DOCTOR’S NOTE: THE LONG ROAD TO DIABETES
To provide a sense of baseline: the average healthy adult
pumps out about 25 units of insulin per day to control blood
sugar. Now contrast that to some of my diabetic patients,
who are injecting upward of 100 to 150 units of insulin per
day, more than five times the physiological norm. This
means that before their diagnoses, their pancreases were
working double- and triple-overtime for many years before
their blood sugar started to creep up.
Priorities for a Different Time
Insulin is the body’s chief anabolic hormone, which means
that it creates an environment in your body favorable to
growth and storage. This can be useful in shuttling energy
(in the form of sugar) and amino acids into muscle tissue
after a twelve-hour day of pulling weeds from a field or
carrying water from a distant well—but more often than not,
these resources end up on our hips and waistlines.
To your fat cells, elevated insulin often means one thing:
“party time!” This was helpful—lifesaving, even—during
more austere times. Today, it’s causing our bodies to
stockpile fat in preparation for a famine that never seems to
come. But while being overweight makes it more likely than
not that insulin resistance lurks below the surface,