Insulin resistance: the hidden cost of modern affluence.

Insulin is known as the "hormone of abundance". Insulin resistance on the other hand is the "plague of prosperity", as Dr Ben Bikman has called it.

Insulin is a hormone produced by the pancreas, which is located under your left rib cage. Think of hormones like messaging apps, Snapchat or Whatsapp, they send fast and targeted signals to different parts of the body to trigger specific actions, such as regulating metabolism, growth or mood. 

Think of insulin as the key that allows sugar (glucose) into cells.

Insulin does 6 main things and lots of other smaller things:

1. It is the key that opens the door in your cells so that sugar fuel can get in.

2. It reduces excess sugar in your blood after you eat.

3. Stores sugar in your liver and muscles

4. Converts excess sugar into fat

5. Allows amino acids (proteins) into the cell

6. Allows minerals, especially potassium, into your cells

Insulin is the main fat-making hormone in your body. When it is triggered and it is high, you CANNOT burn fat, you can only burn sugar for energy. When insulin is low, you can burn fat. Insulin stores fat mainly in your midsection, look at the size of your stomach and you can see how much insulin you have in your bloodstream. 

The main trigger for insulin are carbohydrates or carbs. It's simple, you eat bread, pasta, rice, chocolate, cake, or drink sweet fizzy drinks, orange juice or apple juice, they turn into sugar and raise your blood glucose. Insulin then steps in and does its job, lowering your blood glucose.

How does your body copes with excess sugar?

Every time you eat, whether it is a meal or a snack, and it contains carbohydrates, your body will digest it and turn it into sugar. If you eat a high carbohydrate diet 5 or 6 times a day, your insulin will be triggered and will have to work hard 5 or 6 times a day. 

The problem with triggering insulin frequently is that eventually your cells will start to resist or ignore it. In other words, your body is telling you that if you keep eating sugar, I will block it at a cellular level. 

Insulin resistance is a defence mechanism. Your body sees excessive amounts of sugar as toxic and blocks it from entering your cells - this is called insulin resistance. Your cells cannot get glucose in, they stay hungry and break down carbohydrates, and so do you.

Because the cells are not getting glucose, the pancreas has to work much harder and produce even more insulin so that the cells can get some fuel. In fact, the pancreas has to work 6 to 7 times harder to produce insulin. This leads to the following vicious circle → the body has too much insulin in the blood, but the insulin CANNOT do its job and store glucose in the cells because they are resisting it and starving at the same time.  Eventually the pancreas gets very tired of producing large amounts of insulin and makes less and less of it, and then your blood sugar starts to get higher and higher.

What do your blood tests show?

Stage 1 - Your blood glucose is still normal because the pancreas is working hard to produce more insulin to compensate for cell resistance. 

Stage 2 - as the pancreas gets tired, you CANNOT use insulin to compensate and your blood glucose starts to rise. This is called diabetes. Type 2 diabetes is higher sugar levels due to insulin resistance.

Years can go by before stage 1 turns into stage 2 and shows up in your blood test results, a problem that would be easily detected if doctors tested fasting insulin levels in addition to fasting glucose levels. As far as I know this is not done on the NHS but can be done privately.  

In the meantime, the symptoms of insulin resistance will manifest themselves in different ways:

Insulin resistance and the early stages of type 2 diabetes have one thing in common: high insulin levels.