06/10/2026
Insulin resistance is the worst disease you can have.
Not the rarest, not the most dramatic.
The worst, because of what it causes and how quietly it does it.
By the time we're 18, over half of us already have it.
That's not my opinion; it came from NHANES, the National Health and Nutrition Examination Surveys.
By 60 or 70, over 90% of us have it. And 90% of the people who have it have no clue, because the standard tests your doctor runs can look completely normal while this disease is quietly destroying your body.
One of our House Calls patients, Harlon, was told by his doctor's nurse that he had "a touch of sugar."
He didn't drink sugary drinks, so he figured it wasn't an issue. Meanwhile he was eating biscuits, flour gravy, and grain products every day. No clue. That's the deadly mistake.
Elevated insulin and glucose damage the arteries and nerves, and arteries go to every tissue in your body.
That makes insulin resistance the number one cause of blindness, erectile dysfunction, kidney disease, and fatty liver, and the number one cause of heart attacks and strokes.
Dementia is now being called type 3 diabetes. It's related to a lot of cancers too. There is no war and no pandemic that comes anywhere near causing the amount of death and disability in the human race that prediabetes does.
So here's the plan I've built over 40 years of treating patients.
👉 Step one: test, don't guess.
The test your doctor usually orders misses up to 70% of cases. Everything starts by knowing whether you have it and how bad it is.
👉 Step two: cut the carbs.
Not all carbs, just the ones pushing your blood sugar past 140 mg/dL, because that's the threshold where the lining of your arteries starts taking damage. The inflammation that follows is what builds plaque.
Not fat, not cholesterol, the repeated spikes. My practical tool is the carb-to-fiber ratio: total carbs divided by grams of fiber. Under 7 is generally safe.
Leafy greens come in under 1. Blueberries, 5 or 6.
Most breads, including whole wheat, blow past 7 and often over 20, with blood sugar raising values higher than table sugar.
Then blunt the spikes you do get: eat protein, fat, and fiber before your carbs, take a 10-minute easy walk after meals, or do wall sits and lunges. Apple cider vinegar before a carb-heavy meal helps too. Not magic, but the evidence is real.
👉 Step three: exercise with intensity.
A single session improves insulin sensitivity for the next 24 to 48 hours. Resistance training matters most here, because muscle gives glucose somewhere productive to go.
Your muscles manage more blood sugar than your pancreas. And you don't need an hour at the gym: four 5-minute exercise snacks a day gets you to 150 minutes a week.
👉 Step four: remove the roadblocks.
Sleep first; losing just 90 minutes a night for six weeks raises fasting insulin 12% and worsens insulin resistance 15%, and undiagnosed sleep apnea (I have it, and I'm thin) puts your body into fight or flight hundreds of times a night.
Stress second; the fix isn't "relax," it's reducing your daily decision burden. Same breakfast, same bedtime, same walk. Boring, but good. Toxins third: glass over plastic, cast iron over non-stick, wash your produce, choose lower-mercury fish.
👉 Step five: supplements, used strategically.
They won't fix insulin resistance, they're not powerful enough. But berberine improves insulin sensitivity through AMPK, mulberry leaf blunts post-meal spikes, and creatine and citrulline make your training do more.
👉 Step six: medications when needed.
Metformin reduced progression to type 2 diabetes by 31% in the Diabetes Prevention Program. I take it myself, at a fraction of standard dosing. I've taken a GLP-1 for about five years. Medication's not a failure. It's the right tool for the right job at the right time, at the right dose.
And then the one thing most people miss, the thing that decides whether any of this survives real life: purpose.
People who stay consistent aren't more disciplined. They have a reason. For my mama, it's her garden. For me, it's this channel.
The full video walks through every step, with the numbers and doses behind each one. Growing old is not for sissies. I know. I'm 68. But it's a lot easier, healthier, and longer with healthy arteries.
One more thing.
Step one of this whole plan is test, don't guess. And I told you the standard tests can look completely normal while this disease quietly does its damage. I learned that one personally. At 57, my cholesterol, fasting glucose, and A1C all looked fine. One scan said otherwise.
My team put together a free guide on exactly this: the tests that actually show what's happening in your arteries, and why a normal cholesterol number doesn't mean you're in the clear.
Comment INFO for the free guide: Why One Cholesterol Number Was Never the Whole Story.
