Why should we care about insulin resistance?

If you know me very well, you're aware that I’m pretty obsessed with longevity. (Especially my wife, who has graciously put up with all my shenanigans over the years). But to really have a handle on longevity, you must have some degree of understanding of metabolic health, especially pertaining to insulin resistance, and one of it’s endgame results, type 2 diabetes (T2D).

Why should we care about insulin resistance? If we’re going to enhance and lengthen our lifespan, we must delay the onset of chronic disease. Those include, but are not limited to, cardiovascular disease, neurovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, & cancer. Not to mention NAFLD (non-alcoholic fatty liver disease) & NASH (nonalcoholic steatohepatitis), a leading cause of liver transplant in the US, but that’s a whole other discussion.

So again, why should we care? Because those with insulin resistance have the same risks as those with T2D, which is on the end of a spectrum, insulin resistance simply being the pathway to get there. Also, insulin resistance enhances the risks of those chronic diseases mentioned.

I took this a step further, getting myself a CGM (continuous glucose monitor). While it would be phenomenal if it could also measure insulin levels in real time, that tech just isn’t available. Anyway, the results of the past week have been enlightening, and sometimes alarming. This has caused me to make some personal changes in my own life.

It’s simply imperative to invest in our wellness earlier in life, not just wait for disease to rear its ugly head, and we end up spending much of our finances and time investing in the medical community, when we should be active with our families and loved ones.

The Dalai Lama said it well when asked what was most surprising about humanity:

“Man, he sacrifices his health in order to make money, then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”

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