Who Do You Believe? This Doctor or That Doctor?
Hmm…???
Wow! One doctor tells you: “It’s the fat that causes diabetes. Cut out all fat or at least limit dietary fat to no more than ten percent of your total daily calories. And for goodness sakes, loose some of that weight.” Some may even tell you what types of fats to limit: saturated fat of course. “Make sure you eat only unsaturated fats as in polyunsaturated found in vegetable oils”: they will tell you. But, is that even true? We will soon see.
I suppose that is why, ever since I was a boy, folks– even doctors–called it fat diabetes. Oh? That’s not, right? It has always been called sugar diabetes? Ok…ok! So, maybe it was called sugar diabetes not because sugar causes it but because the disease, itself, causes too high of a sugar reading in the blood. Gotcha? Maybe? Humm…this is so confusing. But, you can always just take a pill, or some insulin shots: right?
But, wait: what about type one diabetes? Oh, it too has excess sugar in the blood: right? Yes, that is correct. But–with type one diabetes–what causes the excess blood sugar? It is caused by no or too little insulin.
For some background on the various types of diabetes, refer to our previous article on “How To Tell If Your Blood Sugar Is Too High Or Too Low”:
Ok, no more tongue-in-cheek. Diabetes, of any kind, is a grave matter that can result in lethal conditions. Type one diabetics can develop a serious condition called ketoacidosis that can cause a diabetic coma and, if not corrected—with insulin—the patient will die. This occurs only in patients with no or too little insulin. Don’t confuse it with a very healthy process called ketosis which is produced by a high-fat diet and provides a cleaner fuel, than sugar, for the mitochondria(organelles that produce all your energy) by metabolizing ketone bodies. In this situation, the very same molecules that produce death in a type one diabetic, ketone bodies, improve the metabolic conditions of a type two diabetic. See why the two diseases should be treated differently? But, I’m getting ahead of myself: and this is a topic for another discussion.
As we learned in the above article, there are many types of diabetes. However, type one diabetes is the lack of insulin, and type two diabetes is–initially–the result of insulin resistance: too much insulin. In this article we are going to learn what insulin resistance is, what causes it: and how to treat it with proper nutrition and exercise. So, in summary, we will be learning:
What insulin resistance is
Types of fats that may have a causal relationship with type 2 diabetes
Manmade seed oils, called vegetable oils
The types of fats that are healthy and help in combating type 2 diabetes
Natural fats and cold-pressed, saturated fats
Insulin:
Before we get into insulin resistance, we need to acquire at least a rudimentary understanding of just what insulin is and some of its functions in the human body.
Insulin is a hormone made in the beta cells of the pancreas. The beta cells are located in the islets of Langerhans of the pancreas. While insulin’s functions are too numerous for this discussion, depending on to whom you listen, there could be anywhere from hundreds to a thousand functions—both directly and indirectly—for this ubiquitous hormone.
For you science geeks, insulin is a protein. Being a protein, requires that it be synthesized in the rough endoplasmic reticulum by some more proteins called ribosomes. Yes, I know! I know! I said it was produced by the beta cells of the pancreas. But specifically, where in those beta cells? View a video depiction of protein production in the rough endoplasmic reticulum here. View a computer graphic of how ribosomes translate the code from the messenger RNA into the protein dictated by the DNA located in the nucleus of the cell here.
Ribosomes are found in two places: free-floating and attached to the rough endoplasmic reticulum. They are little microscopic organs found in all cells that have a specific function: turn amino acids into proteins.
I this article, we will limit our discussion mainly to insulin’s function to get glucose out of the blood and into muscle cells and liver cells.
In part two of this article, we will go into what insulin resistance is, what causes it, and how to cure it. Yes, I said cure it: cure insulin resistance, and you cur type two diabetes.
Come back soon and we will have part two completed and ready for you to learn just how to: eliminate insulin resistance and cure type two diabetes.
