Your endocrine system performs an amazing job: Glands like your pituitary, pancreas, and thyroid are part of a highly sophisticated messaging system that delivers a wide range of hormones your body needs to function. Hormones regulate everything from your sleep and appetite to your fertility and mood.
Insulin is the critical hormone produced by your pancreas that controls your blood sugar. When your body’s response to insulin goes awry, the condition of insulin resistance develops. Unfortunately, multiple negative health condition offshoots can emerge as a result of insulin resistance.
Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia is dedicated to helping patients with insulin resistance — it’s one of many health conditions they have expertise in addressing. Gain Wellness Center offers a range of services and treatments for patients, and our approach is to assess your overall health in an in-depth way, so we can target treating the specific symptom with which you’re struggling.
Insulin resistance defined
Simply, insulin resistance is when your body’s response to insulin is impaired. This leads to a host of health problems that we’ll detail shortly, but the first problem is elevated levels of glucose in your blood. Insulin resistance can go for a long time unchecked too, because it has no symptoms unless you get a blood test.
You can develop insulin resistance and live with it for a brief time, or it can become a chronic problem. When chronic, the problem leads to prediabetes and type 2 diabetes. Prediabetes affects some 96 million Americans, and over 80% of them are unaware that they have it.
Likewise, over 37 million Americans are living with type 2 diabetes, and 90-95% of them have type 2 diabetes.
The health perils of insulin resistance
Increased insulin production is an outcome of insulin resistance,
Aside from prediabetes and diabetes, which are serious enough, insulin resistance leads to hyperinsulinemia, or increased insulin production. This causes multiple health conditions such as:
- Weight gain
- Atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries)
- Elevated triglyceride levels
- Hypertension (high blood pressure)
- Metabolic syndrome
Metabolic syndrome is a group of conditions that raise your risk for stroke, heart disease, and type 2 diabetes.
All in all, insulin resistance isn’t associated with anything favorable. Causes of the condition include being overweight or obese (with excess fat collecting around your waist), an unhealthy diet, and being sedentary, but certain medications and hormonal conditions can cause it as well.
How do I know if I have insulin resistance?
The first signs are unpleasant symptoms, including excessive hunger, thirst, and urination, as well as skin and vaginal infections. You can also notice that cuts to your skin heal more slowly than normal. Headaches and blurred vision may also develop.
If you come to Gain Wellness Center with these types of symptoms, we take a detailed medical history, ask you about your family’s health history, and thoroughly evaluate you. We also analyze your blood and saliva samples.
We also perform a complete wellness exam, which is an extensive assessment of both your physical and mental health — because each affects the other — so we can get to the bottom of your insulin resistance.
The evaluation examines your gut health, stress levels, lifestyle habits such as diet and exercise, and emotional health, and we zero in particularly on any hormonal imbalances. We emphasize finding the origin of your condition, not simply treating isolated symptoms. This is the basis of functional medicine.
WIth a hormonal problem like insulin resistance, we:
- Prescribe exercise habits to improve your health
- Help you improve how you manage stress
- Fine tune your diet (weight loss strongly impacts this condition)
- Recommend treatments to remove toxins from your cells
We’re unique in the care we offer because we become your partners in health as opposed to caregivers who provide essentially disconnected treatment.
You can be assured that the Gain Wellness Center team has your best interests — and optimal health — in mind as we treat you with a highly personalized approach.
Call our office to schedule an appointment with us, or reach out online through our website. We look forward to bringing you to a state of enhanced health and vitality.
Author Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia, DC, AFMCP Dr. Mandeep Walia-Bhatia, DC, AFMCP, is the founder of Gain Wellness Center in San Diego, California. At the wellness center, one of Dr. Walia's, greatest goals, as a health care provider, is to provide her practice members with alternative, but healthy and safe choices that will enhance their health and well-being. She likes to motivate and educate her practice members to take charge of their health by providing them with evidence-based information so that they can make informed decisions regarding their own personal health and take control of their health. Dr. Walia was born in India and raised in Canada before moving to San Diego. She attended McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada for her Master of Science degree with specialties in Biology and Physiology. She had various publications in research articles during her time at McMaster University funded by the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. She has three kids and enjoys cooking, hiking and going to the beach with her family.