I would start increasing my intake of polyphenols. I would eat more blueberries, more raspberries, more strawberries. I wouldn't be afraid of those berries and those fruits that are rich in polyphenols. They have a huge tremendous impact on insulin resistance from an anti-inflammatory perspective and also even some direct mechanism perspectives. So, I wouldn't be shy about the fruits that are rich in polyphenols. I would probably eat some deep leafy greens, too. But I wouldn't overthink the fiber thing. I'd focus more on nutrient quality than anything else. Polyphenols and anti-inflammatory compounds are really powerful. Next, I would start doing full body resistance training. Yes, I want to build muscle.

[00:09:57]Building muscle is going to increase the mitochondria, which is going to increase the number of uh glucose molecules that I can take in and absorb out of the bloodstream. No doubt, I want to build muscle. But the reason that I would do full body resistance training is I'm tapping into my entire body and I'm soaking up glucose throughout my entire body. I would glycogen deplete or soak up glucose out of the bloodstream a little bit easier. So I do things like full body resistance training for metabolic health anyway. But if I woke up and I was all of a sudden had a high HBA1C, I'd be doing full body resistance training three or four days a week along with some highintensity interval training to utilize those carbs as much as I can. So again, I ditch sort of the chest and back or the buys and tries kind of workouts and I'd do full body for 45 minutes or so. Next thing is I would use alulose alongside carbohydrates. There's evidence that alulose the sweetener can actually change how we absorb carbohydrates because alulose occupies some of the same receptors as glucose and fructose.

[00:10:55]What ends up happening is when we consume alulose alongside some carbohydrates, it actually attenuates the glucose spike. This is not illegitimate stuff. This is legit real science that is in humans and rodents and it's quite strong. So alulose binds to a glute 5 receptor which actually can prevent our glucose from getting too high. So when I have alulose my glucose stays super stable. When I have alulose alongside carbohydrates I barely get a blip. So if I had like baked with alulose for example I would notice a huge difference in the spike that I would get even from like the rice flour or something that I would use. Which kind of leads me into the next thing.

[00:11:31]Although I would recommend keeping carbs to a lower amount, if you really are a sugar person and you're really into it, there's a big difference between sugar, honey, and maple syrup. If you can get rid of the refined sugar and switch to honey, there are polyphenols, there are antioxidants, there are enzymes in honey that completely operate differently within the body. So, at the very least, if you're going to have a sweet tooth, try to use something like alulose or monk fruit. But if you must use a real sweetener, try to use honey. And even better, maple syrup is even lower glycemic, but also has even more antioxidants. The deeper the richer the color of the honey and the deeper the richer the color of the maple syrup, the more antioxidant profile and consequently a better benefit in terms of insulin resistance. As far as supplements, I would start taking bourberine. Bourberine helps with high glucose. Huge there. Another one I would start taking is trimethlycine, TMG, also known as betane. increasing evidence coming out showing that betane is hugely beneficial for insulin resistance and it increases fat oxidation. So, it might help you utilize more fat for fuel as well. I would also use cinnamon whenever I can. Cinnamon is an insulin mimetic, so it can actually help glucose get into the bloodstream, but it can also help it so you don't need to have and produce as much insulin, thereby producing a little bit less and giving yourself more insulin sensitivity. and one that's a little bit more I guess fringe if you want to call it that methylene blue.

[00:12:53]Methylene blue acts as an electron acceptor and an electron donor which means that it gives your body sort of an extra gear which means that if there's oxidative stress it could neutralize it but in addition to that because it's allowing your mitochondria to have a little extra space so to speak. You can utilize glucose and fats better because the methylene blue is doing some of the job of the mitochondria. It's complicated and I've done other videos on it but I recommend you just research it. You don't have to take my word for it. Look into it. Research it. And the 13th and final thing that I would recommend, I would eat more eggs. That is a huge thing. The saturated fat content of eggs is not as high as people think. The saturated fat content is not that high. It's more monounsaturated fats, which are what we're looking for in the first place. So, indulge in those eggs. Go for the good ones. Go for the freerange pasture-raised whenever you can and enjoy them because even the FDA has now put them on the health food list. So, I think we can all agree eggs are a win. I'll see you tomorrow.