What We Treat

Insulin Resistance

Diabetes, pre-diabetes, polycystic ovarian syndrome, obesity, metabolic syndrome, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, and cardiovascular disease are all characterized by insulin resistance. Even if you’ve never been diagnosed with any of these, they may be lurking beneath the surface. The best time to treat them is early, before they’ve caused irreversible damage.

Before your blood sugar goes up, your insulin level goes up. However, this is rarely checked in conventional labs. The more elevated the insulin level, the more resistant the body becomes to it, causing it to go higher and higher trying to get a response from the body. It’s kind of like a toddler trying to get your attention at nap time. Their cries may become louder and louder and louder until they elicit a response from you.

The problem is, when insulin is high, the body stores fat. It is impossible to lose weight when insulin is high. And weight gain promotes more insulin resistance. It’s a vicious cycle and one that is hard to reverse.

Insulin resistance is one of the key drivers of many diseases. In conventional medicine, there are over 72,000 ICD 10 codes. These are the codes doctors use to tell the insurance company what is wrong with you.

In my functional medicine training, I learned that there are really only a few key processes that go wrong leading to all diseases, not 72,000. Insulin resistance is one of them. The first step is identifying it, with fasting insulin level. The second step is reversing it by reversing the root causes of disease.

Intermittent fasting is something I recommend to my patients to help reverse insulin resistance. Fasting can be stressful on the body, so it isn’t always recommended initially but it can be an important component of a comprehensive functional medicine wellness plan.

If you are interested in learning more about insulin resistance I highly recommend checking out “The Obesity Code” by Dr. Jason Fung.