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Insulin resistance affects how your body responds to insulin, the hormone that regulates your blood sugar. It is mostly linked to excess body fat but sometimes to genetic factors. Your liver, muscles, and adipose tissue (fat cells) are affected the most.
Insulin resistance can be difficult to diagnose. But there are tests that can help you get diagnosed.
Insulin resistance can lead to conditions like hyperglycemia, hypertension, and metabolic syndrome.
Key Takeaways
- Insulin resistance is a condition where the body's cells become less responsive to the hormone insulin, leading to a higher level of glucose in the bloodstream.
- This condition can lead to serious health problems like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
- HOMA-IR, HOMA2, QUICKI, and serum triglyceride ratios are often tested to diagnose insulin resistance.
- Risk factors for insulin resistance include obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, chronic stress, a high calorie diet, and some medical conditions such as Cushing's disease.
- You can improve insulin resistance mainly through lifestyle changes like maintaining a healthy body weight, getting regular physical activity, managing stress, and eating a healthy diet.
What Is Insulin Resistance?
Insulin resistance is when the body’s cells don’t use insulin effectively. Insulin, made in the pancreas, helps glucose enter the body's cells for energy. If you have insulin resistance, this leads to high blood glucose levels. This can cause serious health problems like type 2 diabetes and heart disease, which makes it important to track using tools like glucose meters.
Your body's cells in muscles, fat tissue, and the liver are the main areas where insulin is used. When these cells become insulin resistant, they lose the ability to balance your glucose levels. This causes your pancreas to make more insulin, leading to hyperinsulinemia, or high insulin levels in your blood.
How Does Insulin Resistance Affect My Body?
When cells resist insulin, glucose builds up in your blood, causing high blood glucose levels. Over time, this can put you at risk for serious health complications such as heart disease and kidney disease.
Chronic, or long-term, insulin resistance may lead to type 2 diabetes. Insulin resistance is a major factor in developing this condition.
In some people, insulin resistance might cause metabolic syndrome, a cluster of conditions including obesity, hypertension, abnormal cholesterol, and high blood sugar levels. Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, which causes excessive fat build-up in the liver, may also be triggered by chronic insulin resistance.
How Does Insulin Resistance Lead to Diabetes?
When you have insulin resistance, your body responds poorly to insulin. At first, your blood glucose levels may stay under control if your pancreas can still produce enough insulin to make up for your body’s resistance. But as insulin resistance continues and worsens, your pancreas may have trouble making enough insulin. Your blood sugar levels may then rise, leading to high blood glucose levels, which can cause Type 2 diabetes. If you suspect you have insulin resistance and catch it before it turns into diabetes, you can work with your healthcare provider to improve your lifestyle to reverse the damage before it develops into diabetes.
What Conditions Are Associated With Insulin Resistance?
Type 2 diabetes is just one of many consequences of insulin resistance. For example, fatty liver can be caused by insulin resistance. This condition causes fat accumulation in the liver. How severe fatty liver can be differs, but it could lead to liver cirrhosis (serious scarring of the liver) and liver cancer in some instances.
What Causes Insulin Resistance?
While the exact cause is not fully understood, several risk factors are well known. Insulin resistance can typically develop due to:
- Being overweight or obese: excess body weight, particularly around the abdomen.
- High-calorie diet: a diet with a lot of carbohydrates or sugar can lead to high blood glucose levels.
- Sedentary lifestyle: long periods without physical activity can impact your body's insulin sensitivity.
- Chronic stress.
- Taking high doses of steroids for an extended period.
- Certain medical conditions: conditions like Cushing's disease and polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) can also contribute.
Symptoms
Insulin resistance doesn’t typically cause symptoms at first. It often goes unnoticed until it progresses and leads to other problems like high blood glucose levels. High blood sugar is one of the main ways that your healthcare provider will diagnose you with insulin resistance.
Initial symptoms vary from person to person but may include:
- Fatigue
- Unexplained tiredness
- Increased hunger
- Difficulty concentrating
- Brain fog
- Weight gain around the abdomen
- High blood pressure
- High cholesterol levels
If insulin resistance leads to prediabetes or type 2 diabetes, the symptoms may become more serious. You might noticemore classic symptoms of diabetes, such as frequent urination and an unquenchable thirst.
How Is Insulin Resistance Diagnosed?
When you have symptoms like high blood glucose levels or frequent urination, healthcare providers may suspect insulin resistance. However, these symptoms alone don't diagnose it. Diagnosing insulin resistance has a few steps.
Identifying risk factors is the first step of diagnosis. These may include your body mass index (BMI), age, ethnicity, and family history. If your risk factors are high, healthcare providers might recommend a series of tests for diagnosis. High blood glucose levels may be a sign of insulin resistance.
Next comes the insulin dose test. This blood test checks your body's insulin production. Too much insulin dose in the bloodstream is a sign of insulin resistance.
The next steps include tests like the HOMA-IR, which checks insulin resistance by measuring insulin and blood glucose levels while you are fasting.
Treatment
Managing insulin resistance involves making healthy dietary choices, physical activity, and monitoring glucose levels. It may also require medical treatments such as insulin injections in certain cases. While medical intervention and insulin therapy are important, continuous monitoring of blood glucose levels, adopting a healthy lifestyle, and regular follow-ups with healthcare providers are just as important for treating insulin resistance. Your health care provider may ask you to take your blood glucose measurements and insulin dose tests regularly. You can take your blood sugar levels with a glucometer. With the help of your doctor, you can come up with a plan for medicating your condition.
Can Insulin Resistance Be Prevented or Avoided?
If you want to prevent insulin resistance, it is important to adopt lifestyles that lead to healthy blood glucose levels. Studies suggest that changing certain aspects of your lifestyle can help manage or even prevent the condition. For example, maintaining a balanced diet, regular exercise routine, and a healthy body weight can lower risk factors for insulin resistance.
Balanced diet
Eating a balanced diet is important in managing insulin resistance. Eating plenty of fresh fruits, vegetables, lean proteins, and limiting processed foods can help balance your blood sugar levels. Counting carbs, understanding portion sizes, and eating at regular intervals also help, as they work on preventing blood glucose spikes and crashes.
Regular exercise
Having a regular exercise routine helps boost insulin sensitivity, making your body’s cells better at using insulin to absorb glucose. This can include aerobic activities like running, swimming, or cycling, or resistance training such as weightlifting. Short bursts of high-intensity exercise are particularly useful in improving insulin sensitivity.
Maintaining a healthy body weight lowers the strain on your body's ability to use insulin and regulate blood sugar, lowering the chances of developing insulin resistance. Even a little weight loss can improve insulin sensitivity.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is insulin resistance?
Insulin resistance is a condition where the body's cells become resistant to the effects of insulin, a hormone that helps cells absorb sugar. This can lead to higher than normal blood sugar levels.
What are the common causes of insulin resistance?
Common causes of insulin resistance may include a sedentary lifestyle, obesity, unhealthy diet, lack of sleep, and certain medical conditions like polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) and Cushing’s disease.
Can lifestyle choices impact insulin sensitivity?
Yes, lifestyle choices, including a balanced diet, regular exercise, and maintaining a healthy body weight can significantly affect insulin sensitivity, possibly even preventing insulin resistance.
Can insulin resistance lead to diabetes?
Yes, insulin resistance is a significant risk factor for type 2 diabetes as it may eventually lead to the pancreas producing less insulin, causing elevated blood sugar levels.
How can I manage living with insulin resistance?
Managing insulin resistance involves making healthy dietary choices, physical activity, and monitoring glucose levels. It may also require medical treatments such as insulin injections in certain cases.
Should I avoid certain foods if I'm insulin resistant?
Yes, foods high in sugars and refined carbohydrates such as soda, juice, sweetened tea, white rice, white bread, and ultra-processed snacks can contribute to insulin resistance.
Can insulin resistance be reversed?
Yes, with lifestyle adjustments including a balanced diet, weight loss, and regular physical activity, insulin resistance can possibly be reversed.
What role does exercise play in managing insulin resistance?
Regular exercise plays an important role as it helps lower blood glucose levels, promotes weight loss, and improves insulin sensitivity. Start with light activities like going for walks and increase intensity over time.
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