The Paleo Diet - Loren Cordain [42]
With the Paleo Diet, it doesn’t matter which of these kinds of foods ultimately cause insulin resistance—because these unnatural food combinations aren’t part of the picture (except as Open Meal treats). Your meals won’t suffer—in fact, they’ll be richer, more varied, and more delicious than ever. Instead of fatty gourmet ice cream, treat yourself to a bowl of fresh blueberries or half a cantaloupe filled with diced strawberries and walnuts. Instead of fish sticks, how about peel-and-eat shrimp or a lean grilled steak? We’ll get to specific recipes and meal plans later in the book.
Healing Metabolic Syndrome: Jack’s Story
Jack Challem, known worldwide as the “Nutrition Reporter,” is a leading health journalist with more than twenty-five years of experience reporting on nutrition research. He is a contributing editor for Let’s Live and Natural Health magazines and the coauthor of a number of popular nutrition books.
When I started writing my book Syndrome X: The Complete Nutritional Program to Prevent and Reverse Insulin Resistance, I was in denial about having the early stages of Syndrome X. I was 48 years old, weighed 170 pounds, had a 38-inch waist, and a fasting glucose of 111 mg/dL. I should have known better. I made a point of getting back to the very diet I advocate in my book, Syndrome X. I also stopped eating all pasta and virtually all bread. Basically, I was following a Paleo Diet with lean meats and a lot of veggies.
In three months I lost 20 pounds and 4 inches from my waist. My fasting blood sugar was 85 mg/dL. My blood cholesterol and triglyceride values also improved. It has been extremely easy to maintain these improvements. Eating the Paleo Diet is simple and tasty.
How Insulin Resistance Increases Your Risk of Heart Disease
High-glycemic carbohydrates cause an increase in your blood triglycerides and a decrease in your good HDL cholesterol. They also cause an increase in a special type of cholesterol in your bloodstream called “small-dense LDL cholesterol.” All of these changes in blood chemistry severely increase your risk of death from heart disease.
Small-Dense LDL Cholesterol
In recent years, small-dense LDL cholesterol has emerged as one of the most potent risks for atherosclerosis, the artery-clogging process. The study of atherosclerosis has become increasingly specific. First, we had cholesterol, then HDL and LDL (good and bad) cholesterol, and now a particularly bad kind of LDL cholesterol whose small, dense particles are ideal for artery blockage.
Even if you have normal total and LDL blood cholesterol levels, you still may be at risk for developing heart disease if your small-dense LDL cholesterol level is elevated.
Although low-fat, high-carbohydrate diets may reduce total and LDL cholesterol, they are useless in lowering small-dense LDL cholesterol. In fact, they make it worse. Dr. Darlene Dreon and colleagues at the University of California-Berkeley have shown repeatedly that high-carbohydrate diets increase small-dense LDL cholesterol particles in men, women, and children. High-glycemic foods increase our blood triglycerides, which make small-dense LDL cholesterol. When we lower triglycerides—by cutting out the starch and the high-glycemic carbohydrates—we automatically lower our small-dense LDL cholesterol.
The Keys to Greater Insulin Sensitivity
The Paleo Diet improves insulin sensitivity in many ways. First, because it’s humanity’s original low-glycemic-carbohydrate, low-sugar diet, you won’t have to worry about triglycerides, HDL cholesterol, or small-dense LDL cholesterol. All of these blood values will rapidly normalize as your insulin level becomes reduced and stabilized.
The Paleo Diet’s high fiber, high protein, and omega 3 fat content all improve insulin sensitivity as well. Unlike starchy carbohydrates,