Insulin is a Hormone that tells Cells to burn carbs and not Fat

This is an interesting theory, and a very minority one. The traditional theory is that obesity is caused by a person’s lack of will power, where if you don’t eat you won’t gain weight. This theory, the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model (CIM) of obesity, says that insulin is a hormone. When you eat carbs or sugar, insulin kicks in and tells your cells to burn carbs and not fat. You therefore crave more carbs and accumulate and not burn fat.

Summary of Eating, Sugar, Glucose and Insulin
You eat food, which is broken down in your stomach. One of these components from carbohydrates is glucose, a sugar, which is released into your blood. Your cells do not immediately use this glucose for fuel. A hormone, insulin, made by the pancreas, tells the cells to absorb glucose. When insulin is released, this tells your cells to absorb glucose. Cells receive fuel from glucose, and the glucose level in the blood goes down.

If there is too much glucose in the blood even after the cells have used as much as they can, insulin stores excess glucose in the liver and muscles, as glycogen. Too much glycogen is converted, with the help of insulin, into fatty acids, circulated to other parts of the body and stored as fat. Fat can also build up in the liver.

when glucose levels in the blood are too low,the hormone glucagon releases glycogen from the liver as glucose into the blood. When you run out of glucose in the blood, and glycogen in the liver/muscles, the body can manufacture its own glucose from amino acids, waste products and fats, called gluconeogenesis. Another alternate fuel, ketones, can be manufactured from fats. This is called ketogenesis. Glucose is burned by the brain and other important organs, and ketones are burned by the muscles (source).

Insulin and glucagon balance out glucose in the blood. Too much glucose in the blood for long periods of time, hyperglycemia, is bad for you, and has serious consequences.

When you cannot make insulin, then your cells cannot absorb glucose. This is Type 1 diabetes. Insulin needs to be added artificially (source).

If your cells become resistant to insulin, or cells are not as responsive to insulin, you may need drugs to better handle your insulin level. This is Type 2 diabetes. You may need oral meds, diet and exercise changes.

I wonder if Dr. David Ludwig, who treats obesity at Harvard Medical School, is correct? Here is another of his articles, 2.

Foods with a high glycemic index break down to sugars extremely rapidly, spiking insulin levels. Foods with low glycemic index break down slowly, allowing the body to digest them more easily.

According to this alternative view, factors in the environment have triggered fat cells in our bodies to take in and store excessive amounts of glucose and other calorie-rich compounds. Since fewer calories are available to fuel metabolism, the brain tells the body to increase calorie intake (we feel hungry) and save energy (our metabolism slows down). Eating more solves this problem temporarily but also accelerates weight gain. Cutting calories reverses the weight gain for a short while, making us think we have control over our body weight, but predictably increases hunger and slows metabolism even more…

As it turns out, many biological factors affect the storage of calories in fat cells, including genetics, levels of physical activity, sleep and stress. But one has an indisputably dominant role: the hormone insulin. We know that excess insulin treatment for diabetes causes weight gain, and insulin deficiency causes weight loss. And of everything we eat, highly refined and rapidly digestible carbohydrates produce the most insulin.

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Jama postulates that under certain conditions, when you eat less, your body goes into super fat storing mode, robbing you of energy to keep minimal system going, thereby making you more hungry.

Jama postulates that under certain conditions, when you eat less, your body goes into super fat storing mode, robbing you of energy to keep minimal system going, thereby making you more hungry.

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What is the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model?

According to a radically different way of thinking, excessive weight gain occurs because fat cells have been triggered to take up and store too many calories, leaving too few for the rest of the body. We overeat in an effort to keep enough calories in the blood stream for the brain, muscles and other vital organs, but those extra calories ultimately wind up in fat cells, creating a vicious cycle of hunger, overeating and weight gain. In other words, overeating is a consequence, not the cause, of an underlying metabolic problem.

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“Insulin is the ultimate fat-cell fertilizer,” Ludwig says. “When fat cells get triggered to take in and store too many calories, there are too few for the rest of the body—that’s what the brain perceives. We think of obesity as a state of excess, but biologically it’s a state of deprivation, or the state of starvation. The brain sees too few calories in the bloodstream to run metabolism, so it makes us hungry. It activates hunger and craving sensors in the brain, and slows down metabolism.”

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Far from being an inert dumping ground for excess calories, fat tissue operates as a reserve energy supply for the body. Its calories are called upon when glucose is running low – that is, between meals, or during fasts and famines. Fat takes instruction from insulin, the hormone responsible for regulating blood sugar. Refined carbohydrates break down at speed into glucose in the blood, prompting the pancreas to produce insulin. When insulin levels rise, fat tissue gets a signal to suck energy out of the blood, and to stop releasing it. So when insulin stays high for unnaturally long, a person gains weight, gets hungrier, and feels fatigued. Then we blame them for it. But, as Gary Taubes puts it, obese people are not fat because they are overeating and sedentary – they are overeating and sedentary because they are fat, or getting fatter.

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2024 Oct 22 Insulin Blocks Fat Burning – The Key to Weight Loss: Dr Jason Fung, great video on the mechanics of how to lose body fat. The key is insulin control by minimizing eating sugars and carbs

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