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INSULIN SENSITIVITY AND RESISTANCE
Insulin Sensitivity and Insulin Resistance
The factors governing your response to different nutritional intakes are pretty
diverse, but one major factor that has been focused on lately, is insulin and
glucose tolerance. Insulin sensitivity seems to be the most important factor
dictating how the body will handle carbs. For those who have high insulin sensitivity,
the body responds to carb intake with small insulin surges. Although the insulin
surges are small, the cells are very responsive to that little amount of insulin
and do a great job of becoming anabolic. Since lots of insulin can inhibit fat
loss, the ideal scenario is to become very insulin sensitive so that only small
amounts of insulin are required for anabolism and so that those small amounts
of insulin don't prevent fat loss.
Simply put, insulin resistance is bad. If you're insulin resistant, your cells
- especially the muscle cells - don't respond to the anabolic effects of normal
levels of insulin, i.e. they resist insulin's effects. If this is the case,
the body then releases massive amounts of insulin to promote nutrient storage
in the resistant cells. Remember, though, that chronic high levels of insulin
in the blood are very bad and can cause type 2 diabetes.
Insulin sensitivity is therefore very good. In this case, your cells - especially
the muscle cells - respond very well to small levels of insulin. Therefore,
they need very little insulin stimulation to get into an anabolic state. So
high insulin sensitivity at the muscle level is very desirable.
The insulin Index is a study of how foods affect ones insulin sensitivity.
Every time you consume foods, there will be a response and release of insulin.
The hormone that can be very anabolic and powerful in your pursuits to gain
muscle and lose fat. Because insulin is a storage hormone, most people think
that since insulin stores nutrients, it should be avoided because it has the
potential to store fat. This is a mistake for several reasons. First, there's
no way to avoid insulin in the blood. Whenever you eat food, insulin is released.
And that's any food.
Secondly, if you theoretically could eliminate insulin, you would abolish all
of its anabolic effects and its ability to store energy in the muscle. In fact,
type 1 diabetics don't produce insulin and as a result, if left untreated, they
die. This of course is a most undesirable situation. So if you cant get rid
of it -what you want to do is befriend it and really understand how to manipulate
insulin to achieve the results that you desire within your body.
But you don't want to go the opposite route, either. If blood levels of insulin
are always highly elevated, trouble results. Chronic elevation of insulin leads
to large amounts of fat gain, risk for cardiovascular disease, and ultimately
to type 2 diabetes. This second type of diabetes is characterized by obesity,
cardiovascular disease, and the poor ability of the muscle to store nutrients,
which leads to muscle wasting and tons of fat storage. This is called insulin
resistance.
So quite simply the point is that you need insulin, but you must learn how
to balance the anabolic effects against the fat storage effects; to trick it
into making you muscular while making you lean at the same time. And this is
done two major ways; first by increasing insulin sensitivity in the muscle while
decreasing insulin sensitivity in the fat cells and, second, by controlling
the insulin released during specific times of the day.
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