Insulin What Is It Anyway?

If you are a diabetic you probably already know what insulin is, but if you don’t have it chances are that all it means to you is that it has something to do with a diabetics blood sugar or it causes you to gain weight. Have you ever wondered what it is and how it works, and why people with diabetes try to control it. I’ll make this a condensed version.

First off insulin is a hormone that is produced in the pancreas. When your blood glucose or sugar level rises, this is a signal for the pancreas to begin producing. Its whole function in the body it to regulate purpose is to regulate the metabolism of glucose and other nutrients. Metabolism is the process where the energy from the things we eat is released for use by the body or stored in body tissues, especially the liver, muscles, and body fat. This is a never ending process for all living things. If it stops, the organism dies.

When you don’t eat for a while you start to feel a sensation called hunger, which usually makes you crave carbohydrates. These carbs get converted to sugar in the blood, which then causes the release of insulin.

Then the insulin lets the sugar leave the blood and get absorbed into the cells of the body; the effect this has on the brain chemistry generates a feeling of satisfaction. Over the next few hours the insulin/blood sugar ratio changes the brain chemistry again and causes you to feel hungry again.

Armed with this knowledge we can modify our diet to help the regulation process. The pancreas secretes the most insulin faster overnight around 0600, so if a diabetic takes a morning shot of insulin, it will reduce glucose 40 percent more than an afternoon one.

Since insulin carries nutrients to the cells, if you are diabetic and exercise then eat, and you don’t have enough insulin your blood sugar would remain high (called hyperglycemia), and the nutrients could not pass through the fatty cell membrane. Eventually the blood glucose would be passed through the urine and the benefits of the exercise and the meal would be wasted.

A high fat diet is not necessarily bad, provided it contains a sufficient proportion of essential Fatty acids (EFAs). Also a low fat diet is not always good if it doesn’t have enough essential fatty acids.

The key is a balanced proportion (two parts of omega-6 to one part of omega-3). Therefore we need to reduce the omega-6 oils, except GLA, and increase omega-3 fatty acids, particularly DHA (DHA is plentiful in cold water fish, such as salmon, mackerel, herring and tuna that feed on DHA-rich micro-algae).

Exercise is the other element that affects insulin levels. It has been shown by a number of papers that resistance training for insulin resistance is better than aerobic training. There are a variety of other reasons too. Resistance training is referring to muscular exercises. If you just do a biceps curl, you immediately increase the insulin sensitivity of your biceps.

Just by exercising you are increasing the blood flow to that muscle. That is one of the factors that determine insulin sensitivity. It has been shown conclusively that resistance training will increase insulin sensitivity.

It has been found that several months of resistance training leads to a much greater increase in insulin sensitivity than seen in patients who engage in aerobic training. This is attributed to an increase in glycogen storage.

It has been shown that bodybuilders, who traditionally employ a high volume style of training, favorably alter glucose tolerance and insulin sensitivity.

So to make a longer story shorter this is why we need to pay attention to insulin levels while keeping the Big Picture in focus. It can be done but like a tripod all three legs need to be leveled in order to succeed. Lower Insulin levels with diet and exercise.

Sugar Control Is Crucial

Keeping your blood glucose levels as close to normal as possible can be a lifesaver. Tight control can prevent or slow the progress of many complications of diabetes, giving you extra years of healthy, active life.
But tight control is not for everyone and it involves hard work.

Good control means getting as close to a normal (nondiabetic) blood glucose level as you safely can. What this means is to keep your levels between 70 and 130 mg/dl before meals, and less than 180 two hours after starting a meal, with a glycated hemoglobin level less than 7 percent. The target number for glycated hemoglobin will vary depending on the type of test your doctor's lab uses.

There is a supplement from NOW foods called Glucose Metabolic Support that contains a new dietary ingredient that is an extract from the herb Lagestroemia speciosa. The active component called GlucoTrim'™s is corosolic acid, has been the subject of scientific studies that demonstrates its ability to support healthy blood sugar levels by helping to transport glucose into the cells.

This tablet also includes an extract from the herb Gymnema sylvestre, a small plant native to India. Extracts of Gymnema have been used for centuries by Ayurvedic medical practitioners for support of blood sugar levels and natural insulin production.

Glucose Metabolic Support does not contain any sugar, salt, starch, yeast, wheat, gluten, corn, soy, milk, egg or preservatives.

Are You A Sugar Junkie?

I read a newsletter article this morning in MyDiabetesCentral that talked about sugar addiction. There was a recent study done at Princeton on rats that concluded that the chemical changes that go on in the brain are just like what happens in people who use cocaine, heroin or other substances.

When I think about how I feel about how sugar affects me, I have to agree with their results. I have always had what society refers to as a sweet tooth, but I never thought of it as an addiction until now. As much as I try to avoid sweets, I find that I still crave them, which is understandable because they are all around me.

If you read food labels you begin to realize that it’s in most of the processed food you buy at the grocery store. Enriched flour, potatoes and rice all turn into sugar also. Also check out the salad dressings and soft drinks. Alcohol is on the list too. It’s like that old punch line “Everything I like is either, illegal, immoral or fattening.”

Diabetics have a harder time dealing with sweets and salty snacks, because they mess with your insulin level. The sugar makes your body produce more insulin which makes your bold sugar drop and then you crave more sweets. Salty snacks like chips, pretzels, etc. are refined carbohydrates which cause your body to react the same way.

So if you just have to have just one more cookie … you might be a sugar junkie. I have been trying to wean myself off of the stuff for years and tried to go for the naturally sweet things like fruit and honey.

One product for sweetening that has come along more recently and I like is Stevia. It is hard to find sometimes, but I found you can get it online also. This is actually a herb that is very sweet. I use it in coffee and on cereal. They even have cookbooks that show you how to use it.

For me eliminating sugar completely is really hard to do, but I have found that the longer I keep away from it, the easier it is to stay off of it. I don’t have the cravings I used to have when I was younger, and that is a good thing.