Most Replayed Moment: The First Warning Signs Of Insulin Resistance! Check Your Skin For This

The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett

Dr. Annette Bosworth (Dr. Boz) joins Steven Bartlett on 'The Diary of a CEO' to discuss insulin resistance—the silent metabolic issue affecting millions. She explains how chronically high insulin levels can lead to visible physical

Key takeaways

• Chronically elevated insulin is a major driver of aging, inflammation, and chronic disease—often unnoticed until symptoms appear.
• Skin tags and velvety skin (acanthosis nigricans) are visible early signs of insulin resistance, especially in areas like the armpits and neck.

Main topics

• Insulin resistance
• Metabolic health

Notable quotes

"If you didn't eat the rest of today, and then you got up tomorrow morning, it would be about that long after a late meal last night, that's how long it would take you to say, okay, we're back down to where we started from."

"Insulin is what makes you fluffy. It puts the fat on. But it also means things like their skin gets a little thicker, they have skin tags...""

Conclusion

Dr. Boz concludes that recognizing early physical signs like skin tags and velvety skin can be a wake-up call to address insulin resistance

Transcript preview

Speaker 1 (0:01) So when I'm, you're 54 years old, when I'm 54 years old, I want to be as young and energetic and articulate and cognitively astute as you are. So what should I be doing now to make sure that I don't decline, decay in all those areas I described? Well, what'd you have for breakfast? Today? Yeah. I have not eaten breakfast yet. It's okay. That's not a bad thing. But when you're 54? You should probably put the calories in the morning, not at night. We know that as you age, the cost of a calorie turns into timing. If you eat that food, one bite of food after 6 o'clock is worth 10 bites of food before noon. Speaker 1 (0:47) So if you're trying to say, how do I get the best out of the nourishment, but also eating's fun, if you only get one bite after six o'clock and 10 before, move that food towards morning. When you're your age, what's the last meal you ate? Yesterday? Yeah. For dinner, I had this cod and I had salad. I also had pasta. Okay. But I ate pretty late, which is a problem. What did you have the rest of the day before that? Was that your first meal? Just a salad. Just a big salad. Was that more towards lunch or noon? Probably about 4 o'clock. So waited all the way to 4 o'clock to eat. Very common. This is a really common pattern of people doing what we would say intermittent or time-restricted eating. They put that eating window in this, but it's got that balloon at the end of the day. Yeah. And it really does. I mean, what you're stimulating is an excessive production of insulin. Speaker 1 (1:39) And you're going to wake up the next morning. What time did you wake up this morning? Today? I went to bed fairly, relatively early for me. I woke up at about 7.30 a.m. Usually it's later. And do you have, did you have a solid seven, eight hours of sleep or how? Yeah. So during that time, you finished eating around 10 o'clock then it sounds like? Yeah. Okay. So then it's seven. A little bit later. Okay. So 11 o'clock and you've got 7.30 in the morning is when you woke up. So that's about eight hours since you've eaten. Speaker 1 (2:08) your insulin is still churning, especially if the meal was large and there was carbs in it. So now you've got these processed foods late at night and you're at the beginning of the disease, right? You're at the beginning of the chronic inflammatory churn of how do you age faster and faster? You don't do that. You don't have high insulin throughout the night. So can you explain to me, like I'm a 12-year-old, what insulin is and the role it's playing? Because, you know, I guess we're focused here on how to... Speaker 1 (2:35) I guess, longevity, aging. Yeah. For a second. But how does insulin play a role in all of this? And what is insulin? So insulin insulates. Okay. So think of it as it makes you fluffy. It makes you, it puts the fat on. It's got some other roles too, but we're going to talk about chronic diseases here where it's not a scarcity problem. You make plenty of it. And when it's in excess, it will store energy for when you go through a famine. It will also Speaker 1 (3:03) cause you to grow. Now, grow means get a little fatter, but it also means things like their skin gets a little thicker, they have skin tags, and what I always think about is what's going on in their brain. And when that insulin is high for years and years and years, just like yours, because if you didn't eat the rest of today, and then you got up tomorrow morning, it would be about that long after a late meal last night, that's how long it would take you to say, Speaker 1 (3:32) okay, we're back down to where we started from or where we should be in the morning. For someone that's never heard the word insulin before, there's some context to give in terms of what it's doing. So it's coming out like a transporter and helping put away the sugar or deal with the excess sugar. Right. So it is what lifts glucose or sugar from the circulation into a cell. That's its first primary job. But if all the cells are full, their storage is full, it's going to start to pack it into the liver. Let's say all those stores are full too. This job of insulin, this hormone oozes into every part of your body to say, make sure it's got fuel, make sure it's got that sugar. But most people are like what I would guess you are. Most of the time, you aren't a shortage of sugar. And so it tops things off and then it will turn things into fat. Speaker 1 (4:22) It's too much sugar. They can't store it. All the storage is full. So you can send the signal out, make me some more cells. I need some more storage units. This guy's eating more than he thinks he is. And we're going to be prepared to