Are You Metabolically Inflexible?

Did I get your attention? 

Metabolic flexibility is a term that’s being thrown around a lot right now, and for good reason. With the current COVID pandemic, there appears to be a strong predilection towards impacting people with metabolic syndrome which is directly correlated to metabolic inflexibility. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of symptoms which appear to tie back to insulin resistance, a.k.a. Diabetes. Millions of Americans are diabetic, and millions more are prediabetic.

What do these terms mean? Your body can produce energy from multiple sources, the two most common being carbs and fats. If you are able to easily switch between the two sources without crashing, you are metabolically flexible. If, for years, you’ve been on a high carbohydrate diet, chances are you are not metabolically flexible. The problem is, following Eisehower’s heart attack in 1955, a physician named Ancel Keys convinced the American Heart Association that a diet high in saturated fats leads to heart disease. Shortly after, a diet of low fat and high carbs was recommended. Years later, the United States skyrocketed in incidences of diabetes, stroke, and childhood obesity; and the numbers continue to climb. 

I remember in the 90’s, hearing that I could lose weight by eating as much meat and cheese as I wanted, but no rice or pasta. I couldn’t believe it. The Atkins diet had surfaced. Over the years, this low carb, high fat diet has morphed into the Paleo diet, and now the Ketogenic diet. If you think about it, all this is, is a return to the way humans have evolved to eat over millennia. The Inuit (Eskimos), have traditionally lived off of a diet of primarily whale blubber and have some of the lowest incidence of chronic diseases on the planet. 

So what is going on here? Why are carbs being taken off the table? The bigger part of this is that Americans have been eating an overabundance of carbs. And I mean refined carbs. The carbs from fruit and vegetables are not evil, and they carry the additional benefit of being loaded with micronutrients. It’s the white bread, rice, pasta, etc. The problem with using carbs as your primary fuel source is the waste product. They don’t burn as clean as fats. When the body breaks down carbs, they become oxidized. This leads to what is known as free radicals. 

These little guys wreak havoc on the vascular system, eating away at the lining of our blood vessels, leading to clots and strokes. By the way, the oxidation process of free radicals is neutralized by antioxidants. In other words, fruit and vegetables. See how it all ties together? A quick tip, the darker the fruit, the more antioxidants. If a fruit browns, it is low in antioxidants. The process of oxidation leads to browning (think of apples and bananas left out). Just like when iron is exposed to oxygen, it rusts, I think of oxidation in humans as our way of rusting. 

The constant flux of carbs in the system leads to insulin resistance. Insulin is a hormone that transports carbs into cells. If the body chronically gets excess carbs, the insulin can’t keep it’s job up. The brain can become insulin resistant as well and this is called type 3 diabetes. This leads to damage to the nerves and it’s thought that a carb heavy diet can lead to Alzheimer’s. 

This brings me to the next new trend, fasting. The idea here is that once the body runs out of carbs to burn, it turns to fat stores. Fat breaks down into ketone bodies for fuel and now you are in a state of ketosis. This is where Ketogenic diet gets its name. An easy way to tell if you are metabolically inflexible is if you get ‘hangry’ when fasting. 

So the bottom line is that we want to become metabolically flexible. You are just a more adaptable being if you can use all food sources for energy. Also, if you get energy from a more normal level of carbs, you don’t run the risk of insulin resistance and the cascading damage of free radicals. 

How does one do this? Choose whole foods and don’t eat things that are white or that don’t rot. If it’s got a list of ingredients, it’s probably bad. Try to achieve a state of ketosis, so maybe the ketogenic diet or intermittent fasting is for you. Also, surprise surprise...exercise. Exercise has been demonstrated to improve insulin sensitivity. 

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