Thread by @DrBPHealth

Asian countries eat a lot of rice & noodles, but don’t gain weight.

Americans & Europeans eat the same thing and tend to get fat.

Why is this?

I’ll explain.

THREAD

90% of the world’s rice production is located in Asia. It’s been cultivated in the region for close to 10,000 years.

The region’s occupants tend to eat a fair amount of rice (and noodles), but yet they don’t gain weight.

In the clinic, I often get asked, “So how can Asian countries eat so much rice and noodles but never get fat?”

After all, rice and noodles are high-carb meals. Specifically, they are high-glycemic carbs that cause a large blood sugar spike.

And typically eating a large amount of high-glycemic carbs leads to weight gain.

So, when I’d got asked this question, honestly, for many years I didn’t really know how to answer it.

I just knew Asian cultures didn’t tend to gain weight.

And I knew that when my patients (Americans) ate these foods, they would gain weight.

If my patient stayed away from rice & noodles, they’d be more apt to lose weight.

I just thought it was something genetic that created the difference.

But I was wrong.

It is true that Asian cultures have been eating white rice for many decades.

When they consumed their traditional diets along with the rice, they did not gain weight and kept prediabetes and diabetes rates low.

However, many of those same cultures are no longer thin and healthy

In the last few decades, they have adopted the Western diet more and more.

Subsequently, Type 2 Diabetes has skyrocketed in China and India in recent years.

And in China, Type 2 Diabetes is now more common than in the United States!

In China, in 1980, the Type 2 Diabetes rate was less than 1%.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2017, showed that in 2013, China’s Type 2 Diabetes rate had catapulted up to 10.9%!

This has since surpassed the United States and is now estimated to be 11.6-11.9% of China’s population!

In that same published study, the prediabetes rate in China was estimated to be at 35.7%.

That’s nearly 4 out of every 10 people in China!

China has over a billion person population and growing.

That means China now has more prediabetics and diabetics than the entire population of the United States!

Dr. Jason Fung in his book Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss, provided my first “ah-ha” moment of understanding the Asian cultures and rice consumption question.

Type 2 Diabetics are what is called insulin resistant. They are not insulin sensitive. Insulin sensitive is a normal metabolic state.

I will try to keep the explanation very simple.

Insulin resistance means that a person does not utilize the hormone insulin very effectively to drive blood sugar into muscles.

Instead, someone who is insulin resistant takes blood sugar and more readily stores it in fat tissues.

So those who are insulin resistant, when they eat rice that converts to blood sugar, the body takes and stores it as fat.

This is why many times Type 2 diabetics are carrying extra weight, obese, or even morbidly obese.

In contrast, people who are insulin sensitive are better at utilizing the hormone insulin to drive blood sugar into muscles.

Again, this is how a proper working metabolism should function.

Insulin sensitivity is the opposite of insulin resistance (pre-diabetics & diabetics).

People in traditional Asian cultures are very insulin sensitive.

This is why they can eat things like white rice, keep or gain lean muscle, and keep body fat % very low.

So how do pre-diabetics and diabetics become insulin resistant?

The reason that Type 2 diabetics have high insulin resistance is because of an overproduction of insulin in the body.

This is not a one-time event but has happened many times, over a long period of time.

Overproduction of insulin in the body is primarily due to the consumption of processed sugars and processed grains, which causes a spike in blood sugar.

Chronic overproduction of insulin in the body is like someone continuously screaming.

Just like continuous screaming would become annoying, continuous over-production of insulin becomes annoying to the body.

So, the body becomes more resistant to insulin.

If there continues to be the overconsumption of processed sugars and grains, that will continue to raise blood sugar.

And the body can’t survive with too high of blood sugar levels.

So the body produces more insulin (“more screaming”).

When this occurs, the body becomes even more insulin resistant because it does not like the “screaming”.

The process continues until the body can’t produce enough insulin to keep up with the blood sugar demand.

At that time, a person goes to a doctor, has blood work, and they are diagnosed with prediabetes or Type 2 Diabetes.

If the person only addresses their condition with medications, they are never addressing the root cause of their issues.

They are also not going to improve their insulin resistance.

But the good news is there are ways to reverse insulin resistance to become more insulin sensitive!

Tomorrow in my free newsletter I will cover the 3 steps to reverse insulin resistance.

I'll also cover the 3 main culture changes that led to the dramatic rise in Asian cultures with:

•Obesity
•Prediabetes
•Type 2 Diabetes

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drbphealth.com/newsletter