I was just curious about the talk of insulin sensitivity. I haven’t really had a chance to look into it and I was wondering if someone could just give me the quick low down. Thanks
Everywhere that I read it’s talking about diabetes and what not (which I get because of the insulin), but is it just that you want to lower this so that you get better nutrient drives when taking in food? Just wondering the lifting aspect of it.
Insulin resistance
You don’t want to lower insulin sensitivity - your logic is wrong.
Greater resistance = better nutrient transportation to muscles rather than fat storage, look at the health benefits on the link these will impact upon your lifting.
[quote]plateau wrote:
Insulin resistance
You don’t want to lower insulin sensitivity - your logic is wrong.
Greater resistance = better nutrient transportation to muscles rather than fat storage, look at the health benefits on the link these will impact upon your lifting.[/quote]
I don’t know why I didn’t try wikipedia! All the google searches came back as health clinics.
Awesome, thank you.
I always thought resistance was a bad thing.
Insulin resistance is a bad thing. It means that your pancreas has to produce more insulin to get the same effect as it would if it were more ‘sensitive’.
[quote]MikiB wrote:
I always thought resistance was a bad thing.[/quote]
It is. You want high sensitivity and low resistance. Type II diabetics have low sensitivity to insulin. That means that regardless of the amount of insulin in the blood stream, the insulin receptors on cells ignore the insulin. So, the insulin just keeps circling within their bloodstream. Type I diabetics don’t create insulin (or enough) but they may or may not be insulin sensitive. That’s why they need to take insulin shots.
Do a search for the Dr Scott Connelly “Insulin and Bodyfat” lecture, it’s great stuff. It’s on the Crossfit journal web page, so I can’t post a link here, but it’s easy to find.
[quote]Hog Ear wrote:
Do a search for the Dr Scott Connelly “Insulin and Bodyfat” lecture, it’s great stuff. It’s on the Crossfit journal web page, so I can’t post a link here, but it’s easy to find. [/quote]
Wow. Just starting to watch it. About 10 min into it. Great stuff. Thanks for sharing.
[quote]plateau wrote:
Insulin resistance
You don’t want to lower insulin sensitivity - your logic is wrong.
Greater resistance = better nutrient transportation to muscles rather than fat storage, look at the health benefits on the link these will impact upon your lifting.[/quote]
this is backwords. greater resistance = worse nutrient transportation to muscles and increased fat storage
You want to lower your resistance and raise your sensitivity.
[quote]WestCoast7 wrote:
You want to lower your resistance and raise your sensitivity.[/quote]
You want to raise your muscle insulin sensitivity. You want your fat cells to be relatively insulin resistant.
You don’t actually want to be, generally speaking, insulin sensitive or insulin resistant.
wfifer wrote:
You want to raise your muscle insulin sensitivity. You want your fat cells to be relatively insulin resistant.
How does one go about this??
Nothing surprising. Less body fat means fewer fat cells for insulin to act on. Resistance exercise improves muscle insulin sensitivity. Those are the big two.
Low-carb diets improve insulin sensitivity. Fasting improves insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity is higher in the morning than at night. The thing to consider with these three statements is that we’re now talking about both muscle and fat cells.
There are supplements which improve muscle insulin sensitivity, but as usual you should be making the most out of your diet and exercise before touching these. This means training hard, keeping body fat in check and eating an appropriate amount of carbs for your physiology.
For purposes of fat loss, low insulin sensitivity can be a good thing because lipolysis can continue even in the presence of insulin.
Growth hormone and ephedrine, two substances that are great for fat loss, work in part because of this.