Episode 38 of the Living Life Well Show: The Healthy American, is there such a thing?
===
[00:00:00] Welcome to the Living Life Well Show, the intersection of God's Word, today's science, and healthy living with common sense application, all based on the truth of the Word of God. I'm your host, Dr. Jon Skelton. Now let's get straight to the truth.
All right. Welcome back to the living life. Well show today. I want to talk a little bit about chronic disease and where we are in America and also want to talk a little bit about what I have upcoming for future episodes. So today, what I really wanted to talk about is our prevalence of chronic disease and why.
It is so prevalent. If you've been following, you know, the presidential campaigns and things, both [00:01:00] candidates have various platforms and things that you can go and look at out there. But one of the things that I thought was pretty interesting by one of the candidates, RFK Jr. Really talking about this level of chronic disease within the U.
S. He's dropped out of the race, obviously, but he is still promoting This issue of health and being able to overcome chronic disease and I personally agree with that aspect of it what I will tell you is it's been interesting to watch because even some of more the mainstream news channels are.
picking up on this and really talking about this a lot more often. We see it even recently just on Fox news with having different commentators like Jillian Michaels on there from the biggest loser, and other health experts, in addition to RFK Jr. on there talking about the, this epidemic.
So let's kind of jump into some [00:02:00] numbers and we'll kind of talk about why we're really seeing this. And 27 percent of us as Americans have more than one chronic disease, sometimes many more than two, depending upon the individual. And then 50 percent of us, one in two. has some type of chronic disease or illness, be it an autoimmune disease, be it high blood pressure, diabetes would be the most common.
And so that is something that, that we are dealing with on a daily basis that, you know, if you are to line up 10 people, five of them are going to have either some known underlying chronic disease. And out of those five, you're going to have two of those that are going to have multiple chronic diseases.
So we have a real problem in our society. So when we look [00:03:00] just at that aspect, right? Um, that's pretty overwhelming But then you take another look and look at the obesity rate or the overweight rate, so obesity is around 40 to 50 percent, but when you Add in the other category of just being overweight, but not obese.
That takes us up to 73. 6 percent of us fit in this category of overweight or obese. Well, what that means. is typically there is at least a precursor to a chronic disease state. The most common precursor that I see is insulin resistance.
But practically speaking, how do we find that? Define that within the medical community? Well, we look at hemoglobin A1c that tells us what your blood sugar has been [00:04:00] on average for the previous 90 days. So the typical medical community is going to define that as a hemoglobin A1c of 5. 6 to about 6.
4, 6. 5 and above. We consider that to be diabetes. If your doctor is checking an A1c, they're going to see that if you have a 5. 7, 5. 8, 6. 0 A1c, you have prediabetes. By definition, when you have prediabetes, you have A1c. Insulin resistance. Physicians will also look at a fasting glucose level.
They'll see what your blood sugar is. And typically when we're looking at that, about 120 number for a fasting glucose that would be considered to be consistent with insulin resistance. Okay. Some physicians will go a little bit further and they'll do a glucose tolerance test, but that's really [00:05:00] not utilized very often.
Now we do utilize that quite often in pregnancy to diagnose gestational diabetes. And for there, you're looking numbers between about 150 and 200. When you look at these tests, there is a significance when we find that it's elevated. However, what I will tell you is there's a better test to look at essentially a vital sign, if you will.
And it's one that, that typically I don't see many physicians ever really checking very often at all. Now, sometimes they will do this when they do the oral glucose tolerance test, but it's not a typical test that we do. And that is your fasting insulin level. Seeing what your pancreas is doing when your gut has been at rest for a significant period of time, typically at least eight hours.
And when we look at those [00:06:00] fasting insulin levels, the way they kind of define this is depending upon who you look at, anybody 20 to 30 fasting insulin level would be considered insulin resistant. Your physician may look at any one of those to try and determine insulin resistance.
What I will tell you is that your physician, even if they are checking the fasting glucose, even if they are checking the hemoglobin A1c, even if the rare ones that are checking a fasting insulin level, if they are just paying attention to those standard ranges, they may be missing your insulin resistance.
When we look at hemoglobin A1c, ideal is going to be about 5 to 5. 5. When we look at glucose, or a fasting glucose, we're looking at about 72 to 90. I think we may even determine that 90 needs to [00:07:00] be a little bit lower. You know, you're talking going all the way up to 120, that is a vast difference The hemoglobin A1c, not so much, you know, you're talking 5.
6 versus 5. 5. So not a big difference there. However, when I look at fasting glucose, it is astounding to me, the difference between the optimal or ideal range. And the standard range, you know, standard ranges are based upon the population that they're testing. You know, here in West Texas unfortunately we do, as the rest of America does, have a high incidence of obesity.
As well as chronic disease states be it diabetes, high blood pressure, coronary artery disease autoimmune disease, all those things. And so what is really astounding to me is when we look at what the optimal range is for a fasting insulin versus what the standard range is. The standard range for a fasting insulin according to [00:08:00] most recent, results from one of the large lab companies that's nationwide and based upon their sample of testing
they have fasting insulin levels as being normal from 2. 6 to 24. 9. Again, talking about that 20 to 30 range being considered abnormal. Sometimes clinicians when they are looking through your labs, quite honestly they're looking for the things that say high or low, and they're not really looking at the individual level.
If a physician ascribes to that lower level of 20 and they're just looking for the highs and lows they may miss it. May, they may miss being able to intervene for you at that stage when your blood sugar excuse me, when you're fasting insulin level comes back at say 22. So that, that is, is part of the [00:09:00] issue.
Secondly the Real range for optimal health. Always needs to be based upon what is optimal, not just what everybody is doing. When we look at these ranges for the hemoglobin A1c, for the fasting glucose level, just because you don't have anything that's in bold or that is, um, you know, shining out to your physician, That doesn't mean it's all good.
Okay. So we've really got to define what optimal is. And so for instance, when you're looking at optimal, fasting insulin. It's definitely below 10. Really, it's probably between 2 and 5. This is a very narrow range. Well, this makes sense when you think about it physiologically. You should not be producing A lot of insulin [00:10:00] when you are in a fasting state, you haven't had any food come in, you should not have high le levels of circulating glucose.
Now, if you've, you know, just had the fight of your life and are in some fight or flight mode as you go in, okay, maybe a little bit of increased blood sugar, maybe a little bit of increased glucose, but but. Again, that insulin level should not be high because that tells us when you have an insulin level, a fasting insulin level that is two to five, it tells us that your gut really does get to rest when you fast.
It is not still having to work because you have such high levels and response of cortisol and or circulating levels of glucose as well. Obviously, we can see that to a degree when we check your fasting blood sugar. When you are looking at this, you've really [00:11:00] got to know that just because your labs and that standard range all come back looking good, that doesn't mean that everything is functioning properly.
And so when we extrapolate that and we really look at those optimal ranges for health and we apply that to the general population, over 90 percent of us. are having some form of Organ dysfunction. That's a staggering number. That means that out of that lineup of 10, only one is making it out of there without some sort of organ dysfunction.
That means that all of us have an issue, that this is a societal issue. This isn't a class issue. This isn't a, um, race issue. This is truly a societal issue. Well, why is that? What is the issue that is common to all of us? Well, quite frankly, I think it's [00:12:00] food. I think our food industry. Which, you know, borders on our farming and ranching as well, has been raised up in such a way to produce.
When we are focused on producing and producing enough to feed the entire world, unfortunately, we are sacrificing nutrition. true nutrition for ourselves. In addition, our availability of food, of what we define as food, I should say, is just kind of all over the place, quite honestly. I mean, a Funyun definitely isn't food.
Um, what I want to do in these next couple episodes is one, really take a look at some of our foods, ways in that we can still go out to eat and go to different restaurants and things like this. [00:13:00] And really you know, maybe they don't have All the best things, but we can minimize the impact to us
coming up next week I am really happy to continue our Taste See series and we're going to be looking at bread. Bread is huge and I think bread is key to this whole issue and really It , in my opinion lit the flame that is the issue with this chronic state of affairs
and so understanding where bread has come from, where it is, and how you can renew bread in your life to, to be something that is Helpful and healthful and nutritious. I think is very important And so that's what we'll be doing on the next episode. In future episodes What I would like to do is spotlight a few different restaurants that are [00:14:00] Producing as much as possible in a whole foods way to really help promote health and make it easy for you to eat healthy and do this as much as you need to within your lifestyle.
So I hope this has been informative. If there's anything else that you would like to have discussed on the podcast or any particular restaurant chains or practices that you have questions about.
I would love your feedback. Just email us at admin at livelifewellclinic. com and we will be happy to take a look at that and possibly cover that in one of our upcoming episodes. So thanks and God bless.
That's it for this episode of the Living Life Well Show. If you like what you've heard and want to learn more, or want to know how to put this into practice for yourself, go to [00:15:00] livelifewellclinic.com. Until next time, this is Dr. Jon Skelton saying, go out and live the truth so you can live life well. The preceding is for entertainment and educational purposes only. It is not meant to be used to prevent, diagnose, treat, or cure any condition. The information contained in this show does not substitute the need for a qualified medical professional, nor is it meant to provide medical advice or services.
If you feel information presented in this show may apply to you, we recommend you seek out the help of a qualified medical professional who can evaluate and treat your specific concerns.
