Does insulin and glucagon both lead to glucose uptake by the skeletal cells?

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When there is excess glucose in the blood, insulin promotes glucose uptake mainly by the liver, adipose, and skeletal tissues. When there is low glucose in the blood, glucagon promotes release of glucose into the bloodstream, which will then be used by the cells for energy (e.g. skeletal tissue). So, in this case, both insulin and glucagon will both lead to glucose uptake in the skeletal cell? Or does insulin promote storage of glucose within the skeletal cell, which then gets released into the bloodstream by glucagon, but re-enters the skeletal cell for energy consumption?? Tried searching online for references, but couldn’t find the answer. Your insights will be much appreciated!

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3 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

What you need to know is that there are two types of cells in the body that can survive exclusively on glucose and they are the red blood cells and neurones so if your blood sugar is low those two suffer.
The brain with low sugar leads to agitation but with very low sugar for a prolonged time leads to coma then death.
On a regular basis insulin stores glucose in several tissues so that when you need it glucagon can take it out to keep regular and healthy levels of glucose in blood to keep the brain working.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Glucagon’s job is just to increase blood glucose so the brain can get it. It’s primary mechanism is glycogenolysis in the liver. It does not promote glucose entry into muscles. In fact, it causes muscles to break down glycogen too. Unless you’re a type 1 diabetic who is not on insulin, there is never a situation where there is zero insulin, so even when glucagon is present, that insulin in the background is still doing its job pushing glucose into cells. It’s competing with glucagon, but both processes are still happening, just the net effect is increasing blood glucose.

Anonymous 0 Comments

>So, in this case, both insulin and glucagon will both lead to glucose uptake in the skeletal cell?

No. Glucagon has nothing to do with glucose uptake in cells.

Glucagon has two primary actions:

1. Stimulate the breakdown of glycogen stores into glucose (glycogenolysis)
2. Stimulate the conversion of amino acids into glucose (gluconeogenesis)

It also downregulates how much glucose the liver itself uses.