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Have you ever wondered why you get hangry? Do you go from normal to immediately irritable if you aren't fed in the next 5 minutes? Have you tried a million diets and still feel stuck? You may have insulin resistance.
Millions of Americans have insulin resistance whether or not their HbA1c blood labwork flags them as "pre-diabetic" or not. Many of us suffer the negative effects of blood sugar dysregulation, just not enough to need medication for it; a matter of more severe (type 2 diabetes) versus less severe (borderline or pre-diabetic). Oddly, even if you are already pre-diabetic, there's a chance your doctor never mentioned it to you. You're currently doing better than the rest of the population and there is no medication for pre-diabetes, but without changes to your nutrition and lifestyle, you can be headed towards diabetes. Changes can reverse the direction of this.
Common symptoms of blood sugar dysregulation & insulin resistance:
• frequently "hangry" or low hunger then ravenously hungry.
• craving carbohydrates, sweets, snacks, or caffeine.
• "tired and wired" feeling
• energy crashes in the afternoon
• weight gain
• bloating
• frequent urination
• "heaviness" sensation
• slow metabolism
Why is it a problem?
One reason high sugar in the blood stream is problematic can be imagined as sweet sticky sugar droplets flowing with your blood cells. Because they are sticky, they attach to various parts as they flow through; your muscles, your lungs, your stomach, your heart, etc. Some of these areas use the sugar droplets, but because there is so much, droplets also stick to areas that need red blood cells or other vitamins and minerals. Instead, they're being clogged up by sugar rather than receiving nutrients. Your body tries to fight the problem, causing inflammation in all areas that are clogged. Because blood flows everywhere, this inflammation happens in many places. Problems start to arise when blood sugar is high so frequently that inflammation never gets the chance to go down.
What can I do about it?
You can work on your body's blood sugar regulation. You want to minimize blood sugar spikes, which are when the amount of sugar in you blood increases highly then drops. The ideal is to increase times where your blood sugar is in an optimal range and decrease the time when your body needs to use insulin to try to bring the amount of sugar in your blood down to a healthy level.
Sugar is very addictive. The journey to changing your diet and nutrition can be a hard one, because we are bombarded socially by sweet or carbohydrate heavy foods as well as deliciously unhealthy drinks. Give yourself patience as you navigate how to make changes amongst any social events that come up. It is pivotal to make the changes for your overall long term health, and takes strength to find new ways to cope with stress or to celebrate that don't include unhealthy foods. Acupuncture can help curb the cravings, strengthen digestion, increase metabolism, and reset the brain from addiction, but it takes time and work.
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