5 Ways Excess Insulin Raises Blood Pressure
Today, you’ll learn about five direct ways that insulin resistance causes high blood pressure and contributes to heart disease. If you’ve been eating low fat, low cholesterol foods and still have a high blood pressure of 130/85 or higher or if you’re taking a medications to lower your blood pressure, then you are in the right place.
It can be really discouraging to be thinking that you’re eating healthy and realize that the advice that you’ve been, following, was ineffective all along. Once you understand it’s actually elevated insulin and insulin resistance that causes high blood pressure and heart disease in most people, your nutrition and strategy changes drastically. This means a shift from eating low fat and low calorie to eating and living in a way that keeps insulin and inflammation low.
You see, high blood pressure is a disease of inflammation. When there is an influx of glucose in the blood stream insulin levels rise and prohibit all the glucose to enter the cells for fuel. This leaves you with excess sugar in the blood stream that overtime damages the lifeline of our heart health, the endothelium.
The endothelial cells that line the inner walls of your blood vessels function in producing nitric oxide (NO). A sufficient amount of NO allows blood to flow smoothly through our cardiovascular system, keeping blood pressure at a healthy level.
Things that were once considered to be healthy like low-fat yogurts (with high added sugar content), and sugar infused granola cereals that you thought were healthy are no longer ok.
Paradigm Shift
Added sugar found in packaged foods, "healthy" granola and protein bars, in mouth watering restaurant foods, and basically anything that you don't cook for yourself is raising insulin levels! A complete paradigm shift happens for most people once this whole concept is understood and is essential to grasp for your future health.
(continue reading below to learn the 5 Ways Insulin Raises Blood Pressure)
Next Reset Starts Monday, April 1st
Understanding the Science of What Excess Insulin Does in the Body
-
First insulin increases blood pressure through raising the hormone aldosterone. Aldosterone is a hormone that increases salt and thus water retention in your body causing blood volume to increase. This increases water in the blood to balance out the salt, and the increased water increases blood volume and increased blood volume increases blood pressure. So instead of walking around with eight pints of blood in the body, your walking around with nine pints. Your heart has to work much harder to pump blood to all parts of your body.
Think about when you go out for Mexican food and have a bunch of chips or when you have a big meal and cake like at a wedding, you likely feel a little bloated and puffy the next day that’s because those simple carbs from the chips and the sugar from the cake raised insulin and insulin raises aldosterone which causes fluid retention.
The second way is too much insulin leads to excessive growth of the innermost layer of the blood vessel wall overtime. This is due to the damage and scar tissue that develops in the endothelium that I talked about earlier. This thickening leads to increased vessel resistance, increased blood vessel resistance will increased blood pressure, think of the difference between stretching a thick rubber band, and a thin one. It takes greater effort to stretch the thick elastic than the thin so we went thin, healthy pliable blood vessels, insulin resistance, also raises blood pressure by reducing the blood vessels, ability to dilate or open up
The third way, insulin resistance impedes nitric oxide production. In healthy endothelial cells insulin activates the production of nitric oxide. If endothelial cells become resistant to insulin, the endothelial cells do not function well, which leads to narrowing of the blood vessels. This results in increases vessel resistance and high blood pressure numbers. Just think of the difference between breathing through a small straw and a big straw. The small straw has a narrow opening and requires increased pressure from you. This is like the endothelial cells that are insulin resistant because they can’t expand as well. The larger straw has a larger opening, so requires less pressure from you. This is like cells that are still sensitive to insulin. They can expand and reduce the pressure leading to lower blood pressure.
-
The fourth way that insulin raises blood pressure is that it increases cortisol. Cortisol normally counteracts insulin, but elevated cortisol levels can cause insulin resistance. Insulin resistance is a stressful state on the body and it’s an inflammatory state as well. Inflammation and stress or not bad things and we need them to survive but when they’re constant they cause chronic illnesses like high blood pressure.
Cortisol is a hormone involved in your fight or flight response. When your body is constantly pumping out cortisol it’s like you’re always in a mild state of stress which raises blood pressure .
Constant stress (release of cortisol) also causes high blood pressure due to that it signals the liver to produce more small, dense, LDL particles.
Finally, Insulin resistance increases inflammation in the blood vessels. Inflammation drives the process of at sclerosis and that’s the buildup of plaque inside the blood vessel think about the sludge that gets built up overtime in your kitchen sink pipes. Your sink used to drain quickly but overtime gross stuff clogged the pipes and the water drains slower. That’s like what happens when you have plaque in your arteries this plaque is what can get dislodged and cause serious problems, such as a heart, attack or stroke. It can also keep growing to the point where your artery is almost or completely blocked. In this case, you’ll experience a heart attack or chest pain if you don’t catch it early enough and get a stent or bypass
When you start to view each lifestyle choice through the lens of "How will this effect my insulin and inflammation?" choices, become clearer. You will be aware of when to make better food choices lik,
eat a low sugar, low refined, carbs (all available in whole foods)
protein mostly coming from high-fiber proteins (beans and legumes) and moderate animal protein
healthy fats from avocados, some olive and avocado oil
move your body
prioritize resistance training
prioritize sleep
manage your stress
This is how we live a low insulin lifestyle. Have you started to incorporate any of these lifestyle changes and if so, have you noticed a change in your blood pressure? Or if you need help check out the 15-Day Blood Pressure Reset that will kickstart your track to better health.