Muscle does a lot of things beyond movement. One of muscle’s most important roles is as a storage area for fuel, especially sugar. We call this glucose disposal.
You might remember our discussion about metabolic flexibility way back at the start of the program.
To recap, being metabolically flexible means that you can toggle between fuel sources, primarily fat or sugar, depending on what’s available and what your body needs.
If you are a metabolically inflexible person your system finds it hard to get the sugar out of your bloodstream and into storage. The sugar can then float around in the blood and cause all sorts of problems.
Having too much sugar in your bloodstream makes your pancreas upset. It has to release more insulin to get the job done. At first, this helps to get the excess glucose into your cells—but at a cost.
Repeatedly spiking your system with too much sugar means more and more insulin is needed to get the job done. Your system becomes resistant to your own insulin.
High levels of insulin also makes it hard for your body to use fat for fuel. If your body can’t use your fat very well, you can become more dependent on sugar for fuel. You become metabolically inflexible.
Many scientists believe that the first place that insulin resistance occurs is at the muscle.
So, muscle is important for metabolic health—but it’s also important for movement and function, so let’s go there next.
