If you have been following health, fitness and nutrition, you may come across the hormone called insulin. When you hear condition called diabetes, it is not blood sugar issue but it is insulin issue. Even when blood sugar level increase after meal, as long as insulin can bind with sugar and cells can receive insulin then there won't be an issue. I'll come back to this.
When working on nutrition for health, fat loss or whatever may be, some question that I hear is what affect does protein has towards insulin. We do hear many different answers to this questions from protein will get insulin spike and get you out of ketosis to protein has no effect and actually help burn off more calories upon consumption.
So what is the answer to the questions? Does protein has any affect on insulin or glucagon?
To understand this topic, let's learn about insulin and glucagon.
Insulin and Glucagon
Insulin and glucagon are secreted in same organ called pancreas. They have complete opposite characteristics. Main role of insulin is to store. So when insulin level is high then the body will work on storing the nutrients. Therefore, majority of times, when we consume food or beverages with sugar, the insulin will be elevated and work on storing the nutrients in those food or beverages. This is vital for those who exercise on regular basis because all the food and supplement that we consume needs to be feeding towards our recovery and growth of the muscles. In this process we do need insulin to work for us.
Glucagon on the other hand has a role of spending. Only time when glucagon will be working is when the insulin level is low. When glucagon is high and active, it work towards utilizing fat or glucose as energy source and wasted heat. This is why we don't die when we are not able to eat for extended period of time like while we sleep.
Catabolism, Anabolism and Insulin to Glucagon Ratio
To understand further conversation in regards to insulin and glucagon, you will need to learn insulin to glucagon ratio. When insulin and glucagon ratio is high the body will be in anabolism. Anabolism is body's way of building. So after you do your workout, you do want to be in anabolic effect so your muscle, ligament, bone will be rebuild to be stronger.
When insulin to glucagon ratio is low, the body will go through a pathway of catabolism or breaking down. Catabolism may sound scary but very important process. Without catabolic process, we are not able to utilize fat as energy source nor can we eliminate some of the old or damaged cells that we do not need.
Both anabolism and catabolism are mostly dictated by the insulin to glucagon ratio. Depending on what your goal or focus is, you can manipulate your diet and physical activity to manage your insulin to glucagon ratio.
Let's put insulin to glucagon ratio into daily perspective.
When we are fasted for more than 2-3 hours our insulin level usually is lower. When insulin level is lower, glucagon level will be higher. Therefore, insulin to glucagon ratio will be low. This will be in catabolic state where body will be using and wasting energy. During this state, because the body is willing to exhaust the stored energy, metabolic rate will be higher.
When we consume carbohydrate, insulin level increase. As the insulin level increases, glucagon secretion is inhibited. Hence, the insulin to glucagon ratio will be higher. This is a anabolic state where the body wants to store. While insulin to glucagon ratio is high, because the body want to store energy, the metabolic rate will be lower.
Therefore, consuming carbohydrate will increase insulin and lowers glucagon.
When consuming fat, insulin effect is lower and promote glucagon secretion.
Protein is interesting. Depending on dominating hormone, protein or amino acid can play a role in insulin secretion or glucagon secretion.
Understanding Gluconeogenesis
Most of the people has decent understanding of what insulin does but not so much for the glucagon. To understand the importance of glucagon, we will need to understand the importance of gluconeogenesis. Gluconeogenesis is the process of liver creating glucose from protein or amino acid in the absence of carbohydrate. In other words when insulin to glucagon ratio is low, the liver can turn on the process of gluconeogenesis to provide the glucose to cells that absolutely need it such as red blood cells. Red blood cells does not have mitochondria, which is power generating factory, and it requires fast producing energy source which will be glucose.
Affect of Protein to Insulin and Glucagon
So let's put everything together and see what happens when we add protein to all this.
When looking at insulin effect on protein consumption, scientists generally use amino acid called alanine. There are several amino acids that can promote gluconeogenesis and alanine seems to be efficient so is often used for studies.
During fasted state while insulin level is low, when ingested with alanine will keep the insulin level lower and doubled the secretion of glucagon. Therefore, insulin to glucagon ratio is low. Meanwhile, with carbohydrate consumed state and add alanine, would increase the insulin secretion and lowers the glucagon. Therefore, insulin to glucagon ratio is high.
Why would fasted state with alanine promote insulin to glucagon ratio to be low? The answer to this is because of gluconeogenesis. When body is creating glucose from amino acid or protein, it is in somewhat emergency state where body is only creating glucose that body actually needs. Therefore, if the insulin level spikes, insulin will gather what glucose is made and put it into storage because that is its role. Remember the one cell that does require glucose? That's right red blood cells. Which means, red blood cells cannot be nurtured properly and we will eventually go into comma. In a way this is a way of our body protecting us during starvation, which is absolutely amazing.
Comparing Protein Effect to Insulin in 3 Different Diets.
So let's put this to how we eat and what effect we can see by adding protein to various diet. To look at this, let's compare fasted, standard American diet, and low-carb diet.
After fasting for more than 24 hours, the insulin to glucagon ratio is .8 which is very low and is considered catabolic state where body will be using fat as energy source and process called autophagy may start.
Standard American Diet (burger, fries, ketchup, cereal, doughnuts, orange juice, etc.), has insulin to glucagon ratio of 4, which is considered anabolic where body will be storing energy in a form of fat.
Low carb diet (ketogenic, vegetarian, Mediterranean, etc.), has the insulin to glucagon ratio of 1.3. It is higher than fasted state of course but still in a level of catabolic state and similar biological process is happening as fasted state.
So what happens to the ratio when protein is added to these diets?
In fasted state, insulin to glucagon ratio turn from .8 to .5. Meaning glucagon secretion was promoted.
Standard American diet, insulin to glucagon ratio turn from 4 to 70. So over 20 folds of increase in insulin secretion. This is probably one of the reason why protein has such negative reviews on some of the research studies.
Low carb diet, insulin to glucagon ratio turn from 1.3 to 1.3. There is 6% difference so the number itself will not change.
Considerations
If you are doing fasting or following low-carb diet, and still having a fat loss issues, most likely insulin has not been received by cells (insulin resistant) that may still be floating in your blood stream. If that is the case, it may help to lower the protein intake in the initial phase of fat loss. Just because you are not consuming carbs does not necessarily means your insulin level is low.
Another possibility is you may have a digestive issue. If you are experiencing bloat, constipation, skin irritation, and so on check your dietary fiber intake. If lower than 15-20g per day, you may want to consider adding food sources such as leafy vegetables, mushroom, grain and so on. Pre and probiotic supplementing may also help improve your gut health and digestive absorption rate. If you consume alcohol, taking antibiotics or any type of medication that has side effect on digestion, it is good idea to support your gut health with pre/probiotics supplements. Food such as, yogurt, kefirs, kimchi, natto, sauerkraut also has pre and probiotics.
Regular physical activity is also important key factor in fat metabolism. 30-40 minutes of low intensity exercise for 3-4 times per week is known to help teach the body how to metabolize fat as energy source.
Kota Shimada
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