There’s a lot of research that shows us that insulin resistance and high blood pressure are not just related. Rather, high insulin levels directly cause high blood pressure. When you work to reduce your insulin resistance, it will also positively affect your high blood pressure. That is good news.
This is what sets Genesis apart from low-calorie dieting. We emphasize an anti-inflammatory, low-glycemic lifestyle of eating. Foods that cause low blood sugar and insulin spiking.
Insulin resistance actually makes your blood pressure go up.
We will look into several ways that insulin resistance causes high blood pressure. One way is caused by a hormone released by your adrenal glands. We may have heard that cortisol (our stress hormone) is produced by the adrenal glands. Those adrenals also produce another hormone called aldosterone.
Aldosterone’s job is to regulate the balance of salt and water in your body. Salt is made up of sodium and chloride. Both elements are important electrolytes responsible for proper cell function. Aldosterone tells the kidneys to hang on the sodium so that we don’t urinate it all out. This is important for bodily function.
When you retain too much water, your blood volume goes up, which increases your blood pressure.
However, if your adrenal glands are releasing too much aldosterone, you are going to retain sodium. That sodium will cause you to retain water. When you retain too much water, your blood volume goes up. Your blood pressure will also increase. This is why many of you have heard of, or have been told to decrease your salt in your diet.
Insulin naturally increases aldosterone, which we just indicated makes us to hold onto salt. When things are in balance, this is a good thing.
However, if you are eating inflammatory foods and carbohydrates that increase your blood sugar, and therefore your insulin, that ultimately promotes insulin resistance. In this situation, you are naturally going to retain more sodium and water. This will lead to high blood pressure.
Too much insulin production will cause too much salt and water retention.
Salt is not the bad guy! It’s very important when put in proper perspective. There are some people who cannot handle excess salt. Others can eat a lot of salt with no problem. People that are salt sensitive can develop hypertension because of it. That is not the norm, though.
Our innate/inborn/God-given bodies are smart. When healthy people eat salt, it is detected by the body. The body allows the kidneys to get rid of the excess salt and water. This intelligence of the body – this active body chemistry – keeps blood pressure normal and in balance.
However, with insulin resistance, salt sensitive people are already retaining sodium and water. So, they continue to retain even more when they ingest it. Over time it increases blood volume and raises blood pressure.
Insulin resistance can create high blood pressure by thickening our blood vessel walls.
Insulin stimulates growth, so, in this situation, it causes cells in the lining of the blood vessels to grow bigger. Excess insulin, therefore, makes the blood vessels narrower as the lining gets bigger. The narrower the vessel, the higher the pressure.
The problem is that when we have developed insulin resistance, insulin is now less effective in helping produce nitric oxide in the vessel cell lining. Now the cells are less responsive to insulin, and they do not dilate efficiently, causing blood pressure to stay elevated.
Insulin resistance changes our body fats, better known as lipids.
You know them as triglycerides, and LDL and HDL cholesterol. These fats are important, because our body is able to break them down into fatty acids as use for energy.
Without getting into the whole cholesterol topic, we can just assert that insulin resistance causes us to produce more of the damaging, dense LDL’s. Almost all cholesterol is made in the liver, and when we have insulin resistance, the liver shifts that cholesterol production to the damaging, dense LDL’s.
Still, these LDL’s alone are not the problem. All cells, even cells that line your blood vessels, need cholesterol to maintain healthy function. It’s when these fats and cholesterol get oxidized that an inflammatory response is created, which is the beginning process of developing plaque in the arteries.
The biggest culprit to oxidation is processed seed oils. Oils like soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, cotton seed oil, etc. They are highly inflammatory.
The great news is that even if you do have insulin resistance currently, you can make choices that will help to reverse it. So many Genesis clients have been able to do this, and they are now living healthy lives without diabetes or high blood pressure.