Presentation on Insulin -- Much More Than a Blood Sugar Hormone

Hey all!

Busy, busy, busy for the next few weeks. I’m speaking at Low Carb Houston this weekend, at the Wise Traditions conference (from the Weston A. Price Foundation) in mid-November, and at the keto event in Ontario on December 1. Yowza!

So it might be a few weeks before I can write more blog posts of substance, but I’ll try to pop in and at least post something before I get back to (what I hope are) more meaningful and educational posts.

In the meantime, I want to share a link to a presentation I gave on insulin and chronic hyperinsulinemia. If you enjoyed my 8-part series on insulin a while back (two more parts coming, by the way!), then I think you’ll like this video. The primary message is that insulin is much more than merely a “blood sugar hormone.” Insulin has effects far and wide throughout the whole body. There’s almost no organ, gland, or tissue system that insulin doesn’t affect in some way, including the brain. (Hence the book I wrote on Alzheimer’s disease, and the talks I give on “brain insulin resistance.”)

In this presentation, I talk about chronically high insulin as a driver of several conditions/disorders not typically thought of as metabolic in origin. Aside from type 2 diabetes and obesity (which are so intertwined in some cases that they’ve coined the phrase “diabesity”), there’s gout, hypertension, PCOS, erectile dysfunction, cardiovascular disease, skin tags, migraines, and more. (Possibly even Parkinson’s disease!)

I go into detail on hypertension and gout as two examples of conditions where the underlying cause (high insulin) is ignored in favor of things that often have little to nothing to do with how the disease actually develops (sodium in the case of hypertension, and red meat in the case of gout). But my favorite part is when I talk about insulin’s role in directly inhibiting lipolysis—the breakdown of fat. It explains so elegantly why so many of us had such a very hard time losing body fat when we were eating all the whole grains we were advised to consume, along with our skim milk, fat-free yogurt, and other low- and no-fat carbohydrates, and why things became much easier when we ate in such a way as to keep our insulin levels low for most of the day.

Please forgive the poor sound quality in the video. This was recorded at an event that was organized by one person, and it was her very first time organizing something like this. We’re lucky someone did us the favor of recording it at all! It’s a little bit hard to hear at first, but it gets somewhat better as the video goes on. Please don’t let that stop you from watching. I think it’s educational and might give you some new knowledge about the role of insulin not just in body weight, but in overall health and wellness.

Here’s the link: Insulin Resistance Presentation, Perth, Ontario (10/16/2018)

   

Disclaimer: Amy Berger, MS, CNS, NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition and is not to be used as a substitute for the care and guidance of a physician. Links in this post and all others may direct you to amazon.com, where I will receive a small amount of the purchase price of any items you buy through my affiliate links.