What is the actual cause of type two diabetes?

Most of you (diabetics especially) will be familiar with insulin. It is the hormone that transports blood sugar (glucose) and some other nutrients through the blood vessels and into cells; you can think of it as a delivery truck that is taking cargo (the sugar or nutrients) into factories (your cells). The problem arises when there is a considerable to severe imbalance between how much insulin+glucose is supplied and available, compared to how much your cells (those little factories) actually need. Cells can’t store more sugar on hand than they are going to use in the near future, otherwise the sugar crystallizes just like honey left in a jar for a long time, which locks up the cell like glue. So if too much insulin/sugar is present the cells will start lowering how much is allowed in, and over time it will barely let any in at all, even when it needs it because it has become severely ‘insulin resistant.’ The cells can no longer get energy and blood sugar starts piling up in the circulatory system. Since a constant over-abundance of glucose in the blood has tissue damaging toxic effects, as a safety mechanism it is stored as fat; and the whole imbalance leads to a wide range of cascading problems, including diabetes and obesity!

So diabetes in it’s actual mechanisms is caused by the hormone imbalance caused by having more insulin than is needed, and usually in great amounts. Our goal to reverse this imbalance, and through that we reverse the disease as well, by decreasing glucose supply which lowers the need for a cell to maintain insulin resistance, while simultaneously increasing the need for insulin which directly lowers insulin resistance from within the cells and takes up more free floating blood sugar. We accomplish this through better nutrition with improved food quality, type and timing, and through weight training which grows muscles and forces them to need and take up more insulin (Cardio is not nearly as effective at this, but is an important element of overall health). In the end we look to create the opposite pattern as described in the picture above, and when we fix the imbalance, diabetes type two is on it’s way to being functionally gone. Some type two diabetics after may have some degree of a decrease in pancreatic function (the organ that creates insulin, among other hormones) that develops, but this combined lifestyle approach offers the best chances and progress in insulin regulation and the defeat of diabetes.

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