What is Insulin Resistance

Insulin it is a hormone that comes from your pancreas and it's important to your metabolism, because it tells your body what to do with carbohydrates that you eat. Carbohydrates when you eat them are broken down in your digestive system into sugar. A type of sugar goes into your blood called glucose. When the pancreas see glucose in your blood it sends insulin over. Insulin's job then is to carry that glucose to one of 3 cells. Your liver cells, your muscle cells or your fat cells. When it arrives it becomes a doorman. It's job is to open up the doors of these cells so that glucose can go in. This does two things. First of all it gets rid of excess glucose in your blood. That's a much more desirable state for your body. Also it delivers glucose to your cells where it can be stored for energy.

When you are insulin resistant your cells don't respond to insulin like they are suppose to. Insulin carries it's glucose up to the cell knocks on the door and the door doesn't open. This creates two problems. Now we have excess glucose accumulating in the blood that's chronic high blood glucose or pre-diabetes. Also the cells don't have their energy source so you end up feeling low on energy and you crave carbohydrates because the carbohydrates that are present can't be seen by the cells. The pancreas now takes one last ditch effort by trying to increase how much insulin it sends into the blood to match up all this glucose. The problem now is that you have high insulin or chronic high insulin state. When insulin is present in your blood stream its very hard for you to burn fat. It also encourages fatty acids that are floating around in your blood to go into fat storage. So when your insulin resistant you're low on energy you crave carbohydrates and weight gain is much easier. You have a problem. What do you do about ?

Insulin resistance can be corrected with proper sleep, exercise and diet. Sleep deprivation causes your cells to be less sensitive to insulin. So make sure you get 7-8 hours of sleep a night. Exercise helps glucose to go into your muscle cells and that's going to keep your glucose levels under control. Diet specifically carbohydrates. Be smart with your carbohydrate choices. Think of carbohydrates that are hard to break down. Example the difference between a hard candy and a carrot. You take a hard candy you put it in your mouth you don't have to do anything and it will dissolve. that will get in your bloodstream very quickly. Whereas compared to a carrot you put that in your mouth you have to chew and chew and chew to break that down. That's going to go into your blood stream very slow give you a nice steady flow of glucose which is what you want.

I hope this was helpful. Please return often to my blog for tips on being a healthier happier you. To Your Divine Health Ellen :-D