– By Bob Graves
At the start of each New Year it’s traditional to make resolutions to improve our lives. The aspiration to be healthier (eat better, weigh less, exercise more) always seems to be an important goal on our lists. At eSavvyHealth, helping you achieve better health is at the heart of our company mission—to help you push aside noise, confusion, half-truths and misinformation about health, discover objective sources and facts, and develop the ability to confidently chart a course to a healthy life.
To help you start this year off with success, I’d like to tell you about a fascinating study [1] that was done over two decades ago. It focused on what happens to peoples’ health when their energy management systems, or metabolisms, are not working correctly (the defect studied was reduced sensitivity to insulin—also called insulin resistance). The hormone insulin is a key regulator of metabolism and the researchers wanted to evaluate whether the degree of insulin resistance could predict a variety of age-related diseases. They divided a number of adults into three groups based on whether their energy regulation systems (insulin sensitivity and blood sugar control) were normal, slightly abnormal or significantly abnormal, which would indicate high levels of insulin resistance. Then they tracked each person for a number of years. To determine the impact of insulin resistance on long-term health they measured adverse events like cancer, heart attacks, hypertension and diabetes. The results were rather amazing: those with no insulin resistance had zero adverse outcomes, and those with higher insulin resistance had the greatest number of adverse outcomes. In fact, age-related disease developed in approximately one out of three individuals who were in the upper third of insulin resistance at the starting point. In contrast, no clinical event was seen in the least insulin-resistant bottom third.
I’m sure you’d like to have healthy outcomes like the study participants with minimal or no insulin resistance. We believe you can. This study (and others) predict that you’ll be healthier and likely live longer with fewer diseases.
These results highlight three important questions you should be asking yourself: How might health be defined (from an energy regulation perspective)? What are the most significant factors which reduce your health status? What can you do to most effectively improve your health?
It’s our intention at eSavvyHealth to provide you with information, drawn from resources like this study, to help you answer these questions. We do this by explaining the fundamentals of how the body works rather than just telling you to follow this or that diet. We think the basics are super important. And, as we say in the Get Savvy About Blood Sugar course, you can’t get more basic than how the body produces and uses energy. The equation is simple, without energy you can’t run a body and live. With energy you can. In this light, what it means to have energy health (or metabolic health) is really pretty simple: The energy systems of the body are functioning as they should — which is to say, normally.
You may be thinking, In terms of health, aren’t there important factors other than energy? Absolutely, but none are more basic, and all eventually interact with the energy system. It’s no wonder that when the energy system goes out of kilter many undesirable problems and diseases occur. Medicine*, by definition, focuses on diseases. We don’t. At eSavvyHealth we focus on how the body should run and provide education resources to help you identify, target and even achieve more optimal health. When you improve your health, you’ll likely have less need for medicine – not to mention attaining a New Year’s resolution.
I wish you great success in the coming year. Stay connected with us at eSavvyHealth to make it as healthy and enjoyable a year as possible.
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* medicine, def. “the art or science of treating disease with drugs or curative substances, as distinguished from surgery and obstetrics”
Reference
1. Insulin Resistance as a Predictor of Age-Related Diseases, J Clin Endocrinol Metab 86: 3574–3578, 2001
