You have probably heard a lot about hormones and how they affect your body, and that is one of the reasons that you exercise the way that you do. But do you really know the difference between the various hormones and what each does?
This series will examine the major hormones of the body, particularly the ones that are influenced by exercise, and show you what impact they can have on your health, appearance, and well being.
Parts One, Two and Three covered HGH, Testosterone and IGF-1 and now we’re on to Insulin.
When you think of the word insulin, you probably think of its relation to diabetes and its negative impact on blood sugar response. While diabetes is indeed due to a deficiency of insulin or a decreased sensitivity to insulin, this isn’t the only process with which it should be associated. Insulin is quite possibly the most anabolic hormone in the body. Its job is to build things up. The problem lies in the fact that it doesn’t distinguish between what it is building up. Considering how powerful this hormone is and the impact it can have on both fat loss/gain and muscle gain, it should interest you to know how insulin works, and how you can control it to help you achieve the results you want.
Your body likes to maintain a blood sugar level in the range of 80-100 mg/dl (meaning 80 milligrams of sugar in each deciliter of blood). When your blood sugars rise above a level around 100 mg/dl, your body responds by secreting insulin into your blood stream from your pancreas. Insulin’s main job is to take the excess sugars in your blood, and find a place to store them in order to get them out of your blood. Insulin works in a similar fashion with excess amino acids in the blood. As you can imagine, every time you eat (assuming the presence of carbohydrates and protein), there is a corresponding increase in insulin in your body. Insulin then works to shuttle all those molecules of glucose and amino acids into your cells for energy or to store them in your liver, your muscles, or fat cells in order to return the blood plasma levels to normal. This is one of the reasons you should always make sure to have sufficient protein in any meal that you eat, and the reason that eating plenty of protein throughout the day contributes to the building of muscle. Every time you eat protein, your body works to transport amino acids into your muscles. Insulin also works to prevent the catabolism of protein and muscle tissue because it doesn’t want the excess amino acids, which can be converted to glucose via gluconeogenesis, floating around in the bloodstream.
The same process occurs with glucose. However, there are many different places to store glucose instead of simply shuttling it into your muscles. Your cells use glucose to create energy, but there is only so much glucose that a cell can take before it doesn’t need anymore, at which point insulin looks elsewhere to put the glucose. If your glycogen stores are depleted, insulin will work to force glucose into your muscles and liver to replenish those stores. If those stores are full, insulin still needs a place to store the excess glucose, and that place is in adipose cells, or fat. Our livers will turn any excess sugar into fat as soon as glycogen stores are full. Insulin can also push excess glucose from your blood stream directly into fat cells throughout your body, in the process making them grow larger. On top of driving glucose directly into fat cells, insulin also acts on several other mechanisms that result in increased fat production, including the inhibition of the fat-burning enzyme lipase, activating the enzyme lipoprotein lipase (which increases fatty acid circulation), decreasing fat utilization for energy in favor of glucose, and increasing overall fatty acid synthesis. Obviously this is something you want to avoid, unless your goal is to blow up like a blimp. So, keeping your insulin levels under control and utilizing it at the right times are key to getting the body you want.
With all this knowledge, you may be asking how you can manipulate insulin to do what you want. There are three keys to controlling insulin:
1. Don’t eat too much during each meal (particularly carbs) and try to spread out your meals to keep insulin levels moderately low.
2. Mediate the insulin response of meals with sufficient amounts of fat and protein, which lower the glycemic load of the meal and reduce the insulin response.
3. Exercise causes a cellular adaptation that makes it easier to transport glucose into cells. This actually reduces insulin secretion and ensures that any available excess glucose is used to provide energy to cells and replenish glycogen stores--not to create fat.
Insulin can be your best friend if you utilize it properly, or your worst nightmare if you don’t pay attention to it. If you bombard your bloodstream with glucose, you run the risk of increasing fat storage and growth. Even worse, if your cells become resistant and stop responding to insulin due to overexposure, you can develop diabetes.
However, if you utilize insulin properly, it can ensure the production of all the muscle that you are willing to work for.
Resources:
Widmaier, Eric; Raff, Hershel; Strang, Kevin. Vander, Sherman & Luciano’s Human Physiology: The Mechanisms of Body Function, Ninth Edition. New York, NY: McGraw Hill, 2004.
Cordain, Loren, Ph.D, Friel, Joe, M.S. The Paleo Diet For Athletes. USA: Holtzbrink Publishing, 2005.
Wolf, Robb; The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet. United States: Victory Belt Publishing, 2010.
Bowden, Jonny, Ph.D, C.N.S, The 150 Most Effective Ways to Boost Your Energy. Beverly, MA: Fairwinds Press, 2009
Hyght, Clay. "T NATION | The Insulin Advantage: How to Bulk and Cut on the Same Day." T NATION | The Intelligent and Relentless Pursuit of Muscle. Biotest. Web. 09 Jan. 2012. <http://www.t-nation.com/free_online_article/most_recent/the_insulin_advantage_how_to_bulk_and_cut_on_the_same_day>.
David Spitz – David is the founder of California Strength Academy in San Ramon. This former high school football player was also a USA Junior National Team thrower in track and field. He is currently working towards his CSCS certification. Clients he has recently trained include Chris Cooper (just resigned with the Oakland Raiders), TJ Ward (second round 2009 / 2010 NFL Draft pick) and Cameron Colvin (former Oregon Ducks and San Francisco 49ers player).