Insulin Resistance Is a Useless Construct
The article argues that "insulin resistance" is a misleading concept that distracts from the real causes of metabolic dysfunction, such as chronic hyperinsulinemia and diet. It contends the term should be abandoned for a more accurate understanding.
Background
- The article is from exfatloss.com, a blog run by "Peter" (a pseudonymous medical blogger known as Hyperlipid) who writes critically about mainstream metabolic disease models from a low-carb/keto perspective.
- "Insulin resistance" is the standard medical diagnosis: cells stop responding normally to insulin, causing high blood sugar, and is viewed as the root of prediabetes and type 2 diabetes.
- The author argues the term is useless because it lumps together several separate problems (muscle vs. liver resistance) and ignores that "resistance" is often a normal adaptation — e.g., when dietary fat is abundant, muscles naturally resist glucose burning (the Randle cycle).
- Key prior debate: the "carbohydrate-insulin model" (Taubes/Ludwig) argues carbs drive obesity via insulin; this author partly agrees but thinks dietary fat, not carbs, is the primary driver of metabolic dysfunction.