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Why insulin for type 2 diabetes?

Here is a puzzler: If insulin resistance comes about because of the presence of too much insulin, why are the most insulin resistant people, type 2 diabetics, treated with insulin?

Dr. Jason Fung, author of The Complete Guide to Fasting, suggests that this treatment is in fact the opposite of what should be done. He treats his patients by reducing insulin, not increasing it.

Many type 2 diabetics who are treated with insulin end up on perpetually increasing doses of it, along with other medications, in order to manage a number of symptoms linked to a cluster of health issues, known as “metabolic syndrome”. The whole mess, according to Dr. Fung, starts with chronically elevated levels of insulin.

Type 2 diabetes can only be a chronic and progressive ailment if the environment that sustains it is maintained. Simply: high insulin leads to insulin resistance which leads to type 2 diabetes and all of its associated health issues (fatty liver, high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, immune issues, inflammation, etc.). As long as these conditions persist, the disease can progress, as many people have experienced.

The solution is simple: reduce insulin levels and the whole chain of events cannot progress. It’s impossible to develop or maintain insulin resistance if you do not have high levels of insulin. Unfortunately the common treatments do not reduce insulin, they reduce blood glucose levels. These treatments would be great if by reducing blood glucose they also reduced insulin but this isn’t the case. Some treatments even increase insulin levels (which were already high to begin with).

This is why people who have made lifestyle changes to significantly reduce their release of insulin have, in many case studies, reversed (cured!) their type 2 diabetes, while the patients who have made no change to their eating habits but rely on blood glucose management through drugs or insulin injections never get better. In fact the group maintaining a high insulin level gets worse!!

Our bodies have already proven high insulin doesn’t work, which is why they became resistant, so I come back to the puzzler from the beginning: If insulin resistance comes about because of the presence of too much insulin, why are the most insulin resistant people, type 2 diabetics, treated with insulin?

You will have to ask the physician who prescribes the insulin treatments to type 2 diabetics why this treatment makes sense for their patients.

To explore other options about insulin control and your health, speak to your doctor or the Live Well Team at Pharmasave Summerland.

~Dan Cassidy, Nutritional Product Advisor