MORE MUSCLE = BETTER INSULIN SENSITIVITY.

Being insulin sensitive means your body efficiently uses ‘energy’ (glucose) during rest and activity. Aiding in metabolism, reducing risk of diabetes/other disease and other hormonal risks - one hormonal imbalance has a knock on effect to others.

Insulin resistance = your cells struggling to respond to insulin levels.

Insulin sensitivity = your cells are able to respond healthily/efficiently to insulin levels.

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This is the most simple way to explain the difference in these terms … we want be insulin sensitive to reduce health risks and ensure our body is working optimally with good hormonal balance.

Insulin is a transport hormone - it is the key to allowing glucose from the blood to enter the cells within the body.

Muscle is a very insulin sensitive tissue - so the more muscle tissue you have this will improve your insulin sensitivity.

You body stores insulin in the liver and it also stores it in the muscle. So the more muscle mass you are able to help regulate insulin levels. Having insulin at the ready means your body will be more responsive to when glucose enters the blood stream post meal and use it more efficiently allowing it to be absorbs by the cells and not continue circulating in the blood stream.

Resistance training has been proven to be the better choice of exercise to help regulate and manage symptoms of type 1 & 2 diabetes.

The older we get we are at higher risk of losing lean muscle mass. As stated in the blogs above other hormones are to play in the lose of muscle mass which then leads to us being more insulin resistant with age.

If we focus on developing as muscle muscle mass as possible while staying at a healthy body fat percentage and consuming a balanced, performance supporting diet then we are reducing the risk of muscle loss.

Developing muscle and retaining it with age is vital to support many many systems own the body but being insulin sensitive has a lot of benefits:

Being insulin resistance means you are in a better position for muscle growth and repair - so you can build more muscle mass to continue supporting hormonal balance.

You increase you insulin sensitivity in the hours after weight training - hitting the 3-5 times a week gives you solid windows of more optimal insulin use.

Insulin help deliver nutrients to the cells in the body.

If insulin sensitivity is low then blood glucose is high, which can lead to weight gain and can lead to disease (eg/ pre diabetes, diabetes, cancers) and stresses to the body systems. The body will make more insulin to try ‘fix’ the problem … this lead leads to health risks.

So a great way for you to help support your body is to focus on building muscle mass - when in doubt ever on your journey - build muscle - it is such a powerful tissue that has huge advantage on supporting every system in the body and keep up running optimally for longer!

With resistance training, healthy lifestyle habits and balanced food we can set ourselves up for our most optimal life with the most optimal body.