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Hopefully you have read Part One to this series, as the beginning to this article will only be a summarization of the former. Now that we are back after a nice Syndrome X vacation, it is time to get back into gear. In Part One we learned about the correlation between insulin and cortisol, and cortisol to well… basically everything else. We now know that insulin could be the most important compound that is making you ill.

In other articles, we have have written about how maintaining a low consistent level of insulin through diet can slow aging and promote health, aid in losing weight and now aid in some hormonal, reproductive, skin and psychological disorders. Insulin is looking to be the king of all precursor chemicals within the body. You may be saying, “Okay already, so what do I do about it!” Alright, I will get to it next, but before I do I need to tell you this.

The issues I am about to discuss and I have discussed on this site in past articles are not meant to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease. See your health care professional before embarking on any new diet or training program. If a medical condition exists, see your health care professional.

Okay, Now that I got that out of the way, let’s move on to the meat of the issue. Insulin levels are directly proportionate to your blood glucose levels. The more glucose you have in your system, the more insulin will be right with it. The reason for this is insulin is the key master for sugar. It unlocks, within the cell, the ability for cellular metabolism to take place.

If one is insulin resistant it means that insulin levels are consistently high, and regular nutritional guidelines will still produce pathological outcomes. To combat this condition patients need to embark on a special nutritional program that takes into consideration the resistance to insulin. There are 6 guidelines that must be followed to prevent further suffering from this condition.

First Guideline

In a normal functioning body, glucose is the preferred source of energy, and carbohydrates are the main source of this glucose. The most basic way of controlling insulin levels is through the types of carbohydrates. There are many ways to distinguish between good and bad carbs. One that is gaining popularity in the United States is using the Glycemic Index for rating carbs by their rate of digestion.

If you would like more detail about the rate of digestion and its correlation with health, you can read about it in this article. The foods that are the best are the ones with the lowest scores (low scores mean slow digestion and high mean rapid digestion). There are some problems with this method though. The most glaring is memorizing all the scores for each food. Another is each institution scores food differently, so who do you listen to?

This is why I came up with my own method of scoring the healthfulness of a carbohydrate. It’s the RGB Diet or the Red, Green and Blue Diet. Just as the name implies, you only eat carbs that are rich in Red, Green or Blue Pigments. Of course nothing artificially died or altered to look red, green or blue is allowed in this program. It has to grow out of good old mother earth as it is, and this means no man made products or at least the most minimally processed products.

There are a couple of reasons for the colors. One is that each color is associated with tremendous benefits. The green being Chlorophyll — the green substance responsible for photosynthesis in plants which has many beneficial properties to humans. Chlorophyll has been known to bring the dead back to life, not really, but when you do research on chlorophyll you get some amazing claims. Here are a few:

“Enhances energy, detoxifies the liver, eliminates body odor and bad breath, cleans the digestive tract, aides in the prevention of liver cancer, is beneficial in all cancer therapy, helps with anemia, aides in the elimination of mold from the body.” - janethull.com

Although none of this is positively proven, the one major benefit that all people will agree on is it has very powerful antioxidant powers. Who needs any more benefits than that? The next is the blue color that makes blackberries (blue-black), blueberries blue and the sky blue…(well, maybe not the sky), but this color, named anthocyanin, has claimed many benefits as well including antioxidant power, immune support and neurological benefits.

Last but not least, red is the next in line, and it is called lycopene. This is what makes tomatoes, watermelon and strawberries red. It too has many, many benefits. Here are some quoted from Wikipedia:

“There is evidence that frequent intake of such products is associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer (especially prostate cancer), diabetes, osteoporosis, and even male infertility. Lycopene may also be related to a reduced risk of esophageal, colorectal, and oral cancer.”

And they say carbs are bad for you?! Huh, what do they know? The reasons listed above are not the only reasons I am recommending such foods. One of the biggest reasons are foods with these colors are slow to be digested, usually high in fiber and low in calories. Everything you need right in the color.

Second Guidline

Eat frequently. Eating every 3-4 hours will not only pick up and stabilize your energy levels, but it will stabilize your insulin, your cortisol and keep you from having the normal lulls in your day. Here is some information as to why you should eat frequently pulled from one of my other articles.
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Keeping your glucose levels stabilized and low will, in turn, keep your insulin levels low. You do this by consuming foods that that do not contain high levels of sugars and that are not converted to sugars rapidly. Foods like green leafy vegetables and non-tropical fruits are converted very slowly to glucose. On the opposite side of the spectrum you have soda, sweets, processed foods, table sugar… these are all high in sugars and are digested very rapidly in the digestive system. Below is a graph that illustrates the consequences of eating the wrong thing. The red zone at the top shows where the body is going to store body fat.

As you can see in the graph most of the time spent was in the red or fat storage zone. You will also note that the sugar was used up quite rapidly. Now lets look at what happens when you eat the “good” carbs.

Here the glucose (energy) levels are stable and they also last longer making you feel more satisfied longer. Since it never reached the red zone, you never communicated to your body to store fat. Now, lets put all this together. Here is a normal day for a normal American. Bob, if you will, will eat only three times a day and eat the wrong things.

If you noticed, I also added a second red zone. This zone, at the bottom, represents extremely low glucose levels that can communicate to your body that it is starving. Research has shown that mostly everything you eat no matter how much, will last about 2 to 3 hours. If Bob continues to eat infrequently and keeps his “levels” at such a low state with very few but extremely high spikes, he is, in essence telling his body that he is starving. These high levels suggest fat storage, the very low suggests the same. Your body is going to slow down your metabolism to conserve energy if it is not getting enough calories at that moment. Your body is like anything else, too much is not good, just as to little is not good. To show the healthier option, here is Jane with her daily nutritional regimen.

Here we have frequent eating of the right thing. See the difference? Eating every 3 or so hours with good carbohydrates will stabilize your energy levels, help you lose weight, sharpen the mind as well as make you feel great! This way Jane’s glucose levels are always sustained and constant at a nice moderately low level. This is communicating to the body that we have plenty of food coming in and we have no need to store any body fat.
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Third Guideline

Working out! The big mystery revealed. Okay, we all know that working out has its benefits… right?! Well, there are some tricks you can do to punch up your success along with lifting weights and doing your normal activities. The secret is — wait, before attempting any of the below mentioned activities go see your physician to make sure you are healthy enough to include this into your training regimen — completing 30-45 minutes of a low impact, low intensity aerobic exercise on an empty stomach after you wake up. Why would you do such a crazy thing? Well, let me explain some science first.

We all know now that insulin is our biggest adversary when we are talking about metabolic syndromes. Well, when insulin is high, this communicates to the body to use glucose or glycogen for energy instead of fatty acids… yes, body fat! What this means is when you (the syndrome X sufferer) get on the treadmill and start walking away, you are only burning sugar, not fat, if you are doing it mid to late day when your insulin is at its normal high. Ever wonder why you can never seem to lose weight? That’s why; you were only burning sugar, and your fat stores just stayed right there, never to be used.

To combat this we have to be sneaky and trick our bodies into burning the fat instead of the sugar. In the morning you have the lowest insulin levels of all day, and the reason is due to the all night fasting that has happened. Since you normally go 8-9-10 hours without eating, your body is starved for glucose, hence break-fast. Since your insulin levels are low, it is the perfect time to take advantage of this opportunity and burn some of that unwanted fat!

You do this by waking up and drinking a glass of water, then riding a bike, walking on a treadmill, walking the dog or taking a low impact, low intensity aerobic/yoga/pilates class, starting off at 3 times a week and working towards every other day. It will be hard, since your body will not be adapted to performing in such a low glucose state, but you will get used to it. Taking this information and adding it to evenings of resistance training, you will have “all your ducks in a row.” What? Why weight train?

The short of the long is the more muscle you have, the faster your metabolism is. For every pound of muscle you add to your body, 15 calories will be expended while you sit and do nothing. Let’s say you added 10 pounds of muscle to your body. You would burn 150 more calories per day if you sat and did nothing all day. Then if you are active, you multiply this factor by the intensity at which you are working. Bottom line, you want muscle, as it will aid tremendously in weight loss.

Fourth Guideline

De-stress yourself! This could be an article all to itself, but it is important to mention here. Stress is going to be your second adversary, because cortisol, the first respondent to stress, is what caused many of your problems to begin with. Working out is going to be a good thing, as it can be a great way to release pent up energy and/or frustration. Other ways of relieving stress are a certain selection of music like Enigma, Delerium, Conjure One, Amethystium and other types of smooth jazz, ambient or acid jazz; hot baths with herbal scents like lavender and chamomile; yoga and/or pilates; ohhhh, vacations! Whatever you do, try to eliminate as much stress as you can.

Fifth Guideline

Supplements, the crazy, whacked out world of remedies galore. This subject is probably the most lied about, swindled, corrupt and damaging of all others. The main problem is who do you trust? The maker of the product? NO! The magazines? NO! The supplement sales people? NO! How about the books written on supplements? NO! Why? The dietary supplement industry is worth $10,000,000,000, and is regulated by no one! That’s why.

Here are some supplements that I will recommend — obviously after you go see your physician and make sure that any of the following supplements do not counteract or create side effects for you or with any medications that you may be taking.




The safest is your good old Vitamin and Mineral supplements. I recommend going to a whole foods store and asking for the highest quality vitamin they have. These should be quite pricey, high in bioavailability, taken 2-3 times daily and of a trusted brand. I recommend going to Whole Foods Inc., as they are to be trusted more than other people. I personally use USANA because they are the highest of quality and are regulated by the FDA by choice, but they are expensive and you have to get it through a distributer. REMEMBER, it is always good to take a little less than whatever the recommended dosage is.

Alpha-Lipoic Acid has been shown by reputable labs to have a beneficial effect on glucose uptake. Which is huge for people with insulin resistance, as glucose uptake is what your body is struggling with. Here is an except from Wikipedia:

Lipoic acid was first postulated to be an effective antioxidant when it was found it prevented vitamin C and vitamin E deficiency. It is able to scavenge reactive oxygen species and reduce other metabolites, such as glutathione or vitamins, maintaining a healthy cellular redox state. Lipoic acid has been shown in cell culture experiments to increase cellular uptake of glucose by recruiting the glucose transporter GLUT4 to the cell membrane, suggesting its use in diabetes. Studies of rat aging have suggested that the use of L-carnitine and lipoic acid results in improved memory performance and delayed structural mitochondrial decay. As a result, it may be helpful for people with Alzheimer’s disease or Parkinson’s disease.

Essential Fatty Acids should be a mainstay in your supplemental program. EFA’s are tremendously beneficial to all people. I recommend a 2 to 1 combination of fish oil to flax oil. Studies have shown the following to be positively affected with supplementing with EFA’s:

• Increase insulin sensitivity
• Reduction of inflammation
• Antioxidant properties
• Cardiovascular benefits
• Lowers blood pressure
• Supports immune function

Quercetin has been shown to be extremely beneficial in combating inflammation of all kinds. This being very beneficial to insulin resistance patients due to their problem with inflammation and cortisol levels. Quercetin is hard for the human digestion to assimilate, so usually papain and bromelain are used to increase the bioavailability of quercetin. There are some sublingual versions of quercetin that can be used that are allegedly in a more available form and papain and bromelain are not needed. Here is what Wikipedia says about it:

Quercetin has demonstrated significant anti-inflammatory activity because of direct inhibition of several initial processes of inflammation. For example, it inhibits both the manufacture and release of histamine and other allergic/inflammatory mediators. In addition, it exerts potent antioxidant activity and vitamin C-sparing action.

Quercetin forms the glycosides quercitrin and rutin together with rhamnose and rutinose respectively.

Quercetin also shows remarkable anti-tumour properties. A recent study in the British Journal of Cancer shows that when treated with a combination of quercetin and ultrasound at 20 KHz for 1 minute duration, skin and prostate cancers show a 90% mortality within 48 hours with no visible mortality of normal cells. Note that ultrasound also promotes topical absorption by up to 1,000 times making the use of topical quercetin and ultrasound wands an interesting proposition.

Quercetin may have positive effects in combating or helping to prevent cancer, prostatitis, heart disease, cataracts, allergies/inflammations, and respiratory diseases such as bronchitis and asthma.

Sixth Guideline

Now that we have covered many specifics of nutrition, let’s look at the global need of macro-nutrients — protein, carbohydrate, fiber and fats. For someone suffering from insulin resistance, we need to keep the blood sugars as low as possible. That means eating small portions of the RGB Carbs with moderate amounts of lean protein, fiber and healthy fats throughout the day, about every 3-4 hours. NEVER EAT JUST PROTEIN OR JUST CARBS ALONE, always have a good balance of each, even if it is just a ’snack’. The rationale for the healthy fats and lots of fiber is they assist in slowing down the digestion process.

The recommended amounts of each are correlated with your lean body mass — what you weigh without the fat tissue. Getting a body fat percentage measurement is very important. Let’s say you are 120lbs of fat free mass, and I recommend about 1 gram of protein per pound and 1.2 grams of carbohydrate per pound as well. That would mean about 120 grams of protein and 145 grams of carbs a day. Ah, but don’t forget your fats, as some are very beneficial. Eating nuts, avocados, seeds, olive oils, and fatty fish are quite good for you, of course in moderation. All in all you should eat about 12 calories per pound lean body mass, so by using the 120 lbs fat free mass figure above, you would want to eat about 1450 calories a day give or take a couple of hundred calories.

Well, what do you think? Are you going to be able to do this? Yes, you can! Just let this be your first priority, above all else… come on, what is more important than your health? I will return in Part Three (coming soon…) of this article to inform you about the psychological aspect of dealing with the battling new you that wants change, and the old you that wants no part in the revolution. Please ask as many questions, concerns, problems, complaints as possible, and I will write about them in the last addition which will be Part Four. I hope this is of great help to you, as there is such little information out there to help the ones who need it. I would like to say that there are medications that claim to help as well, but I don’t like drugs, so I did not include them above. But, it is not up to me to tell you what is right or wrong, so here they are:

“both metformin and the thiazolidinediones improve insulin resistance, but are only approved therapies for type 2 diabetes, not insulin resistance, per se. By contrast, growth hormone replacement therapy may be associated with increased insulin resistance.” - Wikipedia.org

Take care and get at it! See you next time!