What Is Insulin Resistance?

Insulin resistance often operates in ‘stealth mode’ and then goes undiagnosed – in other words, you could be insulin resistant and just not know it...

- Nicky Perks

Quick biology lesson: the body’s main source of fuel is glucose, also known as blood sugar. We get glucose from the carbohydrates contained in grains, fruit, vegetables, and dairy products. Our livers are also able to make the glucose our bodies need, from glycogen stored in the liver. This process occurs when we’re in a fasted state – for example, when we sleep or skip meals.

Insulin is a hormone that helps your body to remove glucose (sugar) from the blood and use it for the production of energy in the cells. Put more simply, insulin is like the chaperone that ‘knocks on the doors’ of muscle and fat cells. The cells hear the knock, open up, and insulin ushers the glucose in.

With insulin resistance, the cells stop being able to ‘hear’ the knock – so they either open the door just a little, or not at all. The glucose is left waiting outside in the bloodstream, and starts to accumulate with each morsel of food consumed. Your cells think they are starving (because glucose isn’t getting in) and send a signal to the brain to eat more carbs and/or sugary food. At this point, you can start experiencing sugar cravings that become very difficult to control, and a vicious cycle begins. Blood glucose levels then begin to rise to abnormal levels, which is highly toxic to the body. The pancreas gets the red alert and starts to pump out more and more insulin to make the ‘knock’ even louder.