How much do you really know about insulin resistance?
It’s a topic that comes up a lot on this podcast, and yet, it’s still not a condition that’s widely understood or even really talked about at large. So what’s actually going on? How do you know whether you are, in fact, insulin resistant? What are the risks if you are? And what can you do about it?
That’s exactly what we’re talking about in today’s super in-depth episode as we sit down with Dr. Morgan Nolte. And it’s definitely an episode that every woman who cares about their health needs to listen to maybe more than once.
Today we’re going to be chatting with Dr. Morgan Nolte. She is a board-certified clinical specialist in geriatric physical therapy who, after recognizing a lack of preventative care for conditions that are largely preventable, has founded Zivli, an online course and coaching program that helps adults reverse insulin resistance for long-term weight loss and disease prevention.
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And today she’s sharing exactly what each and every one of us needs to understand about insulin resistance, what it means, what it looks like, and how to reverse it. It’s such an important topic. So without further ado, I am so excited to be able to introduce you to today’s interview guest, Dr. Morgan Nolte.
Interview with Dr. Morgan Nolte
Morgan, thank you so much for being here today.
Dr. Morgan Nolte: I’m so excited to be here. Thanks for having me, Ruth.
Ruth: You’re welcome. So let’s just start with a little background. Tell us a little bit about yourself, who you are, what you do.
Dr. Morgan Nolte: Yeah. So by trade, I’m a geriatric physical therapist and I have a lot of work experience in post-acute rehab and home care. So I saw a lot of end-stage disease, a lot of end-stage diabetes, like amputations. Severe neuropathy that led to a lot of falls, some blindness issues, a lot of heart disease, like heart attacks and strokes.
A lot of dementia, all the dimensions, Alzheimer’s vascular Louie body dementia, and a lot of obesity, just poor body mass composition, excess body fat, low muscle mass.
And you’re not in that field too long. I don’t think before you. You get a little bit heartbroken by all the stories that you see. So I think a lot of people are used to seeing aging on a small scale, maybe in their parents or their grandparents. But when you work in geriatrics, hundreds and hundreds of people. And it’s heartbreaking because When you don’t have your physical health, you don’t have a great quality of life.
And often your children become your caretakers, a lot of your money, time, and energy goes to being sick, going to doctor’s offices, going to the hospital again, another surgery, another pill, and it’s just sad, so honestly, I felt like in PT, while it’s a very valuable profession, it wasn’t. It wasn’t like what I felt very called to do, which was to help prevent the diseases that I was treating in the first place, because a lot of that diabetes, heart disease, dementia, all really boils down to your lifestyle choices.
And I thought who’s helping people like in the gray zone of healthcare, like my patients, children who are following in their footsteps, who’s helping them get healthy because if they don’t make the changes in their forties, fifties, sixties, they’re going to end up right here. And I’ll be treating them in 20 years. And it’s a deja vu or like groundhog’s day where we’re doing the same thing over and over.
After I had my son, I decided, if I’m going to work, I’m going to do something that I’m very passionate about. I’m not just going to go to work for a paycheck. I’m not just going to go to work to like. Do a job, I felt this calling to help people prevent disease. And so that’s why I started my company and that’s what I do today. And we focus on insulin resistance because just doing independent research, like hundreds of history and physical reviews, right? No one ever just had diabetes. Like no one ever just had heart disease and no one ever just had dementia or obesity.
It always comes with multiple conditions, multiple comorbidities. And I thought that’s because there’s an underlying cause to all of them, but no one taught me that. Like I had to do my own research, just like you did. I was looking into you and your story on your weight loss journey. And it’s once you really understand the truth of what causes these diseases, it’s just mind-blowing. Like how is this not being taught in school? How does everybody not know that? I ask myself that every day. Why? I don’t understand.
So I, that was really inspiring to me that the root cause of all of these conditions was insulin resistance and inflammation. And if I did one thing for the rest of my life with my career, it’s going to be helped to help people really live a low insulin, low inflammation lifestyle. And that’s what I get to today.
Ruth: I love that. Yeah. First of all, what a hard job to be dealing with that day in and day out like that. I can’t imagine that honestly just this limited exposure I’ve had to, with my mother in law being sick and then obviously passing away. And then now my own mom and her issues and health issues, like It’s so hard to watch that on a small scale to actually be in that every single day.
Dr. Nolte: Oh, yeah. And but then at the same time to the question, why? Why are people not talking about this? Because you’re not the only health practitioner who’s dealing with an elderly population or people who are dealing with these health issues because it’s so prevalent and it’s so everywhere. So doctors everywhere are dealing with this. But why are not more people talking about this?
Ruth: That’s such a good question and you’re right. I did feel like a lot of the services I was providing was too little too late and I almost felt like my hands were tied and my mouth was muzzled and I’m like, they need more than just exercise and they needed a lot earlier. And so why are more people not talking about it?
Dr. Nolte: I think if I had to give you a really point-blank answer, I think it’s because we live on autopilot and we are just going through the motions of our day. We’re just doing it, going to work, doing our job, trying to meet productivity standards, trying to get those billable hours, trying to like just get through the day. Like I think so many people are just in survival mode and on autopilot that they don’t take the time to really sit down and reflect is what I’m doing working? Is what I’m doing effective. And I think you can tell that because most healthcare practitioners aren’t healthy.
Unfortunately, nurses, I think are so often under stressful demands. 12-hour shifts, night shifts, like they have some of the hardest jobs, and I think that’s the main reason is because we don’t create the space to think and reflect. And honestly, it took me on maternity leave to really think through things as much as I wanted to because it was the first time I was just like sitting breastfeeding my child. Not working. And I think that when we’re on this like hamster wheel of…
