I thought for a long time about writing this article and finally forced myself to write it out.

This is a completely different point of view on insulin, and will be a surprise for many of you, and yes, even totally change everything you thought you knew about nutrition.

Insulin – Not a storing hormone, but a regulatory hormone

Many people know that insulin is tasked with carrying glucose from the blood into the cells and therefore serve to ensure stable blood sugar levels.

Many years of experiments in different kinds of food products and diets, as well as handling patients suffering from diabetes, revealed to me that practically, this one-sided view could not be accurate.

Especially when we assume that insulin functions as a transporter for glucose and that it supposedly cripples the burning of fats.

The beginning of my doubts

Authors of most current diets, which have been published over the last few years, always aim to keep insulin levels as low as possible in order to maximise the burning of fats.

Not long ago, I myself believed the same thing. But then I decided to carry out a scientific experiment, which revealed that many food products, which have little or even no carbohydrates, also lead to a release in insulin and on a massive scale.

Here is the first big mistake in interpreting insulin’s role. If insulin was just a simple transporter of glucose or its initiator, then the release of insulin would have linearly increased with the amount of added carbohydrates. In other words, the amount of blood-sugar increase would have to be the same as a release in insulin.

But this doesn’t happen. If we compare the glycaemic index with the insulin index of different food products together, we then see this (inexplicable) deviation.

Scientific studies love to use white bread as a reference. White bread leads to a 2,5 times larger raise in blood-sugar levels as milk.

The increase of insulin is 4x less in white bread than in milk.

Sources:

– Mikael Nilsson, Marianne Stenberg, Anders H Frid, Jens J Holst, and Inger ME Björck, Glycemia and insulinemia in healthy subjects after lactoseequivalent meals of milk and other food proteins: the role of plasma amino acids and incretins, AJCN 2004

What we see here is a totally contradictory situation.

At least here I can establish that there needs to be more to the simple theory of insulin as a transport hormone.

GIP-1 and the complexity of hormones

We therefore see that it is not only glucose which is responsible for an increase in insulin.

Amino acids have an equally strong, and sometimes even stronger, insulogenic potential. Specifically, the amino acid leucine ranks at the top.

We then need to deduce that food products with a high value in amino acids and rich in BCAA, mainly leucine, have a strong influence on the GIP-1 and incretin hormones. In addition, these hormones also lead to an increase in insulin secretions. This is why Whey Protein results in a large increase of insulin production without containing any carbohydrates.

Therefore, Whey Protein can’t make us fat, but on the contrary, aides in building up muscles.

Anabolic hormones are talked about very often in relation to insulin. With the help of this new knowledge we can slowly find the best way to go forward.

Glut-4 Transport Proteins

We know that insulin will also, or even increase, if we add little or no carbohydrates, but instead consume food products with a large concentration of proteins.

We need to quickly cover another area in order to fully understand insulin’s real role.

GLUT-4 Transport Proteins are the building blocks for muscles, which are collected by glucose in the blood and transported to the interior muscles where they will finally end up in muscle glycogen storage.

We know that insulin serves for an increase in the amount of GLUT-4 Transport Proteins in the muscle surface area. Weight training results in the same increase of this GLUT-4 Transport Proteins to the muscle surface area.

We therefore see that the body has many different methods to increase the concentration of the GLUT-4 Transport Protein.

Keep this in mind while reading the rest of the article.

Diabetes

We can learn a lot about insulin through studies on diabetes patients. In the case of insulin patients with Type 1 diabetes, their pancreas is not capable anymore to produce insulin.

What happens to the body then?

If we add carbohydrates to the body, then their blood-sugar levels will increase. Many people believe that our bodies are not capable of storing these carbohydrates.

This is incorrect! The body can absorb carbohydrates in the form of glucose, as GLUT-4 Transport Proteins will be available, and in cases of weight training, even more so. It is therefore logical, because our bodies want to fill their storage.

We also know that sport related activities result in less exogenous insulin in insulin patients, in order to store the same amount of carbohydrates.

But this is where most people stop to think. I can only say that this is sad, as the absence of insulin results in many more effects. You will understand in a moment why insulin is not a stored hormone, but a regulatory one.

The Regulatory Hormone

If carbohydrates are being absorbed, then insulin will stop the production of glucose in the liver. If the body cannot produce insulin, then the liver will continue to produce insulin.

We have glucose in our blood, which comes from carbohydrates in the food we consume, but at the same time glucose in our blood which has been produced by the liver.

In the body of a healthy person, insulin is bound to process of the simultaneous readiness of energy from glucose through exogenous glucose and that which has been produced by the liver.

This naturally leads to a chronic increase of blood-sugar levels and the negative results to the body in relation to this.

But this is not everything. Without insulin, further mechanisms will stop working at the same time. The body continues to break down proteins (proteolysis) and fats (lipolysis). The broken down proteins deliver an amount of substrate for the liver so that it can further produce glucose and the released fatty acids lead the substrate to produce ketone bodies.

This results in an increase in the running of different processes, specifically at the same time in the body, which would never cease with the presence of insulin.

This leads to the dangerous situation of a simultaneous hyperglycaemia and ketoacidosis, mainly an increased blood-sugar level and an oversaturation of acids in the blood.

What can we learn from this?

Insulin is not a storage hormone, but a regulatory one. It is tasked with regulation the different processes for making energy available. A highly intelligent system within our bodies.

Building up muscles and burning fats

Let us finally come to discuss what this means in practical terms.

At least by the end of this article, your fear of insulin should have disappeared. It has nothing to do with us becoming fat. In contrast, thanks to its help, it allows metabolic processes to run normally.

Insulin has further regulatory properties within our body. It stimulates protein synthesis and the activation of the protein kinase AKT (Protein Kinase B) and the mTor-pathway.

The mTor-pathway is one of those mechanisms which stimulate the building up of muscles after an intensive work out.

Exogenously added insulin, which is added for a doping effect, is prescribed for a significant increase in muscle growth.

If insulin was only a storage hormone, then this observation would have made no sense at all. No, it is namely the regulatory properties of insulin which are responsible for this. Even the activation of the mTor-pathways plays a significant role.

Practical Use

We naturally do not want to advocate a ban on exogenous insulin. Never, but instead to remove the fear from food products associated with increasing blood-sugar levels.

Carbohydrates will not make you fat because the increase insulin levels, because then it would also need to be a protein.

It is the amount and timing of carbohydrates which actually decides if we will gain or lose weight.

Food products like Whey Proteins, lead to a significant increase in insulin production, but will not make you fat. This alone should be enough for proof.

Insulin regulates our bodies and does not make it fat, but instead allows for maximum effectiveness in building up muscles and burning fats.

Author

Coach Mark is the co-founder of Trainsane and is a personal trainer and a nutrition specialist. He supervises customers from all over the world to reach their personal goals. Furthermore, he accompanies and prepares athletes for body building competitions. Mark is the coach of the Trainsane Girls, an ever growing team of bikini athletes.