Insulin causes weight gain in response to food intake and diabetics have low insulin or insulin resistance. Should not diabetics then be thin?
In: Biology
insulin is anabolic, but you may be confusing the definition of anabolic versus catabolic.
Anabolic steroids promote the synthesis of protein, fat, or carbohydrates.
Catabolic steroids, on the other hand, lead to the breakdown of those large molecules into smaller units, largely for the purpose of creating energy.
So catabolic steroids might make someone look emaciated, but anabolic steroids, including insulin, would be more likely to cause weight gain.
Untreated diabetes does lead to rapid weight loss. That’s how diabulimics “purge”.
It’s a bit confusing since type II diabetes typically presents in overweight patients, since a lifestyle that leads to being overweight also leads to insulin resistance, plus the additional weight itself causes insulin resistance.
I can only give a partial answer.
The reason is in part to the fact that not all type 2 diabetics not producing insulin some only require medications which aid the production or efficiency of insulin and most still produce some insulin just not enough to effectively manage their carbohydrate intake.
Because of this when a type 2 diabetic has high blood sugars some of the glucose can still be processed and so the body is less likely to breakdown fat and muscle for energy.
Conversely many other diabetics that produce no insulin can be quite slim as unless your diabetes is well managed its generally harder to gain fat and muscle, though not impossible.
Talking about Insulin on its own its purpose is to allow glucose to be moved into the cells of the body where is either utilised or stored depending on needs so using it when you are producing a normal amount of insulin will force your body to store the sugar in the liver rather than as fat or muscle.
In type 2 diabetes, your insulin is usually very high but you become resistant to it so it basically acts as if there wasn’t enough insulin. Everytime you eat something very rich in sugar, you will provoke a surge of insuline. This resistance to insuline happen because you’ve eaten so much sugar that insuline was released a lot and your body got “used” to it.
Usually people who develop type 2 diabetes are overweight because they, most of time, eat a lot of processed palatable food rich in sugar and fat.
However, you don’t necessarely need to be overweight to have type 2 diabetes. A bad luck and genetic can put you to develop type 2 diabetes even though you’re at normal weight.
Insulin can promote weight gain because it allows the cells to absorb sugars. Not having insulin mean you cells (and by extension you) will starve even tho there is sugar in your bloodstream. So untreated diabetes, type 1 or type 2, will eventually provoke massive weight loss before killing you.
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