Take Control of Our Insulin System

We Need to Get Our Insulin System Under Control

The insulin system is essential for maintaining the body's energy balance and overall health. When you consume food, especially carbohydrates, it's broken down into glucose, a sugar that your cells use for energy. Insulin, produced by the pancreas, acts as a key to allow glucose into the cells, where it's utilized for fuel. This process helps regulate blood sugar levels, ensuring that they neither get too high nor too low, both of which can lead to serious health problems.

When the insulin system doesn't function properly, it can result in conditions like diabetes. Without enough insulin or proper response to insulin, glucose can't enter the cells and remains in the blood, leading to high blood sugar. This can cause various complications, including heart disease, kidney failure, and nerve damage. Conversely, too much insulin can cause dangerously low blood sugar, leading to confusion, seizures, or even loss of consciousness. Therefore, the insulin system's precise functioning is vital for maintaining energy balance and overall well-being.

*Avoiding the insulin spikes that come with high blood glucose levels is crucial to our overall health.

Reduce Chronic Inflammation

Inflammation is a natural response of the body's immune system to protect itself from harmful stimuli such as damaged cells, pathogens, or irritants. It is a complex biological process involving various immune cells, signaling molecules, and biochemical pathways.

When the immune system detects a threat, it triggers an inflammatory response that results in increased blood flow, swelling, and production of immune cells. The purpose of inflammation is to eliminate the harmful stimuli and initiate the healing process.

Inflammation can be acute or chronic. Acute inflammation is a short-term response to injury or infection, while chronic inflammation persists over a more extended period and can contribute to the development of many chronic diseases, such as arthritis, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

Chronic Inflammation and The Diseases of The Gauntlet

Chronic inflammation may be the killer! The diseases that are associated with chronic inflammation are the same ones that we face when we are running the gauntlet.

Diabetes

Chronic inflammation has been linked to the development of type 2 diabetes, which is a chronic condition characterized by high levels of glucose (sugar) in the blood. The inflammatory response can contribute to insulin resistance, which is a key factor in the development of type 2 diabetes.

Insulin is a hormone that is produced by the pancreas and is responsible for regulating the amount of glucose in the blood. Insulin resistance occurs when cells in the body become less responsive to insulin, which can lead to higher levels of glucose in the blood. Chronic inflammation can contribute to insulin resistance by promoting the release of cytokines, which are inflammatory proteins that interfere with insulin signaling.

In addition, chronic inflammation can also damage the cells in the pancreas that produce insulin, further contributing to insulin resistance and the development of type 2 diabetes. Studies have also found that inflammatory markers, such as C-reactive protein (CRP), are elevated in individuals with type 2 diabetes, indicating the presence of chronic inflammation.

Chronic Inflammation

Inflammation is part of the body's defense mechanism. It is the process by which the immune system recognizes and removes harmful stimuli and begins the healing process. These stimuli can be in the form of a foreign invader, such as bacteria or viruses, where your body’s white blood cells and the things they produce go into defense mode. Or it can be in the form of an injury where inflammation helps fight injury and infection. But it doesn’t just happen in response to injury and illness.

An inflammatory response can also occur when the immune system goes into action without an injury or infection to fight. Since there’s nothing to heal, the immune system cells that normally protect us begin to destroy healthy arteries, organs and joints. This can lead to auto-immune diseases.

There are generally two types of inflammation: acute and chronic.

Acute Inflammation

Tissue damage due to trauma, microbial invasion, or noxious compounds all induce acute inflammation. It starts rapidly, becomes severe in a short time and symptoms may last for a few days for example cellulitis or acute pneumonia. Subacute inflammation is the period between acute and chronic inflammation and may last 2 to 6 weeks.

Chronic Inflammation

In chronic inflammation, the inflammatory process may begin even if there is no injury, and it does not end when it should. Why the inflammation continues is not always known. Chronic inflammation may be caused by infections that don’t go away, abnormal immune reactions to normal tissues, or conditions such as obesity.

Getting Stuck On a Need

From birth and well into our childhood, each of our needs should be satisfied by the people in charge of us. But as we approach the end of our childhood, most of us understand and accept that we are solely responsible for the satisfaction of each of our needs. Without thinking about it too much, we seem to understand that these needs are arranged in some kind of order. If we can’t afford food, we probably can’t afford to date. If we can’t pay rent, joining a social group is not going to be top of mind. But once we satisfy these lower needs we are free to work on the satisfaction of these higher, being, needs. And yet, so many of us cannot seem to get past these lower need levels.

Read more - Our Hierarchy of Needs

The house isn’t quite big enough or in the right neighborhood. The job doesn’t quite pay enough to feel secure in its need satisfying capabilities. For many of us, our deficiency needs have been satisfied many times over, and yet we still seem to believe it to be deficient. We seek perfection in areas where good enough really is good enough.

Kayakpacking Catalina Island

Best Time of Year - Spring and Fall
Type: Kayakpacking (backpacking with a kayak)
Gear Needed - A little extensive (see the list below).
Why You Should Go - Kayakpacking Catalina allows you access to areas of the island that are unaccessable to anyone else on the island.

Get Enough Quality Sleep

A Little About Sleep

The evolution of our sleep cycle is an intriguing testament to the adaptive nature of our species. Throughout our evolutionary history, sleep has played a vital role in ensuring our survival and optimizing our cognitive and physiological functions. Over time, our sleep patterns have been shaped by various environmental and evolutionary pressures. The alternating cycles of wakefulness and sleep are believed to have provided early humans with essential advantages, such as conserving energy during periods of reduced activity, protecting against predators during vulnerable times, and facilitating memory consolidation and learning.