Dairy and Its Effect on Insulin
/
Photo by Charlotte May from Pexels
By: Mark Sisson
The relationship between dairy consumption, insulin, and our health can be confusing. It’s easy to see why: The most common types of dairy undeniably spike our insulin levels, and elevated insulin has been linked to dozens of diseases—most diseases, in fact. When insulin is high, your body holds onto body fat. And insulin resistance, which is when your body doesn’t respond to insulin and must release large amounts of the hormone, makes it harder to lose body fat and is the precipitating factor in a host of degenerative diseases.
So, dairy is bad, right? No. The opposite, in fact.
Insulin is an old, old hormone. Evolution has preserved its structure across hundreds of millions of years and hundreds of thousands of species. Fish, insects, reptiles, birds, and mammals all secrete insulin with fairly similar amino acid arrangements (insulin from certain species of fish has even been clinically effective in humans), so, clearly, it is a vital hormone required by life to flourish and prosper.
What is insulin good for?
We need insulin to shuttle all sorts of nutrients into cells, like protein and glycogen into muscles.
We need insulin to activate certain antioxidant systems.
We need insulin to optimize our cognitive function.
In other words, insulin is there for a reason, and “spikes” of insulin are normal as long as they go back down. It’s chronically elevated insulin, especially fasting insulin (high insulin levels in the absence of food), and insulin resistance that are harbingers of disease.
Read the rest of the article here:
