The Modern Reason for Insulin Resistance

But the research now suggests that there's now another reason for insulin resistance that commonly sets us up for diabetes, obesity, and other metabolic problems, and which may lie at the root of very many modern chronic illnesses: not enough darkness. If we don't have long enough periods of real darkness, then we don't get enough melatonin during the night. That means that it's job as an antioxidant, cleaning up our mitochondria and preventing damage to them, isn't being done properly. At the same time, our mitochondria are being very slowly worked to death on permanent overtime long past sunset, under artificial lights. As a result of this one-two punch (too much work and not enough garbage collection and repairs) the mitochondria become more and more inefficient, and many die. A third factor, as mentioned above, is that mitochondria seem to reproduce during the dark, so as to maintain healthy populations. If we use artificial lights to extend our days, gradually we run our mitochondria right into the ground, just as if they had pistons which were being allowed to grind away at their engine blocks without frequent oil changes or other maintenance. It may take decades(or perhaps just a few years of intense abuse if we have a job that requires vast amounts of overtime), but consequences will come. The energy provided by mitochondria is to vital for us to escape consequences from harm to them.

Ironically, precisely because our bodies were never designed to cope with very short nights, we have no very good warning system to tell us about this microscopic damage, however terrible it becomes. Unlike too much hot or cold, we don't feel pain from excess light because previously, evolution simply never encountered conditions in which animals could chose to stay under bright white light, so there was no cause to build a warning system against very long periods of light. Instead, our bodies (and brains) become confused, and respond incorrectly to the growing crisis. Lacking energy, we respond by beginning to crave and to eat “worse”, high-calorie food (under the influence of changed levels of the hunger hormones Leptin and Ghrelin, etc) – just as if we were starved for raw sugars and fats. Unfortunately, that's not the problem. Worse, this larger intake of high-calorie food only imposes yet another task on our already over-burdened metabolisms (namely storing the sugar and fat, as I've mentioned.) As well, the mere fact that our cells are already becoming plump with glycogen increases insulin resistance still further. This is a very vicious cycle, a positive feedback cycle, that nature isn't equipped to interrupt, because it hasn't anticipated unnatural lighting conditions. Of all the things nature and evolution could rely on in the past, that day followed night was surely the most constant environmental factor except gravity. Now that's changed, thoughtlessly, and we're reaping the consequences: more and more of them, every year.

Since the consequences of mitochondrial insufficiency and the energy shortage that results are very widespread; we probably don't know all of those consequences yet. But we do know that they go far beyond insulin resistance or a sensation of fatigue.

- ARTICLE INCOMPLETE - the end for now -