How Hyperinsulinemia/Insulin
Resistance Causes Heart Disease |
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In summary, insulin resistance and/or hyperinsulinemia promote fatty liver — a
combination that in turn drives high blood insulin and associated mechanistic
pathways that shuttle lipids (fats) into your vascular walls, which is a
hallmark of atherosclerosis. It also leads to high blood glucose, particularly
post-prandial blood glucose, and this too has mechanistic pathways that promote
atherosclerosis.
High blood pressure is another side effect of insulin resistance that drives
atherosclerosis by placing stress on your arteries. As noted by Cummins, most
idiopathic hypertension (high blood pressure with no known cause) is now thought
to be caused by hyperinsulinemia.
Hyperinsulinemia/insulin resistance promotes inflammation, causing your visceral
fat to release inflammatory cytokines and systemic signaling molecules. Over
time, your visceral fat becomes increasingly resistant as well, causing the
systemic signaling to falter. Taken as a whole, this cascade of events drives
atherogenic dyslipidemia, characterized by the now familiar culprits: high LDL,
oxidized LDL and triglycerides, and low HDL.
According to Cummins, while high LDL is a very erratic marker for heart disease
risk, an elevated LDL "particle count" is actually a very good marker for
insulin resistance. Thus the LDL metrics should be more thought of asindicative
of inflammatory issues, and not as the LDL itself being the problem!
In its entirety, all of these factors are what flag the development of heart
disease. Other factors that can influence your CVD risk include smoking and
other environmental pollutants, especially heavy metals, so addressing and
eliminating these kinds of toxic exposures would also be prudent.