▷ Insulin resistance What is it? How do I know if I have it?

Today there are increasingly chronic diseases such as hyperinsulinemia or insulin resistance. It has a lot to do with our lifestyle and our food.

It is important to know if we present any of the symptoms that relate to insulin resistance to tackle this problem and that does not result in more recorded diseases such as type 2 diabetes in which our pancreas can be damaged and stop working.

What is insulin resistance?

At present we eat a lot of foods that in our body are converted into glucose. Glucose gives energy to our body, however an excess is harmful and therefore our pancreas generates a hormone, insulin, responsible for protecting us from this excess sugar.

The problem comes when this excess glucose is increasing and our body has to create more and more insulin. There comes a time that our body is not able to respond to this large amount of insulin produced and the symptoms begin which we will talk about later.

We can start talking about prediabetes here, which means that our blood glucose levels are higher than normal by not assimilating well all the amount of insulin generated by our body.

Unable to assimilate enough insulin, glucose remains in the bloodstream instead of entering the cells to convert into energy. This means that over time the person who has this symptomatology may develop a type 2 diabetes. At this point and if the pancreas is affected and stops generating insulin, we must inject it to maintain the correct functioning of our body.

How do I know if I have insulin resistance?

The first thing is to be clear that we don’t have to have all the symptoms to have insulin resistance. Insulin resistance and its symptomatology is something that occurs in the long term and therefore it is important to tackle the problem as soon as we see it begins to develop and thus not get to suffer a disease.

To give us an idea, since we started to have insulin resistance until we can develop diabetes, it can be more than 10 years.

There are two main symptoms that occur on the skin that indicate that we have a very high probability of being suffering insulin resistance.

The first of these symptoms are warts on the skin. We are talking about a very particular type of warts that appear in the neck and/or back area, this type of warts is called “skin tags” and they are like sachitos. They are produced by an uncontrolled growth of cells in that particular area of the body and is caused by hyperinsulinemia.

The second symptom is called “acanthosis nigricans”. This is a skin condition that causes darkening in certain areas of the body such as the neck, armpits, inside the elbows, behind the knees or torso. The appearance of acanthosis nigricans is as if the skin is stained, even the blackening in the areas of folds is cracked. It is common for women who have polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS. PCOS is also related to insulin resistance, and therefore we recommend you read our article on Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

One symptom that usually appears between 5 and 10 years before diabetes occurs is polyneuropathy, that is, tingling, numbness, or burning in the feet. This feeling is aggravating and rising up the legs becoming really uncomfortable for those who suffer it.

Another way to know if we have insulin resistance is to analyze our blood and look at the data that appears in this analysis:

Triglycerides higher than 150
If the ratio between triglycerides and HDL cholesterol is greater than 3 there is insulin resistance
When our fasting glucose is higher than 100 mg per deciliter
If blood glucose after two hours after eating is greater than 140 mg per deciliter

LDL cholesterol is particular, if it is greater than 500 may also be a symptom of insulin resistance, if it is the only symptom we find then it is not an indicator of this problem.

We may also have an insulin test to ensure whether or not we have insulin resistance.

As we have mentioned before, all those women suffering from polycystic ovary syndrome have insulin resistance.

What to do if we have symptoms of insulin resistance?

The first thing is not to be frightened as it is a disease that can be reversed as long as the pancreas has not been damaged and the person needs to inject insulin. In this case it would already be an irreversible disease and therefore we must avoid reaching that extreme.

If we begin to notice the prescribed symptoms, the first thing we need to do is change our state of life and low-carbohydrate feeding, we can also help from intermittent fasting always under supervision.

If we make the change in the diet insulin resistance can be solved in a matter of months. Once this time has passed, we must continue to maintain a healthy diet, avoiding bad carbohydrates because we will generate insulin resistance again.