What Causes Insulin Resistance? A Comprehensive Guide

Your pancreas produces insulin, which is vital for regulating blood sugar levels and metabolism. Insulin helps your body store and use extra sugar from the food in the form of energy; after you eat, your food breaks down into a sugar called glucose. Glucose is the source of energy your body needs to work correctly. But after eating your meal, the glucose goes into your bloodstream, which causes a spike in your blood sugar levels. The pancreas releases insulin to control that spike in your blood sugar levels. It is an ongoing process that your body performs in a loop after every meal you eat to manage its glucose and insulin levels. 

If you suffer from insulin resistance, your body will perform the opposite function as someone with regular insulin and blood sugar levels. In insulin resistance, your body can not use glucose from your blood because it does not respond appropriately to insulin. Resistance to insulin hormones causes your pancreas to make more insulin that your body can not use. Over time, it can cause high sugar levels, type 2 diabetes, and other health-related issues.    

The two main factors of insulin resistance are body fat or body weight and lack of body movement or physical activity. It is necessary to manage your body weight and what you eat to control your insulin and glucose levels. Food plays an essential role in maintaining the spike of glucose levels in your body. Some foods can spike your glucose levels, which you should minimise in your diet. Not taking care of your diet will spike your glucose levels and cause diseases like PCOS, diabetes, obesity, etc. Diet and your glucose levels are very strongly related. If one fails to be on track, the other gets affected, and so does your health.

What is an Optimal Diet? How does it Help with Glucose levels?

An optimal diet is a diet that helps you get balanced nutrients avoiding unhealthy fats, refined sugars, and other processed foods. In other words, an optimal diet is low in both sugar and refined carbohydrates. It is also low in saturated and trans fat like processed foods and red meat.

A balanced diet helps you lose weight healthily. It is imperative to eat foods that keep you healthy and maintain your glucose levels while losing weight. Most people think it doesn’t matter what you eat as long as you lose weight, but it is not the case. It is essential to eat nutritious and healthy food while you lose weight because being slim or thin and healthy are two different things. 

An optimal diet helps maintain your glucose levels because healthy regulation of your glucose levels is one of the critical factors of this diet. It helps minimise your glucose spikes after meals because an optimal diet focuses on the meal that reduces the spike in your glucose levels. It is essential to maintain a healthy glucose level after your meals.

Read more: Understanding Why Are Fasting Glucose Levels High?

A study suggests that excessive spikes in your glucose levels can lead to various h ealth issues like type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, inflammation, oxidative stress, etc. 

One of the innovative offerings from HealthifyPro, helps us monitor and regulate our glucose fluctuations.

How Glucose Level Spikes are Different for Different People?

Everyone is unique; what might cause a spike in others’ glucose levels does not cause a spike in yours. Therefore following a specific diet and knowing what can trigger your glucose levels is very important. However, it can get overwhelming and challenging at the same time to figure out what foods can trigger your glucose levels and what foods help you maintain them. Therefore, the BIOS solution from HealthifyPro can help you accurately measure a spike in your glucose levels after you eat any particular food. BIOS not only enables you to determine the levels of spikes in your glucose levels, but it will also help you understand why it happens. 

With HealthifyPro, it will be easy to limit or eliminate foods that trigger your glucose levels. BIOS is a continuous glucose measuring device. It explains why your glucose levels rise after eating certain foods and gives you the solution to burn those calories so your body does not gain weight. We all know the basics of a healthy diet. It is a no-brainer that eating less sweet and fried foods will make us better manage our weight. However, we still stay off the path. We do not understand how our body reacts to blood sugar levels and how that correlates to obesity.  

You can not also eliminate all the foods that trigger your glucose levels; therefore, striking a perfect balance is essential. Tracking your foods with BIOS will allow you to eat everything in moderation and help you lose weight more practically and healthily. 

Diet and Glycemic Response

Your diet plays an essential role in managing your insulin levels and maintaining the levels of glucose spikes after your meal. A healthy diet consists of fresh fruits, green vegetables, proteins, vitamins, minerals, and other essential nutrients. Eating foods rich in minerals, antioxidants, and vitamins is necessary to maintain a steady spike in your glycemic index.

It is normal to see a spike in your glucose levels after you eat food, but if the spike is getting out of control and doesn’t come to the normal range after a while, your diet is responsible. The excess glucose gets converted to fat as a natural bodily defence mechanism. 

What is a Glycemic Response?

Glycemic response to a meal is your food’s effect on your glucose levels after consumption. For example, it is normal for your insulin and glucose levels to rise after eating and then return to fasting levels.

Your diet and glycemic response are connected. Foods which are low in fats, artificial sweeteners, and unhealthy crabs are essential to maintain your glycemic response and body weight. Determining your body weight is one of the most important things to maintain your insulin levels and prevent the spike in your blood sugar levels. Obesity and weight gain are the reasons for the severe spike in blood sugar levels. It is impossible to determine a healthy body weight every time, but the HealthifyPro smart scale helps you determine your body weight to maintain proper insulin levels. A smart scale is a digital weighing machine that breaks down your weight into body fat, muscle mass, bone mass, etc., to make sure you are losing weight healthily. 

Apart from diet, your lifestyle choices also affect your glycemic response. Going for a walk after your meals, drinking plenty of water, and moving your body is necessary. It helps you keep your glucose levels normal and helps maintain healthy body weight. Following a special diet for your body type plays an essential role in keeping your metabolic health in check. Rather than following a standard diet, eating foods that are good for your health and help you maintain a healthy body weight is vital. HealthifyPro BIOS and Smart scale make it easy to lose weight properly and determine glucose-triggering foods.

What are Healthy Glucose Levels?

Healthy glucose levels are when insulin stores and uses extra glucose or sugar in your bloodstream. Healthy glucose levels are essential to avoid insulin resistance and other health-related issues. Glucose levels are the amount of sugar you have in your blood any day. Having high or low glucose levels can indicate an underlying health condition.

Blood sugar levels or glucose less than 140 mg/dL is considered normal. In addition, glucose levels that are more than 200 mg/dL after two hours of the meal indicate diabetes. Moreover, glucose levels between 140 and 199 mg/dL indicate prediabetes. Many factors affect your glucose levels, such as how much and what type of food you consume, exercise, age, stress, body weight, menstrual period, alcohol, etc.

Ways to Maintain Healthy Glucose Levels

There are a few things to keep in mind to maintain a healthy glucose level:

• Use a continuous glucose monitoring device to track and get real-time information on your glucose level.
• Maintaining a healthy body weight
• Doing exercise or meditation
• Consuming foods with the low glycemic index
• Eating balanced meals at regular interval
• Priortising sleep
• Minimize stress

What is Glucose Variability? 

Glucose variability refers to the swings or increase or decrease in the amount of blood glucose levels. Glucose variability is common after having meals. But it is crucial to assess your glucose variability after every meal to prevent glucose spikes. Glucose variability occurs throughout the day as you have meals; even the slightest bit of food can cause a difference in your glucose range. Glucose variability includes postprandial increases, hypoglycemic periods, and glucose level fluctuations that can occur differently at the same time each day.

Limiting Variability in Glucose Levels with Dietary Modifications

An optimal diet can manage glucose levels. An optimal diet helps control the spike in your glucose levels and helps decrease the intake of foods that can cause your glucose levels to rise. Apart from diet CGM (continuous glucose monitoring) is also essential to take active steps in managing your glucose levels and controlling insulin resistance. Unfortunately, traditional tools are not very accurate when assessing glucose levels. But the latest CGM tools give real-time glucose levels and help assess and improve sugar levels while promoting healthy weight loss and dietary changes. 

One thing to keep in mind before following an optimal diet is there is no standard diet that can help you control your glucose levels. Therefore, consulting a professional coach who enables you to modify the optimal diet according to your lifestyle, health, and age is very important as everyone is unique. 

Conclusion

Glucose levels can cause various health issues. Frequent increases or decreases in your glucose levels can cause multiple lifestyle diseases like diabetes, obesity, PCOS, etc. But preventing insulin resistance and managing your glucose levels is not a difficult job if you follow some dietary and lifestyle changes. You can manage insulin resistance effectively if you understand the food intake. Lending some help from HealthifyPro CGM to identify foods that play a role in creating a spike in your glucose levels. Food plays an essential role in increasing and decreasing your glucose levels. It can be effectively managed by a continuous glucose monitoring device along with a customized meal plan designed to suit your daily lifestyle.