Keto Diet and Insulin Resistance (Is It The Best Diet?)

keto diet and insulin resistance what are some of the basics that you need to

understand to cut through the hype and make healthy choices? Coming right up

so keto is incredibly popular right now and the reason is that it reverses

insulin resistance and so many people are insulin resistance that's why it's

popular that's why it works so let's look at those in a little bit more depth

so that we can understand a lot more about the big picture so it's all about

blood sugar to start with so the brain needs blood sugar absolutely whether

you're in ketosis or eat high carb your brain needs blood sugar but if you're in

ketosis you taught your brain to also burn ketones so you're not as dependent

on carbohydrates the volume of carbohydrates but it still needs to be

maintained within a certain range so that range is about 80 to 120 and if you

eat whole Foods primarily low carb the way our ancestors did for tens of

thousands of years your blood sugar is gonna stay right in that narrow range of

about 80 to 120 today for example I had my coffee with some butter and a little

coconut cream then a few hours later I had a big omelet and there was a lot of

stuff in that omelet I put some bacon I put lots of cheese I put avocado put

some vegetables and spinach so it was probably 12 to 1,500 calories but even

if after eating all of that I checked my blood sugar and he was a hundred and

twelve thirty minutes later so you can eat the right kinds of food and still

maintain your blood sugar and that's what the keto diet does when we eat high

carb however then it is more like this blue line here that the carbohydrates

will drive up the blood sugar and when the blood sugar is a lot higher than 120

it's an emergency so the body releases a ton of insulin to help that sugar out

of the bloodstream and into the cell and we're going to look at that in more

detail and if everything is working in the early stages of this your body can

still bring it down to a normal level it still keeps it within here the redline

illustrates what happens a lot after a while when your blood sugar gets more

and more dysregulated by different factors such as stress and malnutrition

and carbs now you can have high blood sugar and low blood sugar called

hypoglycemia alternating so you can have insulin resistance and hypoglycemia at

the same time and then once you just totally wear out that machinery then you

have diabetes which means you're starting off high it rises and it tries

to come down but it never gets down to where it needs to be so that's different

scenarios so let's look at what's happening in a little bit more more

detail so here's the the red tube here that's the blood stream and it has

glucose because this the food you eat results in blood sugar eventually the

way that's absorbed into the blood stream is in the form of glucose and

that's the only form that circulates in in the bloodstream and in order for the

glucose to get into the cell these blood vessels they become capillaries and they

come really really close to the cell so that with some help that sugar can get

into the cell and the cell has insulin receptors those are the little blue

why's here and the red triangle that's insulin and they don't look like this

that's just an illustration and when that red insulin fits into the receptor

now that receptor changes the configuration it's like a key in a lock

that opens up a door and now the glucose can get through and that's the ultimate

goal so in a healthy person that can maintain blood sugar

doesn't have the spikes of blood sugar or insulin there's going to be a balance

between blood glucose and insulin and insulin receptors the body is going to

decide it's going to adapt over time and create just the right amount of all of

those but when we start eating a lot of carbohydrates when we start creating

high blood sugar especially on a regular basis now we change the equation we

change the components and there is a lot more blood sugar around so the body has

to make a whole lot more insulin and that's the pancreas that makes that

insulin so over time that that pancreas can get exhausted it gets overworked

what also happens now though is the cell the purpose of the glucose is that the

cell has certain metabolic needs and when those needs are met the cell

doesn't need anymore glucose but the glucose keeps coming so the cell says

hey hey hey back off wait up a little bit enough is enough and when it still

keeps getting more and more glucose it says well now I'm going to start getting

rid of some of these receptors I'm going to down regulate the receptors because

this is just getting out of hand I don't need that much glucose and since the

receptors are what's bringing it in I'm just going to reduce the number I'm

gonna down regulate and now we have insulin resistance so think about it

this way yeah just like a metaphor if you're living in a cabin in the

wilderness and the only source of fresh water is rainwater and you're collecting

it in buckets so you have 50 buckets and you go around you put the buckets out

and wait for the rain and then the rain comes and you get an inch in every

bucket and you collect it all and you have enough for a couple of weeks until

the next rain now imagine that it rained all the time

it was just pouring down and it almost never let up then after a few months or

a few years would you still put out 50 buckets of course not you would have

learned that it's enough to put out two or three buckets because they're gonna

fill up anyway and before you can use one there's going to be another one so

you're not going to put out the buckets that's what the body is doing it's not

going to keep all the receptors because there's an overflow there's an abundance

but here's the problem the blood sugar is still high the cell doesn't want it

but the blood sugar is still high and it has to get out of the bloodstream

because it's creating problem it's creating every problem that you ever

heard of in diabetes is from that high blood sugar and the inflammation

associated with insulin so the body keeps trying to make more insulin

but the problems compounded by high sugar and fewer receptors and now we're

really really pushing that pancreas to work work work and eventually it gets

exhausted and when it can't keep up then we have diabetes so let's look at this

just one one other version of this so we eat the carbs it results in high blood

glucose because of the high blood glucose it results in high insulin for a

while the high insulin can bring the blood sugar back down to normal and it

looks like we're doing fine and we could probably keep this up for years maybe

even decades this is why this didn't used to happen until we got into our 50s

and 60s now that we are abusing our bodies more than ever it starts coming

down in age to 30 and 20 and even teens and what we want to understand is it's

all about blood sugar and insulin and carbs result in high blood sugar they

have a very strong insulin response and this holds true for all starchy carbs it

is not true for non starchy vegetables so when

people say oh you can't eat any carbs on keto that's incorrect you can eat non

starchy vegetables leafy greens green beans there's lots and lots of things

you can eat plenty of to get you lots and lots of different nutrition that

doesn't trigger insulin protein has a mild to moderate insulin response and

fat has a negligible insulin response so that's the whole idea about this and non

starchy vegetables also have a negligible insulin response

so I'm I'll make another video to talk more about what types of foods to eat

like the the food pyramid for keto but for here we're just going to leave it at

that so the body can keep up oftentimes for a long long time but eventually when

we push the system too far for too long and we wear out that pancreas now we

have the high carb and we get the high blood glucose but now the high insulin

is insufficient and the pancreas can't make anymore it's it's reached its peak

and it's starting to decline because it's worn out so we still have the high

blood glucose and now they tell us in the diabetes management to eat moderate

carbs but it's not enough because we destroyed the machinery so moderate

carbs is not going to fix this you want to think of this whole system as your

carbohydrate tolerance machinery okay it's like a machine it processes carbs

as they come in it takes care of them but if you break the Machine then you

can't just cut back to half okay you have to do something more drastic you

have to cut way way way way back to to allow the body to to recover for that

pancreas to back up so much on the carbs that the pancreas has a chance to get to

keep keep up to catch up and to cut way way back so that the

cells actually become a little bit hungry for that blood sugar because then

they're gonna start to increase those insulin receptors again they're going to

up regulate those insulin receptors so that's a key to understand in the body

that you can change some things rather quickly by changing lifestyle but some

other things you have to be patient because your body needs time to heal

someone said you you can never step in the same river twice because the water

is always changing well it's the same in the body your body is not the same that

it was last year ninety percent of the cells have changed so if you give the

body a year and it allow it to make some new cells then the new cells will have a

chance to upregulate you have a chance to heal the machinery so most people

start kedo because they want to lose weight and great whatever it takes but

it's not about the weight it's about the insulin resistance because insulin

resistance is responsible for 95% of all degenerative disease or if not fully

responsible at least associated with 95% of all degenerative disease so what that

means is once you do the keto and reverse insulin resistance you are

getting healthier and that's the whole goal and when you get healthier the

weight will come off as a result it's not about the weight it's about health

and insulin resistance is the greatest threat to health that we know of now

when people talk about a balanced diet what does that mean okay for some people

that the recommendations today is to eat 60 percent of carbs from carbohydrate

that's about 300 grams a day for a small person and 400 grams a day for a large

person like myself and for some people then they say Oh eat a balanced diet

they probably mean maybe cutting that my half I don't know what they mean but

seen some examples like that but 150 or 200 grams is still way high

and if you want to reverse this if you want to fix if you want to have a chance

of healing your broken machine then you can't keep high or moderate you have to

go low or even very very low so a healthy person without insulin

resistance can probably lead a healthy life somewhere around 70 grams of carbs

but that's still not going to cut it for someone who has broken their machine

they might need to get down to 40 or 30 or 20 and no two people are the same so

it's not like a set rule it's a principle the keto diet is not a diet

it's a principle of how to reduce the carbohydrates enough to reverse the

damage to this machinery and it doesn't mean that you eat all fat it means you

start off with vegetables you eat moderate protein and then you fill up

with quality fats just enough to feel full so again I'll do a different video

on the keto food pyramid so we can clarify some of those things so I want

you to dive in a little bit more in detail because there's so much confusion

and I hope this has been helpful in understanding some of the basic

mechanisms of physiology and some of the dynamics that that influence all of that

so please share this video make your comments I'll answer questions and make

videos if you have more interests and as always thanks for watching