Actually It's The Carbs That Are Killing You!
Low Carbohydrate eating is much more than a weight loss lifestyle. It is a roadmap to a long & healthy life. While most of you come to the Atkins Diet in order to lose weight, there are a lot of us, like myself, who came to this lifestyle primarily to control severe health issues & the weight loss is but a wonderful bonus.
The current diet of most people in the industrialized world is characterized by overconsumption of refined carbohydrates. In 1828 the average American consumed around 12 pounds of sugar. By 1975 this had risen to 128 lbs & in 1999 it was up to 158 lbs of sugar or caloric sweetners like corn syrup. This is just the sugar alone it does not include all the carbohydrates from starchy foods either. Currently in the USA over 35% percent of the adult population is characterized not only as overweight but obese.
These circumstances have led to an explosion in the modern world of Type II or Adult Onset Diabetes & the other diseases which comprise the 'Syndrome X' set of conditions. This situation has now truely reached epidemic levels. If you are overweight chances are very high you have insulin resistance & if you do not have High Blood Pressure, High Cholesterol &/or High Blood Sugar levels now you soon will. 1 in 5 adult Americans have the full range of Sydrome X conditions & estimates are that over 20 million Americans have these conditions & do not even know it yet! Any one or a combination of these conditions sets you on the path to heart disease, diabetes & an early death so what you will read here is very important for you to understand.
As you will learn below obesity is intertwined with other risk factors that lead to a whole set of degnerative diseases that are a direct result of overconsumption of refined carbohydrates. So not only will Atkins help you lose weight it will allow you to recover & take control of your overall health. So please read this carefully.
Insulin Resistance & Syndrome X
Insulin is your body's ‘saving’ hormone. In order to meet your body’s demand for energy insulin tries to store away as much energy as possible by converting carbohydrates into fat & storing that fat in your fat cells after taking care of you body’s immediate energy needs. Glucagon is your body’s ‘spending’ hormone whose job is to bring that same energy out of storage from your fat cells to fuel & repair your body between meals.
When your body is in balance Insulin levels rise, making you want to eat, which then fuels your body & puts any excess energy into storage in your fat cells for later usage. Then insulin levels fall, Glucagon rises & your fat cells open & release energy that is used to fuel your body. After a while yoru insulin levels rise & the whole process starts over again.
Our prehistoric ancestors often never knew where their next meal or food source was coming from so Insulin acted as a trigger to make sure early people ate & stored away as much energy as possible in times of plenty.
The typical human today, especially in the ‘industrialized’ world eats huge amounts of refined carbohydrates. We are talking about sugars, milk, fruit juice, dried fruit, refined starches (bread, pasta, etc) & other traditional starchy high carbohydrate foods like potatoes & rice & combinations of above such as cakes, cookies, ice-cream etc. This is a diet your body was NEVER designed to deal with & it creates real havoc with your blood sugar & insulin.
Eating this type of diet means your body is constantly creating huge amounts of insulin to cope with all the glucose. That also means you will have a lot of leftover glucose in your blood which the insulin in your body promptly turns into fat.
Here’s where the really big problem sets in. The fatter you are the less responsive to insulin your cells become. Eating carbohydrates triggers a huge insulin release into your bloodstream but as your body weight gets heavier your cells start to resist & eventually won’t let it in.
This phenomenon is known as Insulin Resistance. To make matters worse in an effort to stay in equilibrium your body then releases even more insulin to overcome this resistance & because your cells won’t let it in to be used as fuel the insulin levels in your blood skyrocket. As the cells in your body become more & more insulin resistant your fat cells become the preferred storage site for blood sugar.
Your body has been transformed into a fat making machine.
What happens eventually is that you're putting out insulin all the time but its’s not doing you much good. Your insulin output is too high even as your body becomes more & more resistant to its effects. This leads to a condition known as hyperinsulism or hyperinsulemia.
Hyperinsulemia is the profactor & primary cause of the ‘Deadly Quartet’ also known as
Syndrome X which affects over 20% of adults in the USA today.
These four conditions that comprise 'Sydrome X' are:
*Central Obesity(excessive fat tissue in the abdominal region)
*Hypertension (high blood pressure)
*High Blood Choesterol (elevated blood lipid or blood fats)
*Adult Onset Diabets (Diabetes Mellitus or Type II)
The relationship between carbs & this set of Syndrome X conditions is summarized below.
Obesity has almost always traditionally been seen as the bad influence that must be eliminated to stop all the other conditions. Although it is true weight gain usually preceeds the others, it most likely that obesity & the rest of these are all a result of insulin imbalance.
In reality weight gain is often a sign that the other components of Sydrome X are not far behind.
So as you can see the Atkins (& just about any low carb plan)is about much more than losing weight. It is the roadmap for a healthy lifestyle that can help you avoid Syndrome X conditions if you don't have them yet; & if you do, can often help you reverse & control these conditions without medication. So this one more very important reason for you make sure you make the most of your induction period to set yourself up for overall diet & health success
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May 27th, 2004, 01:17 AM
Understanding Diabetes: Insulin Resistance & Syndrome X 
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