Staying in overdrive too often can outstrip your metabolic resources. Stress and lack of sleep, for example, cause the adrenal glands to overproduce the stress hormone cortisol and keep levels elevated. When cortisol increases, so does your blood glucose, to provide your muscles with fuel should you need to run fast. The problem is that your muscle cells don’t need the glucose when you are responding to emotional stress or lack of sleep, so the hormone insulin increases to shuttle the excess glucose into your fat cells - usually the ones in your abdomen. In an overspent state, insulin does this too efficiently. Too much insulin causes blood glucose to drop too quickly. You crave the one thing that can quickly raise blood glucose: sugar. If you turn to sugar and fat - as most people under stress do - glucose rises, insulin rises, glucose falls. You’re hungry again.
Overdrive can also result from eating a lot of sugar, HFCS and refined foods. In this case, blood sugar rapidly rises and falls, and so does insulin. To compensate for the volatility of rapid rises and falls in sugar and hormones, the metabolism runs fast. In fact many of my patients who have hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) are fairly slender. It’s not until the progress to “metabolic resistance stage” that they start to gain weight.
As overdrive progresses, the problem magnifies. When insulin levels remain high too long and too often, your brain and muscle cells eventually stop responding. Rather than soaking up blood sugar, muscle cells ignore rises in insulin. Your body starts conserving calories, and you see the results in your gut. Your abdomen grows. Even when you cut calories or portions, you can’t seem to get rid of the spare tire or love handles. Meet metabolic resistance, also known as Syndrome X and metabolic syndrome; it puts you at risk for and can also lead to diabetes or polycystic ovarian syndrome, a condition in which women develop high levels of male hormones, cysts in their ovaries, and, frequently, infertility.
