Insulin: The Wrongly Accused Hormone

[Steven Bussinger]

As far as nutrients go, its a blanket argument. Populations across the world have eaten nutrient poor diets for extended periods of time, for example as has been seen with pellagra in rice eating countries, among others. Obesity was not a major issue in these situation and many of the other situations. Obesity is clearly a modern western disease, that spreads to non-western countries everytime they adopt portions of the western diet. Besides to claim "nutrients" doesnt really answer much. What nutrients? There are numerous nutrients and for the majority of them obesity isn't neccesarily a side effect of thier deficiency.

I largely agree with what you say. The "calories is a crude measure" is something I often bring up in these kinds of discussions. I believe the concept of a calorie was created as a way to standardize and economize food energy. It was done at the very beginning of modern nutritional science in the 1800's, mostly as a way to study the economics of food.

It's important to note that Asians accumulate visceral fat at much lower BMIs than whites. The point being that you cannot simply map the Asian situation onto the Western situation. The "non-obese rice-eaters" can still have metabolic problems (most likely from inadequate B vitamins in the liver). Diabetes used to be a "wasting disease". Now diabetes presents differently and it is probably because, as you said, PUFA is the culprit now.

 

[yerrag]

From the article:

When insulin starts to drop too low, lipolysis becomes overactive and releases too much fat into the circulation. This overload of fat is then converted to energy in the muscles and the rest than cannot be oxidized is deposited in the cells as fat. Ever heard of fatty liver and the accumulation of fat around the heart and in the muscles? Yes, that is driven by excess lipolysis for one.

@Hans I'm interested in the idea of low insulin having detrimental effects such as this one. Given that insulin isn't needed for glucose uptake, is there a possibility that insulin can be at very low levels and the body would still be at a homeostatic state? If I were to consider insulin to be a stress hormone, in the same way that cortisol and PTH are, having it at a minimum level should have beneficial effects, at least that's what I would imagine.

Having too low insulin levels would likely apply to Type 1 diabetics, but not to Type IIs. In a situation where a Type 1 diabetic could maintain normal blood sugar levels, by eating low-glycemic food, high potassium foods with more frequent meals, to compensate for the lack of glycogen stores, and relying on beta-oxidation and gluconeogenesis (at a minimum, to prevent chronically high cortisol production) to complement sugar metabolism, wouldn't having a higher rate of lipolysis be commensurate with the higher reliance on fatty acid oxidative metabolism that the condition would be adapted to?

And while the lack of insulin doesn't put a brake on the rate of lipolysis, it may not necessarily mean that there aren't other processes in the body that also regulate lipolysis. Similar to how when in a low-insulin state, where glycogenolysis and gluconeogenesis are not inhibited (by insulin), adrenalin is still needed to trigger glycogenolysis, and cortisol is still needed to trigger proteolysis and gluconeogenesis.

 

[yerrag]

From the article:

Furthermore, when insulin drops too low, the breakdown of protein in muscles and organs are enhanced and this leads to organ shrinkage and muscle wasting. Even a few hours of stress, where cortisol is very high, can shrink the thymus almost completely. Cortisol becomes elevated in a state of low insulin. Insulin is powerfully anti-catabolic as it potently inhibits cortisol.

Wouldn't low blood sugar be needed to trigger adrenaline and cortisol secretion, although low insulin would still be needed so that glycogenolysis, proteolysis, and gluconeogenesis would not be inhibited?