What happens when body stops listening to insulin?

While resistance of insulin is often an early metabolic warning sign, diabetes is a diagnosed medical condition, said expert.

Human pancreas are responsible for releasing insulin, a hormone responsible for regulating glucose in the blood.

Imagine a newspaper hawker moving in and around the street, knocking at doors and asking people to pick up the paper. 

Likewise, insulin does the same to the body cells, asking them to pick up glucose formed after the metabolisation of food in the intestines. This glucose can be further used by these cells to make energy.

When the pancreas stops making insulin or making too much of it, it becomes problematic.

What is insulin resistance?

Insulin is produced in the beta cells of the pancreas as one big molecule which later breaks into insulin and C-peptide.

C-peptide is often used as a diagnostic marker to know how much insulin is produced by the pancreas.

When the ingested food is broken down into simple sugars by the intestine, there is a brief spike in blood sugar. This triggers the release of insulin which further instigates body cells to absorb the glucose for energy production or storage.

Lack of physical activity or too much fat around adipose tissue can sometimes make body cells become immune to the call of insulin. In some cases, they might stop responding to it.

As a result, glucose stays in the blood for an extended time and the cells continue to starve for more energy. 

In such cases, this finely tuned system goes out of balance, with some counteractive hormones like glucagon further increasing the levels of sugar in the blood.

This starts to put pressure on the pancreas which pumps more insulin into the bloodstream.

This condition is called insulin resistance or the person having it is called to be insulin resistant. However, this state is reversible with lifestyle and dietary modifications.

Insulin resistance versus diabetes

As per experts, insulin resistance is often confused with diabetes but they are not the same.

Speaking to DH, Dr. Saket Kant, a senior endocrinologist at Sri Balaji Action Medical Institute (Delhi) said: “Insulin resistance and diabetes are very much related, but they are not the same. Insulin resistance happens when the cells of the body do not respond properly to insulin, so the pancreas have to produce more amount of insulin to keep blood sugar under optimum levels. In the initial stages, blood sugar may still remain normal. When the body can no longer keep up with the elevated levels, then diabetes develops, causing blood sugar level to remain elevated persistently.”

While resistance of insulin is often an early metabolic warning sign, diabetes is a diagnosed medical condition, Dr Kant added.

As per the expert, insulin resistance is a silent phase because there are no obvious symptoms. However, if one fails to make necessary lifestyle changes, it can cause permanent metabolic dysfunction, resulting in diabetes type 2.