Understanding the Importance of Insulin

For many of you the answers to your battle with the bulge and concerns about long term health issues are here. Most people know that insulin is given to people with a certain kind of diabetes, to help control their blood sugar levels when their own supplies become depleted or insufficient. Insulin is one of the most powerful and efficient substances that the body uses to control the use, distribution and storage of energy. Insulin is the control hormone for glucose, a basic form of sugar. The body must maintain a certain level of glucose in the blood at all times so when there is no carbohydrate food source to make glucose, the liver will actually convert protein to glucose. Remarkably, even on a prolonged, total fast, a healthy body can maintain its glucose level within a rather narrow normal range. Consuming carbohydrates impacts your blood-sugar levels. The amount of carbohydrates – and the type – will determine how your blood sugar responds. A food full of refined sugar and white flour, such as a jam doughnut, will raise blood-sugar much more dramatically than does a salad. To be useful for your body, blood sugar has to be transported to your cells. Think of insulin as the barge that transports glucose from your blood to your cells. Once it reaches the cells, three things can happen to that glucose: it can be mobilized for immediate energy: it can be converted into glycogen for later use as a source of energy; or it can be stored as fat. Insulin is manufactured in a part of your pancreas called the Islets of Langerhans. As the sugar levels in your blood goes up, the pancreas releases insulin to move the sugar out of the blood. It then transports the blood sugar to your body’s cells for their energy needs. When these needs are met, the liver converts excess glucose into glycogen, which is stored in the liver and muscles, where it is readily available for energy use. Once all the glycogen storage areas are filled, the body has to do something with excess glucose, And here is the big revelation: The liver then converts the remaining glucose into fat, which becomes “the storage tanks” of fat on your belly, thighs, buttocks and elsewhere. That is why insulin is called the fat producing hormone. Since fat is much more efficient – and has more capacity to store energy – than glucose, we can store a lot more fat in our bodies than glucose. That is what results in obesity. Any by the way, the main chemical constituent of all this fat is triglyceride – which in your blood can be a risk factor for heart disease and stroke.


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