10 Signs You’re Becoming Insulin Resistant Even With Normal Blood Sugar

If you get insulin resistance right now, or if you're developing insulin resistance, chances are you won't find out for a very long time. Not because it's hidden, but because mainstream medicine is checking a variable that has a 20-year delay. Hello, health champions. Here are 10 signs that you're becoming insulin resistant, even when your blood sugar is in the normal range. And the first sign is if you have hunger after meals, or if you have hunger or cravings about one to two hours after you have eaten. Because what happens is insulin resistance causes excess insulin to be released because the cells are resisting. And there is also a delay in the release and the function of insulin. Now your blood sugar rises excessively and insulin overshoots. And anytime it overshoots, it can come crashing down. And what happens is it's the rate of the drop that causes the hunger and the cravings, not necessarily a low reading. So after you eat, here's roughly what it can look like. So insulin and glucose follow each other. First glucose rises and then insulin follows. The curve is gonna look approximately the same. And the way it's supposed to look is that you're starting off at a low level and then it rises a little bit, but it processes very quickly and then both glucose and insulin levels off. But if you're insulin resistant, then insulin isn't working. So there is, you're starting at a higher level, then there is a delay where it doesn't work as quickly, but then because it isn't working, the body keeps pumping out more insulin and it rises to a much higher level. And whenever it's high, now it comes crashing down and eventually it will level off, but it takes a whole lot longer. And it's this drop right here. It's the rate of that drop because it comes crashing down so quickly. Now that causes those hunger and cravings, not necessarily a low level. And sign number two is that our energy will crash after a meal. And what happens here is food provides some glucose and then through the process of digestion and absorption, that glucose gets into the bloodstream. And now insulin is a hormone that will help the glucose into the cell. And normally it doesn't take a whole lot of insulin and we get normal blood glucose. But when we're insulin resistant, now we have overfed. We have provided too much. We've pushed fuel into that cell over a longer period of time and that cells become insulin resistant. So now that insulin isn't working and maybe we'll have enough insulin to get the glucose down to normal. And maybe that glucose starts rising ever so slightly. So what we end up with then is normal or slightly elevated blood glucose, but that's in the blood. What's happening inside the cell is if the cells resist that action of insulin, which it does when you're insulin resistant, then there's gonna be less glucose inside the cells, even though there's plenty outside. And now as a result, we don't have the glucose inside to make energy and our energy will crash. And number three is that you can get brain fog or loss of concentration, loss of focus, because the brain is insulin dependent, but in a different way than most other cells in the body. The insulin has to get into the brain to work, but it must cross the blood brain barrier first. And it has to get across with what's called a saturable transporter. And that word saturable is important because it means we can saturate that transporter. So if we have chronically high insulin over time, now it will down regulate, it will fill up, will clog that transporter so it can't get as much insulin across. So it still becomes insulin resistant in that sense, but it's a different mechanism. So now when less insulin reaches the brain cells, it's not that glucose can't get across, it's a different mechanism, but it sort of works the same because now we have impaired signaling and glucose utilization in those brain cells. And the end result is the same, that we have less energy available for the brain cells and as a result, brain fog and loss of concentration. Sign number four is an expanding waistline because insulin is a storage hormone. Its job is to take excess fuel and convert it to fat and help the body store it for future use. And it tends to target the liver and visceral fat so it ends up in the belly area because the liver is going to process all this excess fuel and turn it into a storable form of fat called triglycerides. But then the liver also has a constant turnover and it exports triglycerides into the blood as VLDLs. But the first place it's going to encounter is the visceral fat because that surrounds the liver and that's why we tend to get more fat accumulation in the liver and in the visceral fat first. And this can happen even with stable weight. We can find that we redistribute the fat inward toward the belly for two reasons because there are more receptors in the visceral fat than in the subcutaneous fat. And these are both insulin receptors and cortisol receptors that contribute to that process. And then what a lot of people find with the passage of time as we get older, that we could lose muscle both from the process of aging but more so from inactivity and a sedentary lifestyle. If we don't stress the muscles with some weight-bearing exercise or some resistance training, then they don't have a reason to maintain the same level and they start degenerating. And at the same time, we gain some weight and we gain that weight as fat. So now what happens is a concept known as TOFI which stands for thin on the outside and fat on the inside. Number five is if we can't lose weight, if it becomes very difficult to lose weight even though we feel like we're doing everything right. And one of the mechanisms here is that high levels of insulin will suppress a hormone called HSL or hormone-sensitive lipase. So lipase is a broad grouping of hormones that break down fat. We have digestive, we have pancreatic, lipase and so forth. But this specific one, it lives inside the fat cells. And like we said before, the purpose of fat cells is to store energy for future use. And it's the HSL that breaks down the fat inside these fat cells so that we can liberate it and use it for energy. But with high insulin levels and suppressed hormone-sensitive lipase levels, now what happens is that we can be in storage mode despite a calorie deficit. So we've stored all this energy, we'd like to get it back but now we can't, we stay in storage mode. That energy is inaccessible. Plus what happens now is because we can't get the energy back, now we get more hunger and cravings. So we can't break down the fat and we end up eating more. And that's why it's so important to understand these mechanisms. Because a lot of people who have an easy time losing weight, they just say, well, eat less. But if you have all these processes going on that we're talking about, it's not about willpower. Your physiology is working against you because over time your body's become insulin resistant. Sign number six is if you get blood work and you have high levels of triglycerides and low levels of HDL. So what happens when you're insulin resistant, like we said, you're absorbing less glucose into the cell and you're also burning less fat. What happens then is that the liver is adding more fat. It's adding more triglycerides into the bloodstream because it makes more VLDLs, very low density lipoproteins. That's how the liver packages the fat to export it into the bloodstream and deliver it to the cells. So now we increase the levels of fat in the blood, but we have less fat burning because the cells don't want it. So as a result, these triglycerides, these higher levels of triglycerides, they have nowhere to go. Now, what normally happens is these lipoproteins, the carriers, the HDL, the VLDL, the LDL, they're constantly swapping components back and forth. That's a normal function. So they both have cholesterol and triglycerides, but in different ratios. And they keep exchanging that with each other. So with high triglyceride levels in the blood, some of that is gonna be pushed into the HDL carriers. And that makes the HDL carriers unhealthy. They're gonna increase triglycerides and drop some cholesterol, which is the opposite configuration of healthy HDL. And these HDL carriers are going to shrink. They're gonna get tiny. And as a result, they have a lower half-life. That means that the time that they spend in the bloodstream goes way, way down. And as a result, our total levels of HDL goes down. And this is so important to understand because this is one of the most classic signs of insulin resistance and inflammation and metabolically poor health when we have higher triglycerides and lower levels of HDL. And it's not because HDL isn't produced. The body still makes it, but it keeps on disappearing. Sign number seven is when your blood pressure starts creeping up slowly because insulin, high levels of insulin will tell the kidney to reabsorb sodium and water at a higher level. So we retain more sodium and more water. And that's an imbalance because of high insulin. Normally, we have something called pressure diuresis where the body can regulate blood pressure perfectly well, but with insulin resistance, we kind of kick that mechanism out. And what's important to understand is that this is very early, that the blood pressure can start creeping up despite totally normal blood glucose. And number eight is we get disrupted sleep due to waking up excessively in the middle of the night. And I wanna point out that this is the weakest evidence out of these 10 points that I'm bringing up, but the mechanism is very sound. So some of this is probably still going on. So one of the classic signs of insulin resistance is that the body loses its ability to appropriately regulate blood sugar. And as a result, we also have less stable blood glucose regulation at night. Most people don't think about this, but you eat the previous day and then you sleep during the night, but your body still needs that blood glucose to stay level. And that's not working as well now. So in the body, we have insulin to bring blood glucose down, but then there's something called a counter regulatory system which brings blood glucose up. And this is what happens during the night. But with insulin resistance, we're also going to have a less stable system and signals to bring that blood sugar up. And those hormones we're talking about are glucagon, cortisol, adrenaline, and human growth hormone. But in terms of waking up at night, there's two in particular that are gonna kind of stir you a little bit and be responsible for that waking, and that's glucagon and adrenaline. So adrenaline is that quick stress hormone that kind of makes your hair stand on end and gives you that alert response. And then cortisol is going to be released normally. So every night you have an increase in cortisol and it's not necessarily gonna wake you up. It's not the main one responsible, but it still contributes to that waking up to this alert reaction. Whereas human growth hormone is also part of this counter regulatory mechanism, but in terms of waking you up, it's very, very marginal. It's not gonna play a big role. Sign number nine is elevated uric acid. So this is also something you would find on a blood test because insulin resistance reduces the kidney's ability to excrete, to get rid of uric acid. And with high levels, this could result in something very painful called gout, when you have uric acid crystallized into little particles that sit in the joints of the body. So it feels like broken glass. And one of the classic joints is the big toe, or it could simply be that you have a little bit of an increased number on your blood work panel. Now, the reason we wanna keep this in mind, even if we don't have symptoms, is that this is often a shift that happens before glucose or lipids start changing. So it's one of the earliest things that we can use to look for insulin resistance. And this is very underused, but it's so easy to check. And number 10 is the strongest indicator we have of insulin resistance. And that's when we take blood work and we find elevated insulin with normal blood glucose levels. But the problem is that insulin is hardly ever tested. And we'll talk more about this here. So there's something called HOMA-IR, homeostatic model assessment of insulin resistance. And it's a simple formula where we take the glucose and we multiply it by the insulin, and then we divide by the number 405 just to get a manageable number. But the beauty of this formula is that it tells us two things. The glucose is often gonna stay the same for the longest time because it's a controlled variable. But the insulin number, putting that into the formula, it tells us how hard the body is trying to control it. As an example, we have a healthy person, the glucose is 90 and the insulin is at 4.5. I usually quote the range of healthy insulin as being like between two and five, but anything down in this range is really good. Now we put that into the formula and we get a number that HOMA-IR is 1.0. And that's why they use the 405 because it gives us a number around one. So it's easy to remember and it's manageable. But the range for glucose, the normal acceptable range is often quoted as 65 to 100. So if you come back now with a number of 92, that's still gonna look almost the same as 90, but it's actually starting to slip a little bit because usually when people get into this range, their insulin is already a lot higher. So now if the insulin is 15, HOMA-IR ends up at 3.4. So the reason we wanna understand this formula, the number for insulin and the number for HOMA-IR is how insulin resistant we are, where insulin is how hard is the body working at keeping it this way. So even though the glucose is almost identical, in the second case here, we are three and a half times, 3.4 times more insulin resistant, but the glucose number has hardly changed at all. So we have to understand that glucose is a control variable. It's not that we shouldn't test it because it's so simple, we might as well do it, but because it's controlled, it's not going to tell us very much. The body is trying really hard at keeping it at a certain level. Now, if we compare, we look at the progress, we look at glucose in yellow and insulin in red, a person who is healthy and insulin sensitive, they might have a number like we saw on the previous page. Let's call the glucose 90 and the insulin four and a half. But five years later, if we only test glucose, we may not see any difference. It might stay the same, or it could go up and down a few points. It might even be 88 because we took a walk that day or we ate something different. But over time, we become more insulin resistant. Over time, the body is working harder to control that glucose, so insulin might be doubled. And 10 years later, it might be even higher. And 15 years later, it could have quadrupled without really having an impact on glucose because that high level of insulin is controlling, it's working hard to control that glucose. And then 20 years later, we might see the first signs where that glucose is getting a little bit out of hand, where it goes over 100. So over time, insulin is working harder and harder and harder. This is this red line, and it's not gonna necessarily be a straight line, but it's fairly predictable. It's much more linear because it is the variable that shows how hard the body is working, that shows how insulin resistant we are. The blood glucose is only going to change significantly after the system fails. When the system is exhausted, when it gives up, that's when we get into that diabetic range and glucose is no longer controlled. And if we draw a line to see that development, we see this yellow line. It's almost perfectly level for 10, 15, 20 years. And it's only, as I said, when the body fails, that's when we're gonna start seeing an increase. And what this tells us is that blood glucose is the last domino to fall. And this could happen 20 years into the process. Now, here's why I made this video. This is what's so important to understand. Think about all the signs, all the health problem, all the imbalances that we've talked about in this video. Every single one has been about insulin problems. It's not blood sugar causing these problems, it is insulin. And yet, insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes are viewed and treated as glucose problems only. The world is completely obsessed with glucose and it totally ignores insulin. And remember, all the things we talked about in this video are insulin problems, not glucose problems. Now, to make things worse, because they view this as a glucose problem only, the treatment is to increase insulin, is to give you exogenous insulin or to give you pills to increase your body's production of insulin. And in doing this, they actually make insulin resistance worse. Everything we talked about is how the body gets out of balance by insulin resistance and the treatment is to make it worse. So we absolutely have to understand the insulin. And yet, they will check your blood glucose every time, but if you try to get your insulin tested, they will fight you on that. So the US in total on their healthcare or sick care system spends $5.7 trillion, that was the number for 2025. And they will routinely order tests, they'll order imaging, they'll order all sorts of expensive tests running thousands of dollars per test. And yet, they won't spend $20 on an insulin test, even if you ask for it. Even though insulin resistance is the number one health problem we have in the world. And if we were to start testing insulin, we would have a very good chance at understanding more and getting some control over this process. So please understand this and please talk to your doctor about getting an insulin test and share this video so that we can start understanding and knowing how this works. If you enjoyed this video, you're gonna love that one. And if you truly wanna master health by understanding how the body really works, make sure you subscribe, hit that bell and turn on all the notifications so you never miss a life-saving video.