I'm Insulin Resistant and Pre-Diabetic...Now What?
On December 31st, I sat in the lobby waiting to see my Endocrinologist to get lab results from a half dozen viles of blood I had drawn the week before. After studying the results, he very gently laid out, the good and the bad news on my five page lab report. He explained that over the past two years, my blood sugars had been creeping up and he told me that I was pre-diabetic and insulin resistant. My 4th generational family history of diabetes had landed right in my lap. I was stunned. Was I destined to be the 5th generation? My mind raced from thought to thought; “I am running my 21st marathon in a month, for crying out loud; How can I be pre-diabetic; Sure, I have a few pounds to lose, but this is crazy; Is this me losing the genetic lottery?” My health coach brain went crazy sorting through everything I know about these diagnosis. I left the office shell shocked and cried all the way home.
Just two years ago last October, I spoke at my dad’s funeral. My dad was a professional Santa with no artificial padding required—if you get my drift! He was a big man, with a full beard and rosy cheeks. He was also obese, type 2 diabetic, and severely insulin resistant. He had metabolic syndrome in every detail and he ultimately succumbed to heart disease at 76 years old. Sadly, if you understand the progression of diabetes and metabolic syndrome you might say his premature death was inevitable, or at the very least, predictable. Even as I write this, it pains me to think that maybe things could have been different. Maybe his diabetes could have been turned around, or the progress of that horrible, corrosive disease could have been slowed down? Maybe we could have had more days, weeks, months, or years together? I know that just getting the diagnosis of type 2 diabetes can shave an average of eight years off your life. 2920 days! Could my dad have lived to be 84 if his disease had been turned around? I think the evidence suggests it’s certainly possible.
If you are type 2 diabetic, or pre-diabetic, essentially, you are insulin resistant. Many people don’t understand that type 2 diabetes IS insulin resistance. Unlike a type 1 diabetic that doesn’t produce insulin, a type 2 diabetic produces too much insulin. Simply put, the increased insulin doesn’t work to lower your blood sugar. You have a bunch of glucose and insulin in your blood stream and neither one of them are doing their jobs. Too much sugar and too much insulin; that’s type 2 diabetes in a nut shell.
Another major difference between these two forms of diabetes is that type 1 diabetes has no cure. If you are type 1 you have to take insulin because your body doesn’t produce what you need. Without insulin your cells basically starve to death. In contrast, type 2 diabetes can, in so many cases, be reversed when insulin and blood sugar levels are lowered. What really twists my brain into knots is that we treat type 2 diabetes, that is caused by too much insulin, with more insulin. Think about that for a second. I wish I could say more, but that topic deserves its own blog post.
I appreciated something I read in the “Keto Cure” by Adam S. Nally, DO. He outlines the stages of insulin resistance well before it has progressed to the point of having full blown type 2 diabetes. In fact, he sites a study by Dr. Joseph Kraft at the University of Illinois that said, “it is apparent that hyperinsulinemia (insulin resistance) is really the underlying disease and that a diagnosis of diabetes mellitus type 2 should be based on fasting and an after-meal insulin test instead of an arbitrary blood sugar number. This would allow us to catch and treat diabetes ten to fifteen years prior to its becoming a problem.”
So why does this matter? Because you could have worked to reverse your disease state well before your diabetes has progressed and undermined your health in serious ways. I wish more doctors, like my endocrinologist, were treating insulin resistance in its early stages so that more patients can garner an understanding about the disease progression, what causes it, and how to turn it around.
I have talked with countless people that are pre-diabetic who are taking Metformin and have no idea what role insulin is playing in their disease. Understanding what insulin resistance is and what it does to your body is surprising to most people. They are shocked to learn that several medical conditions are connected to diabetes and insulin resistance. They are, like me, treating the symptoms of diabetes (high blood glucose), rather than addressing the root cause (too much insulin). I am taking Metformin right now (eye roll) and I know full well that it is a metaphorical band-aid on a bullet hole. It will slow the progress of diabetes, but it will not stop it. If I don’t make a change, eventually, it will kill me.
I want to be clear that I am no expert, I am not a doctor, I am not an Endocrinologist, and I am not a magician. But I do know that there are solutions and there are alternatives that are well founded and based in reliable research and that I can turn this disease around. I appreciate my doctor being progressive enough to bring this to my attention now, and not when my blood sugars are out of control and my insulin is through the roof.
Are you taking Metformin, or have you have been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, or are you struggling with weight gain around your middle that won’t budge? You may have concerns about high blood pressure, increasing cholesterol levels, or low vitamin D. Often, many of these things occurring together, can be symptomatic of insulin resistance. An easy way to get more information is to ask your doctor for a simple lab test called the HOMA-IR. It will tell you your glucose/insulin relationship and help you to identify if you are insulin resistant. If you don’t understand insulin resistance ask for clarification from your doctor or another healthcare specialist.
Knowing what I do now, I wish I could have changed things for my dad. But I am ferociously committed to changing things for myself, and for generation number 6; my kids. They will understand what causes type 2 diabetes and how they can add years to their precious lives. I am committed to doing whatever I can to change the outcomes for them and for you. I am committed to educating people about what type 2 diabetes is, how it damages your body, how it progresses and destroys your health. I am committed to turning lives around and restoring health and life and years wherever I can. Part of being a marathon runner is that I am utterly relentless and I’ll be damned if I am going to give way to diabetes. Not a chance. Just watch me….
I offer one-on-one, in-person and online health coaching. Visit my website or email me at cathy@cathydunford.com to learn more.
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Live well, my friend.