Before we get too far into this post, I need you to click and read this article.
Obesity-Linked Diabetes in Children Resists Treatment
Many posts and books have discussed the link between today’s American carb-based diet and the rise in Type 2, or Insulin Resistant Diabetes. But, for completion, I’ll quickly give you my simplest explanation of the cause. When your diet consists of mainly carbohydrates, you live in a state of insulin over activity. When you take in carbs your body digests them as simple sugars and your blood sugar quickly rises. In response to this your pancreas secretes insulin whose job it is to shift glucose into your cells and out of the blood stream. This increase in insulin also does two important things: it makes you hungry, and causes storage of excess glucose in the fat cells as fat.
Over time your body kind of stops paying attention to it’s own insulin, and thus you require more and more insulin to keep your blood sugars under control. This is what we call developing a resistance to insulin. If this resistance becomes severe enough, you develop frank insulin resistant diabetes. Now keep in mind, as your resistance builds, your insulin levels also continue to rise. So, according to above this will cause you to become hungrier and fatter. Nice little hormone insulin isn’t it?
We live in a world of simple, cheap carbohydrates being the main staples in the diets of our youth. More meals come through the car window than from mom’s kitchen. As a consequence the youth ofAmericaare exposed to highly refined carbs from a very early age that causes them to live a life of insulin over activity. What used to be a disease of 40 and 50 year olds is becoming a teenage disease.
Diabetes is what we call a coronary artery disease “equivalent.” That means that when we treat a diabetic patient we ASSUME they have heart disease. If we look for it, it will be there. That is why diabetics traditionally have very high rates of heart attacks and strokes. At it’s core, diabetes kills people by it’s affect on our vascular systems. Once diabetes ruins our arteries it slowly kills our eyes (blindness), heart (heart attacks), brains (strokes), kidneys (kidney failure), circulation (amputations)…etc. Trust me, you do NOT want diabetes; and if you have it, you want to control it.
So enough boring stuff, what about this article? Just listen to what it says!!! Kids are getting diabetes more, and our treatment doesn’t work well in them. How scary is that?
There is a clear pathway that leads to insulin resistance, carbs, so there is no way to explain the dramatic rise in childhood obesity other than what we are feeding our children. If we do not stop and address our diets fast; kids will get fatter younger. This will lead to diabetes earlier in life, heart attacks and strokes earlier in life, disability earlier in life, and death earlier in life. This is not rocket science people! And let’s not even think about cost. We can’t afford to care for everyone now…try adding thousands of people to the hemodialysis rolls soon. America HAS NO FUTURE if this does not stop!
So, how does Paleo help? When you eat a Paleo diet you are eliminating all food items that can either increase systemic inflammation (topic for another post) or cause a rapid increase in insulin secretion. Essentially you cut off the fuel supply to the fire, and stop everything downstream from happening. Seems so simple doesn’t it?
It IS simple, so when will we all figure it out?
-E
PaleoHikerMD 