Syndrome X
Insulin Resistance
Vitamin Retailer, July 2001, by Terry Willard, CLH, PhD
Syndrome X Snares 66 Million Sufferers
We are about to be overwhelmed by one of the largest disease epidemics to ever strike North America. This condition can make you feel older and age you prematurely. It can dramatically increase the risk of most age-related health issues such as obesity, hypertension, eye disease, diabetes, nervous-system disorders, cardiovascular disease, cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
It can also make one feel exhausted, spacey, depressed, irritable or angry when she/he normally wouldn't be. It is not some major virus, super germ or a flu. It is coming from our own diet and lifestyle.
This major pandemic goes by many names: insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, glucose intolerance, pre-diabetes or Syndrome X. Syndrome X has insulin resistance at its core, with one or more of the following health issues: obesity, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, high triglycerides or blood sugar fluctuations.
If you have complaints about feeling sluggish and having a hard time losing those few extra pounds, Syndrome X might be the cause.
Syndrome X was coined by Gerald Reaven, MD, professor emeritus (active) of Medicine at Stanford University. As the director of endocrinology, he used the name Syndrome X to describe a cluster of abnormalities that are related to heart disease. His research (and that of others) shows in a nutshell that Syndrome X is a form of insulin resistance caused by a dietary related glucose logjam. This in turn interferes with a person's ability to efficiently burn the food he eats.
We find Syndrome X occurs when insulin resistance is combined with any of the aforementioned lipid or blood pressure problems. It is the major cause of cardiovascular disease, Type II diabetes, and many other serious, life-threatening diseases.
Major Players
There are two major players in this life-and-death drama -- glucose and insulin. Glucose is a simple sugar, also known as blood sugar, that flows through the bloodstream and is the principle fuel for all cells of the body. It has often been called the 'biological gasoline' that runs the cells.
Insulin is a hormone made in the pancreas that usually escorts glucose from the blood into the cells where the glucose is used as energy. Quite simply, modern society is overdosing on these two substances, thereby encouraging the aging process via the onset of degenerative disease.
In an ideal situation, glucose and insulin fluctuate moderately, closely resembling a ballroom waltz. When we see erratic fluctuations, jerking sharply up and down, it often means trouble is brewing. Every cell in the body requires a relatively steady supply of glucose for normal function.
Insulin's role is mainly to stimulate cells to uptake glucose and provide the energy to build new tissue. There is another side to this important hormone that we will discuss later. In the 1960's, when the medical community learned how to measure insulin levels in the blood, what appeared to be a dichotomy was discovered: adult onset diabetes (also known as Type II diabetes) was not just a disorder of high blood sugar, but also a condition of higher-than-normal insulin levels than found in non-diabetics. This seemed to be puzzling at first, because the high insulin levels should have lowered the blood sugar levels. This later proved out to be an insulin-resistant situation. The cells in these individuals are not quite as responsive to insulin as they were in childhood.
To use an analogy; let's say that for each glucose molecule it takes one insulin molecule to introduce the glucose to the door keeper to get the glucose into the party inside the cell. After a while the cell gets 'bored' of the insulin always coming around introducing the glucose.
It now takes two, or maybe three calls before the door keeper lets the glucose into the cell. There starts to be a long queue of glucose outside this popular night spot, while insulin keeps trying to sneak glucose into the cellular party. Instead of a smooth flow of glucose through the club doors, insulin resistance has created a virtual log jam.
Stone Age Diet
This dance of how insulin and blood sugar works has developed over millions of years, with mammals -- particularly primates -- eating a diverse, but simple diet of macro-nutrients, vitamins and minerals. In the distant past, or for more than 95 percent of the history of our species, most of the foods we ate were contained within tough, fibrous matrixes, making digestion poor and slow. The resulting glucose and sugar rise was also slow and steady. Many medical and nutrition experts are suggesting that this Stone Age or Paleolithic diet of our distant ancestors is the best diet for us.
Today, we are eating a diet of highly refined carbohydrates such as breakfast bars, doughnuts, sugar-laden coffee, soda drinks, sugared cereals, pretzels, and or pasta. All of these food items convert rapidly to blood sugar.
Some parts of our body, especially the kidneys and other organs find large amounts of blood sugar to be toxic, so it is important for the pancreas to respond quickly to the sugar and either move it into the cells to be burned as fuel, or stored as fat as triglycerides in adipose tissue.
When most Americans consume substantially more carbohydrates than their ancestors, some of the cells become overwhelmed by the insulin and start to respond to the insulin in a more sluggish fashion. The problem is that the pancreas still receives the signal that the glucose is high and then ratchets up the insulin production even further to reduce the blood sugar. The more insulin in the bloodstream, the less effective it becomes and the more insulin resistant we become.
This situation often compounds itself, because insulin also promotes the formation of fat through a process called lipogenesis. This means that the more insulin a person produces, the more likely she/he is to gain weight.
The increase in fat cells and reduction of muscle cells reduce the efficiency of the body's ability to burn glucose. If this ratio gets too out of hand over a long period of time, not only does the person become more pear-shaped and overweight, she/he risks developing Syndrome X, diabetes and even heart disease.
This becomes quite frightening when you realize that 55 percent of Americans are overweight, producing insulin resistance. About 25 percent of thin people also suffer from insulin resistance. This means that an estimated 66 million people are thought to suffer from some level of insulin resistance.
The good news is that you can help control the situation -- but remember you must take responsibility for this situation. Syndrome X is caused by the interaction of the body's susceptibility to insulin resistance and diet. Positive results are relatively quick and can be perceived usually within the first two weeks.
The most important thing to do is to immediately reduce the consumption of carbohydrates or foods that rapidly turn into glucose and raise the blood sugar levels. This is expressed as glycemic index (GI). High GI foods raise blood sugar, stress the pancreas and produce fat even faster than simple sugar.
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