Diabetes - What Is Insulin?

Insulin is a hormone released by the pancreas in response to ingested carbohydrates. When
you eat, your body breaks down all the carbohydrates into simple sugars in your small
intestine. These simple sugars are then absorbed into the bloodstream and enter the liver.
The liver which is your metabolic organ, converts it into glucose, the body's only usable form
of simple sugar. This glucose is then re-introduced back into the blood stream. The
bloodstream's capacity for glucose is about 80 calories.(1) When the glucose in the
bloodstream raises in excess of this capacity, the pancreas will release insulin into the
bloodstream to transport the excess glucose to the body tissues. The excess glucose is called
insulin-carried glucose. Keep in mind, insulin must be present in all body tissues for the
uptake of glucose, except in the brain.

The first destination for this insulin-carried glucose is the liver, where it is stored as
glycogen. The liver has the ability to store about 300-400 calories of glycogen. (2) Think it as
your reserve gas tank on a motorcycle. Once the liver stores are filled and there is still
excess insulin-carried glucose present in the blood, the next stop, if, and only if (this is very
important) there is recovery taking place due to exercise, is the muscle tissue. If the liver
and muscle tissue have taken all they can handle then the excess insulin-carried glucose
will be rapidly stored in the extra-muscular fat cells. In fact, fat cells absorb the excess
glucose more rapidly in comparison to the liver and muscle tissues.

Another major function of insulin is that it must be present to open insulin receptor sites in
the muscle. Insulin is the key that unlocks the door to allow amino acids to move into the
muscle tissue fibers and serve as the building blocks to growth and repair. Interesting
enough, ingesting protein will not stimulate the release of insulin. However, by eating
sufficient amounts of carbohydrates along with complete proteins, you can ensure insulin
will be present which is essential for protein synthesis. If you don't eat often enough, your
insulin, amino acid and blood sugar levels will gradually drop off. Without enough insulin
present, anabolism or growth will not occur until adequate amounts of complex
carbohydrate and complete proteins are supplied to cause the appropriate amount of insulin
release. If you don't eat enough complex carbohydrates, blood sugar levels will not be high
enough to stimulate insulin release. On the other hand, if you eat too many carbohydrates in
your meals, you'll release too much insulin causing the muscles to provided with more
insulin-carried glucose than they can handle which ends up being rapidly stored in fat cells.
Simple sugars cause your blood sugar to rise too fast causing an over-release of insulin. The
over abundance of insulin will quickly remove almost all glucose form the bloodstream.
Remember, the liver and muscle tissue take up glucose gradually and fat deposits are stored
more rapidly, so most of this insulin-carried glucose will end up in fat cells.

What to do?
Consult a glycemic index to keep absorption rate as low as possible to prevent the
over-release of insulin. Even though certain natural healthy foods such as potatoes and
carrots rate somewhat high on the index, you can still eat them if you combine them with
proteins, insoluble fiber or other low-glycemic index carbohydrates.

Intense training will actually opens muscle tissue receptor sites, which makes it unnecessary
to eat large amounts of carbohydrates for insulin presence prior to or during resistance
training. Most resistance training doesn't last more than an hour, so it will be more important
to eat after the workout.

The absence of exercise causes muscle tissue to relatively inactive, especially the
mitochondrial element. Mitochondria is the "oven" that burns fat in the cell. In the presence
of insulin, untrained muscle receptor sites fail to take up glucose efficiently. This is generally
the case in the beginning weight lifter.

During the beginning stages of working out it is important to provide those mitochondria with
what they need the most after an exercise session - glucose. Here's an old bodybuilder trick.
After working out, perform some sort of moderate activity (cardio) at about 50% of your
maximum heart rate for 10 - 15 minutes while you ingest 80 - 100 calories of simple sugar.
Basically you could drink some juice. Go ahead, try it. Since it is physiological fact that 1) fat
from adipose tissue (extra-muscular fat) cannot be stored and released at the same time and
2) fatty acids and glycerol from adipose tissue must be released from fat cells during the
performance of exercise, the simple sugars you're taking cannot be taken up in the fat cells
as long as you continue to perform the moderate activity. This new insulin-carried glucose
had no other choice but to be driven directly into the post-workout depleted muscle tissues,
where it is force fed into the mitochondria. Voila! Your muscles will have had enough
carbohydrates to stimulate insulin response help your muscles repair and grow.

The bottom line is, if your goal is to add lean tissue or muscle it will be important to eat a
meal consisting of complex carbohydrates and complete proteins every 3 to four hours for
ideal insulin response.