Silent Insulin Resistance Increases Your Risk of Depression
What do your blood sugar, cholesterol levels and triglycerides have to do with your mental health? They’re all quite connected, as it turns out.
Gone are the days of us treating mental health issues as a purely psychological phenomenon. We now know that biological factors like inflammation, hormones and blood sugar greatly influence our state of mind.
Insulin resistance is common and often ignored until it progresses to diabetes. This is unfortunate because science tells us that insulin resistance can impact our wellbeing even before it leads to diabetes. Research consistently shows a connection between insulin resistance and mental health. A 2021 study by Rasgon et. al. found that those with insulin resistance had an increased risk of developing major depressive disorder over the 9 year follow up period of the study–even for those who never had depression or anxiety in the past.
What is insulin resistance?
Insulin resistance is not a specific disease in the same way that we think about diabetes. Insulin resistance is a state that the body can be stuck in long before diabetes shows up. When the body is in a state of insulin resistance, it means that it’s ignoring (or resisting) the instructions that insulin is trying to give to your body: make use of that sugar! When the body ignores those instructions from insulin, sugar is not used well by various parts of the body so it remains floating in the blood stream leading to elevated blood sugar.
It can be tricky to measure early stages of insulin resistance because it can fluctuate easily from moment to moment. There are many ways to test it and it’s common for some tests to come back normal and for others to show signs of insulin resistance.
In the study mentioned above, researchers measured insulin resistance in three validated ways:
They calculated the ratio of triglycerides to HDL
They measured abdominal fat
They assessed fasting plasma glucose levels
An increase in the triglyceride-HDL ratio, an increase in abdominal fat and rising plasma glucose levels over the years all suggest insulin resistance and they were all associated with a higher risk of developing major depressive disorder.
How do we treat insulin resistance?
Causes of insulin resistance include:
Being sedentary
Consuming more calories than your body needs
Not getting enough sleep
Poor stress management
So in many cases, the way to manage insulin resistance is the same old, simple advice we’ve all heard over and over:
Exercise
Eat healthy and keep moderation in mind (culturally appropriate Mediterranean Diet principles are a great way to do this)
Go to bed on time and get help addressing any sleep issues
Work on stress management
Some supplements can play a role in managing insulin resistance but they can’t replace lifestyle changes
The thing is, we may all know about these lifestyle changes but the challenge becomes motivating ourselves to do them and dealing with life situations that make it difficult to implement these healthy changes. Depression is serious and devastating, hopefully more awareness about how these lifestyle changes can prevent depression will help keep us all motivated to take care of ourselves in the best way we can. If you need help coming up with a practical plan to manage insulin resistance and your mental health, book an appointment and I would be happy to help.