How does our body process sugar?

Day 332 / 365

I was reading the book “Discipline equals Freedom”, which among other things stated the importance of having the self-discipline to eat healthy food. One of the most prominent ingredients of modern-day unhealthy food is sugar. The book went into detail about what our body actually does with sugar and I found it interesting enough to warrant writing a blog about it.

Our body has mechanisms in place to maintain the balance of a lot of things. If you get too hot, you will sweat in order to reduce the temperature. If the water levels are down, your body produces a sense of thirst to tell you to drink more. One such thing that the body has to maintain is the blood-glucose level.

When we eat sugar or any carbohydrate for that matter, our body breaks it down into glucose. This glucose enters our bloodstreams and then taken to different cells of our body that use it as a fuel.

Now, what if you take up an excess of sugar than your cells need? The blood glucose level will rise and in order to bring it down, your pancreas releases insulin. Insulin causes your cells to consume more glucose, thus bringing your blood-glucose level down. How does it do it? Well, your cells can get energy either from fresh glucose or by burning fat. Insulin turns off the fat-burning.

This seems like a good enough system, then what’s the issue with eating sugar? The reason is that if the insulin level in your body remains high for an extended period of time, it causes your cells to become resistant to it. This is what causes diabetes.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — Twitter Therapy