Wellness Wednesday: Don’t Believe the Hype!

You’ve heard Dr. Cori talk about this before, but where you get your information is extremely important. Be aware of how people share information with you and if you feel that something you hear or see or read applies to you, consult your health care provider. Information shared online is meant to create awareness and encourage you to take charge of your own health with the support of a health care team when appropriate. Be wary of general statements that make claims without supportive follow-up.

So I happen to see a post on Instagram yesterday from a health coach commenting that one of the biggest indicators of insulin resistance is not being full after a meal and subsequently craving something sweet. Personally, I think this post is an overgeneralization of insulin resistance.

So let’s start at the beginning. Insulin, a fat-storage hormone we have discussed many times before, behaves like a key unlocking your cells to allow glucose or blood sugar into the cell. Once that happens, your cells have the ability to use that blood sugar or glucose for energy. In insulin resistance, the insulin “the key” is no longer able to fit into the insulin receptor, “the lock”, or the receptor or lock is no longer able to recognize the insulin. Here’s the thing though….

Most people likely have some degree of insulin resistance, particularly women. And the presence of insulin resistance does not necessarily mean you will experience a pathology like type 2 diabetes nor does it mean you will experience symptoms associated with pathology or pathophysiology.

For example, I have PCOS, polycystic ovarian syndrome. I have never had abnormal blood sugar. My PCOS was only discovered after I miscarried a couple of times during my pregnancies. I had no difficulty getting pregnant, so that was not an indicator either that I had PCOS, which is a form of insulin resistance. So my insulin resistance didn’t manifest in my relationship with food, but showed up in my pregnancy.

Now let’s move onto the part about “not being full after a meal and subsequently craving something sweet”. Insulin resistance is usually a precursor to type 2 diabetes. And one of the signs of type 2 diabetes is polyphagia or overeating or feeling hungry all the time. You overeat because your cells don’t get the fuel they need due to that lock and key explanation I provided at the beginning of this talk, the insulin is not able to get the blood sugar into the cells. Because of the lack of glucose we tend to crave more sugary foods hence the eat something sweet. But again here’s the deal, insulin resistance is not the sole indicator of that nor does that experience mean you in fact have insulin resistance.

As we have talked about in previous Wellness Wednesdays, the type of food you eat, your lifestyle, emotions you experience, how you metabolize can also contribute to why we may not feel full and crave sweet foods.

So I have shared this on my blog before. We have to be careful about where we get our information and then how we share that information more broadly. Health care providers like your nurses, pharmacists or physicians go to school for many years, actually treat patients with conditions like type 2 diabetes and in my case also get the additional training in holistic, integrative nutrition for those same conditions (i.e.) diabetes and many others like PCOS. Now I personally know many nutrition professionals that have extensively studied a variety of health conditions and have their own personal stories and have helped many people change their lifestyle for the better. But our personal experience and ability to create a success story does not alleviate the responsibility to be careful in our communication with the information we share.

We all experience health differently. There is no one way that works for everyone except maybe low-glycemic eating which is the foundation of the many programs you see across your social media feed. I wrote a blog about low-glycemic eating. I’ll share that again so you have it as a resource. And of course there are many other resources over at CoriCooper.com.

So if you like this content and find it helpful, please share because it’s not enough to just focus on our own health, we have to help the people we love and create a lasting health legacy for our families and our communities.

And if there is a topic you want to hear on Wellness Wednesday, let me know and if I can help, I will discuss live on my Facebook page or catch the replay on IGTV, Vimeo, or on my blog with the notes at CoriCooper.com.

Chat soon,