 By Elena Voropay Insulin is a great anabolic hormone and may be the most misunderstood hormone among strength athletes It is an anabolic hormone and promotes construction of new cells and tissues. Many think insulin is a “fattening” hormone because of its association with carbohydrates and fat cells. Indeed, insulin gives the tools for your fat stores to become larger. But insulin also helps in building new muscle cells, cartilage, bones, and every other tissue that needs to be re-newed. Plus, insulin produces energy, improves protein synthesis and brings essential fuel to your cells in order for the body to live. Insulin is a hormone and like many hormones, insulin is a protein. It is secreted by groups of cells within the pancreas called islet cells in response to eating. The pancreas is an organ that sits behind the stomach and has many functions in addition to insulin production, such as producing digestive enzymes and other hormones.
Think of pancreas as a bus, insulin being a bus driver, your nutrients as passengers and your body cells as bus stops. When the bus is full, your blood sugar levels are high. By dropping off passengers at every stop, the bus driver does a great job at lowering your glucose levels.
Many mistakenly think that insulin's main role is to lower blood sugar levels. This is false. Insulin's main purpose is to help transport newly eaten nutrients into all cells in the body where these can be converted into usable fuel. This action is carefully choreographed by many organs and enzymes.
As soon as you put food in your mouth, you put insulin to action. This is known as the early insulin release from the granules which were made and pre-stored before you even made your meal selection.
Interestingly, insulin goes up even when you drink diet drinks! The reason is that your sweet receptors are always hungry for anything sweet and they don't know the difference between calorie-dense or calorie-free. Your calories find their use only in the stomach and intestines, not in the mouth. So when the foods or drinks interacts with the sweet receptors in the mouth, these will signal for the insulin release in anticipation that carbohydrates will enter the system shortly and the blood sugar levels will be raised.
As food enters the stomach and is broken down into smaller molecules, these get converted to sugars and absorbed through the lining of your digestive tract. Then, as glucose enters our blood, your blood sugar levels rise. The pancreas notices the elevation and senses the nutrient supply and automatically produces the right amount of insulin which helps bring blood sugar levels down by moving glucose into our cells.
This is the second phase response of insulin synthesis. Here, insulin transports the nutrients to the receptors in the tissues. Most cells of the body have insulin receptors which bind the insulin to the cell. When a cell has insulin attached to it, the cell then is able to activate the other receptors designed to absorb glucose and other nutrients from the blood stream and move them into the inside of the cell for energy. Normally, when the receptors are healthy, they sense the hormonal nourishing alarm from insulin and readily suck in the food calories to their best ability. Without this hormone, the cells in our bodies would not be able to process the glucose and therefore have no energy for movement, growth, repair, or other functions. So, insulin is not the enemy, but the key to unlocking the door of the cell to allow the glucose to be transferred from the bloodstream into the cell.
When you eat more than you need at any given time supplying too many calories at once, you overload the bus and pancreas get exhausted. The bus driver, or insulin, becomes ravenous. He screams, shouts, jumps up and down in desperate frustration not knowing what to do will all the passengers. In response, your pancreas realises an unhappy situation is developing and releases more insulin into the bloodstream.
This combination of surplus energy and high insulin is a nasty one and has given this incredible anabolic hormone a bad reputation. Remember, your system is capable of processing only limited amounts of nutrients at once. This depends on the rate of hormonal and enzymatic secretions. And insulin is one of the primary hormones involved.
Your tissues, such as liver and muscles, can make use of and store only several hundred grams of glucose by converting it to glycogen. The liver, which weighs approximately four pounds or two kilograms, can hold only 100 grams of glycogen, enough to supply your system for twelve hours. Muscles can hold a bit more and the amount varies depending on how much lean mass you've got. Still, even if you are a proud carrier of finely shaped boulders of muscles, cells need only a certain amount of nutrients and the amount is not that large.
When insulin driving mechanism has done its great job delivering everything needed to the growing tissues, the rest of the energy will travel to the storage bank of adipose tissue. Shortly, any extra calories become fat. This is where the famous fattening insulin name becomes worth considering. Overeat and over-stimulate your insulin day in and day out, and eventually you will become very fat. The increase in adipose tissue may turn against your own metabolism of other anabolic and catabolic hormones. Your body may adapt and just keep your tissues as they are, maybe add weight to both fat-free and fat tissues. But this is the best case scenario.
There is more bad news – you not only become fat, you become insulin-resistant. You start with overeating and overproduction of insulin. Excess insulin is a powerful growth factor and causes DNA to turn over more frequently and disturbs other hormonal systems. Because you constantly produce more insulin than your cells can recognise, they lose their sensitivity to insulin and will start to demand more than the pancreas can easily produce. This puts pancreas under a lot of pressure and they can't keep up with all the food you eat. Without enough insulin to regulate blood sugar, glucose builds up in the bloodstream after every meal since it is not being taken up by the target cells.
Remember, that insulin's role is also to preserve your energy stores. When insulin is up, you are in anabolic state and all your body does is add, build and make new cells. At these times you are not burning any fat stores and using any previously reserved calories as fuel. Caloric extremes translate into insulin spikes. Not only do these make you fat, they make sure you stay fat. It's a double whammy, and it can be lethal. Eventually, by brute force, the entire metabolic process goes awry and become insulin-resistant.
The first organ which looses sensitivity to insulin is the liver which cannot store and release glycogen properly. The next tissue to become resistant is the muscle tissue. What is the action of insulin in muscles? It allows your muscles to burn sugar and use the amino acids, vitamins, minerals and many other biological compounds delivered by insulin from the foods you've eaten. But if your muscles become resistant to insulin, they can't use the nutrients and burn the sugars. The fat cells may also become resistant to insulin, but not for a while as it takes them longer. Even if you eat well, you will still end up with excess glucose in the blood due to inefficient use of nutrients. People with insulin resistance or sensitivity usually have lower metabolic rates and less metabolically active tissues.
But if you do a good job and monitor your food supply, you can make insulin work in your best interest. This anabolic hormone will increase your metabolism by helping build lean mass, promoting amino acid transport, stimulating other anabolic hormones and shooting fat tissues straight in the foot. All cells, especially muscle cells, are extremely sensitive to insulin after exercise. Physical activity helps your muscle cells use blood glucose because they need it for energy.
The trick is to nourish your body with glucose and amino acids within an hour after training. During this golden hour, insulin will help synthesize muscle proteins and muscle glycogen at a very rapid rate giving your growing tissues the best possible nutrition for recuperation. Watch the nutrient sources and the amounts, and your fat cells will not see a single calorie. If you become naughty and ignore the common sense of frequent small meals, the hormone will do just the reverse. So, insulin can be your best friend or worst enemy, depending on how you treat it. |
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