Fasting to Reduce Insulin Resistance & Type-2 Diabetes

By Cat, Feb 25, 2022

I’ve had insulin resistance since my early 20s (1970s). Back then, no one knew how to treat it, but I’ve since learned to minimize my sugar intake, and eat a good, healthy diet. I’ve been 100% off sugar (other than that naturally in fresh Organic fruits) since 2015. And I started taking Myo-Inositol (a B-vitamin) which stabilizes and improves the health of cell membranes, restoring insulin receptors.

I also started doing a bi-annual Veggie Juice Fast, at Kalispell’s WEC, or Wellness Education Center. The name has since been changed to Glacier Juice and Wellness, but they still do juice fasts. Now Mercola has a very interesting article on fasting to reduce Insulin Resistance and Type-2 Diabetes (far more healthful than taking the big-pharma drugs for this disease). Read on for his “Story At-A-Glance” (Summary Notes).

Now Mercola has a very interesting article on how fasting can reduce insulin resistance

See also: 1. Diet and Health Menu and scroll down to Insulin Resistance (IR), High Blood Sugar, and Metabolic Syndrome section for multiple articles on Insulin Resistance.

Mercola’s “Story At-A-Glance” (Summary Notes)

This is from a 2/25/22 Mercola article: “Why Fasting Is a Powerful Treatment Strategy for Diabetes,” saved as HEALTH-NUTRITION / PODCASTS-ARTICLES / MERCOLA ARTICLES > Fasting-TmtStrategy-Diabetes-IR_022422.pdf).

His “Story At-A-Glance:”

    • “An estimated 37 million Americans, or 11% of the population, have Type 2 diabetes. Another 1 in 3 American adults are prediabetic, defined as an elevation in blood glucose over 100 mg/dl
    • Any fasting blood sugar regularly over 90 mg/dl really suggests insulin resistance, and work by the late Dr. Joseph Kraft suggests 80% — 8 out of 10 — Americans are in fact insulin resistant
    • Type 2 diabetes is curable, and the cure is less than inexpensive — it’s free. You actually save money, as the remedy is to fast and not eat anything for a number of days on a regular basis
    • Type 2 diabetes should not be treated with insulin, as insulin forces glucose into cells that are already saturated with excess glucose and cannot take in more. Instead, the glucose gets turned into fat, which is why insulin injections result in dramatic weight gain
    • The answer for Type 2 diabetes is to stop feeding your body sugar and burn off the sugar already in your cells, and the most effective way to do this is fasting.”

What is Insulin Resistance?

It means that the body’s cells are resistant to insulin. Normally, when cells need sugar (to burn for energy), they send a message to the pancreatic cells to provide insulin. When the insulin molecule arrives at the needing cells, it attaches to an insulin receptor on the cell-membrane. These receptors are like a lock on a door, and insulin is like the key that opens the door, to let sugar into the cell.

But as these receptors age, they can become inactive or disappear, making it impossible for insulin to open the lock, and the cells starve and keep asking for more sugar, which requires more insulin. But if the insulin cannot attach to the receptor, the cells will continue to starve. Eventually the amount of sugar and insulin build-up in the blood.

The excess insulin is broken down, and the excess sugar is sent to the liver where it is converted to storage fat, which is then either stored in the liver (causing Fatty Liver Disease), or sent to fat-storage cells in front of the belly.

Dr Mercola argues that treating this problem with insulin only makes the problem worse. Instead, fasting is far more effective:

  1. Start out with a short 3-5 day fast, and slowly work up to more frequent and longer fasts.
  2. Also on non-fast days, reduce your meal-time (breakfast-through-dinner) and increase your daily fast-time. This is called “intermittent fasting.” For example:
    • mealtime between 8 AM and 8 PM (12-hours) and fast-time between 8 PM and 8 AM of the following day (12 hours); then gradually increasing to:
    • mealtime between 8 AM and 4 PM (8-hours) and fast-time between 4 PM and 8 AM of the following day (16 hours).

To which I would add: restore insulin receptor activity by taking myo-inositol.

About Cat

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