insulin in a nutshell
You may have heard about insulin before, but don’t know exactly what it is, or what it does. Understanding insulin and the effect it has on your body is key to understanding weight. Insulin or problems with Insulin resistance could be the reason you can’t lose weight!
Insulin is a hormone produced by our pancreas. It is referred to as the “fat storage hormone.” Insulin helps to bring glucose or sugar from our blood (ie, sugar broken down from the carbs we have eaten) into our tissues such as our muscle, liver, and fat tissue.
Want to read more about insulin? Go to Insulin: the deep dive here.
IR
IR is insulin resistance. Insulin resistance occurs when your body cannot process the carbs you eat in a normal fashion. Normally after you eat a sandwich, you immediately start absorbing carbs. Your muscles, fat cells, and liver will then use the carbs you just ate based on a normal insulin response.
With IR, your muscles for instance cannot use the carbs well. Your body then knows that this is a problem, so it responds by making more insulin. This abnormal response continues unless we make changes (see the pillars).
what did you do to me, IR?!?
As your body continues to make this extra insulin, you will feel:
hungrier
sluggishness due to a slower metabolism
mood changes such as anxiety (after a sugar crash)
sleepiness after meals
brain fog or poor concentration
The following changes occur with IR physically:
weight gain around the belly
puffiness, swelling as a result of increased inflammation
difficulty losing weight
IR eventually causes metabolic syndrome and complications of obesity resulting in:
high blood pressure
diabetes
high cholesterol
IR makes weight loss very difficult. Do you feel that you gain weight just looking at food? This is true, since more insulin is made even looking at yummy things to eat. This is a common feeling among those that have difficulty achieving their weight loss goals especially even after making dietary changes. In this scenario, IR is likely the culprit.
do you have to be overweight to have IR?
Nope! Even at a normal weight, if you have a belly or tend to put on weight around the belly area, you could have IR. Due to genetics, some of us are more likely to have IR than others.
good news, everybody!
IR can be reversed especially if addressed early. These physical changes are at times subtle, so contact your physician or the obesity medicine trained physicians associated with pillarMD for a metabolic workup. Our goal at pillarMD is to help those with medical problems get better, AND more importantly, prevent medical problems in the first place. Let's fix IR before the diabetes and high blood pressure set in. Remember weight loss can be harder with IR but not impossible, since weight loss medications are available to make the process of becoming healthy easier.
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insulin: the deep dive
Let's review what happens in our body and brain when we ingest carbs or sugar. Before the sugar even hits our mouth, the anticipation of something sweet causes insulin to be released. Once we have ingested something with sugar, the sugar moves from our intestines to our blood vessels, causing our blood glucose to rise. High blood glucose then stimulates the pancreas to release insulin. This increased blood sugar then causes the “sugar high” and may make us feel jittery. Insulin stimulates the uptake of glucose into cells and storage as glycogen in the liver and muscles. Insulin also stimulates the conversion of excess glucose into fat for storage. As the body uses the glucose, blood levels of glucose go down, making the jitteriness worse and even causing mood changes. Any glucose/sugar that is not needed immediately is stored (into fat) for later use.
One of the reasons sugar is a problem for so many of us (causing weight gain and leading to more hunger) is due to the large insulin response when sugar is eaten. Eating sugar causes blood glucose levels to rise, leading to a large insulin response, bringing the blood sugar from high (in the blood), to low (now the sugar is in the tissues--your fat tissues) and then your blood sugar is low and you feel shaky and hungry again, so you want to eat or snack again. It is a vicious cycle.
Also, insulin levels are naturally higher in the evening, so your evening meal will have a larger impact on your waistline, and it is because of the larger insulin response to that meal. You could eat the exact same meal earlier in the day and not have as high of an insulin response. This is also why snacking at night on poor quality foods (chips, cereal, candy) is such a bad idea.
Some people, due to multiple reasons (weight, genetics, etc) can have insulin resistance--their body is not as sensitive to the insulin, therefore more insulin needs to be made to get the same response--leading to a vicious cycle of excess insulin and weight gain.
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