23 July 2009

We just can't make time for everything

"....chronic elevated insulin levels and lipogenesis"

Remember this conversation we were having? The words above are a bit intimidating, wouldn't you say?

Let's start with insulin. I've mentioned before the fact that insulin controls the amount of glucose in the blood (blood sugar), but what you probably don't know is that insulin controls nearly everything related to your metabolism. It can also dramatically raise or lower blood pressure and cholesterol levels in a matter of hours. Insulin is a hormone, just like testosterone, estrogen, and growth hormone. What sets it apart from the rest is that it is the only major hormone that encourages the storage of fat, which brings me to lipogenesis.

Consider the scenario we discussed last week where I went through a typical American's daily diet. Lots of carbohydrates led to "chronic elevated insulin", right? In short, your body never had time to fully utilize (read: burn) all the carbohydrates you've stuffed it with and so insulin levels never drop back down to normal levels again before you munch on that bag of potato chips. So our good friend insulin does all it knows how to do. It tells the body to take all those carbs you haven't used and store them as fat, a process known as lipogenesis. (Lipo meaning "fat", and genesis meaning "the beginning") This is how insulin attempts to maintain a regular blood sugar.

So if you're body is still working on all those carbs you ate for lunch at dinner time, when does your body have time to burn fat?? Never. That gets stored too.

1 comment:

  1. Hi There,

    Looks like a great blog! We've started a blog called http://www.nutritionize.net to get this type of information out to the masses. Drop by, take a look, and let us know what's missing!

    Aj

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