Christopher Ellis explains how insulin resistance directly causes high blood pressure. When cells stop responding to insulin, the cardiovascular system malfunctions. Most physical therapists know insulin resistance raises heart disease risk but don't learn why.
Before I even get there, I want to talk about the correlation between insulin resistance and hypertension, because it's so important. It's super common. It's probably, I'm guessing, the number one reason blood pressure rises. Just about every, not every, but most cells of the body have insulin receptors. So, when they stop responding, bad things happen. So, it can literally affect probably every system of the body. It can sort of selectively Affects systems, and in this case, the cardiovascular system. I also want to talk about it because I feel like a lot of practitioners don't fully understand the mechanism. We learn, you know, in PT school, we definitely learned that diabetes and insulin resistance increase the risk for hypertension and stroke and heart attack, but we weren't really taught the actual mechanism. But in this case, there definitely is a direct mechanism. So, I kind of also want to educate at least the other physical therapists out there.
