Insulin Resistance: What is it exactly?

Insulin resistance is a condition where your body needs more insulin to do the same job.

If you have heard the term thrown around and wondered what on earth is going on, let us find out.

Your liver breaks down food and converts it into blood sugar. Your body then uses the hormone insulin to “digest” sugar.

Digestion in this implying that your cells can take the sugar from the blood and use it for energy.

So obviously, there is an exchange ratio - the amount of insulin used to digest a specific amount of sugar. Let us just say 1:1 insulin:sugar to make it easy.

If this ratio changes to 1.2:1 insulin to sugar, you developed insulin resistance.

You need more insulin to do the same job a.k.a insulin resistance.

So how would you measure insulin resistance? In our work, we use blood markers such as morning fasting and Hba1c.

But the rigorous method is more complicated.

To test accurately, doctors would draw blood and measure glucose and insulin. They would then give you a steady supply of insulin intravenously.

Periodically, they would measure the amount of glucose in your blood to measure how effectively the insulin was “digesting” the sugar. Since your blood sugar would keep falling, they would also inject you with additional sugar.

To prevent all of this excess sugar from killing you, they would give you potassium phosphate, the same thing they put in sugary drinks.

Now they would measure the exchange ratio of insulin to sugar.

They could compare your ration to a normal individual and evaluate the resistance.

I don't know many people who would be willing to subject themselves to this. So let me give you simpler ways to know.

A larger than normal waist. Dark patches on your skin, neck or armpits. High blood pressure, fatigue, thirst, frequent urination are all symptoms of a possible insulin resistance.

Remember they are indicative not definitive. But if you have such symptoms ask your doctor or get an insulin resistance test done.

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