The Impact & Importance of Insulin

(and how to regulate it through a Ketogenic Lifestyle)

By: Dr. Eric Olkkola

Up to 88% of Americans have some degree of resistance to insulin’s actions. Only 12% of Americans may be insulin sensitive (1) 

This is an epidemic that is relatively unknown to most providers of healthcare, yet insulin resistance is the required gateway to getting fat and sick. High blood insulin over the long-term makes for a broken metabolism where fat storage and pro-inflammatory behaviors from the cell to the whole person rule the day.

Every cell type from prostate to ovarian to heart to brain cell benefits from the elimination of established inflammatory behaviors and insulin-provoking foods and beverages. The body is given a chance to recover. 

Re-establishing the burning of fat serves to clear the mind, heal the heart and skin, reduce or eliminate pain in brain, gut, organ, bone and joint. Any degree of insulin resistance – a known age accelerant - is a barrier to optimal health and beauty. 

Which brings me to epigenetics; this is how we live our life, how we feel - calm or anxious. Everything we do, think, feel, eat is determining whether we’re using our life resources to inflame the development of degenerative disease or re-establish our innate ability to heal our metabolism and thus, ourselves over time. 

Every cell in the body has receptors that respond to insulin. Cartilage cells, ovarian cells, testicular cells, nerve cells, fat cells - all cell types have receptors for insulin on their cell membrane surface, including cancer cells. 

Insulin is probably the first hormone to appear more than 500 million years ago to move a nutrient or fuel source like glucose or ketones that is outside of a cell and open an entrance in the membrane of the cell allowing the nutrient into the sanctity of the inner cellular environment (where life is generated). 

The single cell is the engine of life and insulin allows life to be fed. Without this hormone, life starves. With resistance to the action of insulin in a bone cell, the bone cell becomes progressively compromised over time to become brittle and weak. Same with brain cells dysfunctioning from progressive delays in their nutrient requirements from ever-increasing levels of insulin in the blood. 

The ability of all the cells that make up you and me to self-organize over time depend on whole-body insulin sensitivity. Like a loving marriage, each is attentive to the other with just a whisper. 

Thus, the need for a keto-leaning, nutrient-dense food intake becomes obvious and indispensable in a return to health.