Folks,
I’ve been researching energy drinks and energy gels for an article I have to write and insulin has come up a few times, and I don’t quite understand it’s purpose. I’m curious to know more about it, and what it does for athletes. Anyone have any insight?
Thanks!
Insulin is a hormone that is released from the pancreas. It is a chemical messenger to allow glucose to enter cells from the blood so that the cell can metabolize it into ATP. By moving Glucose into the cells, it controls blood sugar levels. Otherwise, the other way for glucose to enter the cell is the Na+/K+ ATP synthase pump.
To add to Mr. Munky’s post, here is a cut and paste job of a post I responded to a couple of months back. It was a quesiton on High Fructose Corn Syrup so much of the total post is cut out. Hope this helps;
…
Another very important hormone (and more to your quesiton) is insulin. Insulin affects nutrient storage in the liver, muscle and fat cells. When you eat CHO you release a certain amount of insulin which in turn pushes nutrients into the cells. So what affects insulin sensitivity? Again, many, many things. For example cardio work affects insulin sensitivity. High insulin sensitivity means that a small amount of insulin creates a large response, and insulin resistance indicates that it takes more insulin to make the same effects occur.
In turn being insulin resistent means you can take in very high GI sources and amounts of CHO and instead of storing these in the form of glycogen in the muscles and liver, you tend to use the glucose for fuel in the muscles and in the brain. So if you are in a state of cardio exercise, among other things that change like increased breathing, sweat for cooling, etc you become very insulin resistant. You don’t store nutrients you use them. This is good also if we are not interested in storing fat. Endurance exercise also encourages muscles use of fatty acids for fuel among many other things that we consider “good”.
There’s a spillover effect with a lot of endurance exercise so that even after a workout, for a period of time your insulin sensitivity will be reduced. Under chronic endurance exercise 5-8 hours/day your insulin sensitivity tends to remain depressed instead of rebound to any great degree. This is why cyclists use insulin to dope. They are so insulin resistant (genetic, exercise induced, or a combination), they can’t get replacement glycogen fast enough for their next race or workout no matter the type or amount of CHO they ingest. They just burn the glucose up. So they supra physiologically introduce insulin in the form of a needle in the butt, take on a ton of glucose and recover better. Oh yeah there’s that thing about if you screw it up (insulin dosage or CHO load) you will die, but we try not to think about that too much in the name of sport.
There are many other factors to insulin sensitivity. Genetics is a big one. You always hear stories about stick men that only eat donuts and French fries. It’s safe to say, that they are probably very, very, insulin resistant, and if you look around you can probably find diabetes somewhere close to them (father, brother, sister, etc.). Your diet over the long run can change your insulin sensitivity and you see this in Type II diabetics. Exercise too over the long run changes things. The list goes on. How does this relate to HFCS? So like any other simple sugar, your circumstance going into ingesting it will determine how your body will deal with it one in there. Your genetics, how you have been eating, what your exercise level etc., all make a difference.
I know that insulin was rumoured to be one of the last performance-enhancing drugs of Marco Pantani.
It is currently experimented with by body builders. Just the right amount can give great performance-enhancing effects. Too much can kill you.
Off to train or I would elaborate. I’ll bet the guys who know a bit more about this would fill you in the rest of the way.
bodybuilders use it to recover fast from intense weights sessions. str8 after a strenuous workout they’ll inject it and consume some high gi carbs (as far as i know)
If bodybuilders inject insulin, they’re morons. Eat a frickin’ candy bar.
Maybe they’re injecting insulin-like growth factor 1 or 2? (IGF-1, IGF-2)
If bodybuilders inject insulin, they’re morons.<<
True, and I agree.
Eat a frickin’ candy bar.<<
I agree, bodybuilders do not.
In the world of bodybuilders, this is actually a very interesting phenomena, and one that they don’t well understand. They believe that if I was a bodybuilder and post workout ate a CHO load to illicit 8iu of insulin response, and you were a bodybuilder that injected 8iu of humalog and then ate CHO, for some reason, your body would spare muscle more than mine, most of the time. It may be the timing, it may be humalog hangs around in a normal person’s system longer, no one really knows for sure.
Studies on this can be contradictory because there is so much going on at one time, and none are done on healthy individuals. Bottom line is this is not well understood and if you screw it up it WILL KILL YOU, but that doesn’t stop the bodybuilding community from playing around with insulin. This is a VERY BAD idea.
Maybe they’re injecting insulin-like growth factor 1 or 2? (IGF-1, IGF-2) <<
I think they do both, but I know that they do insulin (humalog, novalog, etc.)
Weird - do you know of any studies that have compared the anabolic effects of physologic, post-prandial insulin vs. exogenous insulin? A quick scan of Medline gave me only case reports of bodybuilders doing the stuff.
Really dumb idea anyway.
I’m a Type 1 diabetic and I don’t take my novolog around periods when I am doing a significant amount of exercise because my blood sugar drops significantly on its own.
Are you suggesting that it would be benefical to increase the amount of recovery food that I eat and take some insulin with it so that I store the glycogen?
So , based on cardio affecting insulin sensitivity , what would chromium picolinate’s effect on cardio performance be ? “Apparently” CP is supposed to improve the transfer of insulin within the body ,if I am not incorrect. I am not a chemist , nutritionist or physiologist or the like. Perhaps someone in the field would care to expand.Thanks.
I think most of the studies done with chromium piconolate have shown that it’s ineffective.
Are you suggesting that it would be benefical to increase the amount of recovery food that I eat and take some insulin with it so that I store the glycogen?
I’m curious as to what you usually do in terms of recovery eating…
There are two things that I lumped together due to laziness that I shouldn’t have. My scenario is what bodybuilders say, not necessarily what research shows. I should have made that clear (and honestly I am a little surprised I didn’t). First, there are many studies that show insulin to be anabolic but only in the presence of exogenous amino acids.
(Fryburg DA, Jahn LA, Hill SA, Oliveras DM, and Barrett EJ. Insulin and insulin-like growth factor-I enhance human skeletal muscle protein anabolism during hyperaminoacidemia by different mechanisms. J Clin Invest 96: 1722-1729, 1995.)
The amino acids, especially leucine, seem more important than high levels of insulin, at least according to some research. (Ferrando AA, Chinkes DL, Wolf SE, Matin S, Herndon DN, and Wolfe RR. A submaximal dose of insulin promotes net skeletal muscle protein synthesis in patients with severe burns. Ann Surg 229: 11-18, 1999). Now the bodybuilders’ experiences seem to tell a different story?
Also most insulin studies are infusion studies, some are contradictory. Some studies say insulin levels above the tiny cutoff (much less than from an injection) contribute no additional anabolic effect. These studies say insulin is only anticatabolic; it just preserves muscle mass.
(Gelfand RA and Barret EJ. Effect of physiologic hyperinsulinemia on skeletal muscle protein synthesis and breakdown in man. J Clin Invest 80: 1-6, 1987.)
Thanks for the clarification. It was my understanding that insulin is mainly thought to be anti-catabolic in vivo, rather than anabolic. (That’s pretty much what your first reference is saying, though I know there are a fre contradictory reports)
It boggles the mind as to why bodybuilders would mess around with insulin, which has definite risks and highly questionable efficacy. Stick to the anabolic steroids - they’re illegal and also have definite risks, but at least they work 
re: using insulin as a performance enhancing drug.
http://www.discoveryhealth.co.uk/men/m_story.asp?storyid=117433&oldstoryid=47663&feature=
It was my understanding that insulin is mainly thought to be anti-catabolic in vivo, rather than anabolic.<<
I really can’t argue too much on that, I mean we can trade studies but it won’t amount to much (not least of which because we are going to be talking about diabetics, normal functioning people, burn victims, rabbits, rats, etc.), notwithstanding I happen to agree with you… the bodybuilders however, they have other information??
It boggles the mind as to why bodybuilders would mess around with insulin, which has definite risks and highly questionable efficacy. Stick to the anabolic steroids - they’re illegal and also have definite risks, but at least they work.<<
Agree. But as you point out AS are illegal (schedule III or something) and insulin isn’t. One can bum or buy some off of a T1 diabetic and try to make it work in a way that won’t put him in jail and get his house and car taken away, but may put him in the hospital.
You don’t have the mindset of a sports drug junkie, so it doesn’t (nor should it) occur to you to go down the path, and fight with that decision. You are not hoping to believe that there is this drug out there that will cause you to be world class. You maintain your objectivity.
This is yet another mechanism by which drug use in sport kills the future of that sport, as you end up with only those in the sport that have the mindset of a junkie, and are willing to stake their lives on it.
I’m a Type 1 diabetic and I don’t take my novolog around periods when I am doing a significant amount of exercise because my blood sugar drops significantly on its own.
Are you suggesting that it would be benefical to increase the amount of recovery food that I eat and take some insulin with it so that I store the glycogen?
Yes I would suggest you do that - unless you are trying to lose fat or muscle mass. Right after exercise is the most important time so it’s better to jack it up then and cut it later. I wind up eating a large lunch/dinner in the late afternoon after long training sessions and it works much better than keeping more to the usual daily pattern and waiting for the next meal.
Also take more the day before any more extreme training sessions, or two days in front of something like an ironman. I am still trying to get back down to my old racing weight so I haven’t done it much recently but the times I have jacked it and pigged out on Friday, Saturday went a whole lot better.