The importance to Heart Health of managing Insulin levels and Insulin Resistance

A segment has been taken from the ABC Health report (available as podcast through iTunes for free) and it reinforces the theme that managing insulin levels is the primary key to reducing risk of heart attack or stroke in overweight people. Note: not managing Blood glucose (although that is vital for other reasons) but managing insulin levels.

The Health Report: 12 December 2005 - Polycystic Ovary Syndrome: "Norman Swan: So what you did is you took 100 women and compared them to 20 women who didn’t have Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome.

Helena Teede: Yes, and the main question that we were asking is: is this high cholesterol and these cardiovascular risk factors or heart disease risk factors, are those there because these women are overweight, or is there something about obesity and having Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome that makes the heart risk factors and the blood vessel health worse? So we took a large group of overweight women, some of whom had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, and some of whom were just overweight but didn’t have the syndrome. And we looked at the difference between the two groups.

Norman Swan: And how did you assess for heart disease?

Helena Teede: What we did was use ultrasound, to look at the health and stiffness of the blood vessels, which predict heart disease in the longer term, because they actually measure the early signs of heart disease developing in the blood vessels.

Norman Swan: Now I’m just looking at the table of results here and just on the testing you did before we come to the heart disease, and it’s quite amazing stuff. Three times the level of insulin. Interestingly, the blood sugar wasn’t that much different. Why was that, with the insulin so high, is the insulin doing the job at that level, is that what’s going on there?

Helena Teede: Yes. Resistance to the hormone insulin is the first stage. As long as the pancreas can keep up with producing that insulin, our sugars stay normal. You need a combination of that resistance and then an eventual inability as the body to keep producing more and more insulin to eventually develop diabetes.

Norman Swan: And their menstrual cycles were three times as long?

Helena Teede: Yes, absolutely. The menstrual cycles in these women often they may only cycle four times a year, sometimes only once or twice, "