Carbohydrate-Guide

“Syndrome X” is a new condition common among sedentary Western society, which manifests itself with the problems of: hypertension, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, hypertriglyceridemia, glucose intolerance, obesity, high LDL cholesterol, and heart disease. The common factor and indicator for all who have “Syndrome X”, is hyperinsulinemia (chronic high plasma insulin) and insulin resistance (low cellular response to stored glucose). As the Western diet bathes the cells in a continual bath of glucose and insulin, they become less able to respond and store the glucose, and in an attempt to force the storage of the circulating glucose, the body produces even more insulin to get the cells to respond.

To this ever louder signal of insulin, the cells become even more deaf. The chronic snacking on high energy foods keep circulating insulin high, and therefore, the cells must become insulin resistant.

This high level of insulin also causes sodium retention, which then causes water retention, which causes hypertension or high blood pressure.

Also, the hyperinsulinemia causes the liver to convert sugars and dietary fats into triglycerides - the form of fat that circulates in your blood stream and that gets stored in your adipose tissue or fat cells.

So now you get hypertriglyceridemia, which is what those high triglycerides the doctor was talking to you about refer. Also, the walls of your arteries are sensitive to insulin and react by creating more smooth muscle cells so that they can restrict your blood flow in the ” fight-or-flight” response.

Your arteries and veins are not just pipes, but reactive muscular conduits of your blood, and they can react to constrict blood flow to some areas, and dilate for others, increasing blood flow to the heart and skeletal muscles, and shutting down blood to the rest.

This collectively causes a raise blood pressure. The problem is, within our society, this response isn’t needed in the office, and since it cannot be dissipated without a good run or some exercise, you end up with distorted blood chemistry and one of the foundations of atherosclerotic plaque formation.

So now you have got more problems, which could be described as symptoms of aging. They will definitely make you age!

So there is item 1, Excess insulin, and this insulin resistance, means that your cells are resisting insulin’s message to absorb glucose. This results in more blood sugar than you need, which is item number 2, high blood glucose.

Why is high blood sugar a factor in aging? If the above list wasn’t enough, when insulin levels are chronically high, the cells must become insulin resistant. This happens in part to protect the brain, which uses glucose for fuel too, however, unlike muscle and other tissues, the brain doesn’t require insulin for it’s ability to absorb the glucose. Under normal insulin conditions, the brain has a competitive edge over other tissues for the absorption of glucose since it doesn’t require insulin’s signal.

However, under high insulin conditions, the signal for cells to “take up” glucose is loud, and the tissues, if they responded equally, would take up too much glucose and leave the brain starving for fuel. Therefore, the muscle and organ tissue cells become resistant to insulin’s signal, and limit the amount of glucose they soak up.

Never-the-less, you end up with glucose dropping anyway as the supply eventually runs out. This is then called, the “sugar blues”. Your body needs to keep the brain operating. Insulin levels are still too high to allow for adequate blood sugar, and glucagon is suppressed by the insulin, so it cannot raise blood sugar either.

What happens now, is the body reacts with a secondary, or emergency mechanism to regulate blood sugar by releasing the hormone cortisol.