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Sorry for the wait folks, but I’m back to writing about the benefits of fasting. In this article I will discuss the how fasting affects our insulin levels. I will also discuss the relationship between insulin sensitivity and fasting. Let’s start out briefly discussing what insulin is.
I’m sure everyone has heard of . Usually you will hear about how it relates to diabetes. Most diabetics either have one of two forms of diabetes: chronically elevated insulin levels due to glucose intolerance (); or the inability to produce insulin from their pancreas (). Both are bad. In order to avoid diabetes, we should have a good amount of insulin sensitivity, this ensures that our insulin can efficiently shuttle our blood glucose in various cells of our body for use. Insulin is released when our blood glucose levels increase.
Insulin has many functions, I’ll be discussing it’s function as a lipolytic inhibitor here. Lipolysis, is simply the breakdown of fat. If our insulin levels are always high, it is nearly impossible to breakdown fat for use in our liver or muscles. If we can’t break down fat from our fat cells, no fat loss will occur. So keeping our insulin levels under control is a very important objective for long-term health and weight control.
Now let’s discuss how fasting effects our blood insulin levels. Before I discuss the reductions in insulin, let’s get the cat out of the bag. Insulin is dramatically reduced during periods of fasting. If you are not yet diabetic, but are worried about it, IF’ing may be a decent choice to lower your plasma insulin levels. With that said, if you are diabetic, listen to what your doctor says, because hopefully they know more than I do about treating your ailment.
Now, let’s get back to why the body decreases insulin while fasting. A study performed by discovered a 50% drop in plasma insulin in a 72-hour fast. Of even greater importance, 70% of this total decrease occurred in the first 24 hours of fasting! Another performed on healthy females also discovered a decrease in plasma insulin, and plasma glucose levels after a 72-hour fast.
When you think about it, it all makes sense. Our body requires insulin when our blood glucose is high. During periods of fasting our glucose . In order for our glucose uptake to rise, our insulin levels must also rise in order to shuttle glucose in our cells. After the glucose is taken out of our blood stream, there is no need for our insulin to stay elevated, because our blood glucose levels drop.
Let’s use an analogy here. Let’s say we have cars, taking children to school via roads. The children (blood glucose) wake up from sleep (glucose enters our circulatory system). They then signal their parents (insulin) to wake up because they are ridiculously loud and full of energy in the morning. The parents and the children (glucose and insulin working together) then drive to school on roadways (blood vessels). They are then dropped off at school (school is tissues which require glucose such as muscle, liver, and fat cells). Hopefully that makes a little more sense to you?
also found a significant reduction in plasma insulin levels after subjects fasted for 20 hours every second day. They attempted to replicate how our ancestors regularly ate. Periods of eating, with periods of fasting (due to having to hunt, catch, or gather food). They also found large increases with insulin sensitivity. So not only are you decreasing your plasma insulin levels, but your increasing your plasma sensitivity. As I pointed out at the beginning of the article, it is important to keep your cells sensitive to insulin.
I’d also like to mention blood glucose control and meal frequency. Since blood glucose and insulin are directly correlated I thought it’d be a good time for you to check out one of my . It’s a short research review on how a decreased meal frequency results in significantly lower blood glucose levels compared to the higher frequency. The lower frequency group ate 3 meals, the high frequency group ate 6. So now you know, a high frequency of meals does not control blood sugar better than a lower frequency.
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