#68 Episode: Insulin Resistance: The Hidden Cause of High Cholesterol
What if there’s more to your cholesterol levels than meets the eye? I’m taking a closer look at this important topic with Amanda Yue, our functional medicine practitioner, and Shannon Davis, our registered dietitian—Our two health experts who are breaking down the link between insulin resistance and high cholesterol. Listen and join us to learn important insights and easy tips to help you take control of your health naturally.
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Show Notes
Introduction to Amanda Yue and Shannon Davis
Amanda Yue: Functional Medicine Practitioner with a focus on sustainable health solutions.
Shannon Davis: Registered Dietitian with 18 years of experience in metabolic health.
Discussion on Insulin Resistance and Cholesterol
Explanation of insulin resistance and its connection to cholesterol.
Amanda's suitcase analogy: How cells resist glucose due to insulin resistance.
Differences between LDL (bad cholesterol) and HDL (good cholesterol).
Shannon’s insight on the role of triglycerides in determining metabolic health.
Dangers of Statin Use
Potential side effects of statins, including dementia and type 2 diabetes.
The low efficacy of statins in preventing cardiac events.
Natural Solutions to Insulin Resistance and High Cholesterol
Discussion of a natural supplement used by Amanda and Shannon that improves triglycerides and HDL levels.
The importance of dietary changes: reducing processed foods, controlling carbohydrate intake, and incorporating time-restricted eating.
Testing for Insulin Resistance
Importance of fasting insulin tests.
Other key tests: A1C, full lipid panel, thyroid panel, and CRP for inflammation.
Practical Tips for Managing Cholesterol
Time-restricted eating and reducing carbohydrate intake.
Prioritizing protein and healthy fats in your diet.
Avoiding frequent snacking to lower insulin levels.
Key Takeaways
Insulin resistance is a key factor in high cholesterol and many chronic health issues.
Statins may have serious side effects with limited benefits in preventing cardiac events.
Natural dietary changes and supplements can significantly improve cholesterol levels and overall metabolic health.
Understanding your triglyceride-to-HDL ratio is crucial for assessing metabolic health and insulin resistance.
Fasting insulin tests are vital for detecting insulin resistance long before it shows up in other lab results.
Transcript
Hello, everyone and welcome back to Better Than A Pill. Today, I'm so excited to have back on Amanda Yue and Shannon Davis, who are going to be on the podcast a lot regularly. Now, Amanda is our functional medicine practitioner now, and As you, some of she's been on before she's been able to transform her own health and her mission is to help others achieve health outcomes sustainably.
She has found a product that works better than medication for chronic health issues, including mental health and metabolic health, which are closely correlated. And Shannon is our registered dietitian. For the past 18 years, she's specialized in metabolic health. She has experience in organ transplant, bariatric sports, nutrition, and nephrology.
And her passion is helping people shift their focus to insulin resistance in order to heal from chronic disease. So welcome ladies.
Thank you. Happy to be here. Yay. And I am too.
And today we're going to be talking about insulin resistance and high cholesterol. So we're going to get into this and I know there are a lot of people listening.
that are dealing with these things. So I'm just going to throw out like a question which would be how does insulin resistance affect cholesterol? You want me to go or you want to go? I was like we can both go. I can start insulin resistance affects so many, if you can see my poster back here, I have insulin resistance is at the root and it's.
It is the root cause for so many diagnoses for so many symptoms and cholesterol is one of them fatty livers Yes, high cholesterol. So insulin resistant is linked to so many chronic health issues So what is this? Insulin resistance, right? I'll take that. And insulin resistance is a state of too much insulin in the body.
It's hyperinsulinemia leading to insulin resistance. So I like that analogy that I think Shannon have used in the past, when you pack your suitcase to go travels, and then you keep stuffing and stuffing, and then you can't close the suitcase. So insulin's the same way, your cells is full of sugars, full of glucose.
So it's too full. I can't fit any more glucose in the cells. So the cells like, Nope, no more. So I'm going to resist. So that's insulin resistance. So therefore you have too much glucose floating around and excess glucose. Whoa. transform will turn into glycogen and turn into triglyceride turn into store fat and triglyceride is the Harmful lipids that's floating around leading to causing plaque formation so that the simple terms of it So and then of course Cholesterol many of us just look at LDL.
So when you get your lipid panels, right? It's like you see high LDL Oh, no, it's like your doctor want to prescribe stans, right? But LDL, there's two parts of LDL. There's the good part, and then there's bad part. There's particle A and there's particle B. So think of the particle A as the big B beach ball.
That's the good cholesterol that's responsible for hormone, hormone synthesis for brain functions. Whereas the other one, the oxidized LDL, the particle B. B that's think of that as the rock or the boulders that can sink that can pass through the blood vessel causing plaque formation. So that's the my simple explanations of how insulin resistant affects cholesterol.
So I don't know if Shannon has anything to add to that. Yeah, no, that was great. But I'll just add a few tidbits. So what's interesting is when we think of cholesterol, you have total cholesterol, you have your LDL, which Amanda just spoke of, and you have HDL and then you have your triglycerides. When you go to your doctor and you get your panel back, most of the time, practitioners go straight for that total cholesterol.
And if your total cholesterol is, above 200, like they are on it. You need to be on a statin. This is serious. You're at risk for a cardiac complication. So let's just talk first about that just a little bit. So total cholesterol is the combination of HDL good. So think of H as happy and LDL is, has been called the bad guy.
No, I'm going to be the advocate for LDL because LDL is not such a bad guy. When you're prescribed to statin, this is interesting. Statins lower all cardiac events the increase, the, what their benefit is. One percent. So they lower your risk of a cardiac event by only one percent. What they target is that good cholesterol, which Amanda just spoke of.
Nobody really talks about that. They go after the good guy. And now what we're seeing is with statin use, we're seeing dementia. We're seeing type 2 diabetes. We've all known about the muscle pain, the headaches, the fatigue. A study was just released yesterday to now prove statins cause kidney disease.
So we're seeing all of these terrible side effects for a 1 percent increase in, in your mortality. So there's that, but a, total cholesterol again is a combination. What if you have a really high good cholesterol? That's going to make your number look bad. You're total bad. But we want a high good.
We want it as high as possible. Amanda mentioned in her, spoke of a product that she's been on in her biography. And I've been on that same product. I've had high cholesterol my entire adult life. It's so high that my doctor was so quote unquote concerned that, she's pounded me for a stat.
And for the last, I would say 15 years, which I completely refuse, but she's sent me for a full cardiac workup at Piedmont Heart Institute here in Atlanta. for a full cardiac calcium score, which is the gold standard. That was great. But the problem is yeah, I have a high LDL, but I have a very high HDL.
And what we should be focused on in terms of, Insulin resistance is your triglycerides, which come from your liver. That is the fat that is the excess spillover because those cells become resistant. Amanda said, the reason those cells become resistant, it's not because they're like, Hey, go somewhere else.
It's because the cell gets so big and fat in order to protect itself from basically exploding and dying. It becomes resistant to preserve it. Livelihood. It is our body's protective mechanism. So as it rejects any more sugar, any more energy, because everything breaks down into sugar or glucose that we eat in order to protect itself from exploding and dying.
That fat has to go somewhere that sugar And it goes to your liver and you get fatty liver, but we need to be focused on that. We should focus on that triglyceride divided by your good cholesterol. So we ideally, we want that good track. We want triglycerides to be below a hundred and we want our good cholesterol to be above 60.
So you would take your triglycerides and you would divide them by HDL and that number Is going to signify, are you insulin resistant or not? Are you at risk? And we want that to be 1. 5 or less. Wow. That's great information for everybody listening today. Not just looking at the LDL, HDL, but taking that number.
Thank you. You're welcome. So yes. Yeah, I just want to say one more thing. That is the biggest misunderstanding. I dispense a lot of statins. I dispense a lot. That's actually the number one fast moving medications at the pharmacy. And just from my own experience from my mother in law, who's been on it for the past 20 years because of high LDL.
that, it's affecting her brain function that she's having cognitive decline. So she's showing signs and symptoms of Alzheimer's dementias. And I've been able to get her off of Stanton since January, since I started this protocol and put her on this protocol. Now she's off Stanton and her triglyceride has come down.
Her HDL has improved a little bit. And her A1C, which is another one that, we test for insulin resistant for, type two diabetes, and that has also come down. And it's it's a concern. It's quite concerning. Yeah. And Amanda, you brought up a good point.
So notice, how she said statins were the number one prescribed drug. So if we go back 20 or 30 years, we'll notice that the standard for LDL was much, much higher. Now it's much, much lower. That's so they can Prescribe more drugs. Okay. Now we just talked about how triglycerides and HDL were much more important for longevity, for insulin resistance, for health, metabolic health.
Okay. There's not a medication that lowers triglycerides. They're. I guess there is one, but it doesn't work very well, and it has some nasty side effects, so it's not used often. Okay so most people don't get on it. There's not a medication that raises HDL. There was one that came out years and years ago, and it did not work, and it made people terribly sick.
So doctors don't talk about HDL or triglycerides because there's not a quote unquote cure. Medication band aid it, right? And, I, my LDL is almost 300, and it's been over 300 before. My doctor has a heart attack every time she looks at it. She's oh my God, that's awful. But workup, the calcium score done, and my insulin ratio, again, we want it under 1.
5, it's 0. 4. So I'm not concerned. I'm concerned. Even though my LDL is, mind blowing to general practitioners. I'm good. Yeah. Can you know what? Can you repeat that formula one more time for people listening so that they can make note of that? That's really important. Yes. About, about the ratio.
Yeah. Yep. So for, I was just going to say, so for instance when you, when My, my LDL is almost 300. It's 268 and it's been above 300 before. And so doctors get very scared when they see that they want that number under 200. But what we really need to pay attention to is your triglycerides divided by your HDL.
You want that under 1. 5 or less. So if I take my Triglycerides, which by the way, were two 50 until I started the protocol that Amanda and I both use Now they're 52. 50 down. Two 50, yo. Yes ma'am. My good cholesterol, we want above 60. It was 53, now it's 122. So if I take 50 and divide by 1 22, I get 0.4. Nice.
That's amazing. That's amazing. So mine too. We're prone to having high cholesterol in my family, especially my husband. We have reduced our triglycerides by 45%, both of us. It's just amazing. It's just mind blowing that I've been a pharmacist for 30 years and I've never seen, anything that can, that can reduce triglyceride this much in a short period of time in a matter of months, not years, and it's just amazing.
But no one knows about it. No one knows about it. Why? Because it's not a pharmaceutical. And we're the only country, I think New Zealand is it, in the world, that allows pharmaceuticals to advertise on TV. Yeah, because we're not on TV. So nobody knows about this amazing supplement. This one's been this one's been around for 30 years.
Yeah, it's been around for 30 years and it compared to metformin I actually did a video on this comparing the data to metformin and it's you know It's comparable. So it's a natural alternatives with It's food. And first of all, it's just fiber blend. It's just a, it's a very high quality fiber blends of soluble and insoluble fibers.
So it helps to support your gut. It helps to decrease the absorption of carbs and glucose. So you don't get these post meal, postprandial. Yeah. 43 percent reduction. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's just amazing. To touch base on that is since we're talking about cholesterol, the Cleveland Clinic, which I'm sure most of your listeners have heard of, it's the top cardiac hospital in the nation.
They studied our product. They studied this. And in their conclusion, they stated on a population basis, which We, 93 percent of our population has insulin resistance. This product, our supplement could replace lipid lowering medication. That is a profound statement, but no, no one knows about it.
And no one talks about it. And that's why we're here today, right? Because we can make a difference. And it's amazing to me, cause I don't know so little and I'm learning from y'all, but the power in this product and we have the link for those of you listening in the description, the feel great system as more than, for what I'm taking it for, which we were talking about, like on our previous episodes. So yeah, so there are other solutions that are better than appeal with less side effects. Because even though they have those ads on TV, really the most important part of those ads for these medications, the statins or whatever, we're talking about cholesterol is that the last part where they really want to skimp over.
You can die of a heart attack, be crippled for life, have, traumatic strokes. Yeah. So let's pay attention to those side effects too. So that's really important. And you're saying like we have a natural solution. If somebody goes to the doctor and, how do they determine, first of all, if they have insulin resistance, now that we know that can affect cholesterol, what tests should somebody be given?
I first so so most people will get an annual a one c a glucose. Okay. And they'll get a full lipid panel. So we get that. But what we also want to ask for is a fasting insulin because Carrie, believe it or not, this is to me how sad this is. So a fasting insulin is a very simple, very cheap, inexpensive test.
It's not anything extra. It can be added in to what's already been your vial of blood that they already draw. Now, our body is amazing. Like I said, our body. Does whatever it needs to do in order to save itself to be as healthy and maintain what we like to call homeostasis. And so we can be insulin resistant for 10 to 15 years before our labs show it.
What do so when we eat food, like Amanda said, that elicits a Insulin or a glucose response, mainly carbohydrates, sugars, fruit, starches, grains, right? These spike glucose. That's a normal thing that happens. And in a normal response to that, our body releases the insulin. If we're only checking glucose, And your glucose is normal.
And then we look at your A1c, which is your three month average. And by the way, that's all doctors check. Is your A1c Oh, Carrie, your A1c is fantastic. You are at zero risk for diabetes. You continue to do what you're doing. Problem is your body, and I'm just going to throw out an arbitrary number so people can get an idea.
Is your body squirting out 40 units of insulin to make that number, to appear normal to us in the background? Or is it squirting out five units of insulin to make that normal? If we don't know how much insulin it takes to make this number look great for us and our doctor, we're missing the bigger picture.
That happens. It happens. 10 to 15 years in the background, we could determine if you're heading in the wrong direction. Nobody checks a fasting insulin. So I highly recommend that your listeners fight for a fasted insulin. And if your doctors don't want to check it, you can go to Many places I think it's ownyourownlabs.
com and pay for it yourself inexpensively. I know there's another one like here in Atlanta, walkinlabs. com. It was 25. So most people can go to go themselves and request their own blood work, but that's a good one. A full lipid panel and A1C of glucose. Thyroid panel and a CRP is you're an inflammatory marker.
Now those are just some extras, but if you're a doctor's drawn blood work, why not? But I, if you just said Shannon, what is one test? I would say fasting insulin. Okay. And for that test, do you, I guess that what that means is that you should not eat any food before you get that at least 12 hours.
I know I haven't been getting that test because I always get my blood work and they never mention not eating. And if you're going to have but you carry really all of those that I just mentioned you're going to get a much better indication of what's going on. If you're all fasted, if you eat and you get lipid panels done, it's going to be completely inaccurate.
If you exercise. Your numbers are going to be skewed. I highly recommend that for if you're going to have blood work done, please fast. And for me, this is you're going to be like Shannon, you're crazy, but I schedule my lab work To any time after two o'clock so that it forces me to push to keep my fast going because I intermittent fast, so I push it out longer so I get a better accurate reading and I try to do it the same time every time if you can, I feel is as many variables as you can make the same.
You're just going to get a better reading. Result and then you can compare it each time is a reference of change, right? What is the change? Because one lab value to me means nothing. I need to see a trend. When I look at my patients, I want to see a trend. Yeah. That's powerful.
So we got a one C glucose, full lipid profile, most important test of fasting insulin. And then if you want to throw in a thyroid panel and a CRP for anti inflammatory markers and then one more, one more since we're talking about cholesterol CAC score a test. They're going to have to go get it.
Yes. Yeah. So CAC is a special test not necessarily in blood work. What is that? If they're concerned about coronary artery calcium score, if they're concerning about cardiac cardiovascular risk that is a one test that, yeah, that's like the gold standard test. Yes. Extra.
That's an extra. Yeah. Okay. And it's a CAC, coronary artery. Calcium. Calcium score. Okay. Wow. That's awesome. A lot of great information here for everybody, myself included, everybody else listening that we don't know. And definitely nobody tells you about fasting during your blood work. And I actually asked the last time I got my blood work, I said, you know what, do I need to be fasting for this?
And the answer was no, don't worry about that. Wow. But what we don't know, you don't know what you don't know, right? You don't know what you don't know. It doesn't matter how smart you are. So you don't know what you don't know. That's exactly right. Carrie and the reason I feel like most people say that is because.
Most people don't fast and we're in a society that is afraid to go without food. Oh, my gosh. You may have to go 12 hours without eating. I promise you, you're not going to die. If you go 12 hours without food, we actually function better as humans. Not eating every two to three hours. And there's one or two lab spots at 8 a.
m. in the morning and those get full people like freak out. Oh my gosh. That means I have to go a little while without eating. It will be okay. And I can see. Yeah. And I can just speak to that on personal experience, having been somebody that ate every six hours, two months ago to now doing this intermittent fasting, which I know we can do in different ways.
For some of you listening that are frightened, you can even eat three meals a day. But for me, I'm doing lunch and dinner and then I'm fasting and I'm, my body's totally adapted. Yeah, it's adapted. And so it's totally right to do it because I know you were a little hesitant. You were a little scared.
And it's not what you thought, right? My body's adapted to me. Like I'm not starving to death. My body's adapted during that period before lunch where I'm okay. Whereas before I would probably have already eaten three times. Yeah. Two times at least. So I'm just speaking on the behalf that it, what we think we can't do.
And I was totally resistant to it. Absolutely. Are you crazy? There's no way we have to convince you a little bit there by eating every two to three hours, eating that way, you keeping that insulin up there because insulin Does not risk does not come down as quickly as the glucose. So once the insulin is excreted out there, it pushes down glucose, but the insulin takes a lot longer for it to come down.
So if you have insulin resistance, it stays up there a lot longer. Yeah. So leading to insulin resistance. So we don't want to be snacking every two to three hours. We want to bring down the insulin so that your body can switch fuel sources. Your body can go and tap into your love handles, your store fat, and bring that out.
And use that for fuel and give you energy and focus. You might notice that you have better brain function. You think more clearly, you have more energy when you're in a fasted state. I exercise in a fasted state. What is one 30 right now? I'm still, in my fasted state and still drinking my tea and I'm not hungry and I'm not fatigued.
I yeah, that's amazing. And you've been, your body's obviously adapted and, proof. And and Carrie just one more thing on that. When we talk about insulin being high, like Amanda said, it takes about four hours to come down, but. Anytime insulin is high and present, we're in fat storage mode.
So I know a lot of people probably listen, listening, struggle with weight. And so if you are one of those people that have been like, no matter what I do, Shannon, I can't lose weight. Trust me, I have so many clients that come to me. Like I've tried everything. No matter what I do, I can't lose weight.
I exercise. I cut calories. As long as insulin's present and high, you're in fat storage mode. You will not lose weight. So now you've cut calories. Now you're exercising more and insolence high. Those are three BAMs to create just hunger, like crazy to drive hunger. And at the end of the day, hunger wins.
And speaking from where you were at, eating every two to three hours, you thought you were doing your body a favor. But, Because of that, your insulin was high, which kept you hungry. So the thought of going without food is hard and scary because we get very hungry. Yeah.
And we're conditioned, at least for me, being in the medical center, being at the Duke medical center, being at, around places that weight loss facilities that's what they teach, that's what I taught it. I taught it as a clinician. In this mainstream world. That's what we hear. Don't let your blood sugar drop.
You need to in between your meals be eating. And so like you get it ingrained in you. And yeah, which is another topic, but anyway, but yeah getting back a little bit, like with the cholesterol, what would you all say would be a good Diet for somebody that has high cholesterol. I'll just chime in really quick since, I did since you're the dietitian, maybe I should know a little bit about this.
Hopefully I did. I, there, look, everybody's different. So everybody's going to have to tweak it to fit their needs a little bit. But if I had to recommend a quote unquote diet, This is for metabolic health. Number one, I don't care if you're vegan, carnivore, paleo, keto, cut out processed foods as much as possible.
I think that's the number one thing. Anybody that can do that is going to see an improvement in their health. So that's number one. Number two, we've already touched on it. Incorporate some time restricted eating. It doesn't mean eating less. There are studies showing that people eat the exact same thing.
They just chunk it into an interval. And it's not spread out throughout the day and they see improvements in all metabolic function parameters. Okay. So number, so that 16, eight is a super popular timeframe where you're fasting for 16 and it does count when you sleep and then you eat for eight.
So that's another one. Watching your carbohydrate intake, controlling your carbs. We don't need carbs. We like carbs. Our body does not need, if our body needs glucose, it can sure make it. Okay. So really being cautious and being picky about the carbs that we put in our mouth. And I'm not saying you can't eat any, I sure eat them, but I am, I'm choosy about them.
I keep it like a, like I have this amount I need to, I can spend and when it's spent, it's gone. So I always recommend if you are not diabetic, Anything under a hundred, 50, depending on how active you are, 75 grams, if you are diabetic, 30 grams or less per day, not net carbs, total carbs, and then focus on protein.
You want around a gram per pound of your ideal weight, right? And you can divide that into one meal, two meals, three meals, and then focus on fiber, your non starchy vegetables, Again, when you eat this way, that's one of the benefits is there's no counting calories. There's no weighing and measuring food.
You just eat society. There's nothing worse than Packing up half of your meal and still being hungry and looking at it. 'cause we know I've done it. You eat it in the car you, it gets from the table to the car, from the restaurant, but then you eat it right away. But if you eat till you're satisfied, then you're not gonna snack.
You're not gonna have hunger constantly on your brain. And you do that by focusing on fiber, your protein. And then the last one is. Finish with fats. Don't fear fats, your coconut oil, your olive oil, your avocado oil, your butter, your tallow, your lard, your ghee, all the things that we were told to stay away from, we want to eat.
So really your time restricted eating, avoiding processed foods, controlling your carbs, prioritizing protein. And don't fear fat. Yeah. That's great advice. And and and just one more thing, like if you have to eat carbs, if you need to eat a little bit more carbs, just put that at the end. If you need to have fruits, put that at the end.
Don't start your, don't break your fast with a piece of bread. Or a smoothie like what you used to do, right? Carrie . Yeah. So now I do it. Yeah. Now my, yeah. But I didn't know, but my smoothie is now. You didn't know. Yeah. My smoothies, now my dessert. And yes, we're gonna revise the smoothie.
I teach for my clients but the smoothies now like, like a dessert. And I got rid of like the banana who knew? Yeah, like little things. Let's be picky. Like I had no idea. We think it's healthy. Yeah. And this is extra fiber here. If you don't like to eat vegetable, if you can't get fiber in, I travel to Italy, to Greece with this and it's so easy.
You just mix this in a Glass of water, drink it right away. This is my salad in a bowl. If I can't eat a lot of fiber. So this is very convenient. It's very effective. And what Amanda is referring to, for those of you that are just listening and not watching is a packet. It's a a supplement.
Yeah. Yep. The feel great system, which is the feel great system. Yeah. When you use both of them, when you use both of them together, it provides a synergistic effect. That's what the feel great system is. And that's what is what provided such profound benefits carry for my triglycerides and my HDL.
That's awesome. And that's, and this is the system I'm using. And so so for those of you listening, it's a combination of a very delicious yerba mate. Like we talked about before which I love, I just love it. And to me, like we talked about in the lab, there's so many other benefits I won't get into.
I know we're focused on this, but also the fiber drink I take before my meals and that helps to absorb the glucose. So that it doesn't slow down the absorption. Yeah. And it all, and it prevent the glucose spikes. Slow down the absorption to prevent. Okay. And that helps with the insulin resistance is what we're which we're talking about today.
And I'm learning, making sense of all this as I talk to you guys and you're on the podcast. And that also obviously directs affects our cholesterol. Yes. Yes. That's what I want to say. It helps to reduce the absorption of cholesterol as well. Yeah this has been a Awesome. You guys, this has been great information.
I know I've learned a lot and I know a lot of people that are listening today have learned a lot and we always include the link here. If you're interested about the system for the feel great system, it's in the episode so you can check that out and if you have any questions, reach out to us.
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