Susan is damn fit, which she proved today with her strong burpee box jumps.

Saturday Sweat Fest
"EVA"
5 Rounds for time of:
800 meter Run
30 KBS (70, 53)
30 Pull ups

Scott, Dave and Briana rip through 2 minutes of Max effort rowing...


Moe crushed the GHD situps, getting 50 reps each round.


Insulin Resistance:  The Hidden Disease You May Already Have From The Nutrition Reporter
You may already be suffering from one of the most common - and often overlooked - diseases to strike Americans.

It's not a deadly new virus. Not cancer. Nor heart disease.  And as many as one in three people suffer from it.

Doctors call this peculiar condition insulin resistance or, with a bit more mystique, Syndrome X.

If the name doesn't ring a bell, the symptoms might: Feeling tired after you eat, and at other times when you shouldn't. Gaining a pound here and a pound there - and having difficulty losing them. Seeing your blood pressure creep up year and after year. And finding that your cholesterol does the same.

Insulin resistance is the chief characteristic of adult-onset diabetes, which affects an estimated 15 million Americans. It also sets the stage for obesity and coronary heart disease - even if you're not diabetic.

What can you do about it? The simple prescription is to eat right, take your vitamins and minerals, and exercise, because each reduces insulin resistance.

But as you might imagine, there's more to the story.

Sugar and Insulin: A Double Whammy

Doctors have known about insulin resistance for decades, but only in the 10 years have they gained a clearer idea of exactly how it derails your health.

Insulin resistance is caused in large part by the over-consumption of refined carbohydrates, such as breads, pastas, and sugary foods. Eating too much saturated fat (found in beef) and omega-6 fatty acids (found in vegetable oils) also seems to increase the risk of insulin resistance.

Normally, after you eat a meal, your body breaks down carbohydrates into glucose, or blood sugar. The presence of glucose prompts the release of insulin, a hormone produced in your pancreas. Insulin helps transport glucose from the blood to cells, where's it's burned for energy or stored.

When a person eats a lot of refined carbohydrates year after year, a dangerous cascade occurs. Insulin levels remain chronically high, and cells become less responsive - and resistant - to insulin. As a consequence, relatively little glucose gets burned and levels remain high. With chronically elevated glucose levels, insulin resistance evolves into diabetes.

Insulin Resistance and Heart Diseases

Until 1988, researchers studying insulin resistance focused on its role in diabetes. Then, Gerald M. Reaven, M.D., of the Stanford University Medical Center, built a strong case for insulin resistance as a cause of obesity, hypertension, and coronary heart disease.

"The fact that an insulin-resistance subject may not become diabetic does not mean that they suffer no untoward consequences," Reaven wrote in the journal Diabetes. "Indeed, an argument can be made that the more insulin sensitive [in contrast to insulin resistant] an individual, the better off he or she is, and that the attempt to compensate for insulin resistance sets in motion of series of events that play an important role in the development of both hypertension and coronary heart disease."

Reaven coined the term "Syndrome X," to describe how insulin resistance sets the stage for more serious disease. The syndrome is characterized by six traits: insulin resistance, glucose intolerance, abnormally high insulin levels, high triglycerides, low high-density lipoprotein (the "good" cholesterol), and hypertension. "The common feature of the proposed syndrome is insulin resistance," he explained, "and all other changes are likely to be secondary to this basic abnormality."

Alpha-Lipoic Acid Helps

The omega-3 fatty acids, or fish oils, also improve insulin sensitivity and reduce insulin resistance, according to a recent animal study by Margaret T. Behme, M.D., of University Hospital, London, Ontario. The omega-3 fatty acids restore a balance disrupted by excessive consumption of omega-6 fatty acids and saturated fats.

Vitamin E Prevents Damage

Researchers at the ADA meeting came close to unanimously endorsing vitamin E to relieve some of the "oxidative stress" caused by excessive glucose and free radicals in diabetics. It's likely that non-diabetics with insulin resistance also suffer from oxidative stress, though to a lesser degree.

What happens is this: free radicals generated by glucose oxidize the low-density lipoprotein (LDL) form of cholesterol in the blood. White blood cells scavenge the oxidized LDL, then infiltrate heart tissue and get stuck. This causes the cholesterol deposits characteristic of heart disease.

Angelo Azzi, Ph.D., a professor at the Institute of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in Bern, Switzerland, echoed Jialal and expressed a strong preference for natural vitamin E. "Natural vitamin E is two times more effective than the synthetic compound," he said, adding that the body has prefers the structure of the natural molecule. "The important thing is to take it," he said.

In sum, you have a one-in-three statistical risk of developing insulin resistance, but your real risk increases sharply if you consume a lot of refined carbohydrates, omega-6 fatty acids (found in fried foods and vegetable oils), and saturated fats. But you're not going to wake up one morning to discover that you're suddenly insulin resistance.

Insulin resistance takes years to become servere. If you pay attention to some of the early signs - higher blood pressure and elevated triglyceride and cholesterol - when you're in your 30s or 40s, you can reverse insulin resistance and stand a good chance of preventing diabetes and coronary heart disease when you're older.

Diet, Exercise, and Insulin Resistance

Being overweight increases your risk of developing insulin resistance. But being a thin couch potato is comparable - in terms of your body's metabolic activity - to being fat.

Regular exercise, even a daily walk, primes your cells for activity. To get the energy you need for exercise, your body uses insulin to move sugar and fat into cells, where they're burned as fuel. With the increase in insulin activity, sugar levels in the blood decrease. And with less sugar in your blood, your body produces less insulin and becomes more responsive to both sugar and insulin. Insulin sensitivity - the opposite of insulin resistance - goes up, and that's good.

If you're insulin resistant - high blood pressure and cholesterol are clues - the worst thing you could eat are highly refined carbohydrates, such as breads, pastas, cookies, donuts, and candies. Furthermore, Gerald M. Reaven, M.D., of Stanford University, points out that medications that lower blood pressure don't alter insulin resistance, the underlying problem.

Experts, however, disagree on the best diet to follow. Robert Atkins, M.D., of New York City, recommends a high-protein, high-fat diet. He argues that low-fat diets really mean high-carbohydrate diets - which aggravate insulin resistance.

In contrast, Julian Whitaker, M.D., of Newport Beach, California, favors a high-protein diet, but one that relies mostly on fish and complex carbohydrates, such as legumes. Both diets may work, but for different people, so you may have to experiment to determine what works best for you. Also, both doctors recommend alpha-lipoic acid, vitamin E, and other nutritional supplements.

In addition to staying away from foods with a lot of refined carbohydrates and sugars, eat smaller and more frequent meals - not big, heavy meals that trigger the production of lots of insulin. - JC