Metabolic Medicine - Guest Essay by Terri Lutes, ND

Metabolic Medicine

Congratulations to all of you who have taken on the January No Grains challenge. I would imagine by now, almost at the half-way point, that a lot of you are already noticing improvements in your overall heath. Some of you may notice an improvement in your digestion, less headaches, decreased joint pain, or increased energy. However, other changes are occurring inside your body that you might not realize are happening. Some of this is due to removing gluten from your diet. Many people are gluten intolerant and don’t even know it. Other changes are happening because you are better controlling your insulin levels.   Insulin resistance is the basis of many chronic diseases and of aging. What is the purpose of insulin? Most would answer that it is to lower blood sugar (glucose) by facilitating the transport of glucose from the bloodstream into the cell. They would be right, but insulin has other actions in the body.   Insulin stores excess glucose as fat. The body has a limited capacity to store glucose as glycogen in the liver and muscles. Once that capacity had been surpassed, the body converts the rest of it to fat.  There is more bad news about insulin. Not only does it store excess glucose as fat, but it prevents the use of stored fat as an energy source. Since fat can’t be burned, the body burns glucose from muscles instead. So with high insulin, any time a person ingests extra sugar it gets stored as fat, and any time there is a deficit of sugar the body burns up glucose from muscle instead of fat. Not good.  
That’s bad enough, but insulin will also make you eat too much. Insulin stimulates appetite by affecting the brain in two ways. First, it interferes with the appetite-suppressing hormone leptin. Second, insulin causes a spike in dopamine, signaling our brain to seek rewards. This can turn us into cookie monsters, since these rewards often come in the form of a brownie or a bowl of ice cream.     This is why eliminating or limiting sugar and high carbohydrate foods like grains (which will be digested into glucose) is beneficial for managing body composition. Limiting the amount of sugar ingested limits the release of insulin, and therefore the amount sugar that gets stored on the body as fat. Keeping insulin levels under control also allows the body to burn fat instead of valuable muscle. It also helps to keep us from being ravenous all the time, and having constant sugar cravings.   What else does high insulin do?   It increases blood clotting and atherosclerosis.   It increases cancer risk by increasing IGF-1 (insulin-like growth factor-1) signaling, which stimulates cell proliferation and inhibits apoptosis (programmed cell death).   It decreases intracellular Vitamin C. Vitamin C and glucose are very similar in structure. Since the absorption mechanism for vitamin C and glucose are identical, when glucose levels rise less vitamin C is absorbed by the cells. This results in a weakening of the immune system.   It decreases intracellular magnesium. Magnesium relaxes muscles, so with decreased magnesium the muscles around blood vessels constrict, increasing blood pressure. Magnesium is also important for the action and manufacturing of insulin.    It increases sodium retention, contributing to fluid retention and high blood pressure.   It is linked with an increased serum TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone), which indicates poor thyroid function. It also decreases the conversion of the thyroid hormone T4 to the more active T3 in the liver.   The nutrition plan you have been following for the past 2 weeks is metabolic medicine. It is helping to prevent heart disease, high blood pressure, poor thyroid function, and depressed immune function. All that plus improving body composition. While it may not always be easy to follow a grain-free diet, your efforts will reward you with better health and vitality.
  Terri Lutes, ND Synergy Naturopathic Clinic 705.949.2300