Insulin Resistance occurs when liver cells, muscle and fatty tissues don’t react the way that they should to the insulin in your body, which means that you don’t absorb glucose from the bloodstream the way that you should. Due to this problem, those suffering from insulin resistance will require extra insulin in order to encourage blood sugar levels to become stable. When this imbalance occurs the pancreas will begin producing extra insulin, and in most healthy adults the beta cells in your pancreas should be able to produce enough to get you back on track. If your body is unable to compensate then too much sugar will remain in your bloodstream and health issues could follow, including pre-diabetes or full diabetes.

Causes Of Insulin Resistance

There are many different reasons why insulin resistance could occur in a patient, but one of the main reasons seems to fall in the range of an unhealthy lifestyle. This includes a number of different characteristics, but food and exercise are huge factors.

“Many studies have shown that physical inactivity is associated with insulin resistance, often leading to type 2 diabetes. In the body, more glucose is used by muscle than other tissues.” – National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse

It isn’t just exercise that is necessary in order to keep your blood sugar levels functioning properly. Keeping your BMI down to a healthy level is also crucial if you want to avoid heart disease, fatty liver, or even acanthosis nigricans. Often it’s obese patients who find themselves suffering from this disorder, but with weight loss and some changes in eating and physical activities, it’s possible to reverse these effects and lead a perfectly normal lifestyle in many cases.

As It Occurs

Insulin resistance occurs as the human body finds itself unable to comprehend the effects of insulin on its cells. This means that insulin isn’t being utilized as it’s made and a higher level is needed.

“With insulin resistance, the pancreas produces more and more insulin until the pancreas can no longer produce sufficient insulin for the body’s demands, then blood sugar rises.” – Medicine Net

This can lead to hypoglycemia, a condition in which your body may become weak, shaky, and dizzy; many patients with hypoglycemia require a boost of sugar to refocus their minds and give their bodies some stability.

Testing For Resistance

The most recognized method of testing for insulin resistance is performed with a hyperinsulinemic euglycemic clamp, which helps physicians to find the exact amount of glucose needed to rectify a surge in insulin without making a patient hypoglycemic. This is more of an investigative tool and is actually rarely used on an actual patient, but is instead utilized in lab work to test different forms of medicine linked to diabetes research. A secondary test method was developed by Gerald Reaven while working out of Stanford; it incorporates a patient receiving a mixture of medications in a saline fluid over a three to five minute span to suppress the growing levels of insulin and glucose. This correlates with the clamp test and checks the blood glucose in increments of thirty, sixty, ninety, one hundred and twenty, and then ten minutes to determine a steady blood sugar level.