Heart Disease - The Insulin Connection

Excerpted from
The Carbohydrate Addict's Healthy Heart Program : Break Your Carbo-Insulin Connection to Heart Disease
By Richard F. Heller, M.S., Ph.D., Rachael F. Heller, Ph.D., Frederic J. Vagnini, M.D.

Good and bad. day and night, yin and yang. Since time began, the world has been the battleground for two opposing forces. At every moment of every day. a similar combat takes place within your body. The way you look, think, feel, and act depends on the outcome of this never-ending tug-of-war. The stakes are high: your health, your well-being, indeed, your very survival depend on a lasting truce, an essential balance.

Two opposing forces face off in this power struggle for your health. The first combatant is insulin. Insulin affects your every movement and every breath. When most people hear the word insulin, they think of diabetes, but insulin's powerful influence can lead to high blood pressure, risk-related blood fat levels, weight gain, atherosclerosis, peripheral vascular disease, and heart disease in a great many people who are not diabetic. When it comes to the nondiabctic, few doctors and fewer patients are aware of insulin's impact on heart health.

Insulin's power comes from the fact that it is your body's Saving Hormone. It is a miser in the truest sense of the word, although being the Saving Hormone is no easy task. Insulin must also meet the body's other demands: appeals for energy to enable muscles to maintain their health and do their jobs well, to fuel the nervous system, and to repair the very organs that keep the body going. So although insulin wants nothing more than to store away as much energy as possible, by converting carbohydrates into fat and storing that fat in your fat cells, it must give tip some of your body's precious food energy to keep you going.

The second force in this power struggle is glucagon, your body's Spending Hormone. For some reason, although most people have heard of insulin, few have heard of glucagon. (Perhaps insulin has a better press agent!) Just as insulin directs excess food energy into the fat cells, glucagon's job is to bring that same energy out of the fat cells so that it can be used to repair and fuel your body between meals. It's pretty easy to remember: insulin-in, glucagon-out.

When your body is in good hormonal balance, foodwise, insulin and glucagon complement each other and maintain a perfect harmony. Insulin rises, makes you want to eat, fuels your body a bit, and directs some energy to be put away, in your fat cells, for later. Then insulin levels fall. Glucagon rises, opens the doors to the fat cells, and the energy that is released is burned to keep the body running smoothly. After a time insulin levels rise, and the whole cycle begins again.

Today researchers from all over the world have confirmed the importance of insulin to heart health, and the reports continue to mount in record numbers. It is not unusual for scientists to refer to excess levels of insulin and insulin resistance as the "pathogenic link." the invisible illness-causing connection, that has so long been sought in the fight for heart health and long life.

What seems odd to us, however, is the media's apparent unwillingness to report to their viewers, readers, and listeners the results of so many documented, verified, and long-term scientific studies regarding insulin s powerful connection to heart disease.

Recently the American Heart Association (AHA) issued a press release announcing the discovery of an important new heart disease risk factor-high levels of insulin. The report went on to explain that as reported in the American Heart Association's medical journal, Circulation, "over 22 years of follow-up, the predictive power of insulin levels was of the same magnitude as that of cholesterol levels." The AHA added that during the scientific study itself, "when compared to other risk factors, insulin levels were the most statistically significant predictor of heart attack risk."

Yet though the AHA's press releases usually are given lop priority in the news, only one of the major television network news shows presented this revolutionary health information to the public, and only a handful of newspapers ever mentioned it. The news articles and the single television news spot on this critical discovery were of minimal length and barely touched on its importance.

One wonders why so important a breakthrough, one that holds such a powerful potential for saving lives, remains unreported in the news. Though these and similar findings have been repeatedly confirmed and verified, they are neither publicized nor acknowledged. Physicians, nutritionists, and the public alike remain unaware of insulin's connection to heart disease, and it is for this very reason that this book was written.

Insulin Resistance Syndrome:
Putting The Pieces Together

Imagine for a moment that you are putting together a jigsaw puzzle consisting of a picture you have never seen. The only clues you have are contained in the pieces that lie scattered before you and the fragments of image that each piece holds. In order to put the puzzle together, chances are you would start by searching out the most recognizable shapes-most likely those with straight edges: then, after assembling the outside border, you would look for pieces that would connect to those already in place. You would work inward, connecting one piece to another until a picture began to emerge.

Scientists follow the same process when they seek the cause and cure of a disease or disorder. First, they look at what they already know and see whether it forms a frame or border into which the other pieces of the puzzle fit.