blood sugar and insulin

Lately I've received a whole bunch of questions about the benefits and drawbacks of insulin, so why not straighten out the issue, once and for all? (Unfortunately, most of this doesn't apply to diabetics, but if you're one yourself you probably knew that already.)

Insulin release is mainly a bodily response, caused by the food you eat. You are able to control this factor to a pretty large degree, just like you can control whether or not you get goose-bumps by making sure to wear a sweater when it's cold - even though the goose-bumps in and by themselves isn't something you can control. You can't choose to have high or low levels of insulin floating around in your system, but you can pretty much steer it by eating. A truckload of fast carbs (like Dextrose), a big bowl of rice, and an extended period without food will all have very different impact on your Insulin levels. But let's not rush ahead of ourselves here - let's get the big picture together.

Fast vs. Slow Carbs

As you probably know, carbs are actually plain sugar. As an experiment, chew on a piece of non-sweet bread for a while, and you will notice an increasing sweetness developing, because your saliva and jaw-action is breaking down the large chunks of sugar into smaller units, which in turn gets noticeable as they get smaller and smaller. This is how it works in your stomach as well. Now, the difference between slow and fast carbs, aka. complex and simple carbs, is how big the chunks of sugar are!

Assume that you have a handful of loose powder. In your stomach, there's really not anything more to digest, so the whole bunch gets launched into the blood stream, which the whole point of eating in the first place, but in this case it all gets launched at the same time, causing a HUGE, sudden surge of blood sugar! Complex carbs, on the other hand, is more like having a ball of yarn in your hand - it won't just "come apart" anytime soon, but needs to be stripped little by little. This equals a nice and even release of sugar into your blood stream.

Insulin To The Rescue

Now, what's the big deal about how fast it goes into the blood stream you may ask? Well, as a general rule, all sudden changes involving the body is bad. This is no difference. The body takes a beating from extreme levels of blood sugar (the eyes is only one such area - diabetics often develop eye problems as they grow older, simply because their regulatory system for blood sugar is out of synch), so in order to protect itself the body releases it's first, last, and only defense against the scum of the blood stream: Mr.Insulin!

Mr. Insulin is an efficient fellow, rapidly stomping down the blood sugar and thereby saving the body. The bad news is that he's a wee bit over ambitious about it, and usually slashes it down to a level BELOW where it was before eating the food. Now, if you were tired and had low blood sugar before, where do you think you end up half an hour after that candy bar, when Mr.Insulin has done his thing? Say hello to the common afternoon crash.

How does this work?

The Insulin basically force-feeds the muscles with the excess sugar, which they don't like. The amount of sugar being "let in" into the muscles depends on the level of insulin released, which in turn is determined by the insulin receptors in the muscles themselves. Think of it as a dude who listens to how hard Mr.Insulin knocks on the door to determine how wide he should open the door. Another feature of Insulin is that it is highly anabolic - it's a good friend and ally if you're an ectomorph trying to gain some mass (with moderation though, I should say. No insane 100%-sugar diets please!).

The BAD news is that it automatically shuts down your fat burn capacity and keeps it in low gear for quite a while, while actually promoting fat storage! The logic behind this is pretty simple if you remember why insulin is out there in the first place: With this massive dose of sugar going out into the blood, the body makes the assumption that it's getting a truckload of food (before the days of processed food, it was hard to achieve this kind of sugar-boost without extreme eating, so it makes sense). Since the load of food is obviously so significant that you need to store EXCESS energy (as in shoving it into the muscles), what kind of moron wouldn't grab the opportunity to refill the other form of energy storage: Your body fat! By the same token, what would be the need to set things up for fat LOSS in this scenario?

What the body does.

By now one would think that the body would recognize its mistake pretty quickly and correct itself, but this is the part where you sort of get it in the shorts - it won't! At least not for a while! So, to sum it up, you get a sudden blast of sugar in your system, and Insulin is released to protect you from it. The Insulin grabs all the sugar and shoves it into the muscles (who doesn't like it), shuts off the Fatburn-switch, and turns on the Fat Storage-switch.



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But since what the body thought was a major load of food really turned out to be only meek little candy bar, there IS no surplus to handle after that initial blast of sugar ended, so you end up with an empty stomach and even lower blood sugar levels. Normally the body would compensate for this by tapping some stored fat, BUT? The ever-helpful Mr.Insulin made sure to turn that switch off, so what does the body have left? Protein. More specifically - MUSCLE protein. If you shudder as you start seeing what I'm getting at, please keep doing it. You should.

Muscle protein can be used as emergency fuel, especially - remember this? - in a situation where the body perceives itself as starving. Then it wants to get rid of tissue that burns calories 24/7, which leaves us with muscle, being most "un-economical" from a calorie-perspective (even though you surely likes that the extra muscle you're packing makes you able to get away with that Saturday cheese burger, by simply burning the extra calories during the week as maintenance). It might seem paradoxical about the body both thinking it starves at the same time as it shuts off its fat burn because of anticipated truckloads of food. It is. But there's nothing you can do about it. See? I TOLD you that you'd get it in the shorts! Next week we'll have a look at how to get a better process going, and how this relates to maximizing the benefits of Creatine.

ast week we pretty much concluded that Insulin has horns, carries a pitch-fork, and resides in generally hot places underground. Right? I mean, that MUST be the conclusion to draw from something that makes you fat, knocks your blood sugar levels way down, and sets your hard-earned muscle up for cannibalization.

Why Is Insulin So Important!

Not quite. For one thing, Insulin is an extremely important protector against yourself. If you didn't have Insulin to kick in when you - knowingly or not - got your blood sugar up to dangerous levels, you probably wouldn't live very long. Secondly, it IS highly anabolic, and is one of the key factors determining your muscle growth. In this case you're getting some of the bad with the good - you gain overall weight, as in some muscle, some fat. This is one of the reasons it's practically impossible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time (other factors play in as well, as there simply being too little calories available to allow for muscle growth, for example). Moderate Insulin-levels are beneficial for muscle growth, as long as you don't go overboard.

Stick with pasta, rice, potatoes, oatmeal, and other classic bodybuilding sources of carbs, and you'll probably hit the mark pretty well. You may have noticed that I use fairly negative terms about the insulin force-feeding the muscles with sugar. This is on purpose, simply because it is not a really nice thing to do. I like to compare it to blowing air into lungs that are already full. How would you like that?

Now, the risk here is that the receptors in the muscles, the little dude who listens for the Insulin knocking on the door, decides that the Insulin has been knocking just a little bit too frequently lately, and decides not to open the door as much as it used to. After all, the muscle is not a happy camper about the whole thing in the first place. This is not a concern to the insulin-regulation though, as the primary goal is to get rid of the dangerous sugar from the blood. So in order to get the job done, more insulin is released to reinforce the effect. This, in turn, makes the receptors even more numb, and down the spiral you go. If you keep abusing your body like this, you might end up with Type II diabetes, where the receptors simply not longer cares about the insulin knocking on the door. The bad news is that decreased insulin sensitivity in the muscles doesn't necessarily mean decreased fat storage capacity (which can be kinda nasty if you have truckloads of insulin floating around).

Keeping Your Receptors Happy

The best way to keep the receptors - and yourself - in trim is simple: Train, and cut the fast carbs as much as possible. By training, you deplete the stored carbs in the muscle, so when sugar enters the bloodstream, you're not FORCEfeeding the muscles, you're just feeding them something they want and need! This is why there's the one exception to the rule about fast carbs: Immediately after training it's GOOD to have something sugary! This is the one time when there's no Insulin spike. Why is that? Think of cause and effect - when the muscles were full, they needed to be forcefed more. If they're empty, there's no need to force anything, read "insulin knocking in the door", since the door will be wide open anyway!

Another thing worth mentioning is that Chromium picolinate can make the receptors more sensitive to insulin, so that less insulin get the job done. The advantage is obvious: If it'd normally take X amount of insulin to get the job done, that'd result in a certain increase in fat storage. If we cut X by a number of percent, and still get the job done, we automatically cut the increase in fat storage as well! A word of warning though: This is a long term effect, and it's hardly any "miracle pill". Overdosing on chromium will most likely make you more sick than ripped. Keep it sane.

Last but not least, why are we told to take creatine monohydrate with something sugary? I'll put it simple: Fast carbs, sugar, gets shoved into the muscles, pronto. Creatine piggy-backs on the sugar, and gets shoved into the muscles as well. This makes the creatine absorbed quickly and effectively. For the sake of your health, I strongly recommend timing this with the post-workout sugar load you're having to "refuel" your muscles (the one time without an insulin-spike, remember?).

Summary


Eat complex carbs
Avoid simple carbs, except:
Eat simple carbs immediately after training
Have your creatine with your post-workout sugar
Take your vitamin/mineral pill every morning