by Dr. Mark Smith

Created on: December 10, 2010

It is important for anyone who is suffering from a chronic ailment like diabetes, heart disease, osteoporosis, thyroid trouble, repeating colds and flu, high blood pressure, etc., to understand the role of insulin in the body. Insulin has a complex purpose because it either controls or affects (in some way) every hormone in the body.

Insulin resistance is now considered a major factor in just about every chronic illness that is a leading cause of death in the West. Insulin levels are affected greatly by our food choices, so understanding how different foods affect blood sugar is imperative if we want to be healthy and vital.  

One thing that should be made clear is that if you are tormented by any of the above conditions, you can improve your health and even make yourself well again. You are not doomed to suffer from these ailments for life if you are willing to make some changes and make your health a priority.

When you eat, your body will identify some of the food as containing nutrients (carbohydrates/sugar) that it can use to make energy. If there are more energy producing substrates available than the body needs at that time, blood sugar will rise. Insulin will then be released to store those excess nutrients for future use.

This was very important to our ancestors who had to hunt for food because their ability to find something to eat wasn’t always consistent. Their bodies would then be able to use the stored nutrients during times of famine and scarcity.

Humans today, however, often eat an excess amount of calories and have very little exercise to burn them off. A small amount of the excess is stored in the liver and muscles as glycogen, but even combined it is less than what your body would need for one day of activity.

The rest is stored as fat, but not just any fat. It’s stored as saturated fat, 98% of which is palmitic acid – a fatty acid that has been shown to be one of the major culprits in heart disease.

This is why high processed carbohydrate diets are deadly. It’s nothing but a high sugar diet, most of which is going to be stockpiled as harmful fat.

There is a reason for our ailments. They do not occur by chance. Our dietary habits are a major cause of the healthcare crisis in our families because of how the food we eat affects insulin levels and blood sugar. It is imperative that we get back to the basics and start eating according to our genetic necessity. A diet rich in natural foods, such as raw fruits and vegetables, will go a long way in keeping our bodies working optimally and decrease our chances of developing disease.

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