Dr. Saira Hameed

Oh, such a good question and there are various nuances to my answer.

The first thing to say is if you had asked me that question a generation ago, so if you had asked me that question pre-1970, I would have said, yeah, most people are okay.

That endocrine hormone illness is not that common.

most people could go through life not really thinking about hormones or indeed ever having to even know what an endocrinologist is.

So the timeframe we're talking about is important.

And the reason I say that is that today such a huge number of people have a condition called insulin resistance that unfortunately it's no longer possible to say that most of us are living with good hormone health.

Insulin resistance means that the body becomes resistant to the hormone insulin.

It can no longer hear insulin's message.

And in terms of your metabolic health, this is a disaster.

I'll give you one example of insulin resistance.

Insulin we often think of as being the blood sugar hormone.

So you eat something, the blood sugar goes up, your pancreas detects the blood sugar rise and will release the hormone insulin.

Insulin clears that sugar from the blood, the blood sugar returns to normal.

So that is physiology, that is when it's working perfectly.

When the body becomes resistant to insulin's message, insulin cannot clear sugar from the blood effectively.

So it will release insulin in higher and higher quantities, i.e.

the hormone is now shouting at the target cells just to try to get its job done.

And for a period of time that can work, so the blood sugar can be cleared from the blood.

But after a while, the resistance becomes so strong that no matter how strongly the insulin message is transmitted, not enough sugar can be cleared from the blood.

The blood sugar rises.