#316: Adam Sud - Carbs are Not the Enemy…Unraveling Insulin Resistance
Adam Sud - Behavioral Wellness + Nutrition Expert
If you’ve ever been told that 'carbs are the enemy,' or if you think type 2 diabetes is a life sentence, Adam Sud is about to blow the lid off those myths.
He’s a certified insulin resistance and food addiction coach, and returns for his fourth appearance on the podcast to clear up the misconceptions and set the record straight about what really causes diabetes.
He shares the real root causes of insulin resistance, the role of fat vs. carbs, the impact of diet on insulin, debunking “quick fixes,” how movement and muscle can be your secret weapons, and the simple, sustainable changes you can start making today.
You'll learn how:
Insulin resistance is reversible with the right diet
Saturated fat and excess calories—not carbs—fuel the problem
High-fiber, plant-based foods boost insulin sensitivity
Walking after meals and building muscle improve metabolism
The PILAF method to help track key health markers
This episode just might change everything you've heard about insulin resistance and put your back in the driver's seat of your health.
Episode Resources:
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Full Episode Transcription via AI Transcription Service
I'm Rip Esselstyn, and you're listening to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast.
Introduction to Insulin Resistance
[0:05] Is insulin resistance really about carbs, or is the truth something much deeper and more empowering? This week, I welcome back to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast, Adam Sud, a certified insulin resistance and food addiction coach who has walked his own path from crisis to healing. Today, he shares what insulin resistance actually is and how to reverse it. We'll have this eye-opening episode right after these words from PLANTSTRONG.
[0:45] Buckle up because we are in for a powerhouse conversation with my friend, Adam Sud. If you have ever been told that carbohydrates are the enemy, Or if you think that type 2 diabetes is a life sentence, Adam is about to blow the lid off those myths. He is a certified insulin resistance and food addiction coach. And his personal journey is nothing short of jaw dropping. From battling addiction, obesity, and chronic disease, to losing over 150 pounds, reversing diabetes and heart disease, and now living a life of purpose and passion. This is Adam's fourth time on the show, and every single visit,
Adam's Personal Journey
[1:32] he brings a level of clarity, science, and inspiration that will light a fire in your belly. We're talking about the real root causes of insulin resistance, the role of fat versus carbs, how movement and muscle can be your secret weapons, and the simple, sustainable changes that you can start making immediately. So fasten up, because this episode just might change the way you look at food and your health forever.
[2:08] Adam. Yeah. Welcome back to the PLANTSTRONG Podcast. Great to see you. Yeah. Is this my fourth time? This is your fourth time on the podcast. I mean, this is kind of like SNL, right? Yeah. Saturday Night Live, where you're like up there now with like Chevy Chase. There's like a group of people who have hosted five times or more. It's like a class of them. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so you're in Rare Friday Air. I love it. I love it so i think so i've known you since 2010 yeah was when we first meet when you first came to that uh that plan engine two at the time engine two PLANTSTRONG retreat here in austin texas and so you know before we dive in and you know the PLANTSTRONG audience has grown substantially since you were last on the show i'd love for you to give everybody just kind of the reader's digest version of your story. Sure. So we met in 2010 when I was at the tail end of a long battle with substance abuse and depression and just very, I had no ability to care for myself. So when you and I met, I was over 300 pounds. I was struggling with multiple addictions to stimulants and opiates. And I didn't know that I had diabetes and heart disease and all these other conditions.
[3:32] And after going to your retreat, you know, I still struggled for a while until a singular event on August 21st of 2012 when I survived a suicide attempt. And I found myself in rehab and I got diagnosed with advanced diabetes and cholesterol over 300 and my blood pressure was through the roof. And I had this idea, you know, that, man, if I really want to do well, I have to figure out how to engineer aliveness. I can't just be focused on trying to not use. That won't work for me. I can't be sick and sober. I couldn't do it. I had to figure out how to become healthy. What was that term you just said? Engineered what? Engineer aliveness. Aliveness. Yeah. I wanted to feel alive. That's what I was looking for. And so kind of remembered as much as I could about what I learned when I was at the retreat. And I applied that to my recovery. I figured if I could make life feel like a safe, secure, and hopeful place to be, then use will be no longer necessary, right? I can't not use in the hopes that life gets better. I have to make life better. And I figured I can figure this thing out through nutrition. And so I was able to reverse my diabetes and my heart disease and my erectile dysfunction in about five months. And I lost over 100 pounds in the first year. and I got off of all of my psych meds within one year and really discovered the capacity.
[4:55] Plant-based nutrition offers an individual to discover like what their body's actually capable of That if you were to build this very specific environment and then just live there long enough Your body's going to give you a sense of what your life can really feel like and then you get to make a decision Do I want to stay here or do I want to leave and I wanted to stay and so as a result of that, um, I got really passionate about understanding what happened. How did all these things take place? Because I knew the surface level stuff.
Understanding Insulin Resistance
[5:28] I knew plant-based diets were good for reversing diabetes, but why and how? What was going on? So I went back and started studying nutrition and was able to start working in the clinical setting and then helped some friends of mine launch an amazing company called Mastering Diabetes and become an insulin resistance and food addiction coach and help a thousand people do the same thing I was able to do, which was reverse diabetes. And then I figured, well, what if I was to do that same thing, but apply what does nutrition do for addiction?
[5:58] Because there had never been a single study to investigate the effects of diet on addiction recovery outcomes, not in a treatment center, not in a controlled setting. And so I actually ran the first controlled trial to investigate the effects of nutrition on addiction recovery outcomes in treatment facilities, which we had an episode where we talked about that so So people can go look for it. So I've been in continuous recovery for, it'll be 13 years this year. I'm the healthiest and happiest and most connected version of myself that I've ever been. And I've been able to do a lot of amazing things, one of which is to be on this show four times. And so, yeah. Well, you're also a pillar now at our retreats that we have in Sedona and Black Mountain. Yes. And to me, one of the craziest things, and in your opening talk that you give at our retreats, you kind of end with how...
[6:51] You, if you would have taken your life, the best part of you being alive again and living would have never had the chance to blossom. Yeah. The, I think the quote I use is I can't believe I almost ended my life before the best part began. Yeah. You know, and now, and now tell people like you're married. I am. Yeah. I got, I got married in, in, uh, on December 3rd of 2022 to the most incredible woman who has ever lived. And she's an amazing naturopathic physician. She's probably the world's leading expert in what's called mast cell activation syndrome and histamine intolerance. So people, it's becoming a growing, there's a lot of attention on it because as she described it, COVID is kind of like the great uncoverer. And a lot of people had these low levels of mast cell activation syndrome in their system. And then long COVID, what long COVID really is for a lot of people is just mast cell flares. And so she's just unbelievable voice for accuracy in understanding how to help people take charge of having a life that they feel like they want to be a part of, like feeling alive with mast cell. And so she's amazing.
[8:01] Well, and you get to go spend the summer where they're in Wyoming here shortly. I do, yeah, I leave on Saturday. Get out of the heat of Austin. Well, and you know, the thing is, we're going to be there till the middle of July. So we technically don't miss the worst heat of Austin, but it's still nice to go there. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, so why specifically I brought you on the show today is because, because you have become.
[8:25] Even though you're not, you don't have, you know, uh, a doctor in front of your name, you literally, I think have an understanding and a depth of what's going on with insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes, type 1 diabetes, and I just wanted to have you on the show to share with our audience that. Thank you. And so I think a great place to start is just, let's just start right at the top. So what exactly is insulin resistance and how does it differ from type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes? Great, yeah. So when we think about insulin resistance, I think it's first to kind of define, you know, what, what, what kind of impact does this metabolic state actually have on the world right now? And because most people think of insulin resistance as this kind of siloed, you know, metabolic state that fuels diabetes and prediabetes and affects people who have type one diabetes. And it's true that it does.
[9:32] It's a much more accurate way to look at it is that insulin resistance is like this engine that drives so many chronic health conditions.
[9:41] In addition to prediabetes, type 2 diabetes, and affecting those with type 1 diabetes, it fuels gestational diabetes. It fuels certain cancers, coronary artery disease, atherosclerosis, hypertension, fatty liver, chronic kidney disease, blindness, retinopathy. I mean, the list goes on and on. these conditions either start once someone becomes insulin resistant and or is made worse if they become insulin resistant so insulin resistance really is the health epidemic of the western world and so when you and i are going to talk about it today we're going to talk about it through the what we call the expression of pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes how does it fuel those but the same mechanisms that we're going to talk about are occurring in the cellular tissue that affects those other conditions. So the vasculature, the coronary arteries, right? The liver cells, the kidney cells, your brain cells, all of the other things that I mentioned are being affected by the same mechanism. So we'll talk about it in terms of diabetes. And so when people think about diabetes, they're usually thinking, well, pre-diabetes and type 2 diabetes, right? Because about a third of America is either pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic and And about half of America is going to be pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic in a very short period of time. And I think the number is that there's about another 10 million people walking around right now undiagnosed. And that's a very conservative estimate.
[11:11] So how do we know if someone is pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic and what's the difference? So a non-diabetic individual is a person who has what we call an HbA1c. And that is a biometric used to measure how effective your body is at metabolizing carbohydrate energy. And it's used, it's expressed in percentages. So a person who is a non-diabetic will have an A1c below 5.7%. And they're using percentages because, let's say their A1C is 5.4. That means 5.4 out of every 100 hemoglobin molecules in their body has glucose attached to it. And as that number rises, as that percentage rises, you now have greater glucose saturation of hemoglobin molecules. And this interferes with hemoglobin being a transport molecule for other important things like oxygen and other nutrients, right? So this can become a problem. And so a pre-diabetic is someone who has an A1C between 5.7 and 6.4%. This is actually not technically diabetic. It's just letting you know we are going in the wrong direction and something is happening. Type 2 diabetic is an individual with an A1C of over 6.4%. So for reference, when I got diagnosed, my A1C was a 12. I was very, very, very, very diabetic.
[12:32] And, well, we can get to this a little later. when we're discussing diet and exercise and how they impact. But just because I think it's appropriate, you were literally a fast food addict for how many years?
[12:48] Well, for well over five years, probably closer to eight or nine years. But by the end of it, I was consuming like 5,000 calories of fast food a day for like two weeks straight. Then I go on like a two-week drug bender, and then I do the food and then the drugs. And so I should have been diabetic. I mean, it makes complete sense. Right. And that's really what you and I are going to do today is we're going to, for everyone who's listening, diabetes is going to make sense to them. And I love helping people make sense of what is causing them to feel afraid because that fear comes from first not knowing, well, is there something wrong with me?
[13:26] And so how do these, how does prediabetes and type two diabetes differ from type one diabetes? Well, Prediabetes and type 2 diabetes are directly a result of becoming insulin resistant.
Distinguishing Diabetes Types
[13:38] That's how you become prediabetic or type 2 diabetic. Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune condition where, for whatever reason, the presence of antibodies start attacking the beta cells of your pancreas. And those are the cells that actually produce insulin. And they attack the beta cells of the pancreas and diminish their capacity to produce insulin. And over the course of time, they now no longer produce insulin at all, what we call endogenously or inside of their body. And without insulin, you die. And so there's usually a lot of telltale signs that occur as you're losing beta cell function and you end up getting diagnosed and they put you on exogenous insulin or insulin injections. Essentially, you're just replacing what your body would have produced or it's still capable of doing so. So that is not related to insulin resistance whatsoever. There's another condition called type 1.5 diabetes.
[14:33] And that is the same thing as type 1, where type 1 diabetics have at least two or more antibodies that are damaging the beta cells. So it occurs really quickly, usually before the age of 20.
[14:44] Type 1.5 is the presence of one single diabetic antibody. And so the progression of beta cell loss occurs very slowly, usually not until after they're 40 years old. And so unfortunately for a lot of these people, it looks like someone becoming pre-diabetic and then slowly moving into type 2 diabetes. And a lot of them get misdiagnosed because the beta cell function drops slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly, slowly. So it just looks like, oh, I'm trying to do these things, but my blood glucose just keeps going higher and higher. It's not in a dangerous level yet, but eventually it will be. And that's actually called LADA, which stands for Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults. Again, this is an autoimmune condition separate from insulin resistance, but here's the thing. There is a condition known as double diabetes.
[15:30] That is where you are both type 1 or type 1.5 and insulin resistant at the same time. You are effectively type 1 and type 2 at the exact same time. That's where being type 1, insulin resistance is something you should absolutely be paying attention to because if you are injecting insulin, you want to know that every unit of insulin that you inject is as effective as possible at metabolizing carbohydrate energy and that you can predict your needs effectively and consistently because blood glucose control for type 1s is everything. I think it would be helpful if we could backtrack for a sec and let everybody know what is insulin and what is the role of insulin in the body. Insulin is a life-necessary hormone.
[16:17] Of its many roles, the main role that it plays is an energy transport molecule. So when energy enters your body through food and it gets broken down in the digestive system and then it enters your bloodstream, specifically things like carbohydrate energy that enter the bloodstream is glucose. There's a rise in your blood glucose levels. And the beta cells, which are kind of like little antennae that sense this fluctuation in your blood glucose, they release insulin in response to this fluctuation. And now insulin's job is to fly through the blood glucose, fly through the bloodstream, grab a hold of glucose molecules and start transporting it to cellular tissue all over the body. Your muscle cells, your liver cells, your kidney cells, your vasculature, your brain cells everywhere that uses carbohydrate as energy either immediately or to be stored as glycogen for later. And it delivers this energy into the cells by communicating with the cell and getting the energy in. So I think that's really important for everybody to hear. So it kind of transports sugar, effectively, into the cells.
[17:23] And it is basically the communicator that allows the transport of that sugar into the cells. Yeah, think of it as like a shuttle driver that's picking up a bunch of passengers in the bloodstream on the highway and driving them to their destination. And when they get there, this shuttle needs to alert the destination. Hey, I've got your passengers here. Do you want to let them in? And the cellular tissue or the destination will say, yeah, absolutely. We've been waiting for them. Come on in. So there's three macronutrients, protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Do we need something to escort fat and protein?
[18:06] Yeah. Yeah, so fat is also transported through various mechanisms, also insulin. Insulin also drives fat storage. Protein, insulin is involved in metabolizing protein, but it isn't transported using insulin in the same way that it is with carbohydrate energy and with fat storage that insulin does. So the main focus, the main energy that it transports is carbohydrate energy. And for good reason. Your cells love carbohydrate energy, and they want it. They want to use it immediately and they want to store it for later. It is their primary source of energy.
[18:42] So this to me is one of the most confusing topics that is out there and It's also as you said is one of the most important topics considering that we have
The Role of Insulin
[18:52] potentially You know 50% of us walking around as pre-diabetic or type 2 diabetic. Yeah here in the next very very shortly so, And I think there's a lot of debate out there about diet and insulin resistance, low-carb, keto, plant-based, intermittent fasting.
[19:12] I'd love to hear from you and your perspective, since you've become such a lover of reading the science and everything like that. What does the science say is the most effective way to reverse insulin sensitivity or insulin resistance? So that's a great question because the question you asked is, what does the science say about what's the best diet to reverse insulin resistance, not lower blood glucose? And that's a really important thing that you asked because those are not the same thing.
[19:38] So the research consistently demonstrates that there's a very specific dietary pattern that effectively increases insulin sensitivity and lowers insulin resistance. And that dietary pattern looks very specific. I mean, it looked very similar regardless of whether it's exactly the same. It's going to meet four themes. And those four themes are high in fiber, low in saturated fat, prioritizing plants as protein, and the removal of ultra-processed foods and excess calories. And so why does this work, right? Why does this seem to be the consistent pattern that solves the problem every single time? And I think it comes from understanding what is actually happening in the body. How does someone go from being insulin sensitive to being insulin resistant? Because there is so much talk out there. And so many people sound incredibly confident and they want you to believe that they've got the answer. And before you continue, I just, again, because I find this, um, and because I, you know, I, I've heard everybody from Dr. Neil Barnard and my sister and yourself and Clapper talk about it. I now understand it. But for somebody that's just like maybe listening, uh, to this for the first time, uh.
[20:56] Again, I want you to go where you're going, but first, so you use the term insulin resistant and insulin sensitive. Yes. I think it's important that we define what those terms mean. Perfect. Yeah. So insulin sensitive is achieving a metabolic state where the cells of your tissue are sensitive to the action of insulin. Insulin has a desire to deliver energy to cellular tissue. The cells of those tissue, your muscle cells, your liver cells, your kidney cells, they have to be sensitive to the signaling of insulin in order for it to be able to communicate effectively and deliver energy, right? So those are insulin sensitive cells. An insulin resistant cell is when a series of mechanisms occur over time that create a situation where the cells have to reject the action of insulin. They have to say no to it. They have to be resistant to insulin's desire to deliver energy. And the chain of events that lead someone to that place is very specific it's really simple which is great and when you understand it you can see why the pattern that i described earlier those four themes are consistently demonstrating that they lead you towards insulin sensitivity perfect Perfect. What are the main causes and risk factors associated with insulin resistance?
[22:23] Yeah. So I think the main risk factors that we kind of already talked about in the beginning, like they drive all these other conditions. But what's interesting is to talk about the cause of it. And this is so important because, unfortunately, we now live in a very short-form content world.
[22:41] Everything is delivered in a certain number of characters or in a certain number of minutes. And so there's a lot of context that's left out when people share information. And so a lot of people try to distill everything down to a singular cause, like a single root cause. And that's just not the way it works. There are very profound root causes. There are factors that are far more impactful than others. But let's talk about what people typically hear. If you were to go ask the average person. Genetics. Yeah. They're going to say genetics. They're going to say sugar. Age. Age. They're going to say carbs cause it. Yeah. They're going to say insulin, right? What's called the carbohydrate insulin model is that forcing your body to produce extra insulin will drive fat storage. And this drives obesity. And when you become obese, you become diabetic. That's the carbohydrate insulin model, which has been debunked for decades, but people still love to talk about it because the mechanism is true that insulin does drive fat storage. But that doesn't mean insulin, independent of any other variable, causes obesity. That's really important.
[23:52] So what is accurate? If we were to accurately describe insulin resistance, it is the result of an excess accumulation of fatty acids inside of tissues that are not designed to store large quantities of fatty acids. So the key words here are excess and large. I don't want anyone walking away from this conversation to be like, I can't ever eat any food this high in fat. That is a fundamentally untrue takeaway from this conversation.
[24:19] But insulin resistance is the excess accumulation of fatty acids inside of tissues that are not designed to store large quantities of fatty acids. So at its core, insulin resistance is an excess energy problem. It's an excess energy problem. And this problem results in the dysfunction of muscle and liver cells. And when the dysfunction in muscle and liver cells grows too great, you become pre-diabetic and type 2 diabetic. So let's talk about that, the chain of events that lead you there. Yeah. So then let's define insulin sensitive metabolism.
[24:55] If we were to take somebody like yourself and put a cgm on you because i know for a fact you're insulin sensitive cgm is a continuous glucose monitor yeah and i was to take you in a fasting state like wake you up this tomorrow morning and then give you your rips big bowl and be like eat this and i was to watch your blood glucose fluctuations after eating that meal here's what's likely to occur because you have insulin sensitive
The Impact of Diet on Insulin
[25:21] metabolism before you start that meal your blood glucose is going to be somewhere between 70 and 100. That is a healthy fasting blood glucose range.
[25:30] Within two hours after eating that meal, and how many grams of carbohydrate do you think are in that meal? Because I know it's like, what, 500 calories, 600 calories? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So it's easily 120 grams of carbohydrate. Easily. Yeah. So it's going to go up no more than 60 points at most. It will never go above 140 within two hours, and it'll be back down under 100 in less than three hours. That is what we call a healthy postprandial curve. Now, unfortunately, people have been convinced that blood glucose excursions are the same thing as spikes. That's not true. The reason why they believe that is because no one ever defines what a spike is. They're just told, oh, your blood glucose went up. It went up above 110. This is a problem. That is not a problem. That is a physiologically appropriate response to a healthy high-carbohydrate meal. So if someone was insulin resistant, what would we see? If we were to take someone who is diabetic, put that CGM, that continuous glucose monitor on them, feed them the same meal that you ate, what would happen?
[26:34] They would wake up. Maybe their blood glucose in the fasting state would be above 100 because they're already diabetic. Their blood glucose would elevate potentially over 200 and then stay elevated beyond three hours. This is telling us two things.
[26:48] One, that they start with a higher saturation of glucose in their blood because their cells are resistant to metabolizing glucose. And the insulin produced after eating the meal is not effective at driving the glucose down, so it stays elevated longer. It is not because the carbohydrate that you ate is because they are insulin resistant that the carbohydrate cannot be metabolized. Those high numbers are the signal that you're insulin resistant. And this is where a lot of the confusion comes in. People start to believe that carbohydrates are the problem. Because when you're insulin resistant and you eat carbohydrate, your blood glucose goes through the roof. And that's a reasonable assumption to make. Well, I want my blood glucose to go down. When I eat carbs, my blood glucose goes high and stays there. I should never eat a carbohydrate again.
[27:32] Let's actually talk about what happened. How did they get from being in a place where their body could metabolize carbohydrate energy to one day waking up and not being able to even look at a banana without their blood glucose going through the roof? How did that happen? Well, in Western cultures, we have a few problems. One, our diets are too rich in calories, period, end of story. The average American is eating over 3,000 calories a day. And the other problem is we have a lot of calories coming from saturated fat. Saturated fat seems to be uniquely insulting to insulin sensitivity so how how and why right when we consume food your body breaks it down in the digestive process and it breaks carbohydrates down into monosaccharide sugars that enter the bloodstream as glucose and it breaks down triglycerides which is fat and food into free fatty acids the interesting thing is when triglycerides enter the digestive system, we have a very unique and interesting molecule that is created in your digestive system. And it's called a chylomicron particle. And the reason why we have this chylomicron particle, which is a lipid transport poly... Sounds like something from the new Superman movie. It does, right? It's because it turns out in nature, fat is very scarce.
[28:52] Even meat in nature, it's like 18% fat. It's actually very lean. And I want everyone to think of fat energy as their savings account. It's what your body stores as soon as it comes in. It stores it for later. It wants it there in case we ever end up in a situation where we have no energy available. And the reason for that is fat energy lasts a very long time. In fact, if I was to take you to True North and they were to water fast you, they could water fast you for about 40 days because the fat energy in your body could last you those 40 days. Your glycogen stores could be gone in a matter of one day, right? But your fat source could last you the rest of the time. So it's there to save your life.
[29:32] Carbohydrate energy is your body's checking account. When it comes in, the body wants to either burn it immediately or store it for later to probably use either later that day or tomorrow, right? I really like that analogy, the savings account versus the checking account. Exactly. And so the fat is the savings account. The only thing is, though we don't want too much fat in that savings account.
[29:55] So because fat energy is scarce in nature, and we need to have it stored, we need to make sure it gets stored if we get any, there has to be some kind of mechanism that has a part of our biology that ensures that when fat energy comes in, it gets first preference for storage. That's what those chylomicron particles do. They grab ahold of these triglycerides, and they immediately start transporting them to cellular tissue all over the body. They break these triglycerides down into free fatty acids and they deposit them into cells without regulation. So they don't need to have the communication with the cell. They don't communicate with the cells. They don't need it. They don't want it. They just immediately transport that fat energy into your cell.
The Effects of Exercise
[30:35] So we'll talk about it in your muscle cell. So this fat energy gets deposited inside of the muscle cell. And inside of your cell, you have two kinds of energy storage, right? Your body only stores carbohydrate energy or fat energy. Carbohydrate energy is stored as a glycogen granule, and fatty acids are stored as a lipid droplet. And if you were to look inside of your cells right now, you'd likely see this very big glycogen granule and a very small lipid droplet. And this is appropriate. This is what your cells like because this is going to be shrinking and growing all day, right? It gets used, more comes in. It gets used, more comes in. It gets used, more comes in. So there's always space available for more carbohydrate energy to come in. I also know that you eat a low-fat, plant-based diet.
[31:19] So this lipid droplet is not really getting used or burned. You might burn it because you're an athlete, and then some more come in every now and then. But this is pretty much staying right where it is. The average person in a Western diet is not eating like you or I. They are eating over 3,000 calories a day, and they're eating high amounts of saturated fat. So these fatty acids are being deposited inside of those muscle cells uncontrolled over the course of time. And that lipid droplet starts growing larger and larger and larger until eventually there's now too much energy inside of the cell. This lipid droplet has been uncontrolled. It has gotten to a point to where there's no way for that cell to shrink it. And in fact, continuing to take on more energy could damage the cell and actually destroy the cell's health or even kill the cell. So something has to happen in order to prevent that from taking place. And this is actually where the IRS saves your life, not the Internal Revenue Service, but you have inside of your cells something called insulin receptor substrate molecules.
[32:22] And they are like the accountants of your cell because they're looking around. They're going, OK, we've got enough carbohydrate energy in that glycogen granule. The lipid droplets manageable. No problem. Let's just keep things going. But inside of this person that's been eating a Western diet for 20 years, they go, oh, my gosh. We have a serious problem there's way too much energy in here and it's it's at a point where it could be dangerous to let more in so this insulin receptor substrate molecule walks up to the insulin receptors that sit on the outside of the cell and they say hey guys i know i have never said this to you before.
[32:58] But can you turn around and look inside the cell right now? Do you see what's happened? They go, oh my gosh, look at the size of that lipid droplet. How did that happen? It's not our fault. We don't communicate with the chylomicrons. And IRS molecule says, I know, but we got to do something. So here's what we're going to do.
[33:16] If insulin, which is the body's most powerful energy transport hormone, if it comes around here wanting to deliver energy, you need to say to that insulin molecule that you are closed for business and to go somewhere else. Do you understand and they say hey listen you know you're the boss if that's what we have to do that's what we'll have to do and so now these insulin receptors have been instructed yeah to reject the action of insulin this cell has now become insulin resistant does that make sense yeah absolutely and so now where do those uh glycogen go so the glycogen gets it gets pushed out because this gets burned up and as this space gets bigger and bigger or the lipid drop gets It's bigger and bigger. There's just less glycogen coming into the cell. So eventually it's a very small granule and a very large droplet. And so now this person is insulin resistant and they bite into their next high carbohydrate meal, whatever it is.
[34:12] Same digestive process occurs. The glucose enters the bloodstream. The beta cells of the pancreas sense the fluctuation. They release insulin like they always have. The insulin hormone grabs a hold of glucose molecules in the blood, starts driving it to cells, walks up to the muscle cell, goes, hey, knock, knock, muscle cell. I've got your glucose here, your most preferred energy. Do you want to take it up? Do you want to use it as energy? And for the first time ever, the muscle cells say to the insulin, sorry close for business go somewhere else yeah now you can't go anywhere else can it it actually can so insulin lives in your blood for about three and a half hours and it's going to try its best to find somewhere to deposit this glucose molecule but the problem is insulin resistance is not a site-specific problem so if you're insulin resistant in your muscle you probably have a degree of insulin resistance in your liver and in your kidneys and in your vasculature, And so after about three and a half hours of trying to deliver this energy, and remember, your muscle cells are the most important tissue for glucose uptake. And so it's trying to find muscle cells to deliver it to. After about three and a half hours of trying, it dies. And the glucose is left in the blood. And after enough time, the glucose rises higher and higher, and this person starts experiencing symptoms. They get drowsy. They're thirsty all the time. They're urinating. They go to their doctor. And they get diagnosed as type 2 diabetic.
[35:35] And they say, what are we going to do? I don't know what to do. How do I solve this problem? And unfortunately, for a lot of people, the doctors are going to do what they're trained to do, which is to prescribe medicine. And I don't think we should be angry at that. I think that we should be happy that there's someone who knows how to diagnose you and can give you something that's a form of harm reduction in the short term. But they're going to start looking for voices of knowledge. They're going to start looking around the world. Who knows how to solve this problem? And they're likely going to get a message that says, I've got the answer here.
[36:07] And I'm going to prove to you that I know exactly what to do. Here's what we're going to do. Put on this glucose monitor and eat this banana right now. And they do. And what happens? Exactly what we talked about in the beginning. The blood glucose goes very high. It stays elevated. They go, there you go. I just showed you that carbohydrates are the worst thing you could possibly do if you're diabetic. Now, eat this piece of steak. right now. They do it and their blood glucose doesn't move. And they'll say, boom, I just showed you exactly how to never have high blood glucose. And how many carbohydrates are in a steak? Zero. Maybe one or two. Yeah, zero. And so they're going to ask this person, they're going to ask him a question, hey, do you want to solve this? It's like, yeah, that's why I came here. Okay. You have to play a very, very specific game. You have to play the carbohydrate avoidance game for the rest of your life. If you do that, your blood glucose will be very low. You can lower your A1C and you will solve the problem. And unfortunately, when people try this at first, it does look like it works. Because when you stop eating carbohydrate, when you stop adding glucose to your bloodstream, all of a sudden, your blood glucose starts to come down.
Debunking Quick Fixes
[37:20] Your weight might even come down, right? Your A1C is going to come down. And you're going to go, I have figured it out. How am I not insulin sensitive right now? This is it. I figured out this is the solution. Well, what's actually happening is that they are manipulating the amount of carbohydrate in response to the singular mechanism of post-meal blood glucose movement. And they're saying, I'm going to watch what happens after I eat when I'm insulin resistant. And based on whatever happens, I'm going to make an assumption as to whether this food is good for me or this food is bad for me. They're avoiding carbohydrates to solve a single problem. They just want lower blood glucose. Remember what we talked about in the beginning? You asked me a question. What's the best diet to increase insulin sensitivity?
[38:04] Increasing insulin sensitivity is not necessarily the same strategy as lowering blood sugar. Because there's lots of things you can do to lower your blood glucose that are not good for your health. Certainly, you wouldn't want to do for the long term. You could ask a person to just eat bacon and their blood glucose might go down. But we wouldn't want them to do that. Right. No, the question I asked you, what's the best way to reverse insulin resistance? Best way to reverse, yeah. Right. Yeah. I guess increase. Insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity. Yeah.
[38:34] So many interesting ways that I can go with this right now. You mentioned, go ahead. Yeah. So what I was going to say is they're going to live believing they solved the problem. And unfortunately, what's going to happen is eventually they're going to end up in some situation where they're at a party or they're out with friends. And there's something rich in carbohydrate and they're going to eat it and their blood glucose is going to go through the roof again. Why? Because if you remove calories coming from carbohydrate energy and you still have to eat a certain amount of calories per day, what are you likely to replace it with? You're likely to replace it with either fat or protein and fat, which means you've actually created a situation where the dietary pattern is actually worse for you in terms of insulin resistance. Maybe that lipid droplet is even larger because Perhaps you've removed almost all of the glycogen from your cells that lipid droplet is extremely saturated and, When you eat carbohydrate energy in this situation your blood glucose skyrockets So now every time you eat carbohydrate you are confirming to yourself see every time every time that's a problem. So if that's true How do we actually solve this problem if that's not insulin sensitivity? What is I?
[39:43] Because people say, I don't get it. Like if my A1C is below 5.7%, if my fasting blood glucose is low, why is that not insulin sensitivity? Why should this matter to me? Well, if you cannot consume a single high carbohydrate meal and your body cannot demonstrate the ability to metabolize that carbohydrate energy effectively, regardless of your A1C, regardless of your fasting blood glucose you are diabetic you are insulin resistant if you cannot pass what's called a glucose tolerance test you are insulin resistant so why does it matter because insulin resistance as we mentioned is more than just your blood glucose it's also certain cancers it's also coronary artery disease it's also atherosclerosis and hypertension it's also fatty liver it's also chronic kidney disease we're just talking about it in the context of diabetes most people only talk about it in the context of diabetes. But that cellular disruption that occurred in the muscle cells, when it occurs in the liver, it becomes fatty liver. When it occurs in the kidney, it becomes chronic kidney disease. When it occurs in the vasculature, it becomes atherosclerosis. So it does matter. So if we're actually going to want to solve the problem, we have to ask the right question. The right question is not how do I lower my blood glucose, it's why can I no longer tolerate carbohydrate energy? What happened?
[41:05] So nobody's asking the right question right now. Nobody's asking the right question. If they were, they would be able to go back in a time machine and go, I can't look at what I just ate now when I'm insulin resistant in order to get the data I need to solve this problem. I need to look at the choices I've been consistently making over the last five months, five years. What have I been doing that led me to becoming insulin resistant? If you do that, the majority of people are going to go, wow i've actually been living in a high fat environment and an environment with too many calories that's why i can't metabolize carbohydrate energy that's why i'm insulin resistant yeah yeah uh you know we've talked about carbohydrates a lot i'd love to hear you tell the PLANTSTRONG audience.
[41:54] There's good carbs and bad carbs. Can we distinguish between the two? Yeah. So when we're talking about carbohydrate energy, obviously in the context of how your body responds to it when you're insulin resistant.
[42:06] Your blood glucose is going to elevate regardless whether it's a healthy carbohydrate or refined carbohydrate because you're insulin resistant. However, it is the healthy carbohydrates that are going to help you reverse your insulin resistance. And that's where they're kind of like, wait, you're telling me the thing that raises my blood glucose is the thing that's going to lower my A1C? That doesn't make sense to me. But when we're talking about carbohydrates, we're talking about carbohydrates in their whole intact state. Foods like beans and greens and grains and legumes and nuts and seeds and fruits. You want to eat foods that are rich in carbohydrate, rich in fiber, rich in water, rich in nutrients, phytochemicals, antioxidants. You want to get your carbohydrates from the most nutrient dense fiber rich sources on the planet. And right now, in this country, 90% of America is eating trashy refined carbs. Right now, the average American has 70% of their calories coming from ultra-processed foods. And then the remainder of it is equally bad. It's like 20% from animal products. And then the remaining 10%, they say, is coming from plants. But half of that's French fries, which is not a whole food, really. I mean, the whole potato is there, but my goodness, have you destroyed it? And so when you look at that, it's like, this doesn't end well. This is exactly what should cause insulin resistance. So the fact that we have half of our population insulin resistant, that's not a problem of any American walking around.
[43:29] That's a problem of Americans living in the American food environment. That's exactly what should be taking place. And so you cannot depend on the world around you to offer you a solution. You have to craft that solution yourself. And so if we're going to talk about a solution, we should talk about what actually works.
[43:48] Yeah. So let's talk about that. Yeah. So if we were to talk about how do we get out of it being insulin resistant, we want to eat a diet that looks as much like your diet as possible. We want to eat a whole food, plant-based, low-fat dietary pattern. And you can kind of break it down to where you want to eat whole foods rich in fiber. You want to focus on simple guidelines, right? You want to keep your total calories from fat less than 20%. less than 15% if you are already type 2 diabetic, right? So less than 20%. You want to eat around 70% of your calories coming from carbohydrates and the rest from protein, depending on your needs, right? Remember, not all fat is created equal.
[44:33] Research consistently demonstrates that saturated fat is uniquely insulting to metabolic health, whereas polyunsaturated fats seem to have a beneficial effect. So if you are going to be adding... Which are rich in... Antioxidants and fiber and... And our whole plant-based foods. Yes. And so instead of going for the coconut oil, right, use, you know, just grab some avocado, right? Instead of cooking with coconut oil, cook with water, cook with balsamic vinegar, cook with some low-fat substance. And instead of adding, you know, the coconut cream or the coconut-based yogurts, you know, just do oatmeal. Do something that's high in fiber, high in carbohydrate, low in saturated fat. Why does this happen? Why does this help? The reason why is because when you start to eat a low-fat plant-based whole food diet, the same thing is happening. All that food enters your digestive system. It comes into your bloodstream.
[45:25] Remember, those cells, when you're insulin resistant, they are shut off. But there's such low-fat present in the diet that those chylomicron particles really don't have anything to start restoring that lipid droplet. And since this cell is shut off to energy, it has to use what's inside of it for energy. It has to. It can't let new energy in. So all of a sudden, this lipid droplet starts to get burned up. It starts to shrink. It starts to shrink pretty quickly over the course of time. And eventually, there's now a problem of maybe not having enough energy inside of the cell. So those IRS molecules, again, instruct the insulin receptors. We're running out of energy. Come back online. If insulin comes around wanting to deliver energy, you take as much as you can get. We need it. Let's go. You've just restored insulin sensitivity to the cells. You have just created an opportunity for those cells to accept the action of insulin, to be sensitive to their demands, and to receive carbohydrate energy. So tell me, in the work that you've done with Mastering Diabetes and just with some of your clients, what...
[46:28] What's like the average time span for this to occur? Or I would imagine it's very individualized. Yeah, so there's two things that we would want to look at, right? How quickly do you start seeing the effects? And then how quickly do you experience reversal of insulin resistance? Like how quickly do you notice it working? You can notice it working within a matter of days. Now, of course, this is going to matter based on how insulin resistant you are, whether you're pre-diabetic type 2, whether you're highly type 2, or kind of closer to the pre-diabetic range, but you're going to start noticing the effects of this pretty quickly, within a matter of days. You can see the full reversal of your insulin resistance in a matter of months.
[47:08] I've worked with thousands of people, and the interesting thing that I want to point out is whether it took someone three months or one year to reverse their insulin resistance, when they did it, none of them said, I wish this happened faster. Every single one of them was so proud of themselves for figuring this thing out and for giving themselves permission to take kind of a leap of faith to go against what they've been told by almost everybody that I shouldn't be eating carbohydrate, that this may not be good for me. But the science does seem to suggest that perhaps carbohydrate energy is the best thing for my insulin sensitivity, that really it's the excess calories and the excess saturated fat that's the problem. And that's a brave thing to do, especially in today's world where everyone has been convinced that carbs are evil. And I think it's important, you know, you look at your average piece of red meat and it's 40% saturated fat. Chicken's like 30. Fish is like 20%. So you just can't get away from it when you're doing, you know, a lot of animal products and dairy. And the funny thing is that you'll hear this ridiculous marketing from the groups that want you to eat and believe in meat, right? They'll go, well, you know, the food out there today that's grown, it's nothing natural. They've hybridized it. It's nothing like it used to be. He's like, I'm sorry, none of the meat you're eating existed a thousand years ago.
[48:23] That meat has been crossbred with other breeds of animals in order to create a fatter animal. They're fed food. Even if it's regenerative agriculture, it is not the same cow that was around 1,000 years ago. So by your own argument, you shouldn't even be eating the meat that you're eating. So you've got to stop listening to those nonsense buzzwords where they're trying to convince you that produce is unhealthy. Like it's all the studies on insulin sensitivity all the studies on the impact of plant-based diets have been done on conventional modern produce all right i just saw a i think i was scrolling through instagram yesterday and i saw chuck norris holding up a banana saying and it said you know click on this link to see the three most dangerous foods that americans eat yeah Yeah, yeah.
[49:14] It's so funny you say that because, you know, I give a talk at the PLANTSTRONG Retreat on how to know what sensation, what is education, how do you know who to trust? And one of the things I always talk about is, you know, you got to listen for people and they say, here are the three things that they told you were good that are actually hurting you. It's like, yeah, that's when you hear that, just go and walk away. Right. You know, run. Yeah, run. Exactly. And so, if we want to boil it down, insulin sensitivity cannot be measured simply by how low a person can get their fasting blood glucose and their A1C. It is the ability to maintain consistent healthy fasting blood glucose and consistent healthy A1C numbers while consuming a carbohydrate-rich dietary pattern. That is your body demonstrating that when carbohydrate comes in, I got this. I can metabolize this immediately. This is the most insulin-sensitive we have ever been. Way to go.
[50:06] So I think the latest data from the CDC shows that close to, what is it, 75% of Americans are now considered overweight or obese. Yeah. I would imagine, based upon the conversation we've had and you saying that, you know, so much of diabetes is because of excessive energy and we're obese
The Importance of Movement
[50:31] because we're consuming excessive energy. How often do you see people that are at a okay weight and they are now, you know, insulin resistant? So that's actually a really great, great question. And there's an amazing researcher on social media. His name is Gary McGowan. McGowan is a doctor.
[50:50] And he talked about this very specific thing that, yes, excess body mass, independent of diet. Right. So whether you're on a healthy diet and you're 350 pounds or whether, you know, you're on a carnivore diet and you're 350 pounds, that excess mass creates insulin resistance, period, end of story. But it's interesting that you could see someone at 220 pounds and be insulin resistant. So why is that? And the reason for that is because there is something called genetic bioindividuality. Right. And so some people have a lower personal fat threshold than other people, meaning that some people there's a mechanism called cellular dysplasia where the fat cells actually separate. They create more of them. And while and this is actually a good thing because they actually this actually down regulates the risk of them actually damaging themselves and creating inflammatory cytokine storms and all that. So if you have a lower fat threshold right and you actually store larger fat cells You're going to become insulin resistant faster than the person who has a higher fat threshold where they actually have that cellular dysplasia occur But at the end of the day, it's still the same process It's just you know, hey look you got the signal earlier than the person next to you You've got less of a journey to make back from 220 to whatever your healthy body weight is in that person So actually be really excited that you got that signal. That's your body communicating to you That is your body saying we're going in the wrong direction And I want to solve this now.
[52:19] Okay. So I feel like we've done a good job talking about the ideal diet to help get reverse insulin resistance, become insulin sensitive. Yeah. What about exercise? Yeah. What role does exercise play in all this?
[52:37] Movement matters, period, end of story. And the reason for this is that you actually have several reasons why movement is so good for you when you're insulin sensitive and when you're insulin resistant. So one of the best things that you can do if you're insulin resistant, you're trying to take control of your blood glucose.
[52:55] After you finish a meal, go for a 15 minute brisk walk. And what I mean by brisk is when you're walking, you want it to be somewhat difficult to have a conversation. Not like you can't talk, but you'd be like, hey, Rip, how's your day going? I kind of have that Mark Wahlberg talk like, hey, guys. Yeah, how's it going? Okay. And so what happens is as your heart rate elevates, there's a mechanism called a GLUT4 transporter. And this GLUT4 transporter allows you to metabolize carbohydrate energy independent of insulin. And the reason for this is that an elevated heart rate is a signal to your body that there's some demand for energy. And now typically that means you're either fighting something or trying to accomplish something important to your survival. So it can't wait for the hopes that enough insulin will be produced, it's going to try to get energy into those muscle cells and give it as much as it can immediately. So having an elevated heart rate will allow you to metabolize carbohydrate energy that you've just consumed and help you probably not get your blood glucose to be above 200, which is where it can become symptomatic. So if you're trying to have meals that are higher carbohydrate energy, but you are insulin resistant and you're worried about experiencing symptoms like brain fog or being tired, this is one of the best things you can do. So that's a great reason, great way to apply movement in your strategy for insulin sensitivity. The other thing is the effect of muscle.
[54:16] So muscle is like a vacuum for glucose. And it turns out that muscle really does matter in regards to insulin sensitivity. So if you were to take a person who's untrained, they're overweight, they're type 2 diabetic, and you put them on a high-carbohydrate, healthy plant-based diet and train them, there's two things that are going to be happening. That diet is going to help them start to shrink that lipid droplet. It's going to start to allow those insulin receptors to come back online, and they can start to metabolize carbohydrate energy again. But if you add resistance training, what happens is as they start to build lean muscle, new lean muscle, there's now more mass to those muscles that was there before. And in order to sustain this mass, that tissue has to consume more energy per second than it did before. And so there's this interesting biological effect that takes place. The cells of the muscle itself start to build additional insulin receptors so that they can receive more energy and communicate with more insulin hormones than before. And inside of the cell there's a process called mitochondrial biogenesis this is actually the creation of additional mitochondria and the mitochondria are the energy burning factories of your cell and they do this because now they can not only bring in more energy per second they can burn more energy per second constantly meaning that the more lean muscle you have and you don't have to be like a bodybuilder but the more lean muscle you can add to your frame the more insulin sensitive you are 24 hours a day permanently.
[55:44] So muscle absolutely matters in the strategy for insulin sensitivity. Okay. So you talked about two things. You said that movement matters and muscle matters. Yeah.
[55:56] Let's say I've been a couch potato for the last five years. Yeah. I've ballooned up 280 pounds. I'm insulin resistant. I'm a mess. I start eating this way because I need to make some radical changes or some practical changes. Yeah. I, again, I can't stand exercise. I have an adversity to it. What would you say is the most important movement that I should make if I have to just like, focus it down to one or two things, So let's describe this person. So you described them as a nearly 300-pound couch potato. So they haven't been moving at all a lot. And they've gotten in this situation because of that. They've been eating too many calories. It sounds like how you were. Exactly. The great thing about being in that situation is that just by the nature of having that excess mass, walking is resistance training.
[56:55] So remember, if you were to take me right now and add on all the weight that I lost, which would be a 175-pound weight vest, The amount of energy that my body needs to use in order to move that mass is the same as it was when I was 350 pounds Yes, the weight is dispersed in a much more comfortable manner, but it's still the same energy output So if you're that person the best thing you can do is go to a gym Where you can be safe Get on a treadmill where you can be safe with handles And just ramp that incline up a little bit and walk slowly for long periods of time 35 minutes So your heart rate gets up you're having to move that excess mass In a somewhat resistant manner that's safe and controlled in an environment that's safe and controlled Just by being having that additional body mass Movement is now resistance training. So that that solves the problem right there Another thing you can do is just put on a little weight vest like a 15 pound weight vest and just wear it around in life Now you've applied a resistance challenge to your body, just by doing the things that you normally do. Try to just be in movement more. It can be as simple as that.
Practical Changes for Beginners
[58:03] It doesn't have to be squats with a bar over your shoulders. So just start with walking. Start with walking. I would say start with walking that can be somewhat challenging, right? You want it to be a little bit of a challenge. So if you can get to a gym and do a little bit of an incline, or if you're in a flat area and you can put on a lightweight vest so that it's slightly more challenging than it is for you normally so that you actually get that blood pumping. That's a great thing to do. But nothing, there is no amount of movement that is the wrong kind of movement, right? Whatever you can do is great. I love all that.
[58:41] Maybe we've talked about this, but I just want to revisit it in case you have anything tip of tongue. So, you know, there's a lot of information that's floating around out there on Instagram and social media about, you know, quick fixes. Yeah.
[58:59] And there's a lot of myths surrounding those. Do you have any that you can think of that you'd like to debunk or do you feel like we've kind of addressed that? Well, I mean, I think it's important to really put into context what a quick fix is, right? So I would say that being able to reverse insulin resistance in six months is pretty darn quick, given that it took you probably 15 years to develop the state of insulin resistance that you're in right now. So six months comparative to 15 years, that's a blink of time, right? The other thing that I'm – the reason why I'm not a big fan of quick fixes, even the idea of them, is they're cheap. They don't mean anything to you. If you spend six months figuring this thing out and putting in the effort to design a life that feels safe to you and that gives you the health you want, now it's valuable to you. Now, when threatened, you'll fight for it because I care about this thing that I've done. So whether that's GLP-1s or whatever, I'm not anti-GLP-1s. There's certainly a place for them. They can be life-saving for certain individuals who are in a serious situation. But for the average person who has 50 pounds to lose, is diabetic, and wants to give this thing a shot, it's worth it.
[1:00:19] This strategy does work. The research demonstrates that it does. It demonstrates it consistently that it does. And if you were to do it, if you were to really do this thing well, in six months, it becomes what and who you are.
[1:00:34] And people can't, it's much harder to bargain that away from you. You know? I love that. Yeah. Right. No such thing as a quick fix. No. And now you've earned, you've earned your health back. I mean, if you were to bring the best salesman in the world pitching a paleo diet or a carnivore diet to me right now, good luck. Good luck. Do you know how much this lifestyle means to me? Do you know how much time and attention and curiosity and excitement and struggle and victory and defeat I've put into building how I live my life today? You couldn't bargain this away from me if your life depended on it. Like, sorry. And I think...
[1:01:20] Yeah. Nobody is going to pry that sweet potato out of your hands. Not a chance. So what's so interesting to me is that there is so much noise and confusion swirling around right now about weight loss, diabetes, the best way to reverse heart disease, all these things. And people don't have nearly the same conviction that you have. Right. Right? Yeah. And it's like, is it because people are looking for the quick fix and they're not willing to dig in and do the work that's necessary? I don't think that's true. I think that what we're witnessing when you see people gravitate to something like a carnivore diet, that objectively when you look at it, you're like, my goodness, how could you ever consider that? That is such a statement of how sick and lost people feel. That perhaps they have been sold several strategies before that were that they were told we're going to be the thing and it didn't work for them because of whatever it was and they are so desperate to feel well that they would they would hop on the carnivore you know train because i just don't want to feel sick anymore and so i think if anything it's a statement about the state of of desperation that our country is in our societies in regards to not only being unwell but how much we want to be well, that we would jump on that train when the chips are down, you know?
[1:02:48] That is so well said. Thank you. So well said. I feel like we've done a really nice job. Yeah. You've done a really nice job explaining insulin resistance versus insulin sensitivity.
[1:03:01] And the best ways that people can kind of conquer that. Yeah. You know, let's kind of wrap it up. I want people to remember that at its core, insulin resistance is an excess energy problem, right? And then this problem results in the dysfunction of your muscle and liver cells, that that That is the appropriate chain of action that's supposed to take place.
Key Takeaways for Insulin Sensitivity
[1:03:19] And this chain of action within the cells disrupts proper glucose metabolism. That's what it is. And so if you're that person and you're experiencing that, what are the three things that you could do right now that are likely to be valuable for your insulin sensitivity? What would they be? Number one, they would be making sure that you are organizing your diet around fiber-rich whole plant foods. because the majority of fiber-rich whole plant foods happen to also be low in fat, right? The beans, the greens, the grains, the fruits, right? The second thing that you can do is to be in movement more, right? Start drinking water, being hydrated, being in movement more. And the third thing that you can do is to properly assess your insulin sensitivity as it increases. So there's a few things that you can do to make sure that you're getting a sense of, are you moving in the right direction? The first thing that you can do is get something called a C-peptide test. This is an important test for anyone who is experiencing blood glucose variability issues.
[1:04:25] C-peptide tests actually test for the amount of C-peptide in your body. It's a protein that's attached to the insulin hormone when it's released from the beta cells. Why is this important? Well, unfortunately, since insulin only lives for about three and a half hours, we can't do a test to find out how much insulin your body produced in 24 hours. But C-peptide proteins live for about 24 hours, and they're produced at a one-to-one ratio. So if we get a test and we get your levels of C-peptide, we know whether your beta cells are producing an appropriate amount of insulin, whether it's slightly elevated, or whether it's slightly low. And that is so important.
[1:05:01] If you've been insulin-resistant for a long period of time, you can lose a little bit of your beta cell function. And it's important to know, are you competing against low beta cell production? And insulin resistance or just insulin resistance if you're living with type 2 diabetes and you get this test and it comes back high what you're witnessing is your beta cells trying to out compete your insulin resistance this is a clear signal to get to work because those beta cells can only hyper secrete insulin for a short period of time maybe a couple years at most before they start to lose their function and once you lose it you don't get it back and the other reason is have you been misdiagnosed uh with your pre-diabetes type 2 diabetes we have something else going on. So get that test done. And then you will consistently follow these things. The best way to measure your insulin sensitivity over the course of time is to remember the acronym PILAF, like rice, right? P-I-L-A-F. Exactly right. P-I-L-A-F. P stands for pressure.
[1:05:57] Is your blood pressure within the healthy range consistently? I is for ideal body weight. Have you achieved an ideal body weight range for your preferred lifestyle. L is your lipid profile. Is your lipid profile within the healthy range consistently? A is your A1C. Is it consistently within the healthy range? And F is fasting blood glucose. Is it consistently within the healthy range? Once you get all of those letters into the healthy range, you are insulin sensitive. You are optimally insulin sensitive. As you start to see different letters go out of the healthy range, you're noticing that something's going on, start looking to your diet. Maybe some things will crept back in. Maybe there's ways you can optimize. Maybe there's potentially other things going on. But that is the best method for you to measure your progress over the course of time. Beautiful. Yeah. Pilaf. Pilaf. Let's all rock our pilafs. Let's do it.
[1:06:52] So you are going to be joining us for our 14th annual Plant-Stock celebration. That will be the weekend of September 6th. And just FYI, everybody, that is going to be virtual this year. Next year, our 15th annual one, we are planning on doing that in person. In conjunction with Forks Over Knives. Amazing. So that's what we're dreaming up right now. Yeah, 15 years of doing Plant-Stock and 15 years of the Forks Over Knives. And didn't y'all used to do a Forks Over Knives engine two deal in the beginning? We did. Yeah, that's kind of a cool deal. Yeah, it was farms to forks. Yeah. Exactly. And then November, you're going to be joining us again. Black Mountain. The mountain is fixed up. It's good to go. And so we're going to be throwing our six-day retreat there. I highly recommend anyone who hasn't been to come.
[1:07:51] I give three talks. And this one, this insulin resistance talk that I give in person is interactive. It's role-played.
Closing Thoughts and Community Events
[1:07:58] It's so much fun. Plus, you're my personal story. And then the talk on sensation versus education, which is really great. Yeah. And you do a great job. As you said, it's interactive. And you bring people up on stage so you can see exactly what's going on at the cellular level. Yeah. And that visualization to me is so critical for understanding it. And I think you've done such a great job today explaining insulin resistance, clearing up the massive confusion that's floating around out there, and providing all kinds of great manageable advice for prevention and for management. So thank you so much, Adam. Yeah. And if you're out there and you're struggling with this and you felt like you're dealing with this because there's something gone wrong in you, very likely it's the opposite. I want people to think of this as your biology doing exactly what it's supposed to do in an environment gone wrong. The caloric environment does not meet your metabolic needs. So you have nothing to worry about in terms of yourself. Just start reorganizing that environment to look like the one we described today, that low-fat, plant-based, whole food environment, and then live there.
[1:09:09] Guard it with your life and watch what your body does because it will move towards insulin sensitivity this is a biological fact that that's the direction it goes yeah can I get a in person PLANTSTRONG fist bump on the way out hey Adam PLANTSTRONG my brother let's go.
[1:09:32] I think it's time that we stop blaming carbs for all of our health woes. I want to thank Adam for his clear, concise, and truly empowering explanation of what insulin resistance is. If this episode has opened your eyes and helped clear up some confusion, please do me a favor and share this with someone who needs that spark of hope. And if you're fired up to learn even more, join us for our 14th PlantStock event. It's virtual. It is Saturday, September 6th. And you'll hear Adam along with your favorite plant-based docs celebrating science in motion. For more information, you can go to liveplantstrong.com and then click on events. Now until next time, I would encourage you, let's eat more whole plants. Let's move that body, especially after meals, and always, always keep it PLANTSTRONG.
[1:10:36] The PLANTSTRONG podcast team includes Carrie Barrett, Laurie Kortowich, and Ami Mackey. If you like what you hear, do us a favor and share the show with your friends and loved ones. You can always leave a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify. And while you're there, make sure to hit that follow button so that you never miss an episode. As always, this and every episode is dedicated to my parents, Dr. Caldwell B. Esselstyn Jr. And Ann Crile Esselstyn. Thanks so much for listening.
