Ep. 40 Can puberty cause insulin resistance?

Are the weight loss struggles of your teen linked to something deeper than diet and exercise? I  explore the complex relationship between insulin resistance, metabolic syndrome, abnormal lipid profiles, and how these factors compound the difficulty of achieving a healthy weight during puberty's hormonal turbulence.

This episode also brings to light a pivotal study: 
Bergström E, Hernell O, Persson LA, Vessby B. Insulin resistance syndrome in adolescents. Metabolism. 1996 Jul;45(7):908-14. doi: 10.1016/s0026-0495(96)90168-7. PMID: 8692030.

If you're wondering…
❓ Why are teens hungry all the time during puberty?
❓ Why are teens craving sugar all the time?
❓ Why teens feel so tired—even when they sleep?

You’re not alone—and it’s not your fault.

Hormones play a HUGE role in how teens gain weight, feel energy, manage emotions, and grow.

Dr Gourgari is a certified pediatric endocrinologist, obesity medicine specialist and health coach for teens.

Each week, she break down how puberty hormones work—and how simple habits like eating better, sleeping more, and moving your body can help you feel better, stronger, and more confident.

We’ll talk about things like:
🥗 Are smoothies really healthy?
🍞 Are carbs bad for weight loss in teens?
💪 And how to stop emotional eating before it takes over your day.

Whether you’re a teen ready to make a change—or a parent looking to support your child the right way—this podcast is for you.

🎁 Want to jump in right now?
Grab your free guide: 30 Healthy, High-Protein Recipes for Teens at lifestyleforteens.com/recipes

Transcript

Speaker 1: 1:04

This is the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. If you're a mom and want to help your child who is struggling to lose weight, you are in the right place. If you are looking for healthy lifestyle tips, dr Gorgery is here to help you understand the science around safe weight loss in teens and children, because what works for adult weight loss is not always the best for children. This podcast is for educational purposes only. Dr Gorgory does not provide medical, psychological or nutrition therapy advice. You should not use this information to diagnose or treat any health problems without consulting your own medical practitioner and now your host, dr Jenny Gorgory.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Hello, welcome to another episode of the Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens podcast. This is Dr Jenny Gorgory and on today's episode I wanted to talk a little bit about insulin resistance in teenagers. Now, insulin resistance is the first red flag that happens before prediabetes develops, that can lead to diabetes. Insulin resistance is also the first sign that can affect the metabolic syndrome. It is linked to abnormal lipid profile. It can lead to more difficulty to get to a healthier weight because your body cannot process the sugar easily the same way that it can process it if you don't have insulin resistance. Now one of the main drivers of insulin resistance is to have unhealthy weight. Now teenagers have a particular extra reason and that is the puberty and the growth that happens during teenage years and that can make puberty and the growth that happens during teenage years and that can make insulin resistance even worse.

Speaker 2: 3:06

There was a great study that was published several years ago. It was done in Sweden. Actually, the actual title of this manuscript is Insulin Resistance Syndrome in Adolescents and it was published in the Journal of Metabolism in July of 1996. So what the researchers did? They actually did blood measurements. They took the height, they took the weight. They also looked at the body mass index, which is a measurement how unhealthy is a certain weight? If you don't know what BMI is, I invite you to go and listen to episode one of this podcast. But basically they collected all these measurements of all these different hormones in teenagers and they also looked at their puberty hormones and they wanted to see when is insulin resistance that can make it harder to lose weight in teenagers? When does it actually start to increase?

Speaker 2: 4:08

So they gathered data from many teenagers. There were a total of 462 boys and 380 girls. There were two different groups of teenagers. Girls there were two different groups of teenagers. One group was a group of 14 years old and the other group was a group of 17 years old, and researchers went and checked their puberty. They checked their insulin, they checked their bad cholesterol, they checked the good cholesterol and they did measurements of their puberty. At the same time that they did measurements of their insulin resistance, they also did measurements of their waist circumference to look at their belly fat. They also look at the fat at their arms and they also calculated what is their body mass index and what they found was that the insulin resistance was higher in the group of teenagers, that they were 14 years of age, compared to the group of 17-year-old teenagers that had already been done with their puberty, which of course that makes sense, because the spikes of growth hormone, which is responsible for growth in teenagers, are higher in the younger groups compared to the older group that they are done growing. And what the researchers also found was that there was a direct and clear association between the amount of insulin resistance that teenagers had while they were growing with their bad cholesterol and also with their body mass index. So the higher the body mass index, the higher the insulin resistance. And they also find an association of the insulin resistance with the unhealthy lipids, which again is not a surprise, because we know that insulin resistance is what can lead to diabetes and unhealthy cardiovascular profile and a higher risk to get strokes and heart attacks compared to people that don't have insulin resistance. So when they looked also at the association between the belly fat and the body mass index, they found no extra information that they could gather from the fat position the waist to hip ratio, as we call it compared to the body mass index, which tells us that both measurements measuring the belly fat or measuring the BMI is actually giving you very good information about the insulin resistance.

Speaker 2: 7:05

Now, what is the key point in this? The key point is that when teenagers go through puberty, they have an extra reason to have insulin resistance, and that is because they are growing and that is because they are having the puberty hormones, and that can make it more difficult for them to get to a healthier weight if they are not following a healthier lifestyle a healthier lifestyle compared to, let's say, younger kids that are five or seven years of age that don't still have puberty and therefore they don't have this big insulin resistance. Now, what can teenagers do to improve their insulin resistance? It's not that there's nothing that they can do about it, because there are healthy ways that they can follow to improve their insulin resistance, and my goal during this podcast is to talk about all these different healthy lifestyle modifications and ways to do them, like healthier adding more exercise in your daily routine. That can help improve insulin resistance that is associated with puberty. Another thing that you can do is that you can try to eat more fruits and vegetables that have more fiber and they're more natural carbohydrates. That can improve the insulin resistance compared to having refined carbohydrates that lead to higher insulin spikes. And there are also other ways that I'm not going to go into details during this episode.

Speaker 2: 8:57

But what I wanted to point out is that we know that we all need to do our best to eat healthier, do our best to exercise, but it is particularly more important to do so when teenagers go through the big growth spurt and the big puberty changes because there is more insulin resistance. That happens during that time and of course that comes with also the benefit that teenagers have when they're growing that as they become taller, just keeping the same weight can lead to a better body mass index. And again, you can go to episode one and figure out what is the healthy weight for a particular teenager that is a certain age and has a certain height, because there's not the same weight. It's not the same good healthy weight for everyone. Kids have different normal weight according to their height weight and according to whether they're boys or girls. So you can go to Epson Run to listen more about it.

Speaker 2: 10:05

But it is also a good thing that teenagers are growing because, as I said, they can keep the same weight and get into a healthier body mass index just by growing taller and if they can combine both of those things, meaning they can have healthier habits that give them less insulin increase, less insulin resistance, that can improve their efforts to get to a healthier weight. If they are only just growing taller but they're not making any changes in the way that they are eating or in their way they're exercising, or in their amount of fiber they're eating, or in like how much sleep they're getting, or in like how they're managing stress and all those other things Like if they're only getting taller without addressing, by healthy habits, what they can do to improve the increased insulin resistance that comes with increased growth, then they are less likely to get to a healthier weight or it's going to be more difficult for them because they are fighting against the pubertal hormones. So my take-home message is go along with your puberty hormones, use them to your advantage. You're still growing, you can get into a healthier weight, and even if you're done growing, then that's also good. That means your insulin resistance is not as bad as when it was, when you were still growing. However, now it can also be more difficult to get to a healthier weight, because if you're not growing anymore, then you actually need to lose weight to get to a healthier weight.

Speaker 2: 11:59

So I hope this was helpful for you all, and my question to you and my action step for the day is to choose one thing that you can do to improve your insulin resistance today, whether that would be going for a walk, going for a run, go and play basketball or tennis some kind form of physical activity, whether it is you're choosing more fiber in your diet or more natural carbohydrates, or whether you're choosing to cut back on those unhealthy snacks. Just think about one little change that you can do to get to a healthier weight. If you are a teenager, or if you're a parent of a teenager, then you can have that conversation with your teenager about the implications of puberty on insulin resistance and little ways and little steps that they can do to get to a healthier weight by getting better at their insulin resistance of puberty. That's all I had for today. I'll talk to you again next week. I hope you have a wonderful day. Take care Bye.

Speaker 1: 13:13

If you enjoyed listening to this podcast, I invite you to come check out the lift program. It's Dr Gregory's 12 week coaching program for teens and their moms, where we take all this information, we apply it to your daily life and we work together so your teenager learns how to create a healthy lifestyle so they can feel happier, more confident, less stressed and love their body again. Visit the website at lifestyleforteenscom and click on the work with me and free resources to learn more about this program and get free help to start this journey right away. Thanks for tuning in and we'll catch you in the next episode of Lifestyle and Weight Loss for Teens.