Supplements
What about supplements such as Chromium?
All of my diabetics go on 1,000 mcg of chromium, some a little bit more if they are really big people. The amount is usually 500 mcg for a non-diabetic, though it depends on their insulin levels.
I use a lot of supplements. What you really want to do is to try to convert the person back into being an efficient burner of fat. Earlier we talked about when you are very insulin resistant and you are waking up in the morning with an insulin level that is elevated, you cannot burn fat but instead are burning sugar.
One of the reasons that sugar goes up so high is because that is what your cell is needing to burn, but if it is so insulin resistant it requires a blood sugar of 300 so that just by mass action some can get into the cell and be used as fuel. If you eliminate that need to burn sugar, you don't need such high levels of sugar even if you are insulin resistant.
You want to increase the ability of the cells in the body to burn fat and make that glucose burner into a fat burner. You want to make a gasoline-burning car into a diesel-burning car. Did anyone ever look at the molecular structure of diesel fuel in your spare time? It looks almost identical to a fatty acid. There is a company right now that can tell you how to alter vegetable oil to use in your Mercedes. It's just a matter of thinning it out a little bit. It is a very efficient fuel.
Triglycerides
You can look at other variables that will give you some idea too, such as triglycerides. If people are very sensitive to high levels of insulin, they come in with insulin levels of 14 and they have triglycerides of 1000. You would treat them just as you would if they had an insulin level of 50. It gives you some idea of the effect of the hyperinsulinemia on the body.
You can use triglycerides as a gauge, which I often do. The objective is to try to get the insulin level just as low as you possibly can. There is no limit. They classify diabetes now as a fasting blood sugar of 126 or higher. A few months ago it might have been 140. It is just an arbitrary number. Does that mean that someone with a blood sugar of 125 is non-diabetic and fine? If you have a blood sugar of 125 you are worse than if you had a blood sugar of 124--same with insulin. If you have a fasting insulin of 10, you are worse off than if you had an insulin of 9. You want to get it just as low as you can.
Does This Apply to Athletes?
With athletes, think about the effect of carbohydrate loading before an event. What happens if you eat a bowl of pasta before you have to run a marathon? What does that bowl of pasta do? It raises your insulin. What is the instruction of insulin to your body?
To store energy and not burn it. I see a fair amount of athletes and this is what I tell them, you want everybody, athletes especially, to be able to burn fat efficiently. So when they train, they are on a very low-carbohydrate diet. The night before their event, they can stock up on sugar and load their glycogen if they would like.
They are not going to become insulin resistant in one day. Just enough to make sure, it has been shown that if you eat a big carbohydrate meal that you will increase your glycogen stores, that is true and that is what you want. But you don't want to train that way because if you do you won't be able to burn fat, you can only burn sugar, and if you are an athlete you want to be able to burn both.
Few people have problems burning sugar if they are athletes, but they have lots of problems burning fat, so they hit the wall. And for certain events, like sprinting, it is less important, truthfully for their health it is very important to be able to burn fat, but a sprinter will go right into burning sugar. If you are a 50-yard dash person, whether you can burn fat or not is not going to make a huge difference in your final performance.
Beyond your athletic years, if you don't want to become a diabetic, and don't want to die of heart disease and don't want to age quickly, it is certainly not going to do you any harm to be able to burn fat efficiently in addition to sugar.
Vanadyl Sulfate
Vanadyl Sulfate is an insulin mimic, so that it can basically do what insulin does by a different mechanism. If it went through the same insulin receptors, then it wouldn't offer any benefit, but it doesn't, it actually has been shown to go through a different mechanism to lower blood sugar, so it spares insulin and then it can help improve insulin sensitivity. To really lower a person’s insulin, I give 25 mg 3 times a day temporarily.
Glutamine Powder
I also put people on glutamine powder. Glutamine can act as a brain fuel, so it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings while they are in that transition period. I like to give it to them at night, and I tell them to use it whenever they feel they are craving carbohydrates. They can put several grams into a little water and drink it and it helps eliminate carbohydrate cravings between meals.
A high-protein diet will increase an acid load in the body, but not necessarily a high-fat diet. Vegetables and greens are alkalinizing, so if you are eating a lot of vegetables along with your protein it equalizes the acidifying effect of the protein. I don't recommend a high-protein diet; I recommend an adequate protein diet.
