SHRINK and BURN FAT Cells by Keeping Insulin Low and Overcoming Insulin Resistance | Dr. Ben Bikman

I think what we've done within the last couple generations is something that is totally unique in the history of human nutrition, which is now for the first time, we're getting very high fat and high carbohydrate foods. That doesn't exist in nature really, with one exception, which is milk. Milk happens to be high in all three macronutrients. Fat, carbohydrate, protein. That means it's a perfect cocktail for growth. But for those of us that are grown, you don't get fat and carbohydrate at high levels together. And I mentioned protein. What we've done is of course, strip away the protein because protein is very satiating. So it doesn't make sense for a food manufacturer to want to keep the protein in there because that's bad for business, because then someone doesn't want to eat as much and protein is expensive and so they can peel that protein off and do something else with it. Well then that's just another way to make more money. Carbohydrate and fat in nature would never come at a high level without some protein. We're eating foods from bags and boxes with barcodes. And that essentially means we're getting high fat, high carb, low protein foods. And tragically, it's the worst kind of carbs, which is refined sugars and starches, and the worst kinds of fats, which are refined seed oils. This is a total departure from an ancestral way of eating that we've put ourselves in in very little time.

I don't even like to say I'm a low carb advocate. I'm a control carb advocate. Just be smart about the carbohydrates.

If you give one group of people.

A drink that is made up of fructose, like a fructose water drink, another group is getting a glucose water drink. These are two carbohydra, both monosaccharides and they're isocaloric, so there's no difference in their calorie consumption. They're drinking the exact same amount of calories. And the group that's drinking the fructose solutions are gaining more fat selectively in their visceral fat and relatively less in their subcutaneous fat. That is the exact opposite compared with the glucose drinking group who is growing more subcutaneous fat and relatively less visceral. So we can absolutely contribute and, and or reduce the visceral fat that we have by changing our diet. And the low hanging fruit is just drink less fructose. When we're drinking sugary Sodas, or we're drinking fruit juice that is pure fructose and water don't do it. So control the fructose. And that's not the same as eating fruit. You'd have to eat a hell of a lot of fruit to get enough fructose to start changing visceral fat accumulation. That's not the concern. I'm not declaring war on fruit, but I am declaring war on fruit juice and other forms of, you know, highly accessible and highly consumable fructose like sugary sodas.

When someone goes to bed, they're not eating. Now, for the first time in a long time, insulin can finally start to come down because it takes several hours after eating for insulin to come down. During that period where insulin is at its low or fasting state, the body's becoming more insulin sensitive, and the body starts going into a more fat burning state, because low insulin means higher fat burning.

When insulin is low, metabolic rate is higher to the tune of about 300 calories per day.

Well, if you can fast through that period or somehow prolong it either by fasting through breakfast or fasting through dinner, by just starting the insulin drop earlier, whatever way you do that on either end of the day, you've simply prolonged the period of low insulin, which means you're enhancing an insulin sensitizing state or allowing insulin to do its job a little better and stay at lower levels. But the tragedy is that someone has eaten a big dinner and an evening snack, and their insulin takes a long time to come down. Well, right around the time it's coming down, they're waking up. And wouldn't you know it, they're ending their fast.

They're breaking their fast with a starchy, sugary breakfast.

It's bagels or cinnamon rolls or toast or cereal or orange juice. And that spikes insulin 10 times over where it had been. And it takes three hours to come down. And right around then, they're having their mid morning snack, and then lunch and then afternoon snack, and every waking moment is spent in a state of elevated insulin. That's a wonderful way to never burn fat for fuel. And it's a terrible way to make sure your body is becoming more and more insulin resistant at every moment of the day.

One of the problems with obesity, even not overt obesity, but just fat cells that are getting too big, even if the person is just modestly overweight, is that they become pro inflammatory. And this is why weight gain is associated with the subclinical inflammatory state, where it's subclinical because it's not like the person's coming in with some raging fever. But in fact the inflammatory markers are higher than you would expect in an otherwise healthy. If a body has inflammation, then it will become insulin resistant. Whether it's because the person's fighting an infection, whether they have an autoimmune disease, it doesn't matter. Immunity is activated, inflammation is up, and that means the body starts becoming more insulin resistant. And then the insulin would go up. As a result of the insulin resistance, this molecule, Nlrp3, if it's activated, it will essentially turn on all of the machinery to produce all of these pro inflammatory cytokines and initiate immune systems throughout the body. Now, of course, we need a healthy immune system, but you want it to be turned on when it's supposed to be turned on and turned off when it should be turned off.

Fasting is the most effective rapid way of lowering insulin. When you simply stop eating or drinking energy and calories, insulin has no choice but to start to come down.

If you deprive a fat cell of nutrients, it will shrink. An alternative way of shrinking a fat cell is lowering insulin. So even if you're eating a lot and there's still fat coming in, it likely will not match the rate at which the fat is coming out in be burned. If you're focusing on a low insulin approach, it doesn't have to be a hunger based approach, which is very valuable because you can't beat hunger. You got to be satisfied, otherwise you'll never stop eating. When insulin is low, your metabolic rate is higher. So let's say you're eating more calories than your body needs. Well, that's okay because you're pushing out more calories than normal. When you're making ketones, you're also excreting ketones. Ketones have a caloric value. And so if someone's in ketosis and now they're breathing out ketones, they are pushing out actual caloric loaded molecules from their body. And these are calories that didn't need to be burned and didn't need to be stored. You just wasted them. That is how determined the body is to reconcile energy. When insulin is low. Insulin wants to store, store, store. So it will slow metabolic rate and it will promote tissue growth. And that's not a bad thing. We need to grow sometimes, you know, we need insulin. I'm not saying it's bad, we just don't want it to be high. And when it is high, we want it to be very quick. It's acute, it's up and then it's back down.