Why Your Body Chooses Sugar Over Fat
About this episode
Dr. Ben Bikman explains how insulin influences the body's choice between burning glucose and fat for energy.
Question? 📢 Ask Dr. Bikman’s Digital Mind (multilingual): https://benbikman.com/ben-bikmans-digital-ai-mind 📢 Dr. Bikman’s Community & Coaching Site: https://insuliniq.com Topic: Insulin is one of the body’s most important signals for determining whether you burn glucose or fat: when insulin rises, fat release and fat burning fall, while lower insulin allows stored fat to become available for fuel. This helps explain why reducing carbohydrates can dramatically increase fat oxidation even without changing the body’s basic ability to burn fat. Summary: In this mini-lecture Ben explains what determines whether the body burns glucose or fat for energy. He begins with the Randle cycle, also called the glucose-fatty acid cycle, which describes how these two fuels compete with one another. But Ben emphasizes that simply having fat available does not mean the body will burn it. Insulin plays a major role in deciding which fuel gets used. When insulin rises after eating carbohydrates, it suppresses the release of stored fat from fat cells and also makes it harder for long-chain fatty acids to enter the mitochondria to be burned. As a result, the body shifts toward burning glucose…
People in this episode
Host: Dr. Ben Bikman
Topics covered
- insulin
- fat burning
- glucose metabolism
- carbohydrate restriction
- energy production
Keywords
- insulin
- fat oxidation
- carbohydrates
- Randle cycle
- energy metabolism
Mentioned in this episode
Organizations: Insulin IQ
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